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
Oct 29, 2009
This month Burma's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi passed two milestones.
The first was 14 years - that is the amount of time she has now spent in detention during the past two decades.
The second was to meet Western diplomats and begin talks with Burmese military leaders - talks which some think could see her released.
"Given the impasse of the last 20 years, what has happened in the last three months gives us the hope there will be some movemen
Source: Fox News
Oct 29, 2009
YRIA, Damascus — The Syrian Ministry of Tourism invited journalists from Tehran to Tunis to check out its top attractions during a trip to the normally reclusive country. Fox News hopped a caravan and went along for the ride.
Syrians are proud of the fact that Christians and Muslims have traditionally lived together in harmony in Syria. The historical monuments alone tell the story of the intertwining of faiths.
Massive columns, the remains of a pagan temple, which was
Source: Yahoo News
Oct 29, 2009
LOS ANGELES (AFP) – Technology and media stars, pundits and entrepreneurs joined the Internet's father to celebrate the 40th anniversary of his culture-changing child.
"It's the 40th year since the infant Internet first spoke," said University of California, Los Angeles, professor Leonard Kleinrock, who headed the team that first linked computers online in 1969.
Kleinrock led an anniversary event at the UCLA campus that blended reminiscence of the Internet's p
Source: Time
Oct 29, 2009
There was little surprise among Afghanistan experts and longtime CIA watchers at the New York Times report that claimed Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of the Afghan President and alleged drug kingpin, has been paid by the CIA for eight years. Whether or not Karzai fits the bill — and the allegations against him remain unproven — it would come as a surprise if the CIA did not have any number of shady Afghan politicians on its payroll.
The agency has declined comment on the Times story, b
Source: BBC
Oct 29, 2009
The US Ambassador to the UK has stressed that good relations with Scotland will survive the row over the release of the Lockerbie bomber.
But during his first official visit to Scotland Louis Susman also highlighted America's disappointment.
Mr Susman said the relationship with the UK was like a marriage but also strong enough to thrive.
Source: BBC
Oct 29, 2009
A former victim of East Germany's secret police, the Stasi, is due to return to the Berlin prison he was once locked up in - for an art project.
Carl-Wolfgang Holzapfel was arrested by the police in the 1960s while at a demonstration in East Berlin.
He spent nine months in a secret Stasi prison, where he was abused and tortured.
He plans to spend seven days living in the small cell with all his movements broadcast live on the internet.
Source: BBC
Oct 29, 2009
A Rwandan man convicted of war crimes has been jailed for life by a Canadian court, without the prospect of parole for 25 years.
Desire Munyaneza, 42, was found guilty in May in the first court case brought under Canada's 2000 War Crimes Act.
He was convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in 1994.
Munyaneza was accused of leading a militia whose members raped and killed dozens of Tutsis, and of orchestrating a massacre of 3
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 29, 2009
Carla Bruni has been condemned as the new Marie Antoinette of France by the country's leading society magazine.
Point de Vue presents the 41-year-old wife of President Nicolas Sarkozy as a daffy multi-millionaire socialite who does very little real work and is completely out of touch with ordinary people.
The attack by the Paris weekly, which specialises in covering the lives of aristocrats and European royalty, will come as a huge blow to Mr Sarkozy as he fights to de
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 29, 2009
The country has vowed to put a stop to illegal excavations at the country's archaeological sites, many of which have already been ransacked by smugglers.
When archaeologists arrived at Isar Marvinci in southern Macedonia, an ancient seat of power which flourished under the ancient Greeks but was razed to the ground by the Romans, they had hoped to begin excavations, but instead faced an unpleasant surprise.
Police officials are reluctant to estimate whether the amount o
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 29, 2009
Tickets to see former President George W Bush speak at a motivational business seminar are on sale for $4.95 (£3).
Organisers of the event in San Antonio, Texas say guests can also buy a group ticket which will allow them to "send your entire office" to see the former leader of the free world for $19 (£11.50).
Mr Bush features as the "special guest speaker" at the "Get Motivated!" seminar, a popular US programme of "motivational mega-
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 29, 2009
Saddam Hussein planned to escape from his US-run prison in 2006 with the help of loyalists, including former bodyguards, according to a book written by one of his lawyers.
