This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: The Age
May 31, 2008
The unearthing of human remains in the German-dug mass grave in Fromelles may ease the heartbreak of some soldiers' families, but it has sparked a monumental political headache for the Australian and British armies.
With up to 400 Australian and British soldiers apparently buried together in the pits beside Pheasant's Wood, how will we navigate and reconcile the two nations' different responses to and expectations of the find?
While both are party to a postwar agreement
Source: Politico.com
June 1, 2008
As the Democratic primary season nears a close, the candidates have talked about dozens of policies, fended off a host of attacks and studiously avoided one topic: the impeachment of President Clinton.
Whether that’s a product of self-control or self-preservation, the tactical decision by Hillary Rodham Clinton’s opponents to steer clear of any direct reference to what may have been the defining moment of the Clinton White House seems remarkable given the duration and intensity of t
Source: Chicago Tribune
June 1, 2008
When the price of oil roared to record highs last week, it was duly noted. But another milestone passed almost unremarked: Monday was the 100th anniversary of the discovery of oil in the Middle East.
Britons William Knox D'Arcy and George Reynolds are not exactly household names in America, but it was D'Arcy's money and gambler's nerve, and Reynolds' hardheaded persistence that brought in the first gusher in what is today Iran.
The discovery would change the world. Over
Source: WaPo
June 1, 2008
Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto, on a state visit to North Korea in 1993, smuggled in critical data on uranium enrichment -- a route to making a nuclear weapon -- to help facilitate a missile deal with Pyongyang, according to a new book by a journalist who knew the slain politician well.
The assertion is based on conversations that the author, Shyam Bhatia, had with Bhutto in 2003, in which she said she would tell him a secret "so significant that I had to promis
Source: Salon
June 1, 2008
A truth and reconciliation commission is examining a decades-long government policy that required Canadian Indians to attend schools where students were forced to lose their cultural identity and routinely were subjected to abuse.
The commission's five-year mandate began Sunday and its work starts Monday. Members will eventually travel across Canada to hear stories from former students, teachers and others. The goal is to give survivors a forum to tell their stories and educate Cana
Source: Fox News
June 1, 2008
President Bush has asked his defense and interior secretaries to look into designating Pearl Harbor and other historic World War II sites in the Pacific a national monument.
A May 29 presidential memo to Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said such status could offer the sites additional protection.
"These objects of historical and scientific interest may tell the broader story of the war, the sacrifices made by America and its a
Source: NYT
May 30, 2008
A swatch of hair, so thick and tangled it could have belonged to man or bear, has provided answers about a mysterious culture and its origins half a world away.
The culture is that of the first people to have occupied Greenland some 4,500 years ago. Known to archaeologists as the first Paleo-Eskimo culture, it gave way to a second Paleo-Eskimo culture some 2,500 years ago and then 700 years ago to the Thule culture of the present-day Inuit peoples. Some archaeologists suggested that
Source: Fox News
May 31, 2008
A giant Confederate battle flag may soon be flying near a Tampa highway intersection.
A Confederate heritage group called the Sons of Confederate Veterans plans to fly the 30-by-50 flag atop a 139-foot pole, the highest the FAA will allow.
The group, which bills its Confederate flag as the "world's largest," expects to have it in place by 2009, The St. Petersburg Times reported.
The group has building permits but still needs $30,000 to complete th
Source: NYT
May 30, 2008
A local planning board has approved a proposal to build a $250 million visitor center and conference facilities on privately owned land in Valley Forge National Historical Park. Opponents say the decision increases the risk of commercial development in other scenic and historic national parks.
The Planning Commission of Lower Providence Township, about 15 miles northwest of Philadelphia, voted unanimously late Wednesday in favor of the project, the American Revolution Center.
Source: NYT
June 1, 2008
“I have no future here to stay.”
Written in broken English but with perfect clarity, the message is a stark and plaintive assessment from one of the last Jews of Babylon.
The community of Jews in Baghdad is now all but vanished in a land where their heritage recedes back to Abraham of Ur, to Jonah’s prophesying to Nineveh, and to Nebuchadnezzar’s sending Jews into exile here more than 2,500 years ago.
