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
Feb 21, 2009
A 19th-century Belgian priest who ministered to leprosy patients in Hawaii will be declared a saint Oct. 11 at a Vatican ceremony presided over by Pope Benedict XVI.
The Rev. Damien de Veuster's canonization date was set Saturday during a meeting between Benedict and cardinals at the Apostolic Palace.
De Veuster will be canonized along with four other people, the Vatican said.
In July, Benedict approved a miracle attributed to the priest's intercession, de
Source: National Security Archive
Feb 21, 2009
The Justice Department this week missed the opportunity to bring transparency to the controversy over deleted White House e-mail from the Bush administration by allowing briefing to continue on a motion that had been developed by the Bush Administration.
The motion, filed by the Justice Department on January 21, just after the inauguration, sought to dismiss the White House e-mail litigation even while admitting that a secretive restoration process was still not finished. Today the
Source: LAT (blog) Top of the Ticket
Feb 21, 2009
The controversy over the validity of Barack Obama's birth certificate is back on a burner with firebrand conservative Alan Keyes making serious new charges.
In a video released Friday Keyes, who lost to Obama in the 2004 U.S. Senate race in Illinois that launched the new president's national political career, calls Obama a communist and usurper and says he refuses to acknowledge the validity of Obama's inauguration over lingering questions in the minds of many conspiracists about th
Source: BBC
Feb 21, 2009
The Lost City of Atlantis is still lost - despite hopes that Google Earth had located the fabled city on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean.
Observers noted what seemed to be a grid of streets and the outlines of a big city on the sea floor about 960km (600 miles) off the African coast.
Experts had said this was one of the possible sites of the city described by Plato, the Greek philosopher.
But Google said the lines represented sonar data collected from bo
Source: Foxnews
Feb 21, 2009
President Obama topped a new Harris interactive poll that asked 2,634 Americans who they admire enough to call a hero.
John Lennon once claimed the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. Now President Obama has evidence that he's more popular than both.
Obama topped a new Harris interactive poll that asked 2,634 Americans who they admire enough to call a hero.
Jesus came in second on a list that includes God, Mahtma Gandhi and George Washington.
Source: AP
Feb 20, 2009
Archaeologists digging on Jerusalem's Mount of Olives have discovered a nearly 3,000-year-old jar handle bearing ancient Hebrew script, a find significantly older than most inscribed artifacts unearthed in the ancient city, an archaeologist said. The Iron Age handle is inscribed with the Hebrew name Menachem, which was the name of an Israelite king and is still common among Jews.
The inscription also includes a partly intact letter, the Hebrew character "lamed," meaning &q
Source: BBC
Feb 20, 2009
Finland has said it will not extradite a Rwandan man suspected of genocide in his home country, because he may not receive a fair trial there.
Officials said the decision followed rulings by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which has halted the referral of three similar cases.
The 57-year-old man, who has not been named, has been in custody since 2007.
He would be tried in Finland if a prosecutor charged him, officials said. A decision is
Source: BBC
Feb 20, 2009
Serb authorities in Bosnia-Hercegovina have been ordered to pay $42m (£26m) to local Muslims for the destruction of mosques during the Bosnian civil war.
All 16 mosques in Banja Luka, the main town of the Serb-run Republika Srpska, were destroyed in the 1992-1995 war.
A lawyer for the area's Muslim community said the local court verdict was of historic importance.
Source: News Post Online
Feb 20, 2009
Archaeologists in Egypt have uncovered a statue of a pharaoh and a bust of the famous woman pharaoh Hatshepsut in the southern city of Luxor.
The three-meter Amenhotep statue was dug out with only one damage in the nose and one in the teeth, Moustafa el-Waziri, director of the archaeological mission, told the state MENA news agency.
He added that more antiques would be unearthed in the future.
Source: IHT
Feb 20, 2009
The descendants of Geronimo have sued Skull and Bones, a secret society at Yale University with ties to the Bush family, charging that its members robbed his grave in 1918 and have kept his skull in a glass case ever since.
The claim is part of a lawsuit filed in federal court in Washington on Tuesday, the 100th anniversary of Geronimo's death.
