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: NYT
Jul 3, 2009
He was born on July 10, 1509, a religious thinker and leader who may have done as much as anyone to shape the modern world. And yet after 500 years, John Calvin is still not an easy man to understand.
Calvin is often imagined, if he is imagined at all, as the implacable snoop who enforced a prudish morality on the citizens of Geneva, a steely spinner of harsh theological doctrines about a depraved humanity and a fierce God predestining people to heaven or hell.
“When we
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 3, 2009
Vladimir Putin has insisted he is not 'bow-legged' after US President Barack Obama described him as having 'one foot' in Russia's Cold War past.
Mr Putin also called on the United States to shelve plans for a missile defence shield in Europe.
There have been some signs of hope. The two Cold War adversaries are making progress towards a deal slashing their respective nuclear arsenals while Russia agreed to allow the United States to transport arms to Afghanistan across
Source: Calgary Herald
Jul 3, 2009
A pair of Alberta brothers accused of pillaging Yukon's history are gearing up for an unusual legal battle that sees them fighting against charges while simultaneously suing the wreckage of a Second World War bomber.
Brian and John Jasman are accused of excavating a B-26 Marauder-- an American bomber plane--from the depths of Watson Lake without a permit under the Yukon Territory's Historic Resources Act after they salvaged the nose piece in the spring.
The wreckage had
Source: Politico.com
Jul 3, 2009
Bill Clinton. George Bush. Jimmy Carter. They’re all pretty easy to pronounce.
But Barack Obama is not so simple. And before he was world famous, people regularly butchered his African name (Bay-rack anyone?). As president, Barack Obama takes care to get pronunciations correct — from heads of state and foreign nations to the director of a small nonprofit in Jersey City.
The text of Obama’s daily briefings includes phonetic spellings of names and places, or the person briefing
Source: BBC
Jul 3, 2009
Russian delegates have walked out of an OSCE session in Vilnius after it voted for a remembrance day for the victims of both Nazism and Stalinism.
The pan-European security and democracy body passed a resolution equating the roles of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in starting World War II.
Moscow's delegation boycotted the vote after failing to have it withdrawn.
The resolution, meant to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Iron Curtain, said th
Source: BBC
Jul 3, 2009
The African Union is ending its co-operation with the International Criminal Court after it charged Sudan's president with war crimes.
Omar al-Bashir is accused over alleged atrocities in the Darfur region.
Reports from an AU meeting in Libya said the delegates agreed a statement saying they would not co-operate in the "arrest and surrender" of Mr Bashir.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 3, 2009
Australian palaeontologists have discovered three new dinosaur species among fossils at the bottom of a Queensland lake.
The two herbivores and one carnivore, which date back nearly 100m years to the middle of the Cretaceous period, were excavated from the Winton formation in the state's west. They are the first significant dinosaur discovery in Australia since 1981.
All of the dinosaurs have been named after characters in the famous Australian bush poem Waltzing Matild
Source: BBC
Jul 3, 2009
A military historian who posed as a war hero has been exposed as a fantasist.
Jack Livesey claimed he won the Military Medal while serving in the Parachute Regiment.
However, the Ministry of Defence confirmed Mr Livesey served in the Army Catering Corps for less than three years.
Former veterans told the BBC they were upset by the way he paraded his medals.
Source: AP
Jul 3, 2009
Aaron Weisinger, a 26-year-old from Walnut Creek, Calif., was one of the lucky ones. He will be part of the first group of tourists in eight years to climb the 354 steps, 146 of them up a narrow spiral staircase, to stand atop the statue's head and peer from under the spikes of her crown.
Reasons vary for why the crown has been closed for so long, and there are questions about the role terrorism played in that.
In May, the Obama administration announced that the crown w
Source: Rasmussen Reports
Jul 3, 2009
Americans are celebrating the nation's 233rd birthday, and the words of the Declaration of Independence will be heard at countless patriotic ceremonies across the land. The core ideals articulated by those words are still embraced by solid majorities of the American public.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 89% of American adults agree that "we are all endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights among them life, liberty, and the pursuit of
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
Jul 3, 2009
When supporters of the Avenging the Ancestors Coalition converge on the site of the future President's House memorial at 4 p.m. today, they will be seeking to redeem the unpaid labor of enslaved forebears by ensuring paid labor in the here and now.
