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: AP
September 20, 2010
Ronald Oba grew up saluting the U.S. flag and saying the Pledge of Allegiance in school, like millions of other American boys.
But he was labeled an "enemy alien" after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, because his ancestors came from the same land as the attacking planes.
To prove his loyalty, Oba joined the Army as soon as President Franklin D. Roosevelt allowed Japanese-Americans to enlist. His segregated unit — the 442nd Regimental Combat Team — s
Source: AP
September 16, 2010
The Battle of Tarawa was one of the first U.S. amphibious campaigns of World War II. It also was one of the most ferocious.
Thousands of Marines charged the beach, only to be killed by Japanese machine gun fire when their boats got stuck on a coral reef. Hundreds of Marines died, thousands more were injured in three days of fighting.
Sixty-seven years later, the U.S. military is back on the tiny Pacific atoll just 80 miles north of the equator to search for the remains
Source: AFP
September 17, 2010
Less than one in five (19 percent) Germans is aware of the full scale of the use of forced labour by the Nazis in World War II, a survey showed on Friday.
Only 13 percent of Germans over 65 correctly estimated the number of people from all over Europe forced to work in horrendous conditions for the German war machine at more than 13 million, the poll by Infratest-Dimap showed....
Source: Monsters & Critics
September 17, 2010
Prague - A Czech court ruled in favour of the Free State of Bavaria on Friday, ordering a Czech publisher to pull out and destroy its Czech-language edition of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, court spokeswoman said.
The Municipal Court in Prague agreed with Bavaria, which sued the company, KMa s.r.o., for publishing the book without having the copyright, which is held by the Bavarian Ministry of Finance until 2015.
The court also ordered the company to withdraw and destroy
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
September 17, 2010
The country house where RAF chiefs commanded The Few in the Battle of Britain is to be restored.
Seventy years on plans have been approved to create a museum on the site of Bentley Priory, the headquarters of Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding's Fighter Command during the Second World War.
Harrow Council's planning committee have agreed to incorporate a museum within the Grade II listed mansion house in Stanmore, north London, alongside flats, as part of the development of
Source: The State (SC)
September 15, 2010
Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell says a picture circulating on the Internet of him dressed in a Civil War-era military uniform alongside two African-Americans outfitted in period costumes was an innocent moment among friends — nothing more.
The picture, taken during a Republican women’s conference in Charleston last week, however, has managed to capture national media attention. Some think the image callously evokes the state’s slave-holding past.
McConnell, a Charles
Source: Spiegel Online
September 16, 2010
Even before World War II, Nazi strategists came up with a number of plans to strike New York City -- whether with super missiles, kamikaze pilots, long-range bombers or secret agents. Some were ambitious and some were foolish, but all of them failed.
Captain Hans-Heinz Lindner was gradually losing his nerve. As dawn broke on June 13, 1942, the first cars were already driving along the waterfront in the village of Amagansett, Long Island. But the U-202 was stuck. The gray steel colos
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 18, 2010
A 'mild-mannered' bank manager who never discussed the First World War with his family has been revealed as a hero soldier who fought behind enemy lines.
Corporal Reginald ''Rex'' Billingham became stranded in a shell hole after his battalion was ordered to recapture a French village from German forces in May 1917.
He was surrounded by German troops and survived grenades and mortar fire for four nights and three days before dodging a hail of bullets to return to Britis
Source: AOL News
September 19, 2010
For the first time in nearly a century, Turkey will allow a Mass at a 10th-century Armenian Orthodox cathedral in eastern Turkey, but the state's failure to restore a cross atop the building has soured the occasion for many Armenians.
Some 5,000 members of the Armenian diaspora are expected to descend upon tiny Akdamar Island on Lake Van for Sunday's Mass. The Turkish government has portrayed the event as a gesture of religious tolerance and rapprochement with Armenia, which is at o
Source: LA Times
September 20, 2010
Reporting from Baltimore —
You're, like, totally not going to believe this but Baltimore declared Sunday " Frank Zappa Day," dedicating a bust in his honor.
Grody to the max.
Seventeen years after the rocker's death in Los Angeles, Zappa drew a large, fittingly eclectic crowd to a ceremony in the city where he was born.
