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: AP
Jun 15, 2009
Historians and archaeologists want to know who was buried in an apparently forgotten cemetery uncovered in a Miami construction site.
Construction crews uncovered bones, crumbled headstones and nails and metal handles from coffins in the site off Interstate 95. A search of the lot in April failed to uncover any names, records or documents detailing who had been buried there. Only two commercial maps from 1925 and 1936 label the site as a cemetery.
Some longtime resident
Source: TheDailyBeast.com
Jun 15, 2009
In his first interview since taking the job, Panetta tells The New Yorker's Jane Mayer that, when he took over, he "wanted to be damn sure" that no one was on the payroll who could be prosecuted for war crimes. But once the agency was clean, he "didn't want to spend a lot of time dealing with the past and what mistakes were made." Panetta also says that he actually supported a truth commission to investigate the CIA's use of torture, at least until President Obama nipped the
Source: AP
Jun 15, 2009
A rare leather-bound book that played an influential role in America's early history could bring a windfall for a soldier training for his second tour in Iraq.
Indiana National Guard Capt. Nathan Harlan was a high school junior when he paid $7 for a 1788 first edition of volume one of "The Federalist" — a two-volume book of essays calling for the ratification of the U.S. Constitution.
Harlan, a 35-year-old from Granger, Ind., said he always thought his find mi
Source: AFP
Jun 14, 2009
Egypt will soon provide evidence that the 3,400-year-old bust of Queen Nefertiti was taken illegally out of the country by Germany, Egyptian antiquities chief Zahi Hawass said on Sunday.
The fabled bust of Nefertiti, renowned as one of history's great beauties, was brought to Berlin in 1913, a year after German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt unearthed it on the banks of the Nile.
Cairo began demanding the statue in the 1930s, but successive German governments, beginning
Source: Guardian (UK)
Jun 14, 2009
Queen turns down invitation to opening of major new museum in Athens built to house Acropolis treasures.
A bitter new row over ownership of the Elgin marbles has erupted, threatening to eclipse the inauguration this week of a major new museum in Athens designed to house the contested masterpieces.
Just days before the opening of the €130m (£110m) New Acropolis Museum, officials in Athens and London were this weekend engaging in barbed exchanges over the classical treas
Source: AP
Jun 14, 2009
A rare Abraham Lincoln stamp that was stolen in 1967 and surfaced 39 years later has sold at auction for more than $430,000.
The stamped envelope was auctioned Saturday at Manhattan's Robert A. Siegel galleries.
The stamp vanished from its owner's safe in Indianapolis and turned up in 2006 at a home in Chicago, about 200 miles away. A collector notified police.
Source: AP
Jun 14, 2009
Caught in the hail of bullets and bombs, a Plainville soldier, Sgt. 1st Class Lincoln Clifford May, lay among the mounds of the dead.
But in 1993, the North Koreans handed over 208 boxes of bones from U.S. soldiers who perished in that bleak landscape.
Using DNA provided by May's two nephews, Glenn and Cliff Block of Bristol, some of the bones have been identified after all these years by military experts as belonging to the long-dead Plainville soldier.
Source: CNN
Jun 13, 2009
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton showed a rare flash of frustration Monday — calling the vetting process for Obama administration nominees "ridiculous" and "a nightmare."
"Let me say it's not for lack of trying," Clinton replied. "The process — the clearance and vetting process — is a nightmare," she told the staff. "It takes far longer than any of us would want to see. It is frustrating beyond words."
Drawing laughs
Source: CNN
Jun 13, 2009
Alleged Nazi camp guard John Demjanjuk was formally charged Monday with being an accessory to about 27,900 murders during World War II.
The German court originally accused him of complicity in about 29,000 murders. The prosecutor's office said it revised the number downward because some of those who had allegedly died in the camp when Demjanjuk was there were already dead during the transport to Sobibor.
The court has not announced a date for the trial to begin, but Win
Source: Michael Isikoff in Newsweek
Jun 13, 2009
The war over Watergate never ends. The latest battle is over a decision by the Nixon Presidential Library to commemorate this week's 37th anniversary of the Watergate break-in by inviting an especially provocative speaker: John Dean, the former White House lawyer who pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice after testifying about his boss's role in the cover-up. The invitation from the library—which is now run by the National Archives—has outraged Nixon's dwindling loyalists, who have mounted a
Source: AP
Jun 13, 2009
In a culture that teaches not to revisit suffering, a proposal to memorialize routes that Navajo and Mescalero Apache Indians marched as they were forced from their homelands has stirred up painful memories.
