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: Daily Mail
Oct 13, 2009
They were sleek, beautifully shaped, and earned something of a racy reputation.
And that was just the Spitfires they flew.
But even away from the cockpit, the plucky young gals of the World War Two Air Transport Auxiliary turned plenty of heads as well.
In their hastily adapted uniforms (one even had her jacket tailored in Savile Row) they became the darlings of the air – and the unsung heroines of the Battle of Britain.
This was the forgotten
Source: The Daily Beast
Oct 13, 2009
9/11 “mastermind” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed may finally stand trial. The New York Daily News is reporting that Mohammed and four other detainees at Guantánamo Bay may soon face the death penalty in a courthouse near Ground Zero. Apparently, Attorney General Eric Holder is mulling the move and will decide by November 16 whether the men should stand trial in New York. Should the Gitmo tribunals be scrapped, which the Daily News says is “highly probable,” then the Justice Department will move to swift
Source: The Daily Beast
Oct 13, 2009
Bygones must be bygones on the presidential retirement circuit: Ex-presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are set to make their second joint appearance since Bush left office, as both men will speak at the TD Ameritrade Institutional 2010 National Conference in Orlando, Florida next year. The subject is the future of the financial-services industry, and the two will appear for an hour-long discussion. In their first joint appearance, Bush referred to Clinton as his “brother.”
Source: McClatchy
Oct 13, 2009
With his visit to Denmark to pitch Chicago as the site for the 2016 summer Olympics, President Barack Obama has now visited more countries in his first year in office than any other president did.
His one-day trek last week to Denmark -- which failed to convince the International Olympic Committee to award the games to his hometown -- made it the 16th country Obama has visited since taking office on Jan. 20.
That pushed him into the top spot as the country's top globetr
Source: BBC
Oct 13, 2009
A second set of trenches dug for training purposes during World War I has been investigated by experts in an area that saw intensive use in wartime.
The line of three trenches lies about two miles from where other remains were found to have survived in a field in Ross-shire last year.
The Royal Commission on Ancient and Historic Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) have investigated the site.
The farmer has never ploughed the field preserving the system for dec
Source: BBC
Oct 13, 2009
Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has lost his appeal that war crimes charges against him be dropped.
He had appealed against a court ruling made in July that a trial would still be held despite his claim of immunity.
However, he was successful in appealing against the start date of his trial International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at the Hague.
It was due to start on 21 October but has been postponed for five days as Mr
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 13, 2009
The Akuntsu, an ancient Amazonian tribe, has just five members left living in Brazil.
The eldest member of the tribe, Ururu, who was considered the matriarch of the last six survivors, died earlier this month.
Her death has drawn attention to the plight of the tribe, whose members are all aged between 25 and 50. The onslaught of road-building, agriculture and logging have over the decades eroded their way of life and threatened their v
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 13, 2009
Dachau has become the first former site of a Nazi death camp to twin with an Israeli town in a controversial peace project that has angered Holocaust survivors.
While 22 other German towns are twinned with Israeli locations in friendship-building pacts, until now the pairings had not included a site of a former concentration camp.
Peter Bürgel, the mayor of the German town, spent two years searching for an Israeli location willing to partner with Dachau, near Munich, w
Source: Artdaily.org
Oct 13, 2009
Iran accused the British Museum on Monday of breaking a promise to lend it an artifact relating to Cyrus of Persia's conquest of Babylon in the 6th century BC.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi warned of wider harm to archaeological cooperation between London and Tehran if the British Museum did not allow public display of the so-called Cyrus Cylinder in Iran.
A museum spokeswoman said the intention was still to send the piece to Iran once the "practical
Source: Liverpool Echo (UK)
Oct 13, 2009
Brighton bomber Patrick Magee remained defiant over his former IRA membership as he visited the House of Commons for the first time.
But the former terrorist told Jo Berry, the daughter of MP Sir Anthony Berry, who was killed in the bombing of the Grand Hotel in 1984, he was sorry for having killed her father.
