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)
April 4, 2009
Henry VIII, known as the scourge of the Catholic church, has been revealed as having been a firm believer in the religion he later tried to destroy, thanks to a new discovery.
A prayer roll once belonging to Henry and inscribed with his own handwriting, has been brought to light ahead of a major new exhibition on his life.
It will be shown in public for the first time at the British Library's exhibition Henry VIII: Man and Monarch, which opens later this month and mark
Source: BBC
April 3, 2009
One hundred years ago, Sir Ernest Shackleton tried, but narrowly failed, to become the first man to reach the South Pole. Descendants of his team have been retracing and completing his journey.
A century later, the three men, setting out on the route pioneered by Shackleton must trek the equivalent of 35 marathons in 70 days.
And they must complete the 800 nautical miles (equivalent to 920 miles or 1420km) across some of the most extreme terrain and conditions on the pl
Source: AP
April 4, 2009
A German justice official denied Saturday that the deportation of suspected Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk from the U.S. to Germany for possible trial would amount to torture.
Demjanjuk won a reprieve Friday _ his 89th birthday _ from his ordered deportation to Germany. The retired autoworker, who lives in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, argued that given his frail health, the deportation would have amounted to torture.
Demjanjuk was originally expected to arrive Mon
Source: CBS News
April 3, 2009
A mushroom cloud half a century ago has helped clear up a vital medical question: Can the heart make new cells and repair itself?
"I would say that in the heart field, that this is one of those important studies that is going to change the way that we think for a very long time," said Dr. Richard T. Lee, of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.
Scientists solved the mystery by going back in time.
Until it was banned in 1963, nuclear weapons t
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
April 3, 2009
Thursday’s jury verdict in Ward Churchill’s lawsuit against the University of Colorado has given rise to a mystery: How is it that a jury could rule that the university had acted illegally in firing Mr. Churchill, and yet still award him only $1 in damages?
Five of the six members of the jury have told court officials they do not wish to speak with reporters about their thinking. But a sixth, Bethany Newill, called a local radio station, KHOW, last night and said the $1 judgment was
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 26, 2009
US President Barack Obama will travel to France on June 6 to attend commemorations of the Second World War D-Day landings....
Mr Obama will travel to the Normandy coast for events marking the 65th anniversary of the allied invasion, said President Nicolas Sarkozy's chief of staff, Claude Gueant.
Source: Santa Barbara’s American Presidency Project
March 20, 2009
Friday March 20 marked the end of the second month of the Obama Presidency. Obama still maintains his lead in unilateral actions (Executive Orders, Proclamations, and Memoranda; see chart below). Recently the president has begun to define a distinctive mode and method for communicating with the public.
Source: Stone Pages Archaeo News
March 30, 2009
The German city of Speyer, in Rheinland-Palatinate, boasts some macabre relics. A collection of skulls, shin bones and vertebrae might not seem unusual in an archaeology museum, but these particular remains are special. They all show signs of having been cut, scraped or broken, indicating that their owners were cannibalised."These grooves, running from the base of the nose to the back of the neck, or here on the temples, show, beyond all possible doubt, that the flesh was torn off," says Andrea
Source: AP
April 2, 2009
A jury ruled Thursday that the University of Colorado wrongly fired the professor who compared some Sept. 11 victims to a Nazi, a verdict that gives the professor $1 and a chance to get his job back.
Then-Gov. Bill Owens was among the officials who had called on the university to fire Ward Churchill after his essay touched off a national firestorm, but the tenured professor of ethnic studies was ultimately terminated on charges of research misconduct.
Churchill said cla
Source: AP
April 3, 2009
Alleged Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk (dem-YAHN'-yuk) is marking his 89th birthday in seclusion as he awaits word on an appeal to halt his deportation to Germany.
The retired auto worker from suburban Cleveland says his deportation would amount to torture, given his frail health.