Just over half a century ago, Iraq’s Jews numbered more
Source: CBS News
June 1, 2008
Robert Francis Kennedy … RFK … was assassinated 40 years ago this coming week. Few Americans will ever forget the shock of that night, and what it would mean. Among those working in Bobby Kennedy's presidential campaign was Jeff Greenfield, now our Senior Political Correspondent. He offers a very personal recollection of a man who spoke to so many in so many different ways.
Source: theday.com
May 30, 2008
THE U.S. NAVY PLANS TO USE ITS only research submarine to help a local foundation find the wreck of John Paul Jones' Revolutionary War ship the Bonhomme Richard.
It was Sept. 23, 1779, and cannonballs from the HMS Serapis had shredded the hull of the Bonhomme Richard.
Jones was in command of a burning, sinking ship. Half of his crew members were dead or wounded.
His adversary shouted to him, asking if he would surrender.
It was then that Jones
Source: http://www.sciencenews.org
May 29, 2008
Footprints left in volcanic ash that fell in central Mexico's Valsequillo Basin about 40,000 years ago are evidence that humans have inhabited the Americas far longer than previously confirmed, a new study suggests.
Analyses of three-dimensional laser scans of the imprints (example at right) confirm their human origin, says Silvia Gonzalez, a geoarchaeologist at Liverpool John Moores University in England.
Previous finds of human remains elsewhere in the region couldn't
Source: AP
May 30, 2008
The allegations of deceit in Scott McClellan's book have been a surprise not only for Bush officials enraged with the former White House spokesman but also for publishers who turned down what is now the industry's hottest release.
"Books by spokespeople rarely contain anything newsworthy and have generally not proven particularly compelling to consumers," said Steve Ross, publisher of the Collins division of HarperCollins and head of the Crown Publishing Group at Random Ho
Source: US News blog
May 30, 2008
What do you call a recession where the economy keeps going up and up, even if a bit sluggishly? Well, my friends, you call that an expansion. And that is what we seem to have right now, despite all the economic doomsaying about a recession or even a Great Depression 2.0. Today, the Commerce Department revised its first-quarter estimate of gross domestic product upward to 0.9 percent from 0.6 percent. That follows 0.6 percent GDP growth in the final quarter of 2007. The revision also makes it mor
Source: Independent (UK)
May 30, 2008
One of Germany's best-known politicians was under mounting pressure to resign yesterday amid new allegations that he worked as an informer for East Berlin's infamous Stasi secret police.
Gregor Gysi, who worked as a lawyer in the former Communist East, has been an MP since the country's reunification in 1990 – first for the left-wing Party for Democratic Socialism and more recently as co-leader of the new Left party.
Yesterday, the 60-year-old faced demands for his resi
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 30, 2008
Members of one of the few remaining indigenous tribes still isolated from the modern world brandished weapons as a helicopter flew over their village in the Amazon.
Source: AP
May 29, 2008
Naval experts will begin searching Friday for an airliner that crashed into the Baltic in June 1940 with nine people on board, including a U.S. diplomatic courier considered one of the first American casualties of World War II.
The mystery of the plane's fate has since remained unsolved, despite Estonia's efforts to locate the wreckage believed to be lying 300 feet underwater near the tiny island of Keri, some 20 miles northeast of Tallinn.
"If the aircraft is in t
Source: NYT
May 30, 2008
At a meeting in his Pentagon office in early 1981, Secretary of the Navy John F. Lehman told Capt. John S. McCain III that he was about to attain his life ambition: becoming an admiral.
But Mr. McCain, the son and grandson of revered Navy admirals, was having second thoughts about following his family’s vocation. He had spent the previous four years as the Navy’s liaison to the Senate, sampling life in the world’s most exclusive club as he escorted its members on trips around the gl
Source: LiveScience
May 29, 2008
Egypt plans to conduct a DNA test on a 3,500-year-old mummy to determine whether it belongs to King Thutmose I, one of the most famous Pharaohs, the country's chief archaeologist said Thursday.
Zahi Hawass, Egypt's antiquities chief, said the test will be carried out on an unidentified mummy found in the ancient Thebes on the west bank of the Nile, what is today Luxor's Valley of the Kings.
Egyptian experts will also X-ray the mummy, Hawass was quoted as saying by the n
