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: Observer
November 5, 2006
Ireland has the highest proportion of private homeowners in the world. However, the Irish are 21st-century serfs because they do not really own the land on which their houses are built.
A new book on who owns the land of this planet has found that it is the state rather than private Irish individuals which has ultimate control over the ground where homes stand.
Who Owns the World [subtitled The Hidden Facts behind Landownership; published November 2 by Mainstream] is t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 5, 2006
The small case lay sealed in an attic for decades. Faded with age, its rusting hinges took some gentle prising before they snapped open and a war-stained envelope marked "Killed in action" spilled out from piles of letters from the trenches.
Ninety years on, as Remembrance Day approaches, those letters paint a vivid picture of the First World War seen through the eyes of one ordinary family who made an extraordinary sacrifice.
Handed down through three generat
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 5, 2006
Special offer: bijou apartments, unique location in Red Army military installation in central Moscow, a stone's throw from the Kremlin and St Basil's Cathedral. Quiet neighbours, including one long-dead Soviet leader.
Part of Red Square, the iconic symbol of the former Soviet Union and home to the mausoleum housing its first leader, is to become a playground for the fabulously rich.
One of the ornate, pre-revolution buildings overlooking the historic square is being transform
Source: AP
November 4, 2006
Two great-great-great-grandsons of Brigham Young presented to the Mormon church an heirloom rocking chair that one of Young's many wives likely sat in to soothe their children.
Brothers Bob and Skip Young say the chair has been cherished by their family, but its historical value would be better appreciated by the church and the residents of the city founded by their ancestor.
The Youngs are descendants of Lucy Decker Young, one of the wives of the church president who
Source: AP
November 4, 2006
More than half a century of fragile peace between North and South Korea has produced one of the world's most unusual tourist attractions.
As global leaders struggle to strike a balance between punishing the communist-led North for its Oct. 9 nuclear test and engaging the volatile state in arms talks, hundreds of tourists are still flocking to the front lines each week hoping for a glimpse across the last Cold War frontier.
Littered with land mines and encased in razo
Source: AP
November 4, 2006
Tens of thousands of Hungarians marched Saturday in a torch-lit procession organized by the center-right opposition on the 50th anniversary of the Soviet crackdown on Hungary's 1956 revolution.
Commemorations across the country remembered the end of the uprising, when an estimated 100,000 Soviet troops and up to 4,600 tanks overran the country.
There have been protests in the Hungarian capital since Sept. 17, after radio broadcasts of a leaked recording on which Sociali
Source: AP
November 4, 2006
Two of Martin Luther King Jr.'s children say a proposed civil rights museum should be near their father's grave instead of in the city's tourism hub.
The 2.5-acre site that Coca-Cola Co. offered two weeks ago for the museum is near the Georgia Aquarium, the CNN Center and the future World of Coca-Cola Museum. Some city leaders say the civil rights museum should be less than two miles away near Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King preached, and the King Center, where he and his wife,
Source: Independent (UK)
November 4, 2006
The reasons behind Sir Anthony Eden's mistake in dispatching British troops to Suez are among the most enduring mysteries of modern politics.
Rumours have circulated for decades that Eden, who was Prime Minister from 1955 to 1957 and was suffering from a debilitating illness at the height of the crisis in 1956, was taking addictive, painkilling drugs that could have clouded his judgement.
Private papers just uncovered in the Eden family archives provide a definitive an
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 4, 2006
A war memorial to commemorate the 16,000 British servicemen who have died since the Second World War appears certain to be built after an about-turn by National Lottery chiefs last night.
Politicians and the public reacted furiously after the £7.4 million project failed to get lottery funding because it was deemed not to meet the criteria for "Living Landmarks".
After interventions by Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, and Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, heads
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 4, 2006
A leading family historian urged Britons yesterday not to "wipe our collective memory" by relying on electronic means to communicate.
Nick Barratt's appeal came as a senior MP repeated warnings that, in a few years, digital records of government business might be unreadable because of the accelerating pace of technological change.
Mr Barratt, The Daily Telegraph's Family Detective and the researcher behind the BBC's Who Do You Think You Are? series, said th
Source: Times Online (UK)
November 4, 2006
An unpublished aphorism from the pen of Oscar Wilde has come to light.
