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: BBC
August 30, 2011
The murder of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991 stunned India - but it was also a personal tragedy for a young girl who had yet to be born.Haritha Murugan's parents were arrested days after the murder and convicted of plotting it. She was born to the couple in prison in January 1992 and has met them once since that time.Nalini, Haritha's mother, will spend the rest of her life in jail - her death sentence was commuted a decade ago after appeals for clemency.But her father, Murugan, is one of three men still on death row for the murder.All the accused in the Rajiv Gandhi case were tried under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act which has long been withdrawn because of its widespread misuse.Under this act, a confession given to officers above a certain rank (deputy superintendent of police) was treated as valid evidence - which is not the case under normal criminal procedure....
Source: BBC
August 29, 2011
Colombia is home to one of the world's longest running internal conflicts.For 47 years, government forces, rebel groups, paramilitaries and drug cartels have battled for control of large parts of the country.Atrocities have been committed by all sides, and tens of thousands of people have simply disappeared.Now, although the conflict continues, the Colombian authorities are beginning the work to find out what happened to those missing, to identify bodies found in mass graves, and to let families know.To date, some 10,000 people have been identified but the process can be painfully slow, and many families may never get an answer....
Source: BBC
August 30, 2011
On this day 123 years ago, Jack the Ripper claimed his first victim. But who was this serial killer? This new e-fit finally puts a face to Carl Feigenbaum, a key suspect from Germany.Jack the Ripper is the world's most famous cold case - the identity of the man who brutally murdered five women in London's East End in autumn 1888 remains a mystery.More than 200 suspects have been named. But to Ripper expert Trevor Marriott, a former murder squad detective, German merchant Carl Feigenbaum is the top suspect.But it's possible these were cut out in the mortuary, rather than by Jack at the scene. The 1832 Anatomy Act made it legal for medical personnel to remove organs for training purposes.This theory is supported by documents on the fourth victim, Catherine Eddowes. The inquest report shows only 14 minutes elapsed from the time the police did their last sweep of the square in which she was killed and her body being discovered.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 31, 2011
A replica of the Twin Towers destroyed in the September 11 attacks will be built on a square opposite the Eiffel Tower in Paris to mark the tenth anniversary of the atrocity, organisers said on Tuesday.The Eiffel Tower itself will be illuminated by a special light show later the same day, "The French will never forget" group that is hosting a series of events next month said in a statement.US ambassador to Paris Charles Rivkin will inaugurate the replica that will be constructed on Trocadero square, it said, adding that the 25-metre (82-foot) towers will bear the names of the people killed in the attacks....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 30, 2011
Dick Cheney, the former US vice-president, has used his new memoir to heap praise on Tony Blair and insist that the torture of a key al-Qaeda terrorist helped foil a devastating attack in Britain.But he also indirectly rejected British denials that a plot to attack Heathrow Airport in 2003 was foiled thanks to the torture of Abu Zubaydah, an al-Qaeda commander, by US agents.He claims to have said George W. Bush did not see war with Iraq as inevitable but stressed "if he decided to go to war, we would finish the job. We would remove Saddam Hussein".Other evidence suggests the US had in fact decided on military action by this point. Mr Blair's view is said to have "tightened" the following month, when he met Mr Bush at the president's ranch in Texas....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 30, 2011
An 82-year-old Brooklyn grandmother who survived the Holocaust drowned in her flooded holiday cottage when Hurricane Irene hit the Catskills Mountains near New York last weekend.Rozalia Stern-Gluck was on holiday in the popular Fleischmanns resort but was trapped when a nearby creek overflowed on Sunday morning and flooded her cottage with over six feet of water.Her husband escaped but rescuers were unable to answer her screams for help because of the surging flood waters. Her body could only be recovered by police when floodwaters subsided on Monday.Isaac Abraham, a Jewish community leader, said Mrs Stern-Gluck was born in Russia and came to to the US after surviving the Holocaust....
Source: CNN
August 30, 2011
For the first time in its history, Arlington National Cemetery may soon have an accurate record of all the people buried there. The project involves the creation of a digital database that now is substantially complete, according to officials with the Graveside Accountability Task Force. Arlington was tarnished last year by the finding of more than 200 graves that had been misidentified or mislabeled, and by the discovery of dozens of discarded headstones apparently being used to shore up a small stream in a remote corner of the cemetery.A previous superintendent, John C. Metzler Jr., was punished for poor management after the discovery of numerous instances of bodies being buried in the wrong place and incorrect headstones on graves.Congress ordered a task force to fully document who's where.Using a combination of high technology and old-fashioned research, the team is commissioned to compile a verified electronic database with no discrepancies among the records. Their work should be ready for an initial review by the end of September....
