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: NYT
June 17, 2010
...Seventy years ago, on June 18, 1940, Winston Churchill, barely six weeks in office as Britain’s prime minister and confronted with the threat of invasion from Nazi-occupied France, rose in the House of Commons and, in 36 minutes of soaring oratory, sought to rally his countrymen with what has gone down in history as his “finest hour” speech....
The original 23-page typescript of the speech, heavily edited by Churchill in scrawls of blue and red ink, rests now in one of 2,500 boxe
Source: BBC
June 15, 2010
An archaeologist has called for the wreck of the HMS Victory to be brought to the surface to avoid further damage.
Dr Sean Kingsley is an archaeological consultant for Odyssey Marine Exploration, who found the shipwreck in the English Channel in April 2008.
He said the site would continue to suffer damage from bottom fishing and could not be protected by exclusion zones as it is too far from land.
The site's future is the subject of a public consultation
Source: AFP
June 14, 2010
Two distinct groups from Asia settled in the New World and not one single migration as suggested by previous genetic studies, experts said Monday after comparing the skulls of early Americans.
Paleoanthropologists from Brazil, Chile and Germany compared the skulls of several dozen Paleoamericans, dating back to the early days of migration 11,000 years ago, with the more recent remains of more than 300 Amerindians.
Their landmark research found differences in the cranial
Source: CNN
June 16, 2010
It's the iconic image that grabbed the world's attention and helped change the course of South African history.
Thirty-four years ago Wednesday, on June 16, 1976, thousands of black school children in Soweto, South Africa, took to the streets to protest the apartheid education system that obliged them to be taught in Afrikaans.
It was supposed to be a peaceful protest, but the students were met with police gunfire and at least 23 of them were killed.
One o
Source: BBC News
June 17, 2010
Hundreds of indigenous Canadians are to give evidence before a commission of their experiences at state-funded schools set up to enforce assimilation.
About 150,000 children attended the Church-run boarding schools which operated up to the 1970s.
The pupils were forced to abandon their cultural identity and many were physically and sexually abused.
The truth and reconciliation commission is part of a settlement agreed by the Canadian government four years a
Source: The Guardian
June 17, 2010
Bones offer insight into royal life of Eadgyth, whose brother Athelstan married off to German king in 929, say scientists.
She ate lots of fish, rode frequently, may have suffered from a disease or an eating disorder at 10 and regularly moved around the chalky uplands of southern England, presumably as she followed her regal father around his kingdom.
Analysis of remains found in a German cathedral have not only confirm they belonged to the granddaughter of the English
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 16, 2010
France is glossing over the collective shame of collaboration in celebrations to mark the 70th anniversary of Charles de Gaulle's appeal to resist Nazism, a leading historian has claimed.
Jean-Pierre Azéma, a respected author of more than a dozen works, said he was concerned that inconvenient truths about France's wartime past were being played down amid a surge of patriotism around de Gaulle's June 18, 1940 appeal from London.
He said the fervour around the anniversary
Source: The Daily Caller
June 17, 2010
As Tea Party protests pop up in places like Moscow, Tel Aviv and the Hague, Americans may question whether the Tea Party platform can cross international and cultural borders. For activists outside the U.S., the answer is a resounding “yes.”
“I think the message of the American Revolution is global. The message of natural, unalienable rights, the message of opposition to tyrannical government — that’s not just well-known, that’s universal,” Boris Karpa, organizer of the Israeli Tea
Source: BBC News
June 16, 2010
An archaeologist who found a medieval badge featuring the England football team's three lions logo hopes it will prove a good World Cup omen.
The copper piece was found in the ground last week in a stone wall in Coventry by Caroline Rann.
The badge, thought to be from a horse's harness, is believed to date from the 13th Century.
A Football Association spokesman said its resemblance to the England logo was "uncanny".
Ms Rann found the
Source: Balkan travellers
June 16, 2010
An Albanian-American expedition reported on Monday that it has found the wreckage of a WWII Italian merchant ship that was torpedoed on June 14, 1943 by a British submarine.
The remnants, found off the coast of the Karaburun peninsula with the help of undersea scanning devices, are probably part of the 8,000 ton Rosandra freighter, the team said on the 67th anniversary of the sinking.
