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
Dec 15, 2009
Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the former UK ambassador to the UN, said the entire mission was "rushed" and did not have enough international input.
He told the Chilcot inquiry the UK was a "minor partner" and did not have enough clout to affect key decisions.
The broadcast of Tuesday's hearing was cut off for more than a minute by its chairman on national security grounds.
Source: BBC
Dec 15, 2009
The painting, by Maurice Quentin de La Tour, has hung in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery since it was bought for £22,000 in 1994.
Now a leading expert believes the pastel might be Prince Henry Benedict instead of Charles Edward Stuart.
The gallery said it was not uncommon for re-attributions to be made.
It follows a two-year row over the identity of the man in the painting since London art dealer Bendor Grosvenor claimed it was not Bonnie Prince C
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 15, 2009
As a new exhibition in the western German city of Cologne shows, the Nazis tried to skew the Christmas story to do away with the Jewish baby Jesus and impose their racist ideology and propaganda on the popular festival.
"Celebrating the birth of a Jewish baby was unthinkable for the Nazis," said Juergen Mueller, the chief researcher behind the exhibition.
"But Christmas was too popular to be banned. They therefore decided to corrupt it."
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 15, 2009
Jonathan Sumption QC, acting for David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, told the Court of Appeal: “I would go so far as to say their views were irresponsible.”
Mr Sumption said the two High Court judges had “charged in” when they decided that seven paragraphs summarising intelligence provided by the Americans should be published.
The Foreign Secretary is appealing against the decision but Mr Sumption said the material was no longer necessary because the documents were
Source: http://www.dailynews.com
Dec 14, 2009
While the possibility of a nuclear attack in Los Angeles seems almost unthinkable, local officials are inventorying hundreds of old bomb and fallout shelters as part of their preparations for a "radiological or nuclear event."
Los Angeles and other metropolitan areas are drafting emergency plans while federal agencies study how to prepare the public for what county public health Director Jonathan Fielding describes as a "low-likelihood, huge-consequences event."
Source: Sky News
Dec 14, 2009
The Nobel Peace Prize winner told Oprah Winfrey that helping to steady the economy and building plans for the withdrawal from Iraq were highlights of his first 11 months in office.
The US President, who took office on January 20, added there was still work to be done.
"B+ because of the things that are undone. Health care is not yet signed," Mr Obama said.
"If I get health care passed, we tip into A-."
Mr Obama said his admi
Source: History Today
Dec 14, 2009
What if Mitterrand’s alleged opposition to German unification was no more than a myth? Was Thatcher thus the only leader opposed to German unification? How far did Thatcher's views represent those of Britain as a whole? Maybe her alleged opposition to unification too was merely a legend? Or maybe these are the wrong questions to ask? If German unification was inevitable, perhaps the questions to be posed are slightly more complex.
These were some of the questions raised by an impres
Source: Live Science
Dec 14, 2009
Dingoes were semidomesticated village dogs once, in Southeast Asia. Then, about 4,000 years ago, they got loose in Australia, where their behavior reverted to that of their ancestor, the wolf. They howl, live in packs, and fear humans.
But even after so long on the lam they've retained at least one mark of domestication: an ability to read human gestures.
At the tender age of four months, ordinary dogs will spontaneously investigate objects that we point to or even ju
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Dec 14, 2009
Even with a measure of gin and a slice of lime, it's likely to leave a bad taste in the mouth.
An ice cube tray has gone on sale in which drinkers can make a replica of the Titanic - complete with four icebergs. The product is called the Gin And Titonic Ice Tray.
The manufacturer says it allows drinkers to 're-create history' by making the two objects collide in the glass, but one critic has branded the idea 'sick and distasteful'.
Source: BBC
Dec 14, 2009
The chance to spend Christmas Day with up to 30 guests at Warwick Castle enjoying a seven-course banquet has been won in an auction for £27,000.
The castle was put up for private hire on the online auction eBay with a reserve price of £25,000.
It will be the first time in 31 years that Christmas has been celebrated at the castle, which is the only day of the year it is closed to the public.
