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: CNS News
Aug 6, 2009
The Russian and United States militaries both played down the significance of two Russian attack submarines patrolling in international waters off the East Coast of the U.S., although the Pentagon confirmed Wednesday that it had been years since Russian subs had extended their reach into the region.
"It is the first time … in roughly a decade that we’ve seen this kind of behavior," Defense Department Press Secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters.
The New York T
Source: The Huffington Post
Aug 6, 2009
Sonia Sotomayor won confirmation Thursday as the nation's first Hispanic Supreme Court justice, a history-making Senate vote that capped a summer-long debate heavy with ethnic politics and hints of high court fights to come.
The third woman in court history, she'll be sworn in Saturday as the 111th justice and the first nominated by a Democrat in 15 years.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 6, 2009
Harris, the author of the bestsellers Fatherland and Pompeii, has conceded that the Business Secretary is "in some ways similar" to the Roman, who died in 43 BC.
Both were considered to be among the sharpest minds of their generation. Both could also be seen as outsiders who took on the ruling elite of the day, before being banished on foreign exile.
Cicero's multi-faceted career as a lawyer, philosopher and statesman could also be said to have been imitated r
Source: Times (UK)
Aug 6, 2009
A series of allegations including murder, weapons smuggling and the deliberate slaughter of civilians have been levelled against the founder of Blackwater, the security company being investigated for shooting deaths in Iraq.
The accusations, including a claim that the company founder Erik Prince either murdered or had killed former employees co-operating with federal investigators, are contained in sworn affidavits lodged at a Virginia court on Monday night.
The compa
Source: BBC
Aug 6, 2009
The building would be turned into a memorial, officials said.
The house was put up for sale in July after the owner said she failed to find an institution interested in preserving the building's legacy.
Gandhi is thought to have lived there for three years from 1907 - when he began to formulate his philosophy of non-violent resistance.
Source: Deutsche Welle
Aug 6, 2009
The French retiree was granted German citizenship at a ceremony at the German consulate in Paris.
Rouxel said the event helped to ease a lifetime of rejection and humiliation in a country whose wartime occupation remained a taboo topic for a long time.
"I'm German. I'm not a bastard any more. I'm a child like all the others. At last I've got the second half that I was so cruelly missing," Rouxel said.
Source: Deutsche Welle
Aug 6, 2009
Stephan Kramer, general secretary of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told ZDF television: "I think it makes sense and it is important to publish an edition of Hitler's ‘Mein Kampf’ with an academic commentary.
"An academic and historically critical edition needs to be prepared today to prevent neo-Nazis profiting from it," Kramer said. "An aggressive and enlightening engagement with the book would doubtless remove many of its false, persisting myths."
Source: BBC
Aug 6, 2009
Medals and a dog tag from one of Germany's largest World War II prisoner-of-war (PoW) camps have gone under the hammer at auction in Powys.
The medals and the tag, from Stalag 1VB, belonged to the late DLS Hamer of Kerry, near Newtown, who was a driver in the Army Service Corps.
He was captured in 1943 and spent the rest of the war in captivity until the camp was liberated by the Russians.
The memorabilia was expected to make about £200, but was sold for
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 6, 2009
Some of the most intimate thoughts of the late Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, which she secretly recorded in the years before her death, will be aired for the first time next month.
The first ever first person material on the private thoughts of Queen Elizabeth will be included in the long awaited official biography by William Shawcross which is being published next month.
Transcripts of the hours of conversation, which were taped by Sir Eric Anderson, her friend a
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 6, 2009
Archaeologists have discovered what they believe is man's earliest map, dating from almost 14,000 years ago.
A stone tablet found in a cave in Abauntz in the Navarra region of northern Spain is believed to contain the earliest known representation of a landscape.
Engravings on the stone, which measures less than seven inches by five inches, and is less than an inch thick, appear to depict mountains, meandering rivers and areas of good foraging and hunting.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 6, 2009
He was known for being handy with a gun, but an exhibition in New Mexico proves legendary sharpshooter Billy the Kid also knew how to weild pen.
