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: Daily Press
Jun 10, 2009
Same brashness. Same spontaneity. Same lightning-rod remarks.
If you were thinking the Rev. Jeremiah Wright had been tempered by a national backlash that nearly derailed Barack Obama's trip to the White House, guess again.
In an exclusive interview at the 95th annual Hampton University Ministers' Conference, Wright told the Daily Press that he has not spoken to his former church member since Obama became president, and he implied that the White House won't allow Obama
Source: New York Times
Jun 10, 2009
The future of the history profession (as well as the journal’s title) are the subject of a roundtable discussion to be held this month at the annual convention of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. Many historians “are on the defensive,” said Thomas W. Zeiler, the executive editor of Diplomatic History and the moderator of the panel. (Mr. Zeiler, who floated the name change, said he did not have a particular replacement in mind.)
The shift in focus began in t
Source: NYT
Jun 10, 2009
An 88-year-old white supremacist with a rifle walked into the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, one of the capital’s most visited sites, on Wednesday afternoon and began shooting, fatally wounding a security guard and sending tourists scrambling before he himself was shot, the authorities said.
The gunman was identified by law enforcement officials as James W. von Brunn, who embraces various conspiracy theories involving Jews, blacks and other minority groups and at one point
Source: Reuters
Jun 10, 2009
Secret documents from the days of Margaret Thatcher's government could emerge sooner than expected after Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced on Wednesday a cut in the time taken to release official papers.
He said the existing 30-year rule on the publication of state documents would be reduced to 20 years following a review chaired by Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail.
Historian Hugh Pemberton welcomed the decision, but warned that a rush of extra documents could
Source: BBC
Jun 10, 2009
In a small room inside Kabul museum, staff are slowly unwrapping hundreds of stolen pieces of Afghanistan's past.
Worth a fortune on the black market, the smugglers' hoard was spotted and seized by customs officers at Heathrow airport in London.
More than 1,500 artefacts were recovered in an 11-day operation. Many are priceless objects of Islamic art looted in illegal excavations.
There are prehistoric tools - up to 6,000 years old - and ancient coins, as
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 10, 2009
The bells of Malvern Priory could fall silent for the first time in more than 650 years because English Heritage has refused to allow bellringers to replace ageing parts.
The historic bells, which include one that dates from 1350, desperately need new frames to be installed high inside the tower.
However, English Heritage objected because it believed the A-frames from 1887 needed to be preserved.There were no objections to updating the frame
Source: Foxnews
Jun 10, 2009
The offer comes 10 days after the FEMA housing program officially ended and amid growing worries that federal officials would start evicting tenants.
The federal government is offering 3,400 survivors of hurricanes Katrina and Rita who have not found permanent housing a chance to buy the temporary federal trailers they live in now for as little as one dollar.
A FEMA official told a House panel last month that the government would start sending eviction notices on June
Source: AP
Jun 10, 2009
A red notebook of 33 pencil drawings by Pablo Picasso stolen from the Paris museum bearing his name will be hard for thieves to sell, France's culture minister said Wednesday.
The theft was discovered Tuesday morning by an employee of the Picasso Museum. The notebook had been kept in a second-floor glass display case that can only be opened with a special instrument.
Museum head Anne Baldassari said she didn't think it was a commissioned theft — one specifically ordered
Source: Foxnews
Jun 10, 2009
Iran's hard-line president accused his election rivals of using "Hitler" smear tactics to sway voters ahead of Friday's national vote — adding that they should face jail for insulting him.
The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and his main pro-reform opponent, Mir Hossein Mousavi, have accused each other using Hitler-like propaganda tactics in order to win on Friday. The president's harsh allegations against his rivals, including Mousavi, during Wednesday's rally ind
Source: Foxnews
Jun 10, 2009
Convicted terrorist Thedore 'Ted' Kaczynski, who launched a string of deadly bomb attacks across America, is fighting to stop his diaries being auctioned off.
Kaczynski is nearing the end of a five-year battle with U.S. authorities over the sale of his personal possessions, which also include tools, typewriters and clothing.
Proceeds from the auction would go to four surviving victims of the attacks who are owed $15m in restitution by Kaczynski.
Source: CNN
Jun 10, 2009
A lone gunman wounded a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on Wednesday before being injured by return fire, according to police and a museum statement.
