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: Deutsche Welle
Oct 3, 2009
Modern Germany is only 19 years old. It's hard to believe that Europe's leading economy and a key player on the international political stage, could have been at the center of the Cold War just two decades ago.
October 3, 1990, was the day on which the communist German Democratic Republic (GDR) officially ceased to exist and the Federal Republic of Germany, previously the name for just the western part of the divided country, came to encompass both East and West. As the clock struck
Source: BBC
Oct 3, 2009
Defence of the Realm, the first authorised history of MI5, says there were worries about his relationships with Eastern European businessmen.
His contact with KGB officers also raised concerns.
However, the book, serialised in the Times, dismisses long-standing claims of bugging and plots against him.
Mr Wilson, who died in 1995 aged 79, was the only serving prime minister to have a permanent Secret Service file, according to the book's author Cambridge
Source: WSJ
Oct 3, 2009
QAPQAL, China -- Hasutai gingerly turns on the tape recorder and places it on a table. Out of it emanates something he thought he'd never hear: his native tongue, Manchu, spoken by a living person.
Hasutai is a Manchu, descendant of a nomadic warrior tribe that conquered China in the 17th century and ruled it for more than 250 years. Generations of persecution have all but eliminated the Manchus' language.
So Hasutai, who in the Manchu tradition goes by the one name, ha
Source: WSJ
Oct 3, 2009
Are humans hard-wired to be ruthlessly competitive or supportive of one another?
The behavior of our ape relatives, known as peaceful vegetarians, once bolstered the view that our actions could not be traced to an impulse to dominate. But in the late 1970s, when chimpanzees were discovered to hunt monkeys and kill each other, they became the poster boys for our violent origins and aggressive instinct.
I use the term "boys" on purpose because the theory was al
Source: WSJ
Oct 3, 2009
LONDON -- The recently freed Libyan agent convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, released documents containing what he calls fresh evidence that he hopes will bolster efforts to clear his name in the 1988 terrorist act that killed 270 people.
The 170-page legal brief published Friday includes some previously undisclosed evidence, including some uncovered by a Scottish review panel of his 1998 conviction. The documents say that a key witness, Malta shopkeeper Ton
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Oct 3, 2009
As Stanford University reported a couple of days ago and Inside Higher Ed noted, the estate of James Joyce, headed up by James Joyce’s grandson, Stephen James Joyce, has lost a lawsuit with English professor Carol Loeb Shloss and must pay her legal fees and costs of nearly a quarter-million dollars.
This finding appears to end the almost two-decade battle with the estate by Shloss, and to represent relief for other Joyce scholars who’ve felt the estate to be unfair and unreasonable
Source: Digital Journal
Oct 2, 2009
Archaeologists have found a cellar in the university town of Pécs in southern Hungary, which they believe to have belonged to Wallachian Duke Vlad III, more commonly known as "Dracula."
Tamás Fedeles, tutor of medieval and early modern history at Pécs University said his research showed that Vlad III Tepes alias ”Dracula,” lived in a two-story town house on what is now the city’s central square.
Fedeles says the Duke of Wallachia (modern-day southern Rumania)
Source: Haaretz
Oct 2, 2009
Israel and Germany have agreed recently to establish a joint committee to study how school textbooks in each of the countries portrays the other country.
"It is important that students in Israel learn about modern Germany, until and after reunification, and for us it is an opportunity to present Israel to German students in various aspects, not only the Palestinian conflict," Ilan Mor, former political attache at the Israeli Embassy in Berlin, said.
Mor is one
Source: Pew Research Center Publications
Oct 2, 2009
The press is coming under considerable fire these days. News organizations are facing a crippling financial crisis and public views of the accuracy of news stories have fallen to their lowest level in more than two decades, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.
Nonetheless, most Americans continue to support the so-called "watchdog role" for the press. In fact, the percentage of Americans saying that press criticism of political leaders keeps them "from do
Source: The Christian Science Monitor
Oct 2, 2009
Washington - For all the recent uproar over Iran's nuclear program, little attention has been paid to the fact that the country which first provided Tehran with nuclear equipment was the United States.