Magee also said he regretted the loss of life and injuries caused by the Brighton bomb and declared recent sectarian violence in Northern Ireland was not justifie
Source: Guardian (UK)
Oct 13, 2009
History remembers Benito Mussolini as a founder member of the original Axis of Evil, the Italian dictator who ruled his country with fear and forged a disastrous alliance with Nazi Germany. But a previously unknown area of Il Duce's CV has come to light: his brief career as a British agent.
Archived documents have revealed that Mussolini got his start in politics in 1917 with the help of a £100 weekly wage from MI5.
For the British intelligence agency, it must have seem
Source: BBC
Oct 13, 2009
He had appealed against a court ruling made in July that a trial would still be held despite his claim of immunity.
However, he was successful in appealing against the start date of his trial at the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.
It was due to start on 21 October but has been postponed for five days as Mr Karadzic wanted more time to prepare.
Immunity claim
He is charged with 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humani
Source: BBC
Oct 13, 2009
Colin Mildinhall was speaking as he and other relatives of those killed in Iraq met officials conducting the inquiry into the war and its aftermath.
He said the UK had been "lied to" by the government over the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
The man heading the probe said he had "an open mind" about its conclusions.
'Accountability'
The first of a series of meetings with relatives of those killed during t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 13, 2009
The ruling, by a Moscow court, is a rare victory for Russia's embattled liberal elite who believe the Kremlin is using Stalin's strongman image to boost patriotic fervour and legitimise its own tough tactics today.
In a case as surreal as it was absurd, Yevgeny Dzhugashvili, Stalin's grandson, had sued Novaya Gazeta, a liberal newspaper, for printing an article that referred to Stalin as a "bloodthirsty cannibal."
Mr Dzhugashvili, who lives in neighbouring G
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 13, 2009
Hundreds of people lined the banks of the Mississippi river near New Orleans as the USS New York sailed through the fog, local media reported.
Its bow stem contains 7.5 tonnes of steel salvaged from the rubble following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
"That steel means a whole lot more than just metal," Ronnie Harris, mayor of nearby Gretna, Louisiana told the local Fox News station amid a swell of patriot music.
"The entire coun
Source: Guardian (UK)
Oct 13, 2009
The children of Martin Luther King Jr have finally resolved the long-running and bitter battle over their father's estate.
Martin Luther King III, Bernice King and Dexter King have been squabbling in open court in Atlanta for more than a year about the way their father's legacy is managed.
The three are the only surviving children of the civil rights activist, who was assassinated in 1968, and his wife Coretta Scott King, who died in 2006.
Among the content
Source: WSJ
Oct 13, 2009
American economists Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson, who study the way economic decisions are made outside markets, were awarded the Nobel Prize in economics Monday.
Ms. Ostrom, who teaches at Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind., is the first woman to win the economics prize, which had been awarded to 62 men since its launch in 1969. The judges cited her analysis of what happens when natural resources are shared commonly.
Mr. Williamson, who teaches at the Unive
Source: BBC News
Oct 12, 2009
Researchers have unveiled a new species of dinosaur from the late Triassic period - a small, early relative of T.rex and Velociraptor .
The 2m-long dinosaur, named Tawa hallae , was found in a "bone bed" on the Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, US.
The discovery of this early theropod, reported in the journal Science, sheds light on early dinosaur evolution.
The team says the find also highlights how dinosaurs dispersed across what was then the &qu
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 12, 2009
President Robert Mugabe's supporters have been accused of using rape as a political weapon against the opposition during the election in Zimbabwe last year.
A report by an American charity documents 380 politically motivated rapes committed by 241 individuals across all of Zimbabwe's 10 provinces.
Aids-Free World, which is led by the former United Nations envoy on Aids, Stephen Lewis, said that those behind the attacks on supporters of the Movement for Democratic Change
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 12, 2009
Scotland's oldest book, a medieval Celtic psalter with vivid illustrations in green, red, purple and gold, will be put on public display today for the first time in 1,000 years.
The pocket-sized book of psalms dates from the 11th century and has been described as Scotland's version of the celebrated Book of Kells in Dublin.
It contains hand-written psalms in Latin, with Celtic and Pictish illustrations of dragons and other “beasts” and has previously only been available
