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 5, 2011
The son of Osama bin Laden has claimed he was invited to the White House in the final days of George W Bush's presidency in a last-ditch attempt to discover the whereabouts of the world's most wanted terrorist.
Omar bin Laden, the fourth son of the al-Qaeda leader, claims he received a visit from White House staff in January 2009 at his home in Doha, the capital of Qatar.
But the son who was once groomed to take over from bin Laden later admitted that he had had no co
Source: CNN
April 5, 2011
Top Libyan defector Moussa Koussa looks set to be quizzed over the 1988 bombing of a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie in Scotland, prosecutors said Tuesday.
Representatives from Scotland's Crown Office and Dumfries and Galloway Police confirmed they met with Foreign Office officials in London Monday to lodge a formal request to meet Libya's former foreign minister, who arrived in Britain from war-torn Libya last week.
A statement from Dumfries and Galloway Constabulary --
Source: BBC Magazine
April 5, 2011
Today we are urged to report fly-tipping and other nuisances - just as our forebears did 700 years ago. Their complaints survive in a rare medieval document, the Assize of Nuisance, which sheds new light on an age-old problem.
Alice Wade, who lived in 14th Century London, could not countenance the smell of her own poo.
In an era when many of her fellow citizens relieved themselves in chamber pots and surreptitiously tipped the stinking contents out the window, she had a
Source: BBC
April 4, 2011
Dental X-rays of the Queen's family have been withdrawn from auction at the request of the Royal Household.
The 18 images of Elizabeth II's teeth, together with those of her mother and father, King George VI, were taken between 1942 and 1946.
The X-rays were found in a house in Leatherhead, Surrey and were due to go under the hammer on Wednesday.
But Dominic Winter's auction house in South Cerney, Gloucestershire, has been asked to remove the lot from sale.
Source: BBC
April 4, 2011
A memorial is being planned to Welsh soldiers who died in one of the most infamous and bloody of World War I battles.
Hundreds of soldiers from Wales are believed to have been among 70,000 British casualties in the Battle of Passchendaele in Ypres in 1917.
Now the Passchendaele Society in Belgium wants to raise around 50,000 euros (£44,000) for a Welsh memorial.
It is hoped some money will be raised in Wales.
Society chairman Freddy Declerck sa
Source: CNN
April 3, 2011
Attorney General Eric Holder announced Monday that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other 9/11 terror suspects will face a military trial at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba.
The decision is a sharp reversal for the Obama administration, which wanted the terror suspects to have federal civilian trials.
Besides Mohammed, the other suspects to face charges of participating in the 9/11 plot are Walid bin Attash, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Musta
Source: Science News
April 1, 2011
A rising tide lifts all boats, but in a surprising twist, ascending sea levels launched a flotilla of rafts or canoes on voyages from China to Taiwan around 5,000 years ago, a new study suggests.
At a time when rice farming dominated in other regions, the inundation of the Fuzhou Basin in southeastern China starting about 9,000 years ago led to the creation of a maritime culture that eventually took to the seas, says a team led by archaeologist Barry Rolett of the University of Hawa
Source: Sify News
April 4, 2011
Ruins of 2,000-year-old buildings have been discovered in eastern Nepal, Xinhua reported.
They were found during an excavation in Kichakbadhsthal in Jhapa district. Remains of walls made of bricks measuring 36 cm long, 26 cm wide and five centimeters thick have been unearthed. An earthen lamp and an urn were also found.
Uddav Acharya, chief officer at the archeology department, said the remains bear a resemblance of the buildings constructed 2,000 years ago. The conditi
Source: National Parks Traveler
April 4, 2011
Blogging about the Civil War will soon commence at Gettysburg National Military Park, where officials hope to use some of the latest media trends to educate people on the war between the states.
From the Fields of Gettysburg
This will be a weekly blog by park rangers and historians that will explore a wide variety of history topics and park news.
"From the Fields of Gettysburg will be a wonderful resource for people anywhere in the world who want to kn
Source: BBC News
April 2, 2011
While the role of the Home Guard during World War II has been widely celebrated, very little is known of their counterparts in the Auxiliary Units, who would have been Britain's last line of defence in the event of a Nazi invasion.
The units, dubbed "Churchill's Secret Army", were set up to relay vital information about enemy movements and help mount counter-attacks as Britain braced itself for occupation.
