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
May 26, 2011
Rinderpest, a cattle disease that for centuries felled herds in Europe, Africa and Asia and caused periodic human famine, has been eradicated, veterinary epidemiologists announced this week.Eradication is the Holy Grail of disease prevention and has been successful only once before. Smallpox, an equally devastating human scourge, was eradicated in 1980, proving it is possible to stamp out a microbe across the entire planet. Attempts are underway to rid the world of polio and Guinea worm disease.
Source: Fox News
May 27, 2011
NEW YORK – The first Civil War casualty to be buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn was a 12-year-old drummer for a New York regiment.Clarence McKenzie, a local boy fatally wounded in an accidental shooting in Maryland, was buried June 14, 1861, two months after the Union garrison at Fort Sumter surrendered to Confederate forces. He was followed to the grave 12 days later by Adolph Vincens, a 23-year-old London-born jeweler who was the first Civil War battle casualty buried at Green-Wood.
Source: Washington post
May 25, 2011
A mysterious man who wandered New York and Connecticut in a 60-pound leather suit during the 19th century became a little more mysterious Wednesday.Historians announced that all they found when they dug up the 1889 grave of the man known as the Leatherman was dozens of coffin nails.“The Leatherman was a mystery in life and he’s going to be a mystery in death,” said Ossining Historical Society President Norman MacDonald.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 27, 2011
Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb wartime general, is fit to be extradited to the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague and has until Monday to appeal, a judge at a special Serbian war crimes court has said."Mladic's lawyer was delivered the extradition papers and he has until Monday to appeal," judge Maja Kovacevic said.He said Mladic had been examined by a medical commission "which has determined he is fit for further proceedings".
Source: BBC News
May 27, 2011
The US Congress has voted to renew three expiring provisions of the anti-terrorism Patriot Act which increase surveillance powers.The four-year extension was approved in the Senate just hours before the deadline at midnight (0400 GMT).The bill was then sent to the House of Representatives, where it passed by a 250-153 vote.The Patriot Act was brought in under President George W Bush in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks.US President Barack Obama is now due to ratify the bill, officials said.
Source: Star Tribune
May 25, 2011
Paul Bengston never got to meet Hubert Humphrey -- not in person, anyway. But the acquaintance he's forged with the Happy Warrior through campaign buttons, political posters, tickets to DFL bean feeds and the odd key chain has, in a way, been as personal.
Source: National Security Archive
May 26, 2011
Washington, D.C., May 26, 2011 - The U.S. government secretly helped France develop its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile program, and much earlier than previously realized, according to declassified documents compiled and edited by National Security Archive senior analyst William Burr and published jointly with the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project, an Archive partner.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
May 26, 2011
The Austrian town where incest monster Josef Fritzl lived has revoked the honorary citizenship of Adolf Hitler.The town council of Amstetten, 95 miles from Vienna, approved the motion in a bid to banish its ties to the Nazis ahead of its 900-year anniversary.It comes just three weeks after the council approved plans to tear down Fritzl's house of horrors.Mayor Herbert Katzengruber said the decision to declare the title 'null and void' was approved by a large majority in the chamber.
Source: Guardian (UK)
May 26, 2011
New research suggests number of Nazis and collaborators who used travel documents meant for genuine refugees was much higher than previously thought.The Red Cross and the Vatican both helped thousands of Nazi war criminals and collaborators to escape after the second world war, according to a new book that pulls together evidence from previously unpublished documents.
Source: NewsCore
May 26, 2011
A German hotel that was once a notorious Nazi jail organizes "prison parties" complete with striped T-shirts and ferocious guards, Der Spiegel reported Thursday.Hotel Stadt Hameln, a four-star hotel in the northern city of Hamelin made famous by the Pied Piper legend, charges guest $62 to attend the parties.Guests, who wear black and white prison uniforms, are even forced to stand to attention when they ask guards for permission to use the restroom, the report said....
Source: LiveScience
May 26, 2011
Bizarre shrimp-like monsters that were the world's largest predators for millions of years grew even larger and survived much longer than thought, scientists find.
Source: CNN
May 26, 2011
It is now remembered as the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.In a five-day orgy of slaughter at Srebrenica in July 1995, up to 8,000 Muslims were systematically exterminated in what was described at the U.N. war crimes tribunal as "the triumph of evil."Former Bosnian Serb commander-in-chief General Ratko Mladic, who is accused of direct involvement in the genocide at Srebrenica, was arrested on Thursday after more than 15 years on the run.In 1995, Srebrenica was designated a U.N. "safe area."
Source: BBC News
May 26, 2011
A homeless street preacher who kidnapped a 14-year-old girl in the US state of Utah in 2002 has been ordered to spend life in prison.Elizabeth Smart, who was held captive for nine months by Brian David Mitchell, looked on as he was sentenced in a federal court in Salt Lake City."I know that you know what you did is wrong," Ms Smart told Mitchell.Mitchell was found guilty in December of abduction and the transportation of a minor across state lines for sex.
Source: BBC News
May 26, 2011
Barack Obama has completed his three-day state visit to the UK. But how did it compare with the last state visit by a US president, when George Bush came to the country eight years ago in 2003?
Source: BBC News
May 25, 2011
Fifty years after the so-called Freedom Riders risked their lives trying to break the practice of segregating people on the US public transport system, the veteran activists have reunited to inspire a new generation."We changed American history," says Bob Filner, now a California congressman. "And we should do the same thing today."Just across the road from Filner is the old Greyhound station where he and hundreds of other Freedom Riders were arrested in the summer of 1961.
Source: BBC News
May 26, 2011
In the recent row over injunctions and Twitter, the analogy of King Canute vainly holding back the tide has constantly been used. But is it correct?"Who does he think he is - King Canute?" blasted one newspaper. A prominent media lawyer, Mark Stephens, said that by "trying to stop the unstoppable tide of information as it flows through the internet, [Ryan Giggs] has become the King Canute of football".
Source: BBC News
May 26, 2011
International reaction after former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic was arrested 15 years after his indictment for war crimes:FRENCH PRESIDENT NICOLAS SARKOZY"It is very good news and it is a very courageous decision by the Serbian president. It is one more step towards Serbia's integration one day into the European Union."
Source: BBC News
May 26, 2011
Ratko Mladic, wanted for genocide during the Bosnian war in the 1990s, has been arrested in Serbia.Serbian President Boris Tadic said the process to extradite the former Bosnian Serb army chief to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague was under way.Gen Mladic, 69, was found in a village in northern Serbia where had been living under an assumed name.He faces charges over the massacre of at least 7,500 Bosnian Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995.
Source: NYT
May 25, 2011
Weeks after the United States operation that resulted in the killing of Osama bin Laden, the Columbia Pictures division of Sony Pictures Entertainment said it had acquired a new film project by Kathryn Bigelow, the Academy Award-winning director of
Source: NYT
May 25, 2011
A mystery since the 19th century, the Leather Man will apparently remain that way forever.From Sunday to Tuesday afternoon, a team of about 20 historians, geneticists, archaeologists, anthropologists and other researchers descended on the Sparta Cemetery in Ossining, N.Y., hoping to exhume the remains of the Leather Man, a homeless wanderer who fashioned his clothing from discarded boots and roamed around Westchester County and western Connecticut for decades in the 19th century....
