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: Salon
Nov 13, 2009
In the wake of a Salon investigation, the Army Friday announced a broad investigation into “lost accountability” at some graves at Arlington National Cemetery, along with shoddy record keeping and other issues at the cemetery.
Army Secretary John McHugh ordered the inquiry after a series of articles in Salon showed the cemetery found an unknown casket in a grave in 2003, covered it up with dirt and quietly walked away, and also buried another service member in the wrong plot in 2008
Source: NYT
Nov 13, 2009
CAIRO
He was a small man, with a very neatly trimmed black mustache, seated in a corner, leaning forward on his walking stick, smiling, sipping Scotch from a glass that seemed too large for his frail hands. His face brightened with a smile as he reminisced about the dictator’s wife who once locked herself in the bathroom of his private jet and the star-studded, five-day extravaganza he threw for his 50th birthday.
Oh, the memories of a fallen billionaire arms trader.
Source: NYT
Nov 13, 2009
TOKYO — The United States is not threatened by a rising China, President Obama said Saturday, but will seek to strengthen its ties with Beijing even as it maintains close ties with traditional allies like Japan.
In a wide-ranging speech on his first trip to Asia as president, Mr. Obama drew on his own background to reassure the people of the fast-growing continent that even as the United States seemed preoccupied with conflicts in the Middle East and other regions, it was increasing
Source: NYT
Nov 13, 2009
BEIJING — The Chinese government had a special message for President Obama on Thursday: He is black, he admires Abraham Lincoln, so he, of all people, should sympathize with Beijing’s effort to prevent Tibet from seceding and sliding back into what it was before its liberation by Chinese troops: a feudalistic, slaveholding society headed by the Dalai Lama.
“He is a black president, and he understands the slavery abolition movement and Lincoln’s major significance for that movement,
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 13, 2009
With thousands of followers on Twitter, the social networking website, Stephen Fry has come to be regarded as a modern oracle.
The actor and comedian has, however, upset friends of the late Princess Margaret by accusing her of anti-Semitism.
At the HarperCollins History Lecture at the Royal Institute of British Architects, Fry claimed that the Queen's sister had been shocked when he told her at a dinner party that he had Jewish ancestors. Fry, who is a great chum of t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 13, 2009
Ned Kelly, the infamous Australian bush ranger, may finally be able to rest in peace after a skull believed to belong to the outlaw was handed to authorities for forensic testing.
Kelly's skull has been missing ever since it was stolen from a display cabinet at the Old Melbourne Gaol in 1978, just yards from where Kelly was hanged in 1880 for killing a policeman. The crime went unsolved and the whereabouts of the skull became one of Australia's greatest mysteries.
Then
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 13, 2009
A text message reading "Thatcher has died" set off a diplomatic flurry among members of Canada's parliament at a black tie dinner this week, local media reported on Thursday.
Stephen Harper, Canada's conservative prime minister, was quickly informed that Baroness Thatcher, the 84-year-old former British Prime Minister, had passed away.
Upon learning the "news" via mobile or Blackberry at a soiree honouring Canadian military families on Tuesday, som
Source: CNN
Nov 13, 2009
Some family members of 9/11 victims welcomed the announcement that five Guantanamo Bay detainees with alleged ties to the attacks will be tried in a New York civilian court, while others blasted the decision.
But others -- including members of the September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, some of whom spoke to reporters by phone on Friday -- said a civilian trial allows for transparency, noting that families of the victims could attend. Their access to a military trial wou
Source: The National Security Archive
Nov 13, 2009
Three years before al Qaeda's attacks on the United States on 9/11, U.S. officials detected an alarming shift in the ideological stance of Taliban leader Mullah Omar toward pan-Islamism – a change that portended a burgeoning alliance between the Afghan regime and Osama bin Laden. The report that Omar might be falling under bin Laden's "influence" is contained in a December 1998 U.S. Embassy cable from Islamabad, Pakistan, one of a number of recently declassified government documents ob
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 13, 2009
Relations between the Vatican and the Russian Orthodox Church have been tense for centuries, but in a sign that relations are finally thawing, Archbishop Ilarion, who heads the Russian Orthodox Church’s foreign relations department, said that both sides wanted a meeting, although he emphasised that problems remained.