In 1967, under the "Atoms for Peace" program launched by President Eisenhower, the US sold the Shah of Iran's government a 5-megawatt, light-water type research reactor. This small dome-shaped structure, located in the Tehran suburbs, was the foundation of Iran's nuclear pro
Source: CNSNews.com
Oct 2, 2009
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus has asked the Obama administration to “immediately terminate” a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) program that has identified more than 120,000 illegal aliens over the past three years..
“On behalf of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC), we write to ask that you immediately terminate all Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) under the 287(g) program and cease to establish such agreements,” reads t
Source: AP
Oct 2, 2009
Researchers seem to have solved the mystery of what happened to the "Big Red" flag flown by Citadel cadets when they fired on a ship trying to resupply Fort Sumter three months before the Civil War.
The Post and Courier of Charleston reports a 10-by-7-foot flag with a large white Palmetto tree and a white crescent on a red field has been located in storage at an Iowa museum.
Researchers think it is the same flag that flew over Morris Island when cadets fired
Source: BBC
Oct 2, 2009
A former u-boat listening station on the Pembrokeshire coast that monitored submarine transmissions during World War II is up for sale.
In more recent times the red brick building has been used as a farm machinery workshop and store.
Prospective buyers have until Wednesday to submit sealed tenders with offers invited over £45,000.
Source: BBC
Oct 2, 2009
The three judges who jailed Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi in 2001 have denied they were under pressure to secure a conviction.
The denial came in a letter to the New York Times which had published the claim by US professor Dirk Vandewalle.
Meanwhile Megrahi, who still protests his innocence despite dropping his appeal against conviction, has put more material online in a bid to clear his name
On his website, Megrahi concentrates on the crucial evi
Source: The Washington Times
Oct 2, 2009
President Obama has reaffirmed a 4-decade-old secret understanding that has allowed Israel to keep a nuclear arsenal without opening it to international inspections, three officials familiar with the understanding said.
The officials, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because they were discussing private conversations, said Mr. Obama pledged to maintain the agreement when he first hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House in May.
Source: The Japan Times
Oct 2, 2009
LONDON — They are, according to their kanji, part earth and part spirit, somewhere between animal and human. They are dogu, the most remarkable products of Japan's Jomon Period, a Neolithic era before the advent of rice cultivation, when the Japanese archipelago supported higher population densities than any other pre-agricultural society in the world.
The dogu are humanoid forms shaped in clay, large and small, richly decorated or homely and unadorned. Some 18,000 of them have been
Source: AFP
Oct 2, 2009
British archaeologists have discovered the ruins of an arena built early in the third century BC outside Ostia, the ancient imperial port 25 kilometres (16 miles) from Rome, the team leader said Friday.
The ruins were uncovered in three years of digging by the British team from Southampton and Cambridge Universities in cooperation with the British School at Rome, an archaeological academy.
Italian archaeologist Rodolfo Lanciani determined the approximate location of the
Source: BBC
Oct 2, 2009
Rights groups have criticised the move to bathe New York's Empire State Building in red and yellow in honour of communist China's 60th anniversary.
Managers of the building said the lights were to honour the Chinese people, adding that they celebrated many cultures and causes in such a way.
But Human Rights Watch, which has offices in the building, voiced dismay.
Source: BBC
Oct 2, 2009
Mao Zedong knew better than most the power of personality.
The cult of Mao may be dead, but celebrity power is helping the Great Helmsman receive a Hollywood-style makeover.
The Founding of a Republic, or Jianguo Daye in Chinese, a new film from the state-owned China Film Group, is a propaganda epic that includes almost all the biggest names in Chinese film.
There are so many stars, about 172, that most have only cameo roles.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 2, 2009
A mother whose children were stolen by the Stasi secret police of former East Germany has been reunited with one of them nearly 40 years on.
Petra Hoffmann, 55, saw her daughter Mandy Reinhardt, 38, for the first time this week since the agents of the hard line Communist regime took her away shortly after she was born.
Mandy was born to Petra in 1971 when she was just 16 and worked in a government cafeteria. But the father was a man the state disapproved of – a disside