The Earl of Warwick sold it in 1978 to the Merlin Entertainment g
Source: The Australian
Dec 14, 2009
THE makers of Rabbit Proof Fence yesterday rejected claims by historian Keith Windschuttle that the film lies about a government policy to "breed out" Aboriginality in the 1930s.
In the third volume of his The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Windschuttle claims that two of the three girls the subject of the 2002 film were removed in 1931 for their own safety, because of alleged promiscuity with white station workers, not as part of a systematic breeding program.
Source: BBC
Dec 14, 2009
Tens of thousands of Palestinians have turned out in the Gaza Strip to celebrate the 22nd anniversary of the founding of the Islamist group Hamas.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniya said the organisation would not recognise Israel and would not stop fighting.
Supporters filled the streets, waving banners and portraits of assassinated Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
The event comes almost year after a deadly three-week conflict between Israel and Hamas.
Source: AP
Dec 14, 2009
France on Monday handed over to Egyptian officials five fragments of an ancient wall painting at the center of a dispute between Egypt and the Louvre Museum.
President Nicolas Sarkozy showed one of the fragments — a pockmarked slab with sepia and blue tones featuring two figures in profile — to his Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak on Monday, after the two men had lunch in Paris.
Egypt's antiquities czar Zahi Hawass cut ties with the Louvre in October, saying the famed
Source: WCVBTV (Boston)
Dec 14, 2009
A historical marker that commemorated the call to arms at the Battle of Lexington in 1775 was stolen late last week, town officials said.
The bronze plaque marked the location of the Old Belfry that was used to sound the alarm on April 19, 1775, at the beginning of the American Revolution.
The Old Belfry was originally built in 1762 and then moved to the Battle Green in 1768. Its bell was used to summon townspeople to worship or warn them of danger.
Source: National Geographic News
Dec 13, 2009
Today's recyclers can now conceivably lay claim to a rich, bloody, brawny heritage, if a new Viking discovery is any indication.
The famed Norse warriors, many of whom settled parts of eastern and northern England in the Middle Ages, recycled as they fought, new excavations in the United Kingdom suggest.
An 11th-century metalworking site recently discovered in the city of York (map) is likely evidence of a makeshift recycling center, where Vikings took weapons for rep
Source: NPR
Dec 13, 2009
The Orient Express — the very name carries an aura of glamour and mystery. Van Helsing rode it to his battle with Dracula. James Bond romanced a beautiful Russian aboard it. And Agatha Christie set one of the best-known murders in literary history aboard that train.
Now the original Orient Express is itself about to become part of history. On Monday, the route will disappear from European railway timetables, a victim of high-speed trains and cut-rate airlines.
Source: MyCentralJersey.com
Dec 12, 2009
When Kim Ciak searched through her grandparents' attic to look for her late mother's Elvis Presley bubblegum cards, she instead, to her great surprise, found photographs -- wrapped in linen, stored inside a hope chest -- of Adolf Hitler and other high-ranking Nazis.
The slide-sized photographs, her grandmother told her, belonged to her late grandfather, Julius Dobrzynski, who served in the U.S. Army during World War II and whose duties included defusing live bombs.
Ciak
Source: CNN
Dec 12, 2009
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair says he would have taken the decision to remove Saddam Hussein even without evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
In an excerpt from a BBC interview to be aired Sunday, Blair said: "I would still have thought it right to remove him. I mean obviously you would have had to use and deploy different arguments, about the nature of the threat."
Blair, who left office in 2007 and now serves as a special envoy to the
Source: BBC
Dec 12, 2009
The former prime minister said it was the "notion of him as a threat to the region" which had tilted him in favour of the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Without WMD claims it would have been necessary to "use and deploy different arguments," he told the BBC.
Mr Blair is expected to face the Iraq war inquiry early next year.
In September 2002 the UK government published a dossier which contained the now discredited claim that Iraq could use
Source: The Times (UK)
Dec 12, 2009
A new Russian history book for schools, approved by the Putin Government, glosses over Stalin’s Terror and other truths.
Now you see him, now you don’t. Stalin was a past master at the art of airbrushing. In one classic set of photographs, there Stalin is with his secret police chief, Nikolai Yezhov — and in the next photo, there Yezhov isn’t (he was executed in 1940, with his boss’s approval). And now, in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, the airbrushing of history seems to be all the rage