"It would be the height of historical hypocrisy that this would be built without the paid contributions of the sons and daughters of those who were enslaved here and built here in the first place," said Michael Coard, a founder
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 3, 2009
Iran's announcement that it intends to put two British Embassy
employees on trial is nothing more than a return to the hostage-taking
tactics of the 1980s that resulted in the abduction of Terry Waite and
John McCarthy.
In the thirty years since the ayatollahs seized power in Tehran,
taking hostages has become a familiar tactic whenever the Islamic
regime feels itself under threat. Mr Waite and Mr McCarthy were among
dozens of Westerners kidnapped in Lebanon by Iranian-backed militi
Source: AP
Jul 3, 2009
Doctors have determined that John Demjanjuk is fit to stand trial on charges that he was an accessory to murder at a Nazi death camp, prosecutors said Friday.
The doctors said the 89-year-old retired auto worker, recently deported from the United States, can stand trial so long as his time in court does not exceed two 90-minute sessions daily, Munich prosecutors said.
Source: Vancouver Sun (BC)
Jul 2, 2009
A controversy has erupted over one of the most famous corpses from the War of 1812.
U.S. general Zebulon Pike was killed when retreating British and Canadian troops intentionally blew up a munitions depot during the American capture of York (present-day Toronto) in April 1813.
His remains were taken by ship across Lake Ontario and buried at a military cemetery in Sackets Harbor, N.Y.
But a subsequent re-burial and lingering confusion over the exact location
Source: Reuters
Jul 2, 2009
The Catholic Church should not fear scientific progress and possibly repeat the mistake it made when it condemned astronomer Galileo in the 17th century, a Vatican official said on Thursday in a rare self-criticism.
Galileo, who lived from 1564 to 1642, was condemned by the Inquisition in 1633 for asserting that the earth revolved around the sun.
Known as the father of astronomy, he wasn't fully rehabilitated by the Vatican until 1992, nearly 360 years later.
Source: AP
Jul 2, 2009
Citing their free speech rights, three tour guides filed a lawsuit Wednesday challenging an ordinance that will require them to pass a history test and get a license before speaking to groups about the history of the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall and other landmarks.
Mayor Michael Nutter signed the law in April amid concerns some guides were perpetuating gross inaccuracies, including the false claims that Benjamin Franklin had 69 illegitimate children and that three-time widow Be
Source: Foxnews
Jul 2, 2009
The documents and memos were turned over to the American Civil Liberties Union as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
Newly released Defense Department documents and memos about the first years of operation of the jail at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, portray a chaotic and sometimes violent operation that its own commanders described as dysfunctional.
The documents and memos were turned over to the American Civil Liberties Union as part of a Freedom o
Source: NYT
Jul 2, 2009
In a series of interrogations before his execution, Saddam Hussein told an F.B.I. agent that on the eve of the 2003 American invasion, Iraq was trapped between United Nations orders to demonstrate that it had disarmed and a fear that appearing too weak would invite attack from its powerful neighbor and foe, Iran.
The ousted Iraqi dictator “was more concerned about Iran discovering Iraq’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities than the repercussions of the United States for his refusal to al
Source: NYT
Jul 2, 2009
Current and former top Central Intelligence Agency officers have appeared before a federal grand jury in Virginia as part of an 18-month investigation into the agency’s destruction of 92 videotapes depicting the brutal interrogations of two Qaeda detainees.
The witnesses recently called by the special prosecutor, former government officials said, include the agency’s top officer in London and Porter J. Goss, who was C.I.A. director when the tapes were destroyed in November 2005.
Source: Financial Times (UK)
Jul 2, 2009
In 1901 a group of French archaeologists uncovered a 2,700-year-old Babylonian tablet in what is now Iran. Not only is the Hammurabi codex the first example of a written legal code; it is also the oldest known looted artefact, plundered from ancient Mesopotamia. “The looting of antiquities has been going on for a very long time in Iraq,” says Dr Elizabeth Stone of Stony Brook University, New York.
Dr Stone and Donny George, former head of the national museum in Baghdad, are at the f
