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)
Nov 25, 2009
Around 300 feet of the wall in a remote part of Inner Mongolia has been irreparably damaged by Mongolian gold prospectors.
"We discovered what had happened a couple of months ago, while doing a national survey on the condition of the Great Wall," said Wang Dafang, the head of the regional cultural relics department.
"The place where it happened is remote and uninhabited. We might never have found out if the government had not commissioned the inspection s
Source: WSJ
Nov 25, 2009
LONDON -- Iran and Libya, not Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, were Britain's main security concerns before the invasion of Iraq, Foreign Office officials testified Wednesday at an inquiry probing Britain's role in the war.
William Ehrman, the Foreign Office's director of international security from 2000 to 2002, said "in terms of nuclear and missiles, I think Iran, North Korea and Libya were probably of greater concern than Iraq." The inquiry, billed as the most sweeping
Source: BBC
Nov 25, 2009
Seventy former Argentine army officers are accused of crimes against humanity for the alleged abuse, torture and, in one case, murder of their own troops during the 1982 war with Britain over the Falklands, or Malvinas, Islands. As the BBC's Angus Crawford reports, the case has divided Argentina's veteran community.
In 1982, Michael Savage was a student doing his military service, part of a force sent to invade the Falkland islands by the dictatorship then in power in Argentina.
Source: NPR
Nov 25, 2009
When a president's rendezvous with destiny puts him in a position to save his nation's economy from ruin, he probably can be forgiven for thinking it's all right to use his power to move the Thanksgiving Day holiday.
Rescheduling Thanksgiving Day is exactly what President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to do in 1939.
As NPR's Michelle Norris discussed on All Things Considered with Melanie Kirkpatrick who wrote a piece for Wednesday's Wall Street Journal, in 1939 FDR caused
Source: CBS
Nov 25, 2009
Nothing a president does lends itself more easily to a punch line – deliberate or inadvertent - than the annual pardon of a Thanksgiving turkey.
"I think it's kind of funny, and it's an annual ritual," said President Clinton at his first turkey pardon ceremony in 1993.
He said the pardon was easy for him "because I've been around turkeys all my life." Upon realizing the double meaning of his statement, Mr. Clinton was quick to add: "I didn't mea
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 25, 2009
The intercepted exchanges are being posted online "as live" by the controversial Wikileaks website, with messages appearing in the order they were sent during the day.
The release began at 8am GMT and will continue for 24 hours. The majority of the messages posted in the first four hours offer little illumination, with most either automatic alerts sent by computers or anodyne personal memos.
Wikileaks has not revealed how it obtained the records. The site ha
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 25, 2009
The documentary, And Did Those Feet, explores the story behind the legend which survives in the hymn, for which William Blake wrote the words.
The legend claims Jesus visited several places in the West Country, such as the Roseland peninsula and Glastonbury, with his uncle, Joseph of Arimathaea.
In the film, the Scottish researcher Dr Strachan said it is plausible Jesus may have visited Britain to further his learning.
Ted Harrison, the film's director a
Source: Times (UK)
Nov 25, 2009
President Obama’s delay in authorising a US troop surge in Afghanistan had contributed to falling public support in Britain for the mission, Bob Ainsworth said yesterday.
The Defence Secretary said that as well as the “period of hiatus” in Washington, the deaths of British troops and the disputed Afghan elections had also played a part.
Mr Obama is preparing to announce his decision on troop numbers next week, it emerged yesterday, ending months of wrangling.
Source: Times (UK)
Nov 25, 2009
Cambodian prosecutors in the war crimes trial of the Khmer Rouge's former prison chief have demanded a 40 year jail sentence for the part he played in murdering thousands of Cambodians and spreading terror across Cambodia.
Kang Kek Ieu, known as Comrade Duch, was the director of the infamous Tuol Sleng prison, where thousands of Cambodians were sent to be tortured and killed at the height of Pol Pot's genocidal regime.
Duch encouraged the jail's interrogation teams to
Source: Times (UK)
Nov 25, 2009
Intelligence information that Saddam Hussein had dismantled his weapons of mass destruction programme was received by the Foreign Office days before Tony Blair ordered the invasion of Iraq, an inquiry into the war heard today.
The revelation on the second day of the Chilcot Inquiry will raise fresh questions about the justification for invading Iraq in March 2003.