“One can exist without art, but one cannot live without it,” the flamboyant author wrote in 1882, the year he embarked on a grand lecture tour of America.
Having ventured into the Wild West in his pantaloons and velvets to discuss art and aesthetics, he scribbled the previously unseen words in ink on a scrap of paper, apparently for an adoring autograph-hunter of the day.
Source: AP
November 3, 2006
Something remarkable happened after the death of the ruthless and reviled P.W. Botha, apartheid South Africa's last hard-line president: The black government Botha toiled to prevent sent condolences, offered a state funeral and ordered flags flown at half staff.
The reaction to Botha's death pointed to the extraordinary strides toward reconciliation made by a country once bitterly divided. The gestures made this week also show a desire to relegate the wounds inflicted by apartheid
Source: NYT
November 6, 2006
amuel H. Bowers Jr., the imperial wizard of a Ku Klux Klan faction who was found guilty in 1998 in the firebombing murder of a Mississippi shopkeeper 32 years earlier, died yesterday in a prison hospital in Parchman, Miss.
He was 82. The cause was a heart attack, according to Tara Booth, the spokeswoman for the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
Mr. Bowers had been ill and in the Mississippi State Penitentiary Hospital in Parchman, in the Mississippi Delta, for some
Source: NYT
November 7, 2006
When the Fire Department ordered trash removed from the balcony of a little-used auditorium at the Educational Alliance, one of New York’s oldest Jewish settlement houses, part of the agency’s heritage was almost tossed out. There, jumbled in a paper bag, were documents from the early 1900s about a forgotten youth theater program that cast immigrant “hooligans” in classic dramas to help them become good Americans.
Samuel L. Clemens (that is, Mark Twain) was its board president, and
Source: Reuters
November 6, 2006
Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's art foundation has temporarily been stopped by a U.S. judge from selling a Picasso painting worth up to $60 million after a German man claimed he owned the piece.
The painting from Picasso's Blue Period, "Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto," is due to be sold at Christie's in New York on Wednesday and the auction house has valued the piece at between $40 million and $60 million.
But Julius Schoeps has sued Lloyd Webber's foundat
Source: Reuters
November 6, 2006
A bill for Monsieur Lawrence sits in a display cabinet at Aleppo's Hotel Baron, where the guest list reads like a Who's Who of the 20th century. The 1914 bill belonged to Lawrence of Arabia and despite the rumors, the enigmatic British intelligence officer did pay it, hotel owner Armen Mazloumian insists. "I don't know where the story that he didn't came from. One journalist must have written this and others copied without bothering to check," the Armenian manager said over a beer
Source: National Security Archive
November 4, 2006
A series of war games held in 1999 specifically to anticipate problems following an invasion of Iraq assumed a deployment of 400,000 troops to maintain order, seal borders and provide for other security needs. But the games, known as Desert Crossing, were apparently ignored by the Defense Department. When CENTCOM commander Gen. Anthony Zinni, after his retirement, advised planners to refer back to Desert Crossing as they prepared for the 2003 invasion, the response reportedly was, "Never he
Source: Stone Pages
November 5, 2006
Archaeologists have identified fossils belonging to some of the earliest modern humans to settle in Europe. The research team has dated six bones, found in a cave in Romania, to 30,000 years ago. The finds also raise questions about the possible place of Neanderthals in modern human ancestry. Details of the discoveries appear in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Source: Stone Pages
November 5, 2006
The Unesco World Heritage site Stonehenge is 'a destination in trouble', a new survey has found. The National Geographic Traveler magazine marked the site 56 out of 100 against criteria including historic preservation and tourism management. Survey panellists said Stonehenge was a 'mess', 'over-loved' and 'crowded'. English Heritage, which looks after the site, said it was "actively seeking to revamp its visitor facilities" and improve the nearby A303 road.
Source: Chicago Sun-Times
November 6, 2006
A paper trail documents their lives as human property, from their passage across the Atlantic to their sale as slaves for sugar plantations. Now a newly discovered burial ground promises to shed light on the lives and deaths of Africans in the Caribbean.Researchers from Denmark and the U.S. Virgin Islands want to unearth up to 50 skeletons next year, hoping to learn about their diet, illnesses and causes of death.
Descendants of slaves could discover ancestors t
