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: BBC
Jun 20, 2009
The Summer Solstice is likely to be welcomed in by a record crowd at Stonehenge, police have said.
Thousands of people are expected at the twin sites of Avebury and Stonehenge in Wiltshire to celebrate the longest day.
Last year's total of 30,000 revellers could be exceeded, with police warning of a zero tolerance approach to drugs and drunkeness.
The event to mark the dawn of the longest day in the Northern Hemisphere has grown in popularity since a four
Source: ABC (Boston)
Jun 20, 2009
NY Man Buys Iconic Photo From NH Auctioneer.
An iconic photograph of Albert Einstein was sold by a New Hampshire auction company Friday for $74,324, making it the most expensive Einstein photograph ever sold at auction, according to the auctioneers.
The photograph was taken in 1951 while Einstein was celebrating his birthday at Princeton University. Photographer Arthur Sasse tried to convince Einstein to pose with a smile for the photo, but Einstein instead stuck out hi
Source: USA Today
Jun 20, 2009
John Calvin, the Great Reformer, used dictatorial means in making Geneva a "Protestant Rome," but he also planted the seeds of modern democracy.
He enforced rigid morality and stressed the importance of helping others, while he also had a share in developing capitalism. He supported the destruction of religious statues and other images, but described the arts as gifts from God.
This is how Calvin's role in history is being assessed by theologians and historian
Source: BBC
Jun 20, 2009
The long-awaited Acropolis Museum in Athens is to be unveiled later.
The modern glass and concrete building, at the foot of the ancient Acropolis, houses sculptures from the golden age of Athenian democracy.
The £110m ($182m; 130m euros) structure also offers panoramic views of the stone citadel where they came from.
Antique ceramics and sculptures are displayed on the first floor while the Caryatids - columns sculpted as females holding up the roof of a
Source: CNN
Jun 20, 2009
An independent commission will start investigating the 2007 assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in July, the United Nations has announced.
The commission will have six months to fact-find and report to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who announced the commission in February, the release said. Moon is expected to share the findings with the U.N. Security Council and the Pakistani government, which requested the commission.
Ambassador Heral
Source: Times (UK)
Jun 20, 2009
Workmen were putting the finishing touches yesterday to Ancient Greece’s newest and most extravagant showcase, the New Acropolis Museum, due for a fanfare-filled inauguration today. But conspicuously absent are the very relics which the €130m futurist building was expressly designed for: the Elgin Marbles.
The airy top floor of the 25,000 square metre museum, offering an unparallelled view of the Parthenon atop the Acropolis a couple of hundred yards away, has been reserved for whe
Source: Times (UK)
Jun 20, 2009
Explorers have returned to Lake Baikal equipped with two minisubmarines to continue a hunt for a fortune in Tsarist gold that, legend has it, was carried by Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak’s White Army as it fled the advancing Bolsheviks during Russia’s civil war.
Tales abound about the fate of Kolchak’s gold — a haul estimated at 1,600 tonnes and worth billions of pounds today. One version has it that troops retreating on foot and horsecarriage across Baikal’s icy surface froze to death
Source: New York Daily News
Jun 19, 2009
One man's trash turned into Nick DiMola's treasure.
Five years after the Queens rubbish remover took home a mysterious barrel from a SoHo apartment, he opened it to find dozens of ancient Mexican artifacts.
The mix of bowls, figurines and jugs were made between 300 B.C. and 500 A.D., some by Mayans. DiMola, 39, came to own the booty when his Ridgewood company was hired to clear the cluttered space of abstract artist Clinton Hill, who di
Source: AP
Jun 19, 2009
The Vatican has condemned as "unjustified and inopportune" a claim by a church official that pressure from Jewish organizations is delaying the beatification of Pope Pius XII, the wartime pontiff who critics say didn't do enough to stop the Holocaust.
The Rev. Peter Gumpel, a German Jesuit who is spearheading Pius' cause, said at a conference in Rome that Pope Benedict XVI was "impressed" by warnings that relations with Jews would be ruined if he put the World Wa
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 19, 2009
One billion people throughout the world suffer from hunger, a figure
which has increased by 100 million because of the global financial
crisis, says the UN.
