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: WaPo
April 1, 2008
Osama bin Laden flew to London in 1986 to help negotiate the purchase of Russian-made surface-to-air missiles to be used by Arab fighters then battling the Soviet military in Afghanistan, according to a new book on the bin Laden family.
Bin Laden and his half brother, Salem, met several times with the contacts at the luxury Dorchester hotel in London, according to "The Bin Ladens," by journalist Steve Coll. "Don't do any jokes with my brother," Salem is said to h
Source: CNN
March 31, 2008
FBI wiretaps have "given us the most powerful and persuasive source of all for seeing how utterly selfless Martin Luther King was," as a civil rights leader, according to a leading civil rights scholar.
"You see him being intensely self-critical. King really and truly believed that he was there to be of service to others. This was not a man with any egomaniacal joy of being a famous person, or being a leader," said Pulitzer Prize-winning scholar David Garrow in a
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 1, 2008
The daring wartime exploits of a female British secret agent, who was such a thorn in the German side that they placed a one million franc bounty on her head, are disclosed in secret papers released today.
Pearl Cornioley, who was then known as Cécile Pearl Witherington, became one of the most illustrious members of the Special Operations Executive - set up to foster resistance to the Germans across Europe during the Second World War - after being parachuted into occupied France.
Source: BBC
April 1, 2008
A necklace found near Lake Titicaca in southern Peru is the oldest known gold object made in the Americas, archaeologists say.
Radiocarbon dating puts its origin at about 4,000 years ago, when hunter-gatherers occupied the area.
The researchers say it appears to have been fashioned from gold nuggets.
Source: http://www.6d.fi
March 31, 2008
Rock paintings created during the Stone Age can still be seen today in dozens of sites around Finland. These awe-inspiring artworks are like windows into the ancient past, revealing tantalising glimpses of long lost cultures.
FINLAND’S rock paintings mainly consist of brownish-red figures and markings painted onto steep granite walls, often overlooking waterways. Scenes feature people, boats, elk, fish and mysterious partly human figures that may be linked to shamanistic beliefs, as
Source: National Geographic
March 26, 2008
A fast-dying language in remote central Siberia shares a mother tongue with dozens of Native American languages spoken thousands of miles away, new research confirms.
The finding may allow linguists to weigh in on how the Americas were first settled, according to Edward Vajda, director of the Center for East Asian Studies at Western Washington University in Bellingham.
Since at least 1923 researchers have suggested a connection exists between Asian and North American la
Source: Reuters
March 27, 2008
Archaeologists working at the construction site for London's 2012 Olympic Park have uncovered prehistoric skeletons on the site of the Aquatics Centre.
Four skeletons were found in graves around an area thought to be an Iron Age settlement, the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) said on Thursday.
Museum of London archaeologists have carried out extensive investigations at the site in Stratford, east London, which will house the main permanent venues for the Games.
Source: Australian
March 29, 2008
TWO or three times a month, Martin Pash relives the horror of the worst atrocity in Australian waters during World War II.
The 85-year-old retired truck driver tosses and turns in bed at his home in the Melbourne suburb of Ivanhoe and endures frightful nightmares recalling the sinking of the Australian hospital ship Centaur, which was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine off the southern Queensland coast on May 14, 1943.
Mr Pash, who was a 20-year-old steward on the Centau
Source: Daily Mail
March 28, 2008
A decorated German Luftwaffe pilot is to return to the city he bombed during World War Two to make a public apology.
Bomber pilot Willi Schludecker demolished dozens of Georgian buildings in Bath, Somerset, in April 1942 in his Dornier 217E-4.
Now 87 years-old and in failing health, his dying wish is to make amends with the city which lost 400 residents in the raid.
Source: AP
March 31, 2008
A famed conductor, a lowly laundress, singers, dancers, musicians. Jews, part Jews, or married to Jews, they were all a valued part of Vienna's opera family — until the Nazis came.
First to go was ballet teacher Risa Dirtl.
She was a 14-year veteran of the Vienna State Opera. But her husband was Jewish — and so she was purged just three days after Austrians thronged a huge central square in their capital 70 years ago to accord a delirious welcome to Adolf Hitler.