Under the plan, the Iraqi fighters were given orders to attack Baghdad's Green Zone and the headquarters of the US Marines at the capital's airport, before raiding his jail at Camp Cropper near the airport, according to Khalil al-Dulaimi who wrote Saddam Hussein Out of US Prison: What Happened.
Dulai
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 29, 2009
A picture of Nelson's Column under construction nearly 200 years ago is among a series of old photographs going on display at the British Library.
The picture was taken by William Fox Talbot, who helped to develop the newborn practice with his discovery, in 1840, of the calotype process which creates negative images.
The famous study of Trafalgar Square also shows St Martin-in-the-Field and Morley’s Hotel, later South Africa House, in the background.
Source: CNN
Oct 29, 2009
Some Democrats had dubbed the possibility of a Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton pairing last year as a "dream ticket," though the notion that the two once-bitter primary rivals would team up always seemed far-fetched.
But then-Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama was more seriously considering picking Clinton as his running mate than any of his senior aides realized, according to a forthcoming book by former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe.
Yet in the
Source: CNN
Oct 29, 2009
A passport bearing the name of Said Bahaji, a suspect linked to the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington, has been found in a town captured by the Pakistani military.
The passport was found in South Waziristan, where the Pakistani military has been battling to wrest territory from the Taliban in Pakistan. It contained a Pakistani visa issued in August 2001 showing that the bearer entered Pakistan on September 4, 2001, and appeared unusually new for a document eight years
Source: WSJ
Oct 29, 2009
Berlin
To many observers, the fall of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989, symbolized the triumph of liberal democracy and free markets over their last serious ideological rival.
Two decades and one financial crisis later, a new debate is growing over whether that assessment was premature.
Some Western thinkers now argue that democracy is in a new competition with unexpectedly robust authoritarian regimes over which form of government can better deliver prosper
Source: Fox News
Oct 28, 2009
Maybe President Obama will win the Nobel Prize for Literature, too, now that the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts has declared that "Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar."
Rocco Landesman rendered unto Obama that considerable compliment in a little-noticed speech to a group of art philanthropists in Brooklyn, N.Y., last week, praising the president as an "Optimist in Chief" who is developing "the most arts-supportive ad
Source: Medieval News
Oct 28, 2009
One of the most important battles in British history is marked in the wrong place, according to new research.
Bosworth, fought in 1485 and ending in the death of Richard III, was believed to have taken place on Ambion Hill, near Sutton Cheney in Leicestershire. But following a three-year project, the Battlefields Trust said the discovery of ammunition two miles to the south west proved the location was wrong.
The battle ended decades of civil war which is now known as
Source: USA Today
Oct 28, 2009
Awaiting takeoff, seatback grinding your knees, seatmate snoring, babies wailing and you wonder — who's to blame?
Well, Count von Zeppelin, it turns out.
And now we're celebrating a century of his 1909 bright idea: passenger airline travel.
"Really, it was sort of a desperation measure," says historian Ron Davies of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. "He couldn't sell enough of his zeppelins to the military, s
Source: NYT
Oct 28, 2009
WASHINGTON — After a Somali-American teenager from Minneapolis committed a suicide bombing in Africa in October 2008, the Federal Bureau of Investigation began investigating whether a Somali Islamist group had recruited him on United States soil.
Instead of collecting information only on people about whom they had a tip or links to the teenager, agents fanned out to scrutinize Somali communities, including in Seattle and Columbus, Ohio. The operation unfolded as the Bush administra
Source: UC Santa Cruz
Oct 28, 2009
When Philippa Baker-Rabe says a historical archaeology class changed her life, she's not exaggerating.
"I took it on a whim my sophomore year and ended up loving it," recalled Baker-Rabe. "It was an 8 a.m. class, but it ended up being my favorite. I realized this is what I want to do forever."
Taught by assistant professor of anthropology J. Cameron Monroe, the class opened a door that led Baker-Rabe to West Africa, where she spent seven weeks this p
