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: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 18, 2009
The Arctic Sea, the cargo ship that disappeared before resurfacing off the coast fo the Cape Verde island of Sal, joins a list of unexplained shipping disasters.
Mary Celeste: A brigantine merchant ship discovered in early December 1872 in the Atlantic Ocean unmanned and apparently abandoned, in spite of the good weather. The ship had only been at sea a month and had six months of food and water on board. Cargo was virtually untouched and personal belongings were still in place. It
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 18, 2009
Liechtenstein's Prince Hans-Adam II has angered German Jews by invoking the Holocaust to defend his country's banking secrecy.
He took aim at Germany, which has been putting pressure on Liechtenstein to reform confidential banking practices that allow German depositors to evade taxes.
Germany's Jewish community - which last year condemned Hans-Adam II's description of modern Germany as a "Fourth Reich" - attacked his latest comments as another insensitive twi
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 18, 2009
Robert Novak, the conservative columnist who revealed the name of the CIA officer Valerie Plame, has died after a battle with brain cancer. He was 78.
The influential Right-wing pundit, who served as co-host of CNN's "Crossfire" and had been a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times for decades, became himself a central figure in one of the biggest and messiest stories in Washington in recent years.
In July 2003, Novak was the first to publish the name of Ms Pla
Source: BBC
Aug 18, 2009
Kim Dae-jung, the former president of South Korea, has died at the age of 83, hospital sources say.
Mr Kim, who was being treated for pneumonia, was reported to have died after suffering heart failure.
The former leader had spent his life pursuing democracy and reunification with the North.
He survived several attempts on his life and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 for his "Sunshine" policy efforts to improve ties with Pyongyang.
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Aug 18, 2009
Russian hackers hijacked American identities and U.S. software tools and used them in an attack on Georgian government Web sites during the war between Russia and Georgia last year, according to new research to be released Monday by a nonprofit U.S. group.
In addition to refashioning common Microsoft Corp. software into a cyber-weapon, hackers collaborated on popular U.S.-based social-networking sites, including Twitter and Facebook Inc., to coordinate attacks on Georgian sites, the
Source: The Morning Journal
Aug 17, 2009
SOUTH AMHERST — "Let this man enter with this note. April 14, 1865. A. Lincoln."
The short sentence is written on a small envelope, tattered and discolored with age. But it has been a ticket to a big adventure for Bruce Steiner, who stumbled upon the lost fragment of history at the bottom of a box of assorted papers he purchased at Jamie's Flea Market in October 2006.
"I said it can't be real," Steiner recalled when he first laid eyes on the signatur
Source: The Independent
Aug 17, 2009
When Radio Uganda announced at dawn on 25 January 1971 that Idi Amin was Uganda's new ruler, many people suspected that Britain had a hand in the coup. However, Foreign Office papers released last year point to a different conspirator: Israel.
The first telegrams to London from the British High Commissioner in Kampala, Richard Slater, show a man shocked and bewildered by the coup. But he quickly turned to the man who he thought might know what was going on; Colonel Bar-Lev, the Isr
Source: Today's Zaman
Aug 17, 2009
Archeologists unearthed 16,000 year-old mother goddess figurine during excavations in Direkli Cave in the southern province of Kahramanmaras...
... Erek said that the figurine showed that the social status of women was very important 16,000 years ago.
Erek noted that the oldest fired clay god or goddess figurines --unearthed in Mesopotamia, Anatolia and Near East-- were made in 5,000 BC. He added that experts believed that the clay was used earliest in that period, howe
Source: Reuters (India)
Aug 17, 2009
Work to build a subway line through Algeria's capital has given archaeologists a chance to uncover traces of their country's ancient history that they thought had been erased by French colonial rule.
When engineers closed off part of Algiers' bustling Martyrs' Square to build an underground railway station, archaeologists seized the opportunity to investigate the site and, beneath layers of concrete, found a 5th century basilica.
They also found Ottoman-era metal forges
Source: BBC
Aug 17, 2009
Invergarry was burned down by Oliver Cromwell's forces in 1654. It was rebuilt, but ransacked by government soldiers after the Battle of Culloden.
The MyGlengarry.com Conservation Trust has "built" two versions of the castle, near Fort Augustus, on Second Life.
Virtual tours of the building in its ruinous state today and how it was in 1740 have been offered.
