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)
Jul 2, 2009
The Group of Eight brings together eight of the world's richest and
most powerful countries: the United States, Britain, France, Russia,
Germany, Japan, Italy and Canada.
The G8 is not an international organisation like the United Nations or
European Union – it has no permanent secretariat or staff.
Instead, it brings together heads of the world's strongest economies
at an annual summit for informal discussions of the most pressing
global issues with a view to increasing inter
Source: WSJ
Jul 2, 2009
For more than 200 years, buried deep within Thomas Jefferson's correspondence and papers, there lay a mysterious cipher -- a coded message that appears to have remained unsolved. Until now.
The cryptic message was sent to President Jefferson in December 1801 by his friend and frequent correspondent, Robert Patterson, a mathematics professor at the University of Pennsylvania. President Jefferson and Mr. Patterson were both officials at the American Philosophical Society -- a group th
Source: The Vancouver Sun
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: BBC
Jul 2, 2009
A descendant of India's last Mughal emperor has been rescued from a life of penury in Calcutta by getting a job with the state-run Coal India.
Madhu is the illiterate great-great-granddaughter of emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar and has been employed to run errands in Coal India's offices.
A letter of employment will be formally handed over to her by the coal minister at a function in Calcutta next month. The move by Coal India follows sustai
Source: Telegra ( )
Jul 2, 2009
Marie Curie, the Nobel Prize-winning nuclear physicist has been voted the greatest woman scientist of all time.
Marie Curie has been voted the greatest woman scientist of all time. Photo: PA
The Polish-born researcher, who discovered radiation therapy could treat cancer, won just over a quarter of the poll (25.1 per cent) - almost twice as much as her nearest rival Rosalind Franklin (14.2 per cent), the English biophysicist who helped discover the structure of DNA.
Source: Guardian (UK)
Jul 2, 2009
A rare and extremely valuable copy of the United States Declaration of Independence has been discovered in Britain, it was announced today.
The document, which is in perfect condition, is believed to be one of only 200 ever printed and was found amongst files at the National Archives in Richmond.
Stumbled upon by an American antiquarian bookseller carrying out research, the Dunlap print of the declaration was printed on 4 July 1776 and brings the total of known survivin
Source: Reuters
Jul 2, 2009
Saddam Hussein believed Iran was a significant threat to Iraq and left open the possibility that he had weapons of mass destruction rather than appear vulnerable, according to declassified FBI documents on interrogations of the former Iraqi leader.
"Hussein believed that Iraq could not appear weak to its enemies, especially Iran," FBI special agent George Piro wrote on notes of a conversation with Saddam in June 2004 about weapons of mass destruction.
He belie
Source: AFP
Jul 2, 2009
Arne Soerensen, a retired Danish doctor, flips through thousands of pages of notes scribbled over 50 years of research and issues his diagnosis: Napoleon died of a kidney disease.
Soerensen has dedicated his life to studying the French emperor's health to debunk the myth that he was poisoned by his enemies or suffered from stomach cancer.
In the latest twist in a long-running medical saga, Soerensen wrote in a new book "Napoleon's nyrer" (Napoleon's kidneys) p
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 2, 2009
A painstaking five-year restoration of a massive fresco painted by Michelangelo in the Vatican has revealed what experts believe is a self-portrait of the Renaissance genius.
Restorers claim that a bearded man wearing a blue turban in the Crucifixion of St Peter bears a striking resemblance to portraits and bronze busts of the artist.
The fresco shows the moment at which St Peter was raised on the cross by Roman soldiers, his face showing suffering but also defiance.
Source: Foxnews
Jul 2, 2009
Saddam Hussein let the world believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction because he did not want to appear weak to Iran, according to the Washington Post.
In interviews with the FBI before he was hanged, the former Iraqi president also denounced Usama bin Laden as "a zealot" and said the United States was not Iraq's enemy, the Post reports.
In fact, he claimed, he felt so vulnerable to the threat from "fanatic" leaders in Tehran that he would have b
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 2, 2009
Professor Derek Matthews was so surprised to discover that the students in his economics class at Cardiff University had such a poor grasp of British history that he decided to conduct an experiment.