Source: http://www.justiceforjews.com
April 1, 2008
In what may be the beginning of a dramatic shift in United States policy, the U.S. Congress passed House Resolution 185, which grants first-time-ever recognition to Jewish refugees from Arab countries.
Prior to the adoption of H.Res.185, all Resolutions on Middle East refugees referred only to Palestinians. This Resolution affirms that the U.S. government will now recognize that all victims of the Arab-Israeli conflict must be treated equally. It further urges that the President and
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 31, 2008
British scientists have deciphered a mysterious ancient clay tablet and believe they have solved a riddle over a giant asteroid impact more than 5,000 years ago.
Geologists have long puzzled over the shape of the land close to the town of Köfels in the Austrian Alps, but were unable to prove it had been caused by an asteroid.
Now researchers say their translation of symbols on a star map from an ancient civilisation includes notes on a mile-wide asteroid that later hit
Source: AP
March 30, 2008
Islam has surpassed Roman Catholicism as the world's largest religion, the Vatican newspaper said Sunday.
"For the first time in history, we are no longer at the top: Muslims have overtaken us," Monsignor Vittorio Formenti said in an interview with the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano. Formenti compiles the Vatican's yearbook.
He said that Catholics accounted for 17.4 percent of the world population -- a stable percentage -- while Muslims were at 19.2 pe
Source: WaPo
March 30, 2008
Addressing civil rights activists in Selma, Ala., a year ago, Sen. Barack Obama traced his "very existence" to the generosity of the Kennedy family, which he said paid for his Kenyan father to travel to America on a student scholarship and thus meet his Kansan mother.
The Camelot connection has become part of the mythology surrounding Obama's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. After Caroline Kennedy endorsed his candidacy in January, Newsweek commentator Jonat
Source: AP
March 30, 2008
Their faces seem to float from Todd Matthews' computer -- morgue photographs, artist sketches, forensic reconstructions -- thousands of dead eyes staring from endless Web sites as though crying out for recognition. John and Jane and Baby "Does" whose nameless bodies have never been identified.
His wife, Lori, complains that Matthews, a 37-year-old auto parts supplier, spends more time with the dead than he does with the living, including his two sons, Dillan, 16, and Devin
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 30, 2008
The Northwest Passage is one of the most fabled, and treacherous, sea routes in the world. Many sailors have perished in its freezing Arctic waters after their ships became encased in ice.
Now, as climate change takes hold, British explorers are trying to become the first to sail through the Northwest Passage from east to west, relying solely on wind and oars.
The expedition will demonstrate the advance of climate change, which scientists say is thawing out the Northwes
Source: ABC News
March 27, 2008
Could Neanderthals speak? The answer may depend on whether they used make-up.
Francesco d'Errico, an archaeologist from the University of Bordeaux, France, has found crafted lumps of pigment – essentially crayons – left behind by Neanderthals across Europe.
He says that Neanderthals, who most likely had pale skin, used these dark pigments to mark their own as well as animal skins. And, since body art is a form of communication, this implies that the Neanderthals could s
Source: Reuters
March 28, 2008
New evidence of a sick, deprived population working under harsh conditions contradicts earlier images of wealth and abundance from the art records of the ancient Egyptian city of Tell el-Amarna, a study has found.
Tell el-Amarna was briefly the capital of ancient Egypt during the reign of the pharaoh Akhenaten, who abandoned most of Egypt's old gods in favor of the Aten sun disk and brought in a new and more expressive style of art.
Akhenaten, who ruled Egypt between 13
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 31, 2008
As a newly qualified doctor in September 1939, Nowell Peach was looking forward to a career in surgery. He was waiting to begin his anatomical studies and the course was set to start on September 4, 1939.
When war was declared the day before, the anatomy course was postponed. Young Dr Peach, then 26, enlisted as a medical officer with the RAF Volunteer Reserve.
Yet although he would spend the next six years in uniform, and three-and-a-half of those years in Japanese pri
Source: http://www.vagazette.com
April 1, 2008
Few people may know that the site of the Siege at Yorktown was once home to an 18-hole golf course.
According to Mike Litterst, prior to the founding of the Colonial National Historical Park the area encompassing the Yorktown Battlefield was part of the Yorktown Country Club. An area between siege lines was developed into an 18-hole golf course called Riverview Golf Course. A second golf course, known as The Lakeview, was planned but never built.
Litterst explained that
