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: CNN
Nov 29, 2009
(CNN) -- It was to be a somber memorial, a remembrance of those who perished in a lethal milky fog.
To mark the 25th anniversary of the world's worst industrial disaster, authorities planned to open up the now-dilapidated shell of the Union Carbide fertilizer plant, where in the wee hours of December 3, 1984, 40 tons of methyl isocyanate gas oozed out onto the sleeping city of Bhopal, India.
About 4,000 people died instantly in the toxic leak, an event that came to be
Source: Fox News
Nov 29, 2009
WASHINGTON — The military says Capt. Michael "Scott" Speicher died when his fighter jet was shot down over Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War and was never captured or tortured.
But Speicher's family is unconvinced.
The Navy pilot's remains were identified earlier this year under about 18 inches of sand in the Iraqi desert.
In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, the chief of POW/MIA analysis at the Defense Intelligence Agency describes a ser
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 29, 2009
The government agency, which runs the scheme, rejected the application by supporters of the founder of Scientology after its blue plaques panel decided that it was unconvinced about Mr Hubbard's "reputation".
The decision has frustrated the Hubbard Foundation, which had nominated him. In an unusual move, a foundation representative went to visit English Heritage officials, following the verdict, to find out more about why he had been rejected and how his case could be help
Source: Time
Nov 29, 2009
Wanted: Clean-living young people for a long career (women need not apply). Responsibilities: Varied. Spiritual guidance, visiting the sick, public relations, marriages (own marriage not permitted). Hours: On call at all times. Salary: None, bar basic monthly stipend.
He hasn't placed classified ads in the Irish press just yet, but according to Father Patrick Rushe, coordinator of vocations with the Catholic Church in Ireland, "we've done just about everything" else to att
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 29, 2009
Rwanda joined the Commonwealth on Sunday, becoming only the second country which was not formerly a British colony to be admitted to the group.
The small central African country applied last year to join the group of 54 nations, all of which - aside from Mozambique - have historic links to Britain dating back to the colonial era.
Rwanda's President Paul Kagame has lobbied hard for his country to join the Commonwealth as part of a policy of moving towards the Anglophone
Source: CNN
Nov 29, 2009
It was at 2:28 p.m. on May 12, 2008, when a devastating earthquake shattered the villages of China's Sichuan province, leaving 69,000 people dead and 15 million displaced.
Little more than a year after the quake, Du Haibin's film "1428" won the Orizzonti prize for Best Documentary at the 2009 Venice Film Festival.
Without judgment but with a deep compassion for their subjects, the filmmakers of "1428" bring us a myriad of individual stories of absurd
Source: New York Post
Nov 29, 2009
It's been an inexplicable phenomenon for decades: a remote Brazilian village full of blond-haired, blue-eyed twins. Dozens and dozens of twins, all with the clean-cut Aryan features that Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele wanted in his genetically altered master race.
Could Mengele -- who fled to South America in 1949 -- have had a hand in the bizarre outbreak of Germanic twins in Candido Godoi, Brazil?
That's the puzzle the National Geographic Channel tries to solve in
Source: Fox News
Nov 29, 2009
Nearly 65 years after the liberation of the concentration camps, an alleged accomplice in the Holocaust is to stand trial this week in Germany -- one of the last such cases and marking for some the end of Europe's darkest era.
German prosecutors will begin their case against John Demjanjuk Monday morning in Munich, bringing charges against a man, they say, volunteered to guard the Sobibor death camp in 1943 and was complicit in the murder of tens of thousands of Jews.
A
Source: Air Force Times
Nov 28, 2009
There are places here where the desert floor is so speckled with artifacts, it is difficult to find a step that will not fracture history.
In a place called Lago Seco, pieces of pottery, many more than 800 years old, glisten in the morning sun. Stone tools and arrowheads are covered with only a thin layer of sand.
Then in the howling silence, a massive cloud of dirt and sand rises from the ground. Moments later, a concussive blast rolls out of Manned Range 4.
Source: NYT
Nov 28, 2009
As President Obama vows to “finish the job” in Afghanistan by sending more troops, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has completed a detailed look back at a crucial failure early in the battle against Al Qaeda: the escape of Osama bin Laden from American forces in the Afghan mountains of Tora Bora in December 2001.
