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: Slate
May 29, 2008
In his new book, Now the Hell Will Start, Brendan I. Koerner tells the story of an epic World War II manhunt: the quest to find Herman Perry, a black soldier who shot and killed a white commanding officer, then disappeared into the jungles of Burma, where he joined a tribe of headhunters and eluded capture for months. The book is an amazing piece of reporting—part thriller, part history—that got its start as a Slate "Explainer." When Koerner wrote the column back in 2003, he came acros
Source: AP
May 30, 2008
When British military leaders set up a
special task force in 1969 to study how best to use
deception to achieve their battlefield aims, they
turned their attention to the tactics used by the
Israelis — not the Americans.
Formerly classified documents released Friday by the
National Archives show that many officers felt the
Americans didn't have a knack for deceiving the enemy.
Americans were judged to be so open and friendly that
they lacked cunning.
The so-called Defense De
Source: AFP
May 29, 2008
The United Nations on Thursday
feted 60 years of peacekeeping around the world, with
its overstretched"blue helmets" in high demand but
somewhat tarnished by sex abuse and corruption
scandals. "Today, we have more than 110,000 men and deployed in conflict zones around the world," UN chief Ban Ki-moon
said in a message to mark International Day of
Peacekeepers.
"They come from nearly 120 countries, an all-time
high, reflecting confidence in United Nations
peacekeeping," he said.
Source: AP
May 30, 2008
One of Brazil's last uncontacted Indian tribes has been spotted in the far western Amazon jungle near the Peruvian border, the National Indian Foundation said Thursday.
The Indians were sighted in an Ethno-Environmental Protected Area along the Envira River in flights over remote Acre state, said the Brazilian government foundation, known as Funai.
Funai said it photographed "strong and healthy" warriors, six huts and a large planted area. But it was not known
Source: http://www.wickedlocal.com
May 13, 2008
The Governor’s Council issued a resolution at the Massachusetts State House on April 30 honoring Newton resident David Boyajian for his role in the campaign against the Anti-Defamation League’s denial of the Armenian Genocide and for questioning the appropriateness of towns’ affiliation with the ADL’s No Place for Hate anti-bias program.
The resolution was introduced by Marilyn Petitto Devaney, a Governor’s Council member and Watertown Town Councilor.
The resolution cit
Source: Politico.com
May 28, 2008
Even after Scott McClellan’s publisher released a juicy excerpt from his memoir last November, some of his former combatants in the White House press corps remained skeptical that the longtime Bush loyalist would really open up.
But Newsweek’s White House correspondent Richard Wolffe wasn’t one of them.
“He promised when he first started writing this book that he’d engage in some truth-telling,” said Wolffe, who had spoken to McClellan in recent months. “And that’s wh
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
May 29, 2008
It is hard to imagine a Microsoft venture falling under the weight of a competitor. But that's the post-mortem offered by many academic librarians as they ponder the software giant's recent and sudden announcement that it is shutting down its book-digitization project. The librarians' conclusion: Google did it.
Microsoft quietly revealed this month that it would end the program and the accompanying search software, Live Search Books and Live Search Academic. The project made complet
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 27, 2008
A foreign policy expert consulted by Senator Barack Obama, the leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, has accused members of the American Jewish establishment of "McCarthyism" in its attitude towards critics of Israel.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former national security adviser, said that the pro-Israel lobby in the US was too powerful, while the slur of anti-Semitism was too readily used whenever its power was called into question.
Presenti
Source: AP
May 29, 2008
England's enigmatic Stonehenge served as a burial ground from its earliest beginnings and for several hundred years thereafter, new research indicates.
Dating of cremated remains shows burials took place as early as 3000 B.C., when the first ditches around the monument were being built, researchers said Thursday.
And those burials continued for at least 500 years, when the giant stones that mark the mysterious circle were being erected, they said.
"It'
Source: Times (UK)
May 23, 2008
In the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940, an historian named Emanuel Ringelblum organised and carried out an act of resistance without parallel, a feat of historical heroism that has only come fully to light recently: he set about preserving the present, for the benefit of the future.
Ringelblum was one of 450,000 Jews herded into the ghetto by the Nazis. Over the next three years many died of disease or starvation. Most of the remainder were rounded up and murdered in Treblinka. Those who surv
Source: Deutsche Welle
May 27, 2008
Germany's war graves authority has signed an agreement for the remains of some 4,000 German soldiers killed in former Czechoslovakia during World War II to be buried at a special site in the western Czech town of Cheb.
