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: AP
Oct 21, 2009
Germany's highest court says it has thrown out a request to block the trial of John Demjanjuk on charges he was an accessory to the murder of thousands at a death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.
The Federal Constitutional Court said Wednesday that it rejected complaints from Demjanjuk's lawyer against decisions to open the trial in Munich on Nov. 30 and to keep the 89-year-old retired Cleveland area autoworker in custody.
He maintains that he was a Red Army soldier who wa
Source: WSJ
Oct 21, 2009
The Vatican said it will make it far easier for disgruntled Anglicans to convert to Catholicism, in one of Rome's most sweeping gestures to a Protestant church since the Reformation.
A newly created set of canon laws, known as an "Apostolic Constitution," will clear the way for entire congregations of Anglican faithful to join the Catholic Church. That represents a potentially serious threat to the already fragile world-wide communion of national Anglican churches, which h
Source: WSJ
Oct 21, 2009
"You see, for me the Cultural Revolution was not as bad as all that, actually," says composer Guo Wenjing, 53, with a slightly bemused look on his face. He draws pensively on his cigarette and explains: "Nobody in my family had any interest in music. My father and mother were peasants from the north. They had joined the Communist Party early on and became soldiers in the People's Liberation Army. They arrived in Sichuan with the army, and once demobilized and assigned to do 'commu
Source: LA Times
Oct 20, 2009
Reporting from Fernald Preserve, Ohio - Amid the family farms and rolling terrain of southern Ohio, one hill stands out for its precise geometry.
The 65-foot-high mound stretching more than half a mile dominates a tract of northern hardwoods, prairie grasses and swampy ponds, known as the Fernald Preserve.
Contrary to appearances, there is nothing natural here. The high ground is filled with radioactive debris, scooped from the soil around a former uranium foundry that
Source: Associated Press (NAT)
Oct 20, 2009
On a cold December day in 1861, a few hundred German immigrants in blue Union uniforms squared off against 3,000 Confederates on foot and horseback near Munfordville, Ky.
When the withering artillery and musket fire cleared, the rebels fled, and Kentucky's first Civil War battle ended in victory for the 32nd Indiana regiment known as the "First German."
But before the regiment marched on, infantryman August Bloedner carved a limestone monument to the 13 Union
Source: BBC History Magazine
Oct 20, 2009
According to our latest survey, the majority of people believe that after ten years have passed events have definitely crossed into history. But what about those who study the past for a living? We spoke to a group of historians about their views on the border between current affairs and history. Following are samples of their responses:
Professor Arne Westad, London School of Economics:"There is no automatic cut-off point for when history stops and current affairs begin."
Source: Caribbean Life
Oct 20, 2009
After 230 years as largely unsung contributors to American independence, Haitian soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary War’s bloody siege of Savannah have a monument dedicated in their honor.
The six bronze figures standing atop a granite base, in downtown Savannah, Ga., represent more than 500 free black volunteers from Haiti who fought for American independence in the revolutionary war battle of Savannah.
“Maybe it was their first fight. Maybe it was many fig
Source: The Hill/OpEdNews.com
Oct 20, 2009
An irritated House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) on Tuesday fired back at Republicans who have charged President Barack Obama with jeopardizing U.S. troops by deliberating over whether to send additional forces to Afghanistan.
Hoyer tore into Republicans — including House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) — for criticizing Obama’s approach to a war Hoyer said Republicans “abandoned.”
“My Republican colleagues, of course, abandoned their focus on Afghanistan
Source: NYT
Oct 20, 2009
Of all the consequences of shrinking newsrooms, one of the oddest is this: Fewer journalists are available to watch people die. But Michael Graczyk has witnessed more than 300 deaths, and many of those were people he had come to know.
An Associated Press reporter based in Houston, Mr. Graczyk covers death penalty cases in Texas, the state that uses capital punishment far more than any other, and since the 1980s, he has attended nearly every execution the state has carried out — he h
Source: Spiegel Online (Germany)
Oct 20, 2009
Archaeologists in Germany have made a number of sensational finds along a railway line under construction in eastern Germany -- Bronze Age treasures, burial sites and evidence of settlements dating back more than 7,000 years.
Archaeologists in the state of Saxony-Anhalt have uncovered 4,000-year-old skeletons and Bronze Age treasures in excavations along a railway line being built in eastern Germany.