“This discovery will be of interest for experts of the period to shed light on the fa
Source: BBC News
June 17, 2010
A Canadian commission of inquiry is expected to release a report on Thursday into the bombing of Air India flight 182 in 1985.
The flight - travelling from Canada to India - crashed into the Atlantic killing all 329 people on board.
Canadian police say it was bombed by Sikh militants fighting for an independent homeland in India.
Two Canadian men were eventually tried in the case 20 years after the event, but were found not guilty.
'Mass murder
Source: WaPo
June 17, 2010
Several mud-caked headstones line the banks of a small stream at Arlington National Cemetery, the country's most venerated burial ground. Farther upstream in a wooded area, a few others lie submerged with the rocks that line the stream bed.
On Wednesday, after The Washington Post alerted the cemetery to their presence, officials there said they were shocked to find the gravestones lying in the muck near a maintenance yard. Already under fire in recent days for more than 200 unmarked
Source: AP
June 16, 2010
African-American slaves sweated in the summer heat and shivered in the winter's cold while helping to build the U.S. Capitol.
Congress took note of their service and sacrifice Wednesday by erecting commemorative plaques inside the Capitol in their honor. Lawmakers said the memorials will ensure that the contributions of slaves in building one of the world's most recognizable buildings are never again forgotten.
"In remembering the slaves who labored here, we give t
Source: AFP
June 16, 2010
Indian travel companies are running "human safari tours" to enable tourists to glimpse members of a rare and endangered tribe with whom contact is illegal, a campaign group said Wednesday.
Survival International, which campaigns on behalf of tribal groups worldwide, said it had found eight travel groups on India's tropical Andaman Islands promoting tours to see the indigenous Jarawa people.
Under Indian laws designed to protect ancient tribal groups susceptibl
Source: BBC
June 16, 2010
A grandmother has been jailed for five years for possessing a "family heirloom" World War II pistol.
Gail Cochrane, 53, had kept the gun for 29 years following the death of her father, who had been in the Royal Navy.
Police found the weapon, a Browning self-loading pistol, during a search of her home in Dundee while looking for her son.
She admitted illegal possession of the firearm, an offence with a minimum five-year jail term under Scots law
Source: BBC
June 16, 2010
An archaeologist who found a medieval badge featuring the England football team's three lions logo hopes it will prove a good World Cup omen.
The copper piece was found in the ground last week in a stone wall in Coventry by Caroline Rann.
The badge, thought to be from a horse's harness, is believed to date from the 13th Century.
Nicholas Palmer, principal field archaeologist at the Warwickshire Museum, said the one inch-high badge was still being assessed
Source: BBC
June 15, 2010
A collection of rare paintings by the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore has sold for more than £1.5m ($2.2m) at an auction in Britain.
So far the buyers of the pictures - certain to attract huge interest in India - have not been identified.
Tagore, often referred to as Bengal's Shakespeare, is the only Indian to win the Nobel literature prize.
He wrote poems and short stories and composed both the Indian and Bangladeshi national anthems. He died in 1941..
Source: BBC
June 16, 2010
...Campaign to save the Arabic language in Lebanon.
Most Lebanese speak French - a legacy of France's colonial rule - and the younger generation gravitates towards English.
A growing number of parents send their children to French lycees or British and American curriculum schools, hoping this will one day help them find work and secure a better future.
Even with Arabic, there is a big difference between the classical, written form of the language and the
Source: BBC
June 16, 2010
Two Darfur rebel leaders have surrendered to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
The men, Abdallah Banda Abakaer Nourain and Saleh Mohammed Jerbo Jamus, were secretly indicted last year.
They are wanted for war crimes in connection with the deaths of 12 African Union peacekeepers in 2007.
Earlier this year, charges against another rebel leader to do with the same attack were dropped because of lack of evidence.
ICC judges ruled p
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 15, 2010
They last met after a bloody two-day battle in the Falklands as British forces pushed to retake Port Stanley.
Paratrooper Tony Banks had been ordered to strip belongings from Argentine prisoners, including army musician Omar Tabarez who was armed with only a trumpet.
He stowed the instrument in his office after returning to Britain and it lay untouched until last year.
Mr Banks, whose nursing home business is worth an estimated £60m, had always regarded the
