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: Telegraph (UK)
July 21, 2010
The Hague war crimes tribunal has ordered the retrial of Kosovo's former Prime Minister, Ramush Haradinaj because of witness intimidation.
The tribunal said that his acquittal on murder and torture charges related to the 1998-99 conflict two years ago was a miscarriage of justice.
The original trial for Mr Haradinaj and two former Kosovo Liberation Army comrades was marred by intimidation that left two prosecution witnesses too scared to testify, Patrick Robinson, the
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 21, 2010
A 12-year dispute has ended with an agreement that a 1912 oil painting will be returned to a Vienna museum and displayed with an acknowledgement that it was stolen from a Jewish art dealer by a Nazi agent.
The settlement calls for the Leopold Museum to own the painting entitled "Portrait of Wally" by Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele after paying $19 million (£12m) to the estate of Lea Bondi Jaray and allowing it to be displayed for three weeks at the Museum of Jewish H
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 21, 2010
Instruments used in Elvis Presley's autopsy and embalming are going up for auction in Chicago, including the "John Doe" toe tag used after the original was stolen amid the chaos at the hospital following his death.
Leslie Hindman Auctioneers will hold the auction Aug. 12, four days before the 33rd anniversary of Presley's death.
The auction house said that all of the items used in the autopsy and funeral preparations will be available, from rubber gloves and
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 21, 2010
David Warren, an Australian scientist who invented the black box flight data recorder, has died, at the age of 85.
Warren, came up with the idea for the cockpit voice recorder after investigating the crash of the world's first commercial jet airliner, the Comet, in 1953. He thought it would be helpful for airline accident investigators to have a recording of voices in the cockpit.
He designed and constructed a black box prototype in 1956, but it took several years bef
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 21, 2010
The remains of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena were exhumed more than two decades after their execution in an attempt to quash conspiracy theories surrounding their death.
But relatives of the late and hated couple have repeatedly questioned whether the two bodies buried in the Ghencea cemetery in Bucharest, the capital of Romania, are really those of the Ceausescus, suspecting they were secretly buried elsewhere.
Die-hard supporters have also q
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 21, 2010
David Cameron has not ruled out a full inquiry into the decision to free the Lockerbie bomber, US senators have claimed.
Four senators who met the Prime Minister during his visit to Washington said he told them he may yet order an independent investigation.
But the senators from New York and New Jersey, the states where most of the 189 American victims on board Pan Am flight 103 came from, said Mr Cameron was clear that he was keeping an open mind.
Mr Ca
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 21, 2010
A handwritten story by Franz Kafka that has never been published is understood to be contained in a secret archive of the author's private papers.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which was involved in the legal challenge to lift the secrecy surrounding the privately-held archive, disclosed the existence of the short story on its website.
The discovery emerged as an Israeli court rejected an application to keep secret the contents of a vast collection of Kafka's writing
Source: NYT
July 15, 2010
In an echo of the debates over the discredited intelligence that helped make the case for the war in Iraq, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday released more than 1,100 pages of previously classified Vietnam-era transcripts that show senators of the time sharply questioning whether they had been deceived by the White House and the Pentagon over the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident.
“If this country has been misled, if this committee, this Congress, has been misled by pret
Source: NYT
July 21, 2010
“Sweetheart,” a character shouts to a secretary in the “Mad Men” episode airing Sunday, “8 o’clock Saturday night, Jimmy’s La Grange.”
Pause! Rewind! Jimmy’s what?
It’s Restaurant Week in New York City, but a quick look at the Zagat’s guide showed that you won’t be booking a table for two at Jimmy’s La Grange: There is no such restaurant, putting us on the hunt for a bit of Old New York....
The New York Times gave Jimmy’s two stars in a brief review in 1965
Source: NYT
July 20, 2010
Mao slept here. So, too, did the imperial eunuchs who found themselves unemployed after China’s last emperor was sent packing. For much of the last 700 years, however, the most prominent residents of the quarter just north of the Forbidden City have been a pair of massive brick towers whose drums and bells helped Beijing’s citizenry keep track of the hour.