The head of the German war graves authority, Reinhard Fuehrer, and the mayor of Cheb, Jan Svoboda, agreed on Monday, May 26, to build a military cemetery for the German war dead next to the town graveyard.
The agreement was hailed by both sides as an act
Source: Reuters
May 28, 2008
A speck of green in a sea of sand, St. Anthony's Monastery in Egypt welcomes those seeking God in silence broken only by the whisper of the wind.
Monks at what is considered by many to be the world's oldest active Christian monastery still rise before dawn to chant and pray just as their predecessors did for more than 1,500 years.
Now, they also carry mobile phones, send e-mails and maintain a website (http://www.stanthonymon
Source: LiveScience
May 28, 2008
Strands of 1,000-year-old DNA from 10 Viking skeletons have been retrieved, a team of scientists claims.
If true, the achievement would be notable, since many researchers say it is impossible to recover authentic DNA from ancient humans.
Jorgen Dissing of the University of Copenhagen and colleagues say they retrieved the genetic material from the freshly sampled teeth of skeletons dating back to around A.D. 1000 and found at a non-Christian burial site called Galgedil o
Source: WaPo
May 28, 2008
Nobody has walked across the Red Sea since Moses parted the waters. But it could happen again under an audacious plan to build the world's longest suspension bridge between Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.
If built, the bridge would cross the Red Sea at an 18-mile-wide strait known as the Bab al-Mandeb, or Gate of Tears, connecting the southern tip of Yemen with the tiny East African country of Djibouti. Estimated price tag: $10 billion to $20 billion.
The proposal is
Source: AFP
May 28, 2008
An ancient gold cup mysteriously acquired by a Taunton scrap metal dealer is expected to fetch some 500,000 pounds at auction after languishing for years in a shoe box under its current owner's bed.
Owner John Webber says his grandfather gave him the 5.5-inch (14-centimetre) high mug to play with when he was a child, back in 1945.
He assumed the golden cup, which is decorated with the heads of two women facing in opposite directions, their foreheads garlanded with two k
Source: AP
May 28, 2008
The oldest active ship in the U.S. Navy, the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier, made its final departure from Japan on Wednesday to be decommissioned after nearly half a century of service.
The Kitty Hawk, with sailors lining its decks, pulled away from Yokosuka port just south of Tokyo to the cheers of hundreds of schoolchildren and the sounds of brass bands.
The Kitty Hawk, the last conventionally powered aircraft carrier in the Navy, is to be replaced later this summe
Source: http://www.kentucky.com
May 27, 2008
A Jefferson Davis scholar at Rice University in Texas knew immediately that the letters she saw on an auction house Web site belonged to Transylvania University.
Lynda Crist, editor of The Papers of Jefferson Davis, said in a phone interview that her office had microfilmed the documents, worth more than $15,000, and included them in one of the volumes.
She notified Transy officials, who contacted Lexington police, according to the affidavit.
Eugene C. Zollm
Source: AP
May 26, 2008
As the nation marks Memorial Day, New York City officials have unveiled a newly refurbished Civil War monument in Manhattan's Riverside Park.
The city and the private Riverside Park Fund have paid more than $1 million for new plantings, chess tables, lighting and other improvements to the Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument. The work included cleaning and restoring a pair of 1865 U.S. Army cannons.
Source: AP
May 28, 2008
President Bush, linking the wars of his tenure to the deadliest one in history, is asking the country to commit anew to postwar rebuilding.
In an address for Wednesday to more than 1,000 graduates of the U.S. Air Force Academy, Bush frames their futures by drawing back to the World War II generation. He links the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to postwar Germany and Japan six decades ago.
"America has assumed this obligation before," Bush said in prepared remarks rele
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 28, 2008
Italian archaeologists have discovered a perfectly preserved skeleton of a 1400-year-old Lombard warrior, buried with his horse.
The skeleton, which was found in a park at Testona, near Turin, is of a 25-year-old Lombard who died of a fever. Unusually, his horse was buried alongside him.
"This is a very rare find," said Gabriella Pantò, the archaeologist leading the dig. "We have not seen many precedents in Italy. We have seen horses' heads buried with wa
