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: CBS News
September 28, 2010
A box unearthed in a Nunavut community along the Northwest Passage earlier this month contains nothing related to Arctic explorers Sir John Franklin or Roald Amundsen, government officials have announced.
The wooden box, which was believed to have been buried for decades in Gjoa Haven, Nunavut, was opened by the Canadian Conservation Institute in Ottawa on Friday.
The box was purported to contain either documents related to Franklin's ill-fated attempt to navigate the N
Source: BBC
September 29, 2010
A diary and sketch book recording life in the trenches of World War One has made £9,600 at auction.
Lieutenant Kenneth Edwin Wootton served with the Tank Corps on the western front, being decorated for bravery.
The volumes contain contemporary entries as well as reflections on what he had seen, along with drawings and paintings of battlefields and tanks.
Hansons Auctioneers, from Derbyshire, said they were special in giving "the spirit" of the war
Source: BBC
September 29, 2010
A US state department official has said there is no evidence in government records that oil firm BP sought the early release of the Lockerbie bomber.
Nancy McEldowney was speaking to a senate committee examining claims of a link to an oil deal.
Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi was freed from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
The Scottish government said the entire basis for the hearing had fallen away....
Source: AP
September 29, 2010
A Swiss artist's drawing seized by the Nazis during World War II has completed a 73-year journey from the hands of its original German-Jewish owner to the collection of a Jewish charity in Britain, Israel's national museum said Wednesday.
The convoluted passage of Paul Klee's drawing, from its seizure to the present destination, reflects an ongoing quest by Jewish organizations to restore artwork stolen by the Nazis to their rightful owners.
Klee's 1920 drawing, "
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 29, 2010
The European Commission has stepped back from formally accusing France of carrying out racist expulsions of Roma gipsies despite previously comparing the policy to Nazi deportations.
Viviane Reding, the EU’s fundamental rights commissioner, dropped her previous accusation that the “disgraceful” policy amounted to illegal discrimination against gipsies.
Instead, she warned France that it was in technical breach of EU law by failing to properly incorporate a 2004 free mo
Source: AP
September 29, 2010
Prosecutors plan to give Osama bin Laden a starring role in the terrorism trial of the first Guantanamo Bay detainee to be tried in civilian courts, a test case in the debate over whether suspects scooped up in the war against terrorism can be prosecuted like everyone else.
Jury selection began Wednesday when 53 prospective jurors were introduced to the defendant, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, who turned briefly toward the group. He has been described by federal authorities as a bomb make
Source: NYT
September 29, 2010
...The offer by the Democratic National Committee to the University of Wisconsin-Madison [for the president to visit the campus] would seem like a no-brainer, conjuring images of university officials ostentatiously checking their calendars before saying: It just so happens that the Badgers of Wisconsin are free that day....
Over the decades, two other sitting presidents have visited the campus of this famously liberal, progressive university in this famously liberal, progressive cit
Source: NYT
September 29, 2010
MOSCOW — This capital city was on the brink of collapse when Yuri M. Luzhkov became mayor in 1992, with food shortages, trash-strewn streets and rampant crime. Cigarettes, one of the few luxuries available to the masses in the Soviet era, were in such short supply that Muscovites blockaded the city’s main thoroughfares in protest.
Eighteen years later, as Mr. Luzhkov steps down after being unceremoniously fired on Tuesday by Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, he is leaving behi
Source: NYT
September 29, 2010
...Depending on whom you talk to in the steep, alpine enclaves of Graubünden, otherwise known as Grisons, the easternmost wedge of the country, there is either strong support or bitter resistance to Romansh, the local language. “When people talk about the death of Romansh,” said Elisabeth Maranta, who for the last 18 years has run a Romansh bookshop, Il Palantin, which sells books in Romansh and in German, “then I say that there are days when I only sell books in Romansh.”...
Romans
Source: NYT
September 29, 2010
NEW DELHI — The case has existed almost as long as independent India itself. Dating from 1950, the legal battle between Hindus and Muslims over a religious site in the city of Ayodhya began as a little-noticed title dispute. With a ruling finally expected on Thursday, the case has become something altogether different: a test of India’s secular soul....