He set five easy questions, which he believed 'every 18-year-old should know', and over three years 284 first-year university students took the test.
The results confirmed his fears. Just one in six knew that the Duke of Wellington led the British army in the Battle of Wate
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Jul 2, 2009
The Queen is to honour the families of Britain's war dead with a new award in her name.
Those who have lost loved ones on the frontline or in terrorist attacks will be presented with the Elizabeth Cross.
In a radio message to the armed forces on the British Forces Broadcasting Service the Queen said: 'I greatly hope that the Elizabeth Cross will give further meaning to the nation's debt of gratitude to the families and loved ones of those who have died in the service
Source: Deutsche Welle
Jul 2, 2009
Mohamed ElBaradei's message was clear: "We are not going to say that this is a material breach unless obviously we see a gross violation of the resolution," the Director General of the International Atom Energy Association (IAEA) said at the end of January 2003. He was responding to demands by the administration of US President George W. Bush to find the so called "smoking gun," i.e. proof that Iraq possessed or developed nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction.
Source: BBC
Jul 2, 2009
Hundreds of Palestinian civilians were killed using high-precision weapons, while others were shot at close range, the group Amnesty International says.
Its report also calls rocket attacks by Palestinian militants war crimes and accuses Hamas of endangering civilians.
The Israeli military says its conduct was in line with international law.
Israel has attributed some civilian deaths to "professional mistakes", but has dismissed wider criticism
Source: WaPo
Jul 2, 2009
An investigator at the Securities and Exchange Commission warned superiors as far back as 2004 about irregularities at Bernard L. Madoff's financial management firm, but she was told to focus on an unrelated matter, according to agency documents and sources familiar with the investigation.
Genevievette Walker-Lightfoot, a lawyer in the SEC's Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations, sent e-mails to a supervisor, saying information provided by Madoff during her review didn't
Source: Newsweek
Jul 1, 2009
On July 22 the Einstein Papers Project, located at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, will release the 12th volume of letters written or received by Albert Einstein—791 of them—plus transcripts of several notable lectures and interviews the physicist gave, covering the year 1921. It was a momentous 12 months. You might think there are no new revelations to be made about him, but for Einstein groupies the current volume addresses at least one key question: what did Einstein know
Source: BBC
Jul 1, 2009
A United Nations inquiry into the assassination of former Pakistani PM Benazir Bhutto has formally began.
It is headed by Chile's ambassador to the UN, Heraldo Munoz, and includes a former Indonesian attorney general and a former senior Irish police officer.
The inquiry will last six months and investigate the "facts and circumstances" of Ms Bhutto's death.
The three-member inquiry team will arrive in Pakistan later this month and submit its rep
Source: NYT
Jul 1, 2009
TOLEDO, Spain — As this medieval hilltop city baked in the afternoon heat, a group of Jewish leaders gathered beside a freshly dug grave and lowered into it small bundles of flaking, ancient bones. With prayers and a plea for forgiveness for disturbing the peace of more than 100 medieval souls, they laid them to rest in the cool, reddish earth.
The quiet ceremony in late June concluded months of delicate negotiations between Jewish groups and Spanish authorities over the fate of the
Source: AP
Jul 1, 2009
A survivor of the Khmer Rouge's main prison said Wednesday that his ability to paint larger-than-life images of the regime's late leader, Pol Pot, and portraits of other communist icons helped save his life.
Bou Meng is one of only three living survivors of S-21 prison — all of them apparently spared because of skills deemed useful to the "killing fields" regime of the 1970s.
The artist was put to work painting portraits that glorified Mao Zedong of China and North
Source: National Security Archive
Jul 1, 2009
FBI special agents carried out 20 formal interviews and at least 5 "casual conversations" with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein after his capture by U.S. troops in December 2003, according to secret FBI reports released as the result of Freedom of Information Act requests by the National Security Archive and posted today on the Web at www.nsarchive.org.
Saddam denied any connections to the "zealot" Osama bin Laden, cited