The inquiry heard that the Foreign Office did not believe that Iraq had a large number of long-range miss
Source: Times (UK)
Nov 25, 2009
Gordon Brown today sparked controversy on the eve of the Commonwealth summit by suggesting he backs the sweeping away of 300-year-old laws that prevent Roman Catholics ascending to the Throne.
Mr Brown is also keen to change the ancient rule of primogeniture, which stipulates that men must always take precedence over a woman in line to the throne.
The Prime Minister is expected to raise the issue with heads of government in the "margins" of the Commonwealth
Source: Times (UK)
Nov 25, 2009
A German bomb devastated Bridgewater House, home of the Earls of Ellesmere and their magnificent art collection, on May 11, 1941. A monumental painting described yesterday by the director of the National Gallery as of huge importance was torn in 200 places by shrapnel and coated in dust.
For 68 years it was rolled up in storage, thought by its owner and experts alike to be ruined. But in February, Paul Delaroche’s Charles I Insulted by Cromwell’s Soldiers will go on display to comp
Source: Lee P Ruddin
Nov 25, 2009
The world’s foremost expert on Political Islam, Gilles Kepel, gave a lecture on jihad on Tuesday evening.
Speaking at the London School of Economics (LSE), Kepel trailed the history and geography of the political-religious phenomenon.
Beginning and ending with Afghanistan, the former visiting professor at Columbia University explained how Political Islam plugged into the world system.
Kepel is the Philippe Roman Chair in History and International Affairs (
Source: http://medievalnews.blogspot.com
Nov 25, 2009
An excavation on the rue de Rivoli is currently uncovering the first Medieval city fortifications of Paris. This excavation by an Institut national des recherches archaeologiques preventives team has found a deep ditch on land isolated among a group of buildings. This earth and wood fortification comprised a ditch and a bank, which probably held in place a wooden palisade. The bank and the palissade were destroyed when the fortification was abandoned, and have left no traces. The ditch, however,
Source: AAP
Nov 25, 2009
BRITAIN and the US were at odds over whether to overthrow dictator Saddam Hussein two years before the pair teamed up to invade Iraq in 2003, an inquiry has heard.
Former senior British military and government officials told the first public hearings of Britain's latest Iraq war inquiry that while talks were under way in the US in 2001 about regime change, the UK preferred to toughen up UN sanctions against Iraq in an attempt to control Saddam.
At the time, President
Source: Rochdale
Nov 24, 2009
ROCHDALE has become the first town in the UK to honour the victims of a barbaric Soviet famine that claimed the lives of millions.
A memorial stone has been unveiled to mark the Holodomor genocide — an enforced starvation over 18 months between 1932 to 1933 which claimed the lives of at least seven million Ukrainians under Joseph Stalin’s regime.
The memorial stone was unveiled during a ceremony at the memorial gardens opposite Rochdale Town Hall on Friday.
Source: The Providence Journal (Rhode Island)
Nov 24, 2009
WARWICK — The discovery of Native American artifacts dating back thousands of years –– plus the likelihood that there are many more beneath the streets of neighborhoods off Tidewater Drive –– have stalled an effort to bring sewers to the coastal area.
Archaeologists retained by the Warwick Sewer Authority have been unearthing a variety of artifacts in test trenches for more than three years and recently issued a report stating that the Mill Cove area was probably home to generations
Source: Voice of America
Nov 24, 2009
Yosemite National Park, in California's Sierra Nevada mountain range, was one of the nation's first wilderness parks, created in 1890. It has granite cliffs towering over deep valleys, spectacular waterfalls and ancient giant sequoia trees. It also holds a special place in African-American history.
As an interpretive specialist at Yosemite, Ranger Shelton Johnson tells visitors about the history of the park. While researching Yosemite's archives, he learned that for three years, ar
Source: CNSNews
Nov 24, 2009
Geneva (AP) - The number of people worldwide infected with the virus that causes AIDS -- about 33 million -- has remained virtually unchanged for the last two years, United Nations experts said Tuesday.
Officials say the global epidemic probably peaked in 1996 and that the disease looks stable in most regions, except for Africa. Last year, HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 72 percent of all 2.7 million new HIV cases worldwide.
Daniel Halperin, an AIDS e
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
Nov 24, 2009
On November 18, 2009, Senator Robert C. Byrd (D-WV) became the longest-serving member of Congress, having served in the House of Representatives (1953-1959) and the Senate (1959-present) for a total of 56 years, 10 months, and 16 days. He broke the record previously set by Carl T. Hayden (1912-1969). On June 12, 2006, Senator Byrd became the longest-serving senator in U.S. history