The march in the 1860s from tribal lands to a desolate tract in eastern New Mexico, known as the Long Walk, led to the deaths of thousands of American Indians.
So while the federal designation as a national historic trail is supported by some tribal members who beli
Source: BBC
Jun 13, 2009
Seven bodies have been removed from Spanish Civil War graves in the first court-ordered exhumation.
The remains were transferred from two mass graves in the cemetery of Santa Marta village to a medical lab for official identification.
Archaeologists recovered the remains, belonging to men executed by supporters of Gen Francisco Franco in 1936.
This could be the first of thousands of official exhumations that have been the focus of a lengthy legal wrangle.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 13, 2009
Recordings include a fourteen-year-old Princess Elizabeth's first BBC broadcast on Children's Hour, in which the young Princess sends her best wishes to the children who have been evacuated from Britain to America, Canada and elsewhere.
She can be heard saying: "Thousands of you in this country have had to leave your homes and be separated from your fathers and mothers. My sister Margaret Rose and I feel so much for you as we know from experience what it means to be away from
Source: Foxnews
Jun 13, 2009
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter was honored by the Palestinian government Saturday and pledged to support the Palestinians' campaign for independence to the end of his days.
In his acceptance speech, Carter urged the Palestinians to end their internal divisions and stop persecuting their rivals.
He was referring to the growing rift between the Islamic militant Hamas group, which controls Gaza, and Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in charge of the
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 12, 2009
The death certificate of Baron Manfred von Richthofen, the legendary First World War German flying ace better known as 'Red Baron', has been discovered in Poland.
Ninety-one years after Von Richthofen died after being shot down near the River Somme in France Maciej Kowalczyk, a genealogist, found the document in archives belonging to the western Polish town of Ostrow Wielkopolski.
Mr Kowalczyk explained that the town, which in 1918 was part of Germany, issued the death
Source: Foxnews
Jun 12, 2009
President Obama says slavery is a terrible part of the United States' history and should be taught in a way that connects that past cruelty to current events, such as the genocide in Darfur.
During an interview with CNN while traveling in Ghana, Obama compared the legacy of slavery to the history of the Holocaust. He said both are horrible historical points that cannot be ignored and that their lessons must not be forgotten.
Obama, his wife, Michelle, and their daughte
Source: CNN
Jun 12, 2009
President Obama has ordered national security officials to look into allegations that the Bush administration resisted efforts to investigate a CIA-backed Afghan warlord over the killings of hundreds of Taliban prisoners in 2001.
The inquiry stems from the deaths of at least 1,000 Taliban prisoners who had surrendered to the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance in late 2001.
But The New York Times, citing government officials and human rights organizations, reported Friday tha
Source: www.independent.co.uk
Jun 12, 2009
Spanish bishops broke decades of silence at the weekend to apologise for the killing of 14 priests by Francisco Franco’s troops during the civil war, asking forgiveness for the church’s collusion with the dictator’s cause
The bishop of Vitoria celebrated a memorial service in the cathedral of the Basque regional capital yesterday to mark the execution 73 years ago by Francoist troops of 14 priests who had never received a funeral, and whose deaths were never officially recorded.
Source: CNN
Jun 12, 2009
CIA Director Leon Panetta testified to a congressional committee that he was told former Vice President Dick Cheney ordered the intelligence agency to withhold information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Sunday.
The disclosure by Panetta to both the Senate and House intelligence committees about Cheney's involvement was first reported in The New York Times. Efforts to contact Cheney for reaction were unsuc
Source: LAT
Jun 12, 2009
Infuriated by pressure from Washington, Israel's
prime minister summoned the American ambassador.
"You have no moral right to preach to us," he lectured the envoy."What kind
of talk is this, 'punishing Israel'? Are we a vassal state of yours? Are we
a banana republic?"
That scolding was 28 years ago, but it echoes as a cautionary tale.
Today, President Obama is pushing a reluctant Israeli government to halt the
growth of Jewish settlements and embrace the goal of a Palesti