Ilarion spoke of a rapprochement under Pope Benedict XVI that would allow for a meeting with the new Russian Orthodox Patriarch, Kiril, who took up his office in Februa
Source: Truthout
Nov 13, 2009
By now, most people can admit to the fact that former covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson had a decades long career with the spy agency before high-level officials in the Bush administration leaked her undercover status to reporters six years ago.
That is, most people except for Valerie Plame Wilson.
On Thursday, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, ruled that the CIA did not violate Wilson’s First Amendment rights when it refused to allow
Source: Politico
Nov 13, 2009
The Republican National Committee will no longer offer employees an insurance plan that covers abortion after POLITICO reported Thursday that the anti-abortion RNC's policy has covered the procedure since 1991.
"Money from our loyal donors should not be used for this purpose," Chairman Michael Steele said in a statement. "I don't know why this policy existed in the past, but it will not exist under my administration. Consider this issue settled."
Source: Spiegel Online
Nov 13, 2009
It all started innocently enough. Back in the mid-1970s, Rita Breuer began collecting old German Christmas ornaments after her husband expressed the desire for a good old-fashioned Christmas tree like his grandmother used to have. Breuer, who hails from the small town of Olpe, 60 kilometers from Cologne, scoured flea markets and raided friends' attics in the search for baubles and came to accumulate quite a collection which included not only tree ornaments, but also Advent calendars, cribs and C
Source: BBC
Nov 13, 2009
At the time of writing this, it is just after 1500 (GMT+2) in Kaliningrad. People in this west Russian exclave, between Poland and Lithuania, still have a few more hours of work before heading home for their dinner.
In Kamchatka, in the far east of Russia, people have long since left work and had their dinner. In fact it is 0100 (GMT+12), and the majority are probably fast asleep in their beds.
In between the two ends of this, the world's largest country, lie another
Source: Yahoo News
Nov 13, 2009
LONDON – The diaries of a British reporter who risked his reputation to expose the horrors of Stalin's murderous famine in Ukraine were put on public display for the first time Friday.
Welsh journalist Gareth Jones sneaked into Ukraine in March of 1933, at the height of a famine engineered by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. Millions of people starved to death between 1932 and 1933 as the Soviet secret police emptied the countryside of grain and livestock as part of a campaign to force
Source: Politico
Nov 13, 2009
The confessed mastermind of the September 11th terrorist attacks will face charges in the city he targeted.
The Obama administration has decided that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other terrorism suspects now detained at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay will be charged in civilian court.
Two Obama administration officials confirmed plans to transfer Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other men to New York City from the prison at Guantanamo Bay to face charges in a
Source: The Daily Beast
Nov 13, 2009
Sarah Palin's book Going Rogue isn't out until Tuesday but leaked excerpts reported by the Associated Press are already setting off denials from John McCain's old campaign staff. In response to the Palin's reported claim that she received a bill from the McCain campaign to pay for expenses related to her own vetting process, a McCain official told CNN that the story is "one hundred percent untrue." The official added: "All those bills are from her personal attorney Thomas Van Flei
Source: Chicago Tribune
Nov 13, 2009
U.S. researchers said Thursday they have located the remains of two high-tech Japanese submarines that were scuttled by the U.S. Navy off Hawaii in 1946 to prevent the technology from falling into the hands of the Soviet Union at the beginning of the Cold War.
One of the vessels was the largest non-nuclear sub ever built and had the ability to sail 1 1/2 times around the globe without refueling. Called the I-14, the behemoth was 400 feet long, 40 feet high, and carried a crew of 144
Source: CBS
Nov 13, 2009
Self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees will be sent to New York to face trial in a civilian federal court, a law enforcement official told CBS News Friday.
Attorney General Eric Holder plans to announce the decision later in the morning, a White House official told the Associated Press. The official is not authorized to discuss the decision before the announcement, so spoke on condition of anonymity.
Without
Source: WSJ
Nov 13, 2009
LIUYI VILLAGE, YUNNAN PROVINCE -- In a courtyard of her crumbling house, Wu Liuying lifts her favorite pair of shoes from a dusty cardboard box. Hand-sewn from navy-blue cloth, embroidered with pink flowers, they are no bigger than a small child's slippers.
But they slip easily over the gnarled shrunken feet of the 90-year-old Ms. Wu. From the age of 5, her feet were bound tightly with cotton strips, warping them. The four smallest toes folded under the sole, which was squeezed into