“Removing the Al Qaeda leader from the battlefield eight years ago would not have eliminated the worldwide extremist threat,” the committee’s report concludes. “But
Source: Truthout
Nov 28, 2009
Buenos Aires, Argentina - In July 1977, when Ana Maria Careaga was just sixteen years old, she was kidnapped off a major intersection in Buenos Aires by forces from Argentina's last dictatorship. She was taken to what she later found out was "Club Atletico," a torture center and secret prison in a federal police station just blocks from the bustling downtown. According to court documents, for three and a half months, she was savagely tortured - beaten, hung by her wrists and ankles, an
Source: The Daily Beast
Nov 28, 2009
Nazi hunters have had what they’re describing as their best break in years after discovering immigration files in Brazil that are more than 50 years old. The files identify several hundred Germans who moved to Brazil in the decade after World War II ended. Though most are likely to now be dead, the German government plans to investigate the names. “The discovery will probably be our most important find in recent times,” said Kurt Schrimm, the top German justice official who hunts Nazi fugitives.
Source: WSJ
Nov 28, 2009
Mention the Vikings and most people will immediately think of horned helmets, blood eagles, and grizzled barbarians raiding and pillaging their way across the seven seas. It's a cliché, of course, but one embedded with an element of truth. During the early years of the Viking Age (circa 800–1100) the Vikings were engaged in a campaign of what we might now term "asymmetrical warfare," attacking religious targets in a savage attempt to assert their own culture against Charlemagne's expan
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 28, 2009
Vyacheslav Manyagin has asked Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to outlaw the film, which he claims is an insult to Russian statehood.
The blockbuster, released earlier this month, has triggered an ill-tempered debate in religious and historical circles at a time when the Kremlin is encouraging Russians to take patriotic pride in their often brutal history.
In the film, Ivan the Terrible is shown as a murderous tyrant who puts himself above God and punishes his real and
Source: Artdaily.org
Nov 28, 2009
Ukrainian nationalists hurled red paint at a restored monument to Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin moments after it was unveiled Friday, sparking a street brawl and revealing the bitter divisions over the legacy of communism in Ukraine.
The nationalist group, Freedom, said the protest was inspired by persistent debate over the Ukrainian famine of 1932-33, a major irritant in Kiev's relationship with its former Soviet overlord, Moscow.
It was the second time this year that
Source: BBC
Nov 27, 2009
Booksellers touting their wares amid the heavy traffic in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, have discovered an unusual best-seller.
Adolf Hitler's autobiography manifesto Mein Kampf is selling as well as Dan Brown's latest novel, The Lost Symbol.
The street vendors in Dhaka are found at every major road junction and intersection.
Most of the sellers are young boys and many compete with beggars to attract the attention of motorists.
Source: LifeSiteNews
Nov 27, 2009
President Obama's brief proclamation of Thanksgiving Day on November 26 was unique among all recorded Thanksgiving proclamations by his predecessors: it is the first one that fails to directly acknowledge the existence of God.
The beneficence shown by God to America is a theme that traditionally defines the Thanksgiving holiday, and this theme is strongly emphasized in the original Thanksgiving Day proclamations and consistently acknowledged even by modern presidents.
Source: Guardian (UK)
Nov 27, 2009
Showing off his stunning collection of classic automobiles, Dmitry Lomakov explains why Russians love Nazi cars. "They are symbols of Russia's victory,'' he says. "For Russians the second world war isn't a historical event. For us it happened yesterday.''
Lomakov is the director of Moscow's museum of retro-automobiles whose collection in a freezing cold hanger includes three rare Nazi-owned vehicles. "Buying a Nazi car is like sticking one finger up to Hitler,'' he ex
Source: NYT
Nov 27, 2009
NEW DELHI — When 7-year-old Shiva Ayyadurai left Mumbai with his family nearly 40 years ago, he promised himself he would return to India someday to help his country.
In June, Mr. Ayyadurai, now 45, moved from Boston to New Delhi hoping to make good on that promise. An entrepreneur and lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with a fistful of American degrees, he was the first recruit of an ambitious government program to lure talented scientists of the so-called des
Source: Sky News (UK)
Nov 27, 2009
Graham Foulkes, whose 22-year-old son David was killed in the London attacks, said the announcement came as a "real blow" and criticised its "insensitivity".
He was speaking after Lady Justice Hallett, a Court of Appeal judge, met with the families to explain she will hold a pre-inquest hearing early next year.
The full inquests are expected to follow in the autumn.
She told the families she had no choice but to hold the inquests of the