A letter he wrote to the state's governor Lew Wallace will be available for public viewing in the Santa Fe library for the first time.
Billy the Kid was being held in the Santa Fe jail at the time he wrote the letter. Just four months later, the Kid was gunned down by Sheriff Pat Garrett.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 6, 2009
A former security guard at the Khmer Rouge's most notorious prison told a tribunal on Wednesday that he watched as a Western prisoner was burned alive.
But the head of the prison - the first senior Khmer Rouge figure to face trial in the UN-assisted tribunal - denied it.
Up to 16,000 people were tortured under Duch's command at S-21 prison and later were taken away to be killed during the Khmer Rouge's 1975-1979 rule of Cambodia. Only a handful survived.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 6, 2009
Thousands of people have lined the streets of Wells, Somerset, to watch the funeral procession of Harry Patch, the last British veteran of the First World War trenches.
Mr Patch, 111, the 'Last Tommy', who did not want a state funeral, was honoured at a service at Wells Cathedral.
Last week hundreds of people queued outside the cathedral for several hours to get one of the 1,050 tickets to the funeral which were allocated to the public.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 6, 2009
Hollywood's habit of playing with historical facts is leading schoolchildren to get it wrong too – even if they read the true story in classrooms, a new academic study shows.
Researchers have found that film is an incredibly powerful tool for teaching children about the past which can greatly increase historical knowledge.
However, it is so powerful that if the facts are wrong, pupils are more likely to believe them even if they are told otherwise by text books or tea
Source: The Times (UK)
Aug 6, 2009
The founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, was exposed as a fraud 30 years ago by British diplomats who were investigating his qualifications.
The science-fiction writer, who invented a religion now followed by celebrities such as Tom Cruise, awarded himself a PhD from a sham “diploma mill” college that he had acquired, the diplomats found.
Such was the climate of fear and paranoia surrounding Scientology that the U.S. believed the sect had sent bogus doctors to declar
Source: Wall Street Journal
Aug 6, 2009
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey met the leader of the country's main Kurdish party Wednesday, signaling a new drive to end a 25-year conflict that has hobbled Turkey's status as a rising regional power and slowed its efforts to join the European Union.
"Our people want unity... and an end to blood and killing," said Mr. Erdogan, describing the hourlong meeting with Democratic Society Party head Ahmet Turk as "very, very important."
More
Source: CNN
Aug 6, 2009
The president she tried to assassinate has been dead for nearly three years, and her longtime idol and leader, Charles Manson, remains in prison.
According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Fromme, now 60, is set to be released on parole August 16.
For years, she was one of Manson's few remaining followers, as many other "Manson Family" members have shunned him. A prison spokeswoman would not say whether Fromme continues to correspond with Manson.
Source: The American Task force on Palestine
Aug 5, 2009
A new study published by the Peres Center for Peace argues that economic peace, though a helpful tool, cannot replace a political solution with the Palestinians.
The study was released last week at a special conference on the topic at Tel Aviv University, following a meeting between Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom and Palestinian National Economy Minister Bassim Khoury...
...Ashkenazi, who prior to joining the Peres center was the head of the IDF's West Bank and Gaza
Source: The New Republic
Aug 5, 2009
Quiet sobs echo through the atrium of the Al-Rifai Mosque in Cairo, where rows of seated mourners are surrounded by wreathes of white flowers. Women dab their heavily made-up eyes, while men stare solemnly ahead.
As the streets of Tehran demand freedom, a different group of Iranians gathered in Cairo last week to commemorate the 29th anniversary of the death of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Iranian monarch deposed by the 1979 Islamic revolution. The Shah was granted refuge in Egyp
Source: NYT
Aug 5, 2009
The towering concrete blast walls that have both protected and suffocated Baghdad streets for the past two years will come down within 40 days, Iraq's government announced Wednesday...
...The announcement was the latest in a government push to restore a sense of normalcy and shore up public confidence ahead of national elections scheduled for January.
The U.S. military, which erected most of the walls, said Wednesday it had not been informed of the decision -- an indica