Source: Boston Globe
April 2, 2009
President Obama signed legislation this week that extends the boundary of Minute Man National Historical Park to include Barrett's Farm, a Concord property that played a central role in the American Revolution.
The farm is where colonists were storing the munitions that caused British troops to march from Boston through Lexington to Concord, a key milestone in the War of Independence.
Source: AFP
April 3, 2009
Egyptian customs officials have foiled an attempt to smuggle a large quantity of pharaonic artefacts hidden in furniture, state news agency MENA reports.
The agency quoted customs official Galal Abul Fatuh as saying it was the largest smuggling bust in a decade, adding the priceless relics had been hidden in furniture and wood products destined for Spain.
The smugglers were arrested and the relics were handed over to Egypt's antiquities council, he added.
Source: Austrain Times
April 2, 2009
The ruins of a village dating back to the fall of the Roman empire have been found at an excavation site in Salzburg.
Workers found the remains of the village which is thought to date back to the 5th to 7th centuries at a 6,000-square-metre site for construction of a home for pensioners at Anif-Niederalm in the Flachgau region.
Archaeologists say that a layman probably wouldn’t recognise anything special at the site, but claim it may shed considerable light on a period
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 2, 2009
Barack Obama, concerned about offending Britain and Germany, rebuffed strenuous attempts by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France to persuade the new American president to make a trip to Normandy this week.
White House officials travelled to France at the start of March to discuss a visit by Mr Obama to Omaha Beach, the site of the American Cemetery, established in 1944 just after D-Day and where 9,387 American personnel are buried. Among them is Theodore Roosevelt Jr the eldest son
Source: BBC
April 1, 2009
An international court in the Hague has asked Lebanon to hand over documents relating to the murder of the former Lebanese Prime Minister, Rafik Hariri.
The UN-backed tribunal also asked for a list of all suspects Lebanon is holding in connection with the 2005 killings.
The court has been set up to try those suspected of being behind the blast which killed Mr Hariri and 22 others.
The requests bring the tribunal closer to asking Lebanon to hand over four of
Source: 4-3-09
December 31, 2069
The University of Massachusetts in Amherst said Friday it would scan, catalog, digitize and put online papers of civil rights movement pioneer W.E.B. Du Bois.
The university's W.E.B. Du Bois Library has an estimated 100,000 diaries, letters, photographs and other items related to Du Bois, who helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
UMass received a $200,000 grant from the Verizon Foundation to put the collection online during the two
Source: 4-1-09
December 31, 2069
More than 2,400 languages around the world are in danger of extinction, according to Unesco, and the US is second only to India in having the highest number of endangered languages.
The US has already lost more than a third of the indigenous languages that existed before European colonisation, and the remaining 192 are classed by Unesco as ranging between "unsafe" and "extinct".
As recently as 2008, the Alaskan tongue Eyak became officially extinct w
Source: AP
April 3, 2009
Newly published photographs of the aftermath of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. languished for decades in Life magazine's archive before being published on the magazine's Web site this week.
About a dozen black-and-white pictures that went online Thursday include scenes of King's associates meeting solemnly in the civil rights leader's motel room, standing on the balcony where he stood for the las
Source: Foxnews
April 3, 2009
Alleged Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk (dem-YAHN'-yuk) is marking his 89th birthday in seclusion as he awaits word on an appeal to halt his deportation to Germany.
The retired auto worker from suburban Cleveland says his deportation would amount to torture, given his frail health.
Demjanjuk kept out of sight Friday, as has been the case for years.
His son, John Demjanjuk Jr., says the family is awaiting word on the appeal. The immigration appeals cour
Source: NYT
March 31, 2009
In the summer of 1933, just as they will do on Thursday, heads of government and their finance ministers met in London to talk about a global economic crisis. They accomplished little and went home to battle the crisis in their own ways.
More than any other country, Germany — Nazi Germany — then set out on a serious stimulus program. The government built up the military, expanded the autobahn, put up stadiums for the 1936 Berlin Olympics and built monuments to the Nazi Party across
