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
Feb 26, 2009
Along with five other Serbian ex-officials, he is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity during the conflict in Kosovo in the 1990s.
This will be the court's first ruling on alleged crimes committed by Serb forces during the Kosovo conflict.
Prosecutors in The Hague are seeking jail terms of between 20 years and life for the men, who all deny the charges.
Prosecutors at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) accus
Source: BBC
Feb 26, 2009
The Royal Horseguards Hotel is connected to Whitehall by underground passages used during the war.
Guests will now be offered guided tours of the building to learn about its secret past.
The 280-bed hotel on the River Thames will mark its reopening with a charity fundraiser on Thursday evening.
The hotel tours will also take in Gladstone Library, the National Liberal Club, as well as the passages used by politicians to secretly enter the Grade I listed b
Source: Kilkenny People (Ireland)
Feb 25, 2009
A human skull believed to be that of a murder victim dating back to medieval times has been unearthed embedded in the walls of the moat of Kilkenny Castle.
The moat walls were discovered on Tuesday by archaeologists working on the Parade development. The moat is believed to date back some 800 years to 1209. "This is the most significant find since we began our excavations last April. We always believed that the moat existed but it was never found and we thought that it was loca
Source: AP
Feb 25, 2009
When Gustav Mahler's niece greeted new arrivals at a Nazi death camp, she knew that any woman who stepped off the train with a musical instrument had a chance to live. Women in Alma Rose's orchestra were forced to entertain SS officers at the Birkenau concentration camp. All the women survived — except Rose.
Now, an American chorus and orchestra is paying tribute to those musicians with concerts in the U.S. and Germany titled "Music in Desperate Times: Remembering The Women's O
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 25, 2009
Jean-Marie Le Pen, the French far-Right leader, faced calls for his prosecution after he repeated a claim that Nazi death camps were a "detail of Second World War history".
MEPs have moved to prevent the 80-year-old French National Front leader from presiding over the opening of the first session of the new European Parliament on July 14 as the doyen of the house.
Officials have also indicated that he could face disciplinary action for "bringing the parl
Source: BBC
Feb 25, 2009
The US historian John Hope Franklin, a pioneering scholar of black American history, has died at the age of 94.
His 1947 book From Slavery to Freedom is regarded as a landmark volume of black American history, and remains on US school syllabuses.
Mr Franklin, born and raised in an all-black community in Oklahoma, helped in the 1954 Brown vs Board of Education case against racial segregation.
He was also the first black president of the American Historica
Source: Foxnews
Feb 25, 2009
A milk flask now represents the final few moments between a heroic husband and his wife as they attempted to flee the sinking Titanic liner in 1912.
It forms part of an untold tragedy which has only just emerged after a collection of artifacts and letters came to light almost a century after the disaster.
Shop worker Arthur West, then 36, thrust the flask into his wife Ada West's hands as the rescue boat she and the couple's two children were aboard was lowered into the
Source: CNN
Feb 25, 2009
One of the earliest photographs in existence is expected to fetch as much as $70,000 when it is auctioned off later this month at Sotheby's auction house in New York.
A half-plate daguerreotype dating from 1848 shows a country estate in Manhattan on what was then known as old Bloomingdale Road and referred to as "a continuation of Broadway."
In the foreground of the 5.5-by-4-inch, black and white daguerreotype, a dirt road leads to an entry gate that surrounds
Source: BBC
Feb 25, 2009
A gem-encrusted tiger's head from the throne of Tipu Sultan - the Indian king famed for resisting British rule - is due to be sold in the UK next month.
The sale takes place less than a month after personal possessions of the Indian independence leader, Mahatma Gandhi, were sold in the US.
Auctioneers Bonhams say the head is one of the most important Tipu Sultan belongings to be sold.
It had been left undiscovered in an English castle for at least 100 ye
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 25, 2009
A self-portrait of Adolf Hitler, thought to be the first he ever painted, is to go under the hammer for the first time.
The watercolour painting is among 13 works by the Nazi dictator, created back in 1910 when he was just 21.
The small portrait has no nose or mouth, but the side parting hairstyle is unmistakable and experts are sure it is him because of the markings on the piece.
All of the pictures had been kept under lock and key in storage since thei
Source: AP
Feb 25, 2009
During World War II, the best brains in Britain cracked Germany's encrypted secrets but never broke their own code of silence.