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said the figure was a
record high.
Compared with last year, there are 100 million more people who are
hungry, meaning they consume fewer than 1,800 calories a day, the FAO
said.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 19, 2009
The historic town of Witney, part of David Cameron's constituency, is to be named as an "at risk" conservation area in a major English Heritage report to be published next week.
English Heritage has warned that the town's historic buildings and character are under threat because there is a high chance of them being seriously damaged by floods.
It follows the downpours in July 2007 which left 175 properties flooded.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 19, 2009
President Barack Obama has praised a "historic" resolution passed by the Senate apologising for the "fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery".
The comments by Mr Obama, the first African American president, were contained in a statement on the oldest commemorated anniversary marking the end of slavery following the US Civil War.
"African Americans helped to build our nation brick by brick and have contributed to her
Source: NYT
Jun 19, 2009
When Ayatollah Ali Khamenei used his speech at Friday Prayer in Tehran to denounce Britain as “the most evil” of Iran’s enemies, he was striking a chord with a deep resonance in the psyche of Iranians, the legacy of a long history of British imperial intrusions into their country’s affairs.
Singling out Britain, and not the “great Satan” of the United States, so often the bugaboo for Iran’s leadership since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, might seem an odd choice for Iran’s supreme
Source: National Security Archive
Jun 19, 2009
Declassified documents confirm that prior to the launch of the first spy satellites into orbit by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in the early 1960s, the Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) collected by the National Security Agency and its predecessor organizations was virtually the only viable means of gathering intelligence information about what was going on inside the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, North Vietnam, and other communist nations. Yet, for the most part, the NSA and its fore
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 19, 2009
Japan's prime minister, Taro Aso, faced fresh demands that he apologise to former prisoners of war after he cancelled a meeting with the son of a Royal Navy stoker used as a slave labourer in his family's coal mines.
James McAnulty, from Wishaw in Lanarkshire, had been told that he would be able to meet Taro Aso and make his request for an apology and compensation for his father's suffering during the Second World War. But after he travelled to Japan the prime minister's office can
Source: AP
Jun 19, 2009
Newly released FBI files show agents across the country and at the highest level of the agency investigated "Deep Throat" — the 1972 porn movie, not the shadowy Watergate figure — in a vain attempt to roll back what became a cultural shift toward more permissive entertainment.
The documents released to The Associated Press show the expanse of agents' investigation into the film: seizing copies of the movie, having negatives analyzed in labs and interviewing everyone from
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 19, 2009
Warwick Castle officials are to tone down a new dungeon attraction after it made 19 visitors ill.
In the first month since the dungeon opened, 15 people have fainted and another four have vomited, apparently due to fear.
Visitors to the medieval dungeon are greeted by fake blood and life-size models of victims on the rack. Guides demonstrate how prisoners used to have their tongues ripped out.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 19, 2009
Japan's prime minister, Taro Aso, faced fresh demands that he apologise to former prisoners of war after he cancelled a meeting with the son of a Royal Navy stoker used as a slave labourer in his family's coal mines.
James McAnulty, from Wishaw in Lanarkshire, had been told that he would be able to meet Taro Aso and make his request for an apology and compensation for his father's suffering during the Second World War. But after he travelled to Japan the prime minister's office can
Source: AP
Jun 19, 2009
London is filled with oddball place names, from pokey alleyways to the grandest thoroughfares _ and a tourism organization has launched a monthlong campaign to tell the city's history through its streets. Visit London's "Street Stories" initiative includes an event at Buckingham Palace where tourists participate in a game of "paille maille" _ a 17th Century precursor to croquet that is believed to have given its name to the stately London avenue known as Pall Mall.
Source: Independent (UK)
Jun 19, 2009
Graffiti in support of fascist extremists Combat 18 has been daubed on republican monuments in a cemetery in west Belfast.
Vandals painted slogans in support of the hardline group in the republican plot at Milltown cemetery on Wednesday night.
Two monuments were yesterday afternoon still emblazoned with ‘C18’.
Sinn Fein Assembly member Paul Maskey said: “Overnight, racist and sectarian slogans, along with Combat 18 graffiti, were daubed on the republican plot