Ayodhya is located in the state of Uttar Pradesh. India’s first Mughal ruler, Babur, constructed a domed mosque on the contested pr
Source: NYT
September 29, 2010
MIAMI — Arrest the bum and run him out of town: that was the approach of the Miami police when Alphonse Gabriel Capone moved to South Florida in 1928. But when he sued the city for harassment two years later and was then tried for perjury, the authorities ended up looking like chumps....
Why then would the Eleventh Judicial Circuit Court and Miami-Dade County go out of their way to re-enact the perjury trial on Tuesday — in a courthouse already overwhelmed with a backlog of cases? P
Source: The Root
September 21, 2010
No one knows why Bethany Storro decided to mutilate her own face with acid late last month. Obviously deeply troubled, she was sane enough to make a calculated decision to maximize sympathy and deflect suspicion. She blamed it on a black person.
And the fake acid attack became the latest twist on a tactic as old as America itself, one that plays into every long-held stereotype of black folks as criminal and violent: the racial hoax. The racial hoax "plays into long-standing fea
Source: The Baltic Course
September 28, 2010
Construction workers and archaeologists digging at the future site of Parnu's history museum have unearthed remnants of a city gate, expected to date from the 13th or 14th century, informs ERR/LETA.
The workers discovered the gate's oak foundations and pillars, as well as a wooden walkway, during drainage works at the location.
In medieval times the gate would have been a vital city feature as the main artery for goods transported between the port to the city, Pärnu M
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
September 28, 2010
David Cameron has chosen one of the best-known anti-war poems as his favourite piece of poetry.
The Prime Minister selected Dulce et Decorum Est by Wilfred Owen.
Asked by the Radio Times about his favourite poem ahead of National Poetry Day next month, he said: ‘I still remember the first time I read Owen’s poems and the incredible power and anger about the First World War.
‘For me, they were literally an eye-opener and I still find them moving when I read
Source: NYT
September 28, 2010
Mets first baseman Ike Davis is half Jewish and not religious. But he is acutely aware of the two distinct branches of his family history, which have a common thread in World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust. Davis, whose father is Baptist and whose mother is Jewish, had many relatives on his mother’s side who died in the Holocaust, and one great aunt who survived it.
And his grandfather on his father’s side was a paratrooper in the United States Army who landed in France on
Source: BBC
September 28, 2010
If you've got a German helmet from World War I hanging around the house Dr Gethin Matthews would like to hear from you.
He's manager of the Welsh Voices of the Great War project that's been travelling round the country looking for memorabilia from 1914-18 and comes to Llanberis this week.
The project is creating an online archive of memorabilia from World War I to give an insight into what life was like for soldiers and their families.
Staff from Cardiff
Source: BBC
September 28, 2010
The commission responsible for finding the so called Disappeared are believed to be due to start a new search.
The Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains (ICLVR) was established in 1999.
In June 2010 Mr McIlwaine led the forensic archaeology team which discovered the remains of Charlie Armstrong.
Mr Armstrong, 57, from south Armagh went missing on his way to Mass in 1981, he was believed to have been kidnapped and murdered by the IRA.
Source: BBC
September 28, 2010
A 'haunted' castle which was pulled from auction in 2006 is set to go back on the open market.
The crumbling ruins of the 16th Century Llantwit Major Castle, also known as Old Place, were put up for sale by the Vale of Glamorgan Council.
But the process was called off after Cadw which is responsible for listed buildings in Wales demanded more talks.
Now the council is planning to sell the monument once again.
The building has been unoccupied si
Source: BBC
September 28, 2010
A series of world-famous saucy seaside postcard images is being relaunched to mark their 100th anniversary.
Businessman Ian Wallace, of West Yorkshire, bought the firm Bamforth & Co nine years ago and now owns the rights to about 50,000 of the images.
But he has waited until the centenary to sign a licensing agreement, which will take place later with the Jane Evans Licensing Consultancy.
James Bamforth began his business in Holmfirth in 1870.
Source: BBC
September 28, 2010
A secret document has emerged in court, revealing Tony Blair's mounting concern in 2002 about claims of torture of terror suspects by US agents.
The former prime minister was briefed by Foreign Office staff as suspects were being moved to Guantanamo Bay.
The document concludes with a hand-written note, said by lawyers to have been written by the former PM.
His note expresses concern about torture claims and urges officials to establish that "it isn'