More recently, those who reside in the neighborhood known as Gulou are anxiously counting the days until construction crews begi
Source: DNAinfo
July 21, 2010
The 18th-century boat unearthed last week at the World Trade Center site is about to make its first journey in more than 200 years.
Starting on Monday, archaeologists will dismantle the ship’s crumbling wooden beams and move them to storage to study them further, said Steve Coleman, spokesman for the Port Authority.
The work is scheduled to take five to eight days, but the Port Authority hopes to speed it up by adding double shifts.
After the beams leave th
Source: Salon
July 20, 2010
Few people some 20 years ago, near the start of the administration of George Bush Sr. — when cyberpunk was still a fresh notion, when there existed only three "Star Wars" films, all good, and when the word "steampunk" had only just been coined — would have predicted that in the early 21st century some of the most entertaining and deftly rendered science fiction being currently published would derive from the pen of a Frenchman dead for a century, whose legacy had long been se
Source: Mediaite
July 18, 2010
I don’t happen to know any leaders of the Tea Party, but I think I can guess their reaction when Mark Williams posted his letter mocking “Coloreds”: OY.
The fall-out: Williams has been booted from the National Tea Party Federation, according to spokesperson David Webb this morning on Face the Nation. CNN reports:
“We, in the last 24 hours, have expelled Tea Party Express and Mark Williams from the National Tea Party Federation because of the letter that he
Source: Deutsche Welle (Germany)
July 20, 2010
Ceremonies marking the anniversary of the failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler will be held at sites around Berlin on Tuesday, as Germany remembers the attempt that came closest to killing the Nazi leader.
Commemorations in the German capital on Tuesday will mark the anniversary of the failed plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. The attempt on the life of the Nazi leader was the culmination of efforts by the German resistance.
The ceremonies begin with an ecumenical
Source: DW World
July 18, 2010
Officials at Germany's Stasi archive have agreed to release some information showing West Germany's secret service employed former Nazi criminals. But some key data remains under wraps.
It's one of the country's worst-kept secrets. Yet questions still surround the presence of former Nazis and war criminals in West Germany's police, secret service (BND) and politics. Who were those people, what positions did they hold in Nazi Germany and later in post-war West Germany?
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 20, 2010
SS chief Heinrich Himmler set up a secret unit in the Dachau concentration camp after becoming convinced he could turn sand into gold, a book has claimed.
His personal alchemist was a man named Karl Malchus who convinced Himmler he could make the metal.
Gold was vital for the Nazi regime in Germany to use to buy armaments and technology from abroad. When Himmler was approached by the scientist in 1937, after the regime had been in power for four years.
The
Source: Fox News
July 19, 2010
A management consultant on Monday stood by remarks over the weekend in which he compared black Tea Party activists to Jewish guards in Nazi concentration camps, telling FoxNews.com there are "turncoats" in every group.
Luke Visconti, owner of DiversityInc, first said on CNN that Tea Party leaders are "leveraging racism" and that they have risen to power with an "anti-black Obama" message.
When the anchor noted that black members are activ
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 20, 2010
The statue – which will be up to 180ft (55m) tall – is to be erected in Southampton, the city where the aircraft was designed and first built.
The Spitfire Tribute Foundation, the organisation behind the scheme, is launching a public competition, backed by The Sunday Telegraph, to select the design
The winner will see their concept built at a cost of £2 million.
The foundation hopes the memorial will be completed by the end of next year, the 75th anniversar
Source: NYT
July 18, 2010
...For the Cajuns of South Louisiana — exiled in the 1700s from French settlements in Acadia, now part of eastern Canada, for refusing to swear allegiance to the British — life along the bayous has been bittersweet, with the constant threats of lightning-quick destruction from hurricanes and floods on top of the slow-motion agony of coastal erosion.
What they got in return for their tolerance of living in what early cartographers called No Man’s Land was a world-class bounty of seaf
Source: AP
July 20, 2010
With every step toward the gate, Jerzy Bielecki was certain he would be shot.
The day was July 21, 1944. Bielecki was walking in broad daylight down a pathway at Auschwitz, wearing a stolen SS uniform with his Jewish sweetheart Cyla Cybulska by his side.
His knees buckling with fear, he tried to keep a stern bearing on the long stretch of gravel to the sentry post....