A computer expert who writes codes for Second Life was brought in by MyGlengarry to rec
Source: NYT
Aug 17, 2009
Frederick Chiluba, the former president of Zambia whose government became internationally notorious for corruption during his years in office, was acquitted Monday on charges of stealing about $500,000 from the state.
A magistrate in the Zambian capital, Lusaka, ruled that the prosecution had failed to prove its case against Mr. Chiluba, a former trade unionist who governed Zambia for a decade, but it convicted two businessmen, Faustin Kabwe and Aaron Chungu, of theft. Mr. Chiluba’s
Source: The Washington Times
Aug 17, 2009
Tears filled the eyes of some Vietnam veterans who were warmly greeted with cheers from their family and friends Sunday -- unlike their original return from the war, when they were often met with angry demonstrators and harsh headlines.
The ceremony was a first for the 101st Airborne Division and the Army, said Maj. Patrick Seiber, an Army spokesman based at Fort Campbell in Kentucky.
"Our hope is that other units and other posts will follow our lead in having this
Source: Boston.com
Aug 17, 2009
...Nearly 123 years after his death, doubts about his US citizenship linger, thanks to lack of documentation and a political foe’s assertion that Arthur was really born in Canada - and was therefore ineligible for the White House, where he served from 1881 to 1885.
Long before “birthers’’ began questioning the citizenship of President Obama, similar questions were raised about the early years of Arthur, an accidental president who ascended to the job after President James Garfield w
Source: CNSNews.com
Aug 17, 2009
Hawaii turns 50 years old as the 50th state Friday, but there will be no grand parades, no dazzling fireworks, no lavish displays of native culture.
Organizers of the observation are not even willing to call it a party. It is simply a "commemoration," one that is sensitive to a painful history of the Hawaiian monarchy's overthrow and unresolved claims of Native Hawaiians.
The main event is a low-key daylong conference reflecting on Hawaii's place in the world.
Source: CNSNews.com
Aug 17, 2009
A commander in chief fighting two wars, President Barack Obama plans to thank veterans for their service on Monday while pressing his commitments to wind down the Iraq war and redouble efforts in Afghanistan.
The president is slated to address members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars gathered in Arizona at the organization's annual convention.
"He'll talk about where we are currently in both those two conflicts. He'll talk about what we owe the men and women in unif
Source: CNSNews.com
Aug 17, 2009
A dredging project to remove pollutants from the bottom of the Hudson River was resumed Tuesday, five days after it was halted due to the contamination it was causing in the river.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) project, which is being carried out by General Electric (GE), aims to remove chemicals known as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) from the river floor.
PCBs were used in transformers and capacitors from the 1940s until they were banned in 1977 and dump
Source: BBC
Aug 17, 2009
Prehistoric artwork has been discovered by an amateur archaeologist at a Perthshire mountain range.
The ancient carvings were discovered by rock art enthusiast George Currie at Ben Lawers, near Loch Tay.
Mr Currie discovered a piece of rock which has more than 90 cup marks, which are circular depressions in the stone.
Some of the cups have rings around them and a number of linear grooves can also be seen, with some still showing the individual blows of cr
Source: BBC
Aug 17, 2009
Bronze memorials to British soldiers killed in the world wars have been stolen in north London by thieves thought to have sold them for scrap.
The plaques, which also list civilians killed in the Blitz, were taken from a memorial in Broomfield Park, Enfield.
It comes after the 204th British serviceman died in Afghanistan. Some 179 UK troops have now died in Iraq.
Source: BBC
Aug 17, 2009
A World War II bomb has been discovered during work to excavate a plane in a North Yorkshire field.
The 500lb explosive was found on farmland at Ebberston, off the A170, during the RAF-licensed project to excavate and restore a wartime plane.
An army bomb disposal unit attended and a 500m (1,640ft) cordon was set up.
The villages of Ebberston and Allerston will be evacuated while the bomb is detonated in a controlled explosion at 1500 BST on Tuesday.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 17, 2009
The Vatican's official newspaper has accused Britain and the United States of having detailed knowledge of Hitler's plans to exterminate the Jews but of failing to do anything to halt the Final Solution.
L'Osservatore Romano said the British and American governments ignored, downplayed or even suppressed intelligence reports about the Nazis' extermination plans.
They could have bombed Nazi concentration camps and the railways that supplied them but instead chose not to