The suspect was identified as James von Brunn, an 88-year-old white supremacist from Maryland, two law enforcement officials told CNN.
Gunfire at the entrance of the museum wounded at least two people Wednesday, emergency officials said.
Source: Spiegel Online
Jun 10, 2009
When it comes to sea floors, that of the Baltic Sea counts among the most cluttered. Barrels of toxic waste, World War II munitions and a wide variety of other detritus has settled to the bottom of the northern European body of water over the years.
On Tuesday, a team of Swedish and Finnish divers announced the most recent find: a Soviet submarine sunk by Finnish mines in the Winter War of 1939-1940. Speaking to the press on Tuesday, the divers said that they found the S-2 sub near
Source: Deustche Welle
Jun 10, 2009
The cessation of bombing operations in the breakaway region of Kosovo on June 10, 1999, ended the last large-scale military confrontation between NATO and Serbia within ex-Yugoslavia.
In the decade since, Kosovo - which has been under United Nations administration and which declared independence in February of last year - has seen the return of a measure of stability. And NATO is expected to announce on Thursday that it is reducing the number of its troops in Kosovo by a third, fro
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 10, 2009
The dig will uncover more of the enormous pit that surrounds the tomb of Qin Shihuang, China's first emperor.
The first excavation of the site lasted six years betweeen 1978 and 1984, during which 1,087 clay soldiers were discovered. A second excavation started in 1985 but was cut short after a year.
Altogether, archaeologists believe there may be as many as 8,000 life-size clay figures in the pits, as well as chariots and hundreds of horses. No two figures are alike,
Source: Times (UK)
Jun 10, 2009
The Cold War spy and traitor George Blake whose betrayal of secret intelligence to the KGB led to the execution of 40 British agents, was at the heart of a confidential Government appeal to newspaper editors in 1961, according to an official history of the D-Notice system published today.
The D-Notice arrangement in which a senior retired military figure provides guidance to newspapers and broadcasters on stories that might damage national security - launched in 1912 and still in e
Source: The Times (UK)
Jun 10, 2009
MI5 and KGB files have at last revealed the identity of the agent who passed Britain’s atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union — and triggered the Cold War.
For ten years a Soviet spy codenamed “Eric” fed Britain’s nuclear secrets to Moscow, paving the way for the Cold War. The KGB treasured him as its “main source” of atomic intelligence; MI5 suspected him, trailed him, opened his letters and monitored his every move. But he was never caught.
Today, 70 years later, wi
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 9, 2009
The wartime pilot who launched the torpedo that led to the sinking of the Bismarck has told his story for the first time.
John Moffat was informed recently by the Fleet Air Arm museum that research had highlighted his role in sinking the German battleship.
The 89-year-old, who lives in Dunkeld, Perthshire, was flying a Swordfish biplane when he carried out the mission. Days before, Bismarck had sunk HMS Hood with the loss of 1,416 lives and Winston Churchill, the prime
Source: Press Release
Jun 9, 2009
The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation announced today that it will launch an online Global Museum on Communism on June 16. The museum can be previewed at www.globalmuseumoncommunism.org.
The Museum will have numerous interactive features including the emotional stories of victims who suffered the most heinous crimes in history, essays on Communism by leading historians, a Gallery of Heroes who fought against Communism, in
Source: IHT
Jun 9, 2009
The president of the Russian republic of Bashkortostan, who has hung on by his fingernails through repeated periods of friction with the Kremlin, pushed his luck last week when he gave a scathing interview to a Moscow newspaper, charging that Russia’s political institutions were “embarrassing to look at” and that the country “is walking away from the process of democratization.”
Murtaza G. Rakhimov, 75, who has led Bashkortostan, an energy-rich southwestern region, since 1990, comp
Source: BBC
Jun 9, 2009
Nearly 40 years after the first of its 210 nuclear tests, France is preparing to compensate people affected by the fallout. The move leaves the UK isolated in its policy of rejecting liability for illnesses suffered by test participants, reports Aidan Lewis.
Early in the morning of 13 February, 1960, several thousand French servicemen gathered in the Algerian Sahara to witness "Gerboise Bleue" or "Blue Desert Rat", an atmospheric nuclear explosion four times more