Copper and amber jewellery and hundreds of dogs' teeth with holes bore
Source: NYT
Oct 20, 2009
MOSCOW — Until recently, Aleksandr Y. Khochinsky occupied a special niche in this capital, known as much for its corruption as for its wealth. He was an antiquarian who specialized in providing high-class grease for the best-connected palms in the government and other high-level circles.
Harried businessmen would rush in off the streets to his gallery here, Bogema, and think nothing of spending tens of thousands of dollars for the right item to delight the powerful, whether a set of
Source: NYT
Oct 20, 2009
DETROIT — To sell a car in the 1980s, dealers had to do little more than open their doors, and loyal buyers would show up to trade in their Chevrolet for a new Chevrolet, or their Toyota for another Toyota.
Nearly four in five Americans were repeat buyers back then, staunchly faithful to brands that they knew, trusted and were part of their self-image. The allegiance often continued through generations of families, like party affiliations in politics.
Now, partly as a
Source: Fox News
Oct 20, 2009
For Army Capt. John Poindexter, being awarded the Presidential Unit Citation for heroism Tuesday marked an "opportunity to close a chapter" in his life.
"The general feeling is a pretty intense level of excitement," Poindexter told Foxnews.com just before he and 85 other Vietnam veterans were honored at a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden.
"It will mean to me that I've filled an important duty to the men who I literally owe my life to, me
Source: BBC
Oct 20, 2009
A five-year project to make 190,000 wills available online has been completed.
About 800,000 pages of documents, some going as far back as the 14th Century, have been placed on the National Library of Wales' website.
Among the wills available at the click of a button are Twm Sion Cati's, known as the Welsh Robin Hood, and hymn writer William Williams, Pantycelyn.
Officials said it had taken more than five years to digitise the documents.
Source: CNN
Oct 20, 2009
Sarah Palin will sit down with Oprah Winfrey the day before her new memoir hits bookstores, Harpo announced Tuesday.
The former Alaska governor will make the appearance on Oprah on November 16 to talk about her highly anticipated tell-all, "Going Rogue: An American Life."
Palin has never before appeared on the popular daytime talk show. Last December, Winfrey said she had invited her on the show to discuss the election, but suggested at the time that Palin had
Source: The Providence Journal
Oct 20, 2009
PROVIDENCE — Since he first trudged through the woods to found Providence, Roger Williams has been variously called an American statesman, a canny trader and a champion of religious freedom.
Julianne Jennings, a Native American, would like to add a few more labels to the list.
Indian fighter.
Slave trader.
“We have to stop the lying,” says Jennings, 48, an author and adjunct professor of anthropology at Rhode Island College.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 20, 2009
As medicine has allowed people who would previously have died young to live to childbearing age and beyond, many have assumed that natural selection no longer works on our species.
But Prof Stephen Stearns, the evolutionary biologist at Yale University behind the study, says: "That's just plain false."
While survival to reproductive age is no longer such a hurdle for humans, other evolutionary pressures – including sexual selection and reproductive fitness –
Source: Chosun Ilbo (South Korea)
Oct 20, 2009
Japanese who believe that Tokyo should apologize for drafting thousands of Asian woman as sex slaves for the Imperial Army in World War II outnumber those who think otherwise for the first time, a straw poll suggests.
The Northeast Asian History foundation commissioned Gallup Korea to poll 527 Seoul citizens, and 500 citizens each in Beijing and Tokyo from Aug. 1 to 9. In the poll released Monday, 48.9 percent of respondents in Tokyo said Japan should apologize to the "comfort
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 20, 2009
If it nudges over 16.2 million pounds, the work, called Head of a Muse, will double the record for an Old Master drawing sold at auction.
Raphael's 1508 drawing was made as a working draft for his famous fresco Parnassus, one of four he was commissioned to paint by Pope Julius II in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican.
Created between 1508 and 1511, the fresco series is seen as Raphael's greatest masterpiece.
At the same time his rival Michelangelo wa
Source: BBC
Oct 20, 2009
The Crown Office has dismissed an MSP's claims that she uncovered new evidence which could have compromised the Lockerbie prosecution as "misleading".
The SNP's Christine Grahame said a fragment of bomb timer used in the atrocity left Scotland twice before the trial of Abdelbasset al-Megrahi.
She said a Freedom of Information inquiry response revealed the evidence had been taken to Germany and the US.