Now gray-haired and using walking sticks and at least one wheelchair, the legendary code breakers returned for a reunion Tuesday at Bletchley Park, where they labored in the grim, blacked-out rooms and played a key role in defeating the Nazis.
The code breakers who worked here in anonymity helped alter history, frustrating Adolf Hitler's ambitio
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 25, 2009
Officials in Kazakhstan claim to have have a found the world's oldest person - a woman who will this week celebrate her 130th birthday.
If their records are correct, Sakhan Dosova is 16 years older than the oldest known human currently living.
The mother of ten, whose birth date is said to be March 27 1879, attributes her longevity to staying away from sweets, and the doctor. However, she is a fan of cheese and yoghurt, and says her sense of humour has kept her young
Source: AP
Feb 25, 2009
Former western Kentucky landowners and their families are not entitled to compensation for their property the U.S. government used to build a military camp at the start of World War II, a federal court said in 2-1 ruling Wednesday, ending a 15-year legal battle in the case.
Landowners and their families claim the government promised to sell back farmland used to build Camp Breckinridge near Henderson after the war in the 1940s. Instead, the government sold it and the mineral rights withou
Source: Times Literary Supplement (UK)
Feb 25, 2009
At one time or another between 1936 and 1939, about a thousand foreign correspondents reported on the Spanish Civil War; at least five were killed – one shot by the Nationalists – and numerous others were wounded. About a dozen were imprisoned by Franco’s forces, for periods ranging from a few days to several months. It was, as one of the correspondents later wrote, “a new and by far the most dangerous phase in the history of newspaper reporting”.
Through the pages of [a new book, P
Source: BBC
Feb 25, 2009
An international tribunal has found three Sierra Leone rebels guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
RUF leaders Issa Sesay, 38, and Morris Kallon, 45, were convicted of 16 of the 18 charges, while Augustine Gbao, 60, was found guilty on 14 of the counts.
The Freetown trial of the RUF rebel leaders, related to Sierra Leone's 10-year civil war, began in mid-2004.
Many RUF victims in the court sighed with relief at the verdicts. Sentences will b
Source: ansa.it
Feb 25, 2009
Italy is planning to help Iraq create a new police unit to fight the
trafficking of stolen works, Culture Minister Sandro Bondi said Wednesday.
The new Iraqi unit will be based on Italy's crack team of art cops, who have gained a worldwide
reputation for their work in recovering stolen works and stopping illegal trading.
Flanked by Iraq's Tourism and Antiquities Minister Qahtan Abbas al-Jibouri, Bondi said the unit was
just one of a series of initiatives in a plan for ongoing cu
Source: CNN
Feb 25, 2009
The honors were late but still well-received Wednesday for members of the first all-African-American, all-female unit to serve overseas in World War II.
During the war, nearly 1,000 women from the "Six-Triple Eight" Central Postal Battalion moved mountains of mail for millions of American service members and civilians that clogged warehouses in England and France.
Their service to their country had been overlooked for years, starting with when they returned to
Source: NYT blog: The Caucus
Feb 25, 2009
Senator Robert C. Byrd, whose career in the Senate has spanned five decades, advised President Obama this week to keep in check the powers of members of the White House staff to prevent an erosion of the “Constitutional system of checks and balances.”
In a letter, Mr. Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat, drew examples from the Republican administrations of Richard Nixon and George W. Bush to drive home his concerns.
He suggested that the president’s creation of offices of
Source: USA Today
Feb 25, 2009
President Obama, who will decide the fate of struggling Detroit automakers, may need to brush up on his industry history.
In promising support in his speech to Congress Tuesday, he said, "I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it."
Actually, history — and the U.S. Library of Congress — credits Germany.
"It's a fact that Daimler invented the car," says Han Tjan, U.S. spokesman for the German automaker. &qu
Source: Boston Globe
Feb 25, 2009
Andrew Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr., and Franklin D. Roosevelt will have to wait for a place in the state's 10th-grade MCAS exams, after the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education decided yesterday to delay the history test's premiere as a high school graduation requirement.
The board voted 8 to 2 to put off the exam for at least two years because of concerns that state budget cuts would leave the agency without enough money to administer the test. They also questioned