"It's about time he got the recognition he deserves," said Greg Stinson, 50, accompanied by his 16-year-old son
Source: WaPo
September 20, 2010
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. made it sound so simple that day in 2007, when he and four other members of the Supreme Court declared that this city's efforts to desegregate its schools violated the Constitution.
"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race," Roberts wrote, "is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."
But life has been anything but simple for school officials here. They have steadfastly - or stubbornly, depending on t
Source: NYT
September 20, 2010
He sniffed at Hillary Rodham Clinton’s smugness, denounced Spiro T. Agnew as a demagogue, opposed Pamela Harriman’s application to a prestigious Manhattan club and called the Peace Corps elitist. He presciently raised the specter of global warming, advocated for safer cars and championed equal rights and recognition for women, especially his wife.
He huffed about the defense establishment that produced over-reaching military advice about Vietnam, fretted about making enough money, o
Source: NYT
September 20, 2010
A day after drawing both adoring crowds and the largest protests of his papacy, Pope Benedict XVI wrapped up a historic and contentious four-day visit to Britain on Sunday, moving a Catholic convert one step closer to sainthood and recalling the valor of Britons during the Second World War....
The pope praised Cardinal Newman, a 19th-century thinker and writer who left the Church of England and the pulpit of Oxford University to convert to Catholicism, for “his insights into the rel
Source: NYT
September 20, 2010
...After many years of complaints about the racial insensitivity of having a man dressed as a Confederate soldier as the symbol of a university where 14 percent of students are black, Ole Miss is pulling the plug on Colonel Reb this football season....
It is part of a longstanding plan to recast the university’s image, still tarnished by its reputation for racial strife in the 1960s, to signal that it is more tolerant and diverse. Confederate battle flags were discouraged from footb
Source: BBC
September 18, 2010
A 'barrel' mortuary and the records of Victorian shipwrecks will be revealed at Llanfaelog church on Anglesey on Saturday.
Canon Madalaine Brady said the idea to reveal more about the graves and their history has really fired up people's interest.
St Maelog church yard dates from the 12th Century and the event is part of UK-wide Open Churches Day.
Llanfaelog church, on the west coast of Anglesey, will open from 1000-1500 BST....
Source: BBC
September 19, 2010
A Spitfire and a Hurricane have taken part in a flypast to mark the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain.
It was watched by Prince Charles, Prince William and Prime Minister David Cameron, who all attended a service at Westminster Abbey.
The 1940 battle saw RAF pilots repelling a German bid for air superiority, making an invasion of the UK impossible.
The Westminster Abbey service was attended by veterans of the Battle of Britain and representatives of
Source: BBC
September 18, 2010
The restored grave of the last known "sin-eater" in England has been at the centre of a special service in a Shropshire village churchyard.
Campaigners raised £1,000 to restore the grave of Richard Munslow, who was buried in Ratlinghope in 1906.
Sin-eaters were generally poor people paid to eat bread and drink beer or wine over a corpse, in the belief they would take on the sins of the deceased.
Frowned upon by the church, the custom mainly died o
Source: BBC
September 19, 2010
A research team reports new findings of stone age tools that suggest humans came "out of Africa" by land earlier than has been thought.
Geneticists estimate that migration from Africa to South-East Asia and Australia took place as recently as 60,000 years ago.
But Dr Michael Petraglia, of Oxford University, and colleagues say stone artefacts found in the Arabian Peninsula and India point to an exodus starting about 70,000 to 80,000 years ago - and perhaps even
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 18, 2010
She is a former Marxist guerrilla whose organisation once stole $2.5 million from the safe of the governor of São Paulo.
Locked up and tortured by the dictatorship which ran Brazil during the 1970s, she was once branded by a prosecutor as the "Joan of Arc of subversion".
Yet in less than a month's time Dilma Rousseff is on course to become Brazil's first woman president, entrusted with running the largest and fastest-growing economy in Latin America.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 19, 2020
Julian Fellowes is writing a television drama about the Titanic that will show the 'human version' of the disaster.
James Cameron's Hollywood blockbuster Titanic may be one of the most successful films of all time, but it left viewers with the impression that the English on board were either knaves or fools.
Now, ITV hopes to salvage the reputation of the English with a drama to be screened on the centenary of the ship's sinking in two years' time....