The Apache warrior's heirs are seeking to recover all his remains, wherever they may be, and have them transferred to a new gra
Source: BBC
Feb 20, 2009
Finland has said it will not extradite a Rwandan man suspected of genocide in his home country, because he may not receive a fair trial there.
Officials said the decision followed rulings by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which has halted the referral of three similar cases.
The 57-year-old man, who has not been named, has been in custody since 2007.
He would be tried in Finland if a prosecutor charged him, officials said. A decision is
Source: CNN
Feb 20, 2009
William Jackson was a slave in the home of Confederate president Jefferson Davis during the Civil War. It turns out he was also a spy for the Union Army, providing key secrets to the North about the Confederacy.
Jackson was Davis' house servant and personal coachman. He learned high-level details about Confederate battle plans and movements because Davis saw him as a "piece of furniture" -- not a human, according to Ken Dagler, author of "Black Dispatches," which
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 20, 2009
The sketch, believed to be Brown's first garden plan, covers around 100 acres of rolling Northumberland countryside close to where he was born in 1716.
It will take around 18 months to plant out the design at Kirkharle, subject to funding and permission to alter the Grade II listed parkland.
Brown was born and grew up in Kirkharle, 20 miles north west of Newcastle Upon Tyne, and it was there that the farmer's son first learned his craft as a "gardener's boy".
Source: Voice of America
Feb 20, 2009
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder sparked a debate over race relations this week with a speech in which he said the United States was a nation of cowards because most Americans prefer to avoid candid talk about race.
At a Justice Department commemoration of Black History month, Eric Holder, the nation's first African-American attorney general, had some strong words about the state of race relations in the United States.
"Though this nation has proudly thought of
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Feb 20, 2009
For a few tantalising hours researchers appeared to have solved one of the greatest mysteries of the ancient world - the location of the mythical underwater city of Atlantis.
More than 600 miles off the coast of Africa and nearly 3.5 miles below the surface lay a mysterious grid of lines and markings that closely resembled the streets of a city.
The image - discovered on the internet mapping tool Google Earth - lay in an area of the Atlantic long thought to be a possible loca
Source: Independent (UK)
Feb 20, 2009
The detective in charge of the Omagh bomb inquiry launched a devastating attack on the trial judge today after two police officers he accused of lying were cleared by an official investigation.
Former Chief Superintendent Norman Baxter demanded that Mr Justice Weir retract and apologise, claiming the officers had been grievously and publicly wronged, left humiliated, their reputations shattered and personal integrity dissolved.
Innocent people in a modern democr
Source: Times (UK)
Feb 20, 2009
Bikini Atoll, the North Pacific site of US nuclear testing 60 years ago and namesake of the swimsuit, has been submitted for listing as a World Heritage Site.
Locals hope the impact of the 12 years of nuclear testing will aid their bid, and in turn bring tourism back to the atoll, which forms part of the Marshall Islands in Micronesia in the North Pacific.
Jack Niedenthal, a spokesman for the people of the Bikini Islands, told The Times that Bikinians believe the “tre
Source: Spiegel Online
Feb 20, 2009
Argentina on Thursday told the ultra-conservative bishop Richard Williamson to leave the country. The British-born bishop, who has described the Holocaust as "lies, lies, lies," was told by the Argentine Interior Ministry to leave within 10 days, or else he would be expelled.
The government said Williamson's denial of "a proven historical truth" had "deeply shocked Argentine society, the Jewish people and all of humanity." An official statement added, w
Source: Spiegel Online
Feb 20, 2009
Chancellor Angela Merkel, one might think, has enough on her plate this year. Saving the economy from collapse has become a fulltime job and, soon, her campaign for re-election in the September vote will become a priority.
But now she's got a new worry brewing. Once again, the issue of how to remember those Germans expelled from Poland following World War II has come to the fore. Merkel only his two choices available to her. She can either side with the expellees, which could do se
Source: BBC
Feb 20, 2009
The English navy at around the time of the Armada was evolving revolutionary new tactics, according to new research.
Tests on cannon recovered from an Elizabethan warship suggest she carried powerful cast iron guns, of uniform size, firing standard ammunition.
"This marked the beginning of a kind of mechanisation of war," says naval historian Professor Eric Grove of Salford University.
"The ship is now a gun platform in a way that it wasn'