Now Forestry Commission Wales has unearthed a bunker w
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 4, 2011
The Nazis planned to kill Allied troops with poisoned coffee, chocolate and cigarettes, as part of a terrorist campaign in liberated Europe, newly disclosed MI5 documents show.
Female agents were also to be sent to kill senior Allied commanders using microbes hidden in handbag mirrors, according to interrogation reports.
One assassination device, captured by advancing Allied troops, involved a gun hidden inside a belt bulk with a Swastika emblem on it.
Doc
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 4, 2011
Here are 10 facts you might not know about Martin Luther King's “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963.
1) The speech is known as “I Have a Dream” but those words were never in the original draft, they were ad libbed on the day.
2) It lasts 17 minutes and is widely considered to have been drafted in New York and then in Washington in the hours before the rally.
3) As a result of the speech, Dr King was named Man of the Year by Time Magazine in 1963, and won the N
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 4, 2011
Adolf Eichmann, the bureaucratic mastermind of the Holocaust, regretted that he failed to exterminate all of Europe's Jews, saying "there was more we could have done", recordings have revealed.
Eichmann showed only disappointment that some survived, according to newly declassified files. Looking back on his role in organising the systematic slaughter of Jews, gipsies and other groups, he says: "We didn't do our work correctly."
Recordings of Eichmann
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 4, 2011
Liverpool is famed for many things – including The Beatles and its football team. But few would associate the city with one of the most famous political speeches in history.
Yet tourism officials in the city have published the extraordinary claim that Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech was written at a city centre hotel.
The allegation has been made in a guide to a major art event entitled "Liverpool Discovers", commissioned by amongst others, the ci
Source: BBC News
April 4, 2011
A three-panel oil painting by artist Zhang Xiaogang has sold for 79m Hong Kong dollars (£6.3m) - a record auction price for Chinese contemporary art.
The 1988 work, Forever Lasting Love, shows half-naked figures in an arid landscape surrounded by symbols, among them an emaciated ram.
It was one of 105 artworks sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong by Belgian collector Baron Guy Ullens.
They fetched HK$427m (£34m), more than three times than had been expected.
Source: AP
April 4, 2011
The four men wading ashore on a Florida beach wearing nothing but bathing trunks and German army hats looked like an unlikely invading force.
Declassified British intelligence files describe how the men were part of Nazi sabotage teams sent to the U.S. in June 1942 to undermine the American war effort.
A detailed new account of the mission — code-named Pastorius after an early German settler in the U.S. — is provided in a report written in 1943 by MI5 intelligence offic
Source: NYT
April 4, 2011
DURHAM, N.C. — His name is not on any campus buildings. His only portrait is stored in a locked closet. And after his scandal-driven downfall, Richard M. Nixon was so stigmatized here at Duke University — where he earned a law degree — that the faculty rejected a proposal to house his presidential library.
But last week, the Duke community took a small, uncharacteristic step toward embracing its most infamous graduate — by performing a play about him. “Tricky Dick,” a musical writt
Source: NYT
April 3, 2011
STANTON, Ky. — Nearly two decades after fleeing her native Croatia, the squat, hardworking woman known as Issabell Basic lived a quiet life in this small town, firing up her Jeep Cherokee each day for the 25-minute commute to her job making Hot Pockets....
Emphysema kept her close to the series of homes she shared with Steve Loman and his wife, Lucy, whom she called “Sis.” The Lomans, in turn, describe Ms. Basic, 51, as a “big-hearted” person — the kind who would not buy something f
Source: NYT
April 4, 2011
BEIJING — At the elaborately renovated National Museum of China in Tiananmen Square, visitors interested in the recent history of the world’s fastest rising power can gaze at the cowboy hat that Deng Xiaoping once wore when he visited the United States, or admire the bullhorn that President Hu Jintao used to exhort people to overcome hardship after the Sichuan earthquake in 2008.
But if their interests run to the Cultural Revolution that tore the country apart from 1966 to 1976 and
Source: USA Today
April 3, 2011
The image of a "Jester god," a symbol of royalty among the ancient Maya, may have done just the trick. Some archaeologists suggest its discovery has helped identify the oldest known burial site for a Maya ruler.
The ancient Maya filled Central America with pyramid-dotted cities prior to a drawn-out abandonment of such sites around 850 A.D., one of archaeology's most storied mysteries. The unexpected find from the archaeological site of K'o (Kuh-OH) in modern-day Guatemala,