Source: AP
August 30, 2011
ATLANTA (AP) — A presidential panel on Monday disclosed shocking new details of U.S. medical experiments done in Guatemala in the 1940s, including a decision to re-infect a dying woman in a syphilis study.The Guatemala experiments are already considered one of the darker episodes of medical research in U.S. history, but panel members say the new information indicates that the researchers were unusually unethical, even when placed into the historical context of a different era."The researchers put their own medical advancement first and human decency a far second," said Anita Allen, a member of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.From 1946-48, the U.S. Public Health Service and the Pan American Sanitary Bureau worked with several Guatemalan government agencies to do medical research — paid for by the U.S. government — that involved deliberately exposing people to sexually transmitted diseases....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 26, 2011
The King's Knot, a geometrical earthwork in the former royal gardens below Stirling Castle, has been shrouded in mystery for hundreds of years.Though the Knot as it appears today dates from the 1620s, its flat-topped central mound is thought to be much older.Writers going back more than six centuries have linked the landmark to the legend of King Arthur.Archaeologists from Glasgow University, working with the Stirling Local History Society and Stirling Field and Archaeological Society, conducted the first ever non-invasive survey of the site in May and June in a bid to uncover some of its secrets....
Source: Guardian (UK)
August 26, 2011
PG Wodehouse was questioned by MI5 as a suspected collaborator for broadcasting from Berlin during the second world war. The creator of Jeeves protested that he was shocked and dismayed at the criticism his broadcasts had provoked in Britain.How the cosy world of Bertie Wooster collided with harsh reality is revealed in MI5 files released today at the National Archives. "I thought that people, hearing the talks, would admire me for having kept cheerful under difficult conditions," he said in a statement for MI5 in 1944.
Source: WaPo
August 16, 2011
Within weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Smithsonian Institution began collecting a wide range of artifacts recovered from the three sites where the hijacked planes went down.In an exhibit opening Sept. 3, the National Museum of American History will let visitors get much closer for a more intimate experience. The museum plans to depart from the usual glass-covered displays and assemble the objects on open, uncovered tables.“September 11: Remembrance and Reflection” contains about 60 objects from the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pa.“The objects come from collectors and donors and, more importantly, people who were there,” said Cedric Yeh, curator of the Sept. 11 collections. In 2002, the museum was designated as the official archives for Sept. 11 materials....
Source: AP
August 26, 2011
BALTIMORE (AP) — A presidential historian's assistant charged with conspiring to steal valuable documents from archives throughout the Northeast has entered a plea of not guilty.Twenty-four-year-old Jason Savedoff entered the pleas Friday morning in U.S. District Court in Baltimore.Savedoff and historian Barry Landau are charged with stealing historical documents from the Maryland Historical Society and conspiring to steal documents from other archives. Savedoff was released on bail last month, but had not yet entered a plea. Landau pleaded not guilty and was released....
Source: History.com
August 25, 2011
As Hurricane Irene continues to batter the Bahamas and churn toward the northeastern United States, some may be wondering why this menacing swirl of peril goes by such an innocuous name. Why do we bestow people’s names on volatile storms in the first place? Find out more about the history of hurricane nomenclature and how it’s changed over the years.For as long as people have been tracking and reporting hurricanes, also known as tropical cyclones, they’ve been struggling to find ways to identify them. Until well into the 20th century, newspapers and forecasters in the United States devised names for storms that referenced their time period, geographic location or intensity; hence, the Great Hurricane of 1722, the Galveston Storm of 1900, the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 and the Big Blow of 1913. Meanwhile, hurricanes in the tempestuous West Indies were named for the Catholic saint’s days on which they made landfall.
Source: NYT
August 24, 2011
He described himself as a risk-taking rabbi who had been “beaten up, thrown in jail and gone $175,000 into debt” on “expeditions” to Eastern Europe. He said his mission was to rescue and restore Torahs that had been “wrenched from their communities during the Holocaust” and place them with congregations that would look after them.“I guess you could call me the Jewish Indiana Jones,” he wrote in 2004.But on Wednesday, the rabbi, Menachem Youlus, was arrested in Manhattan on fraud charges. Court papers said he had never gone to the far-flung places he talked about and had made up the stories he told about discovering Torahs at the sites of the Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps — or in Iraq in 2007.Instead, prosecutors accused him of selling fake Torahs and pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars through Save a Torah, the nonprofit organization he co-founded in 2004. A postal inspector who investigated Rabbi Youlus’s dealings also challenged his tale of financial troubles, saying in court papers that the rabbi had never been deeply in debt....
Source: Jewish Daily Forward
August 30, 2011
Sometime in the mid-to-late 1640s or early 1650s, a young Jewish man — probably of Spanish-Portuguese descent — seems to have taken what would likely have been a short walk from his home in Amsterdam’s Jewish quarter to Jodenbreestraat (“Jewish Broad Street”) 4, where Rembrandt van Rijn lived. Inside the three-story home, which Rembrandt purchased for the whopping sum of 13,000 guilders in 1639, the young man posed for several studies that he surely must have known were going to become portraits of Jesus.Was the young man so desperate for ducats that he talked himself out of any discomfort about his unusual modeling gig, which his peers surely would have considered sacrilege? Or was the young man one of the many people in 17th century Holland who were dazzled by interfaith dialogue? Was he, perhaps, considering converting to Christianity?Although much is known about 17th century Holland in general, and Rembrandt in particular — much of it thanks to the many lawsuits leveled against the master painter and inventories of his bankruptcies — it is simply conjecture to speculate about the state of mind of Rembrandt’s Jewish model.
Source: Stars & Stripes
August 30, 2011
A photo from the U.S. Air Forces in Europe historian's office shows some of the damage from a massive car bomb that exploded Aug. 31, 1981, in the parking lot outside the USAFE headquarters building on Ramstein Air Base, Germany. Twelve U.S. military members and two German civilians were injured. The German terrorist group, the Red Army Faction, later claimed responsibility for the attack. The incident prompted a number of security changes, including pop-up barriers and a permanent security ring around the headquarters, according to information from USAFE....
Source: NYT
August 29, 2011
LONDON — Television footage of the only man convicted in the Lockerbie bombing lying in bed, purportedly comatose with advanced prostate cancer at his Tripoli home, has provided a focal point for a question asked with new urgency in places far from Libya: With Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s government in ruins, what reckoning is likely for the terrorist bombings that were once a signature of the former Libyan leader’s war with the Western world?The issues range far beyond the bombing in 1988 that killed 259 people aboard Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, as well as 11 people on the ground, though many questions remain about who, including Colonel Qaddafi himself, may have ordered it.
Source: Daily Caller
August 16, 2011
President Barack Obama said yesterday in Decorah, Iowa, that he absorbs more political criticism than Abraham Lincoln, the assassinated 16th U.S. president, attracted from his Civil War critics....“Democracy is always a messy business in a big country like this,” Obama [said]. “When you listen to what the federalists said about the anti-federalists … those guys were tough. Lincoln, they used to talk about him almost as bad as they talk about me.”
Source: Grogan & Company Press Release
August 29, 2011
Dedham, Mass. – Dr. John Warren heard the cannon fire and saw the flames from the battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775. As a surgeon with Colonel Pickering’s Colonial Regiment in Salem, Dr. John Warren left Salem for Charlestown to tend to the wounded, carrying with him a tool of his trade, an amputation kit. Warren knew that his older brother General Dr. Joseph Warren would be at Bunker Hill. However, upon his arrival in Medford, he learned that his brother was missing. Dr. Warren continued his journey to Cambridge, where for several days he made inquiries about his brother to soldiers that had survived the bloody battle. Although the accounts of what transpired on Breed’s Hill varied, the truth was that his brother had been shot and killed, with his body bayoneted and buried in a shallow trench. John Warren eventually went to Charlestown in search of his brother’s body, unfortunately, he was intercepted by a British sentry who bayoneted him in the side as a warning not to return.
Source: NYT
August 28, 2011
HANOI — Pham Binh Minh, whose father fought to force the United States out of Vietnam, is working fervently to elevate the interest and involvement of his country’s former enemy.Vietnam wants a U.S. presence for economic reasons and as a balance to China, the regional superpower. Mr. Minh is the new foreign minister; his father was part of Ho Chi Minh’s Communist regime during the bitter conflict of the 1960s and 1970s; later, he was foreign minister when Vietnam clashed with China.“One cannot imagine how fast the relationship between the United States and Vietnam has developed,” Mr. Minh, 52, said in Hanoi.“After 16 years of normalization, we’ve come to the stage where we’ve developed the relationship in nearly all aspects.”While the United States hasn’t fully erased the pain of that war, the Vietnamese, who suffered far more, have embraced their old adversary....
