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 14, 2009
The court trying alleged perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide has expressed its shock at the death in an air crash of a top expert on the 1994 massacres.
Alison Des Forges, 66, was among 50 people killed in a plane crash on Thursday near Buffalo, New York state.
A spokesman for the the UN tribunal for Rwanda called her death "a great loss", said AFP news agency.
Ms Des Forges was an expert adviser to the court on the genocide, in which some 800
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 14, 2009
Barack Obama has sent Sir Winston Churchill packing and pulse rates soaring among anxious British diplomats.
A bust of the former prime minister once voted the greatest Briton in history, which was loaned to George W Bush from the Government's art collection after the September 11 attacks, has now been formally handed back.
The bronze by Sir Jacob Epstein, worth hundreds of thousands of pounds if it were ever sold on the open market, enjoyed pride of place in the Oval
Source: Times (UK)
Feb 14, 2009
In a bland courtroom on the outskirts of Phnom Penh next week the justice that most Cambodians believed had passed them by will finally begin to creak into motion.
Three decades after the fall of Pol Pot, the first trial of the leaders of his genocidal Khmer Rouge regime is to begin before a UN-backed tribunal - the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC).
On Tuesday a thin, elderly former schoolmaster will stand in the dock accused of crimes against h
Source: Times (UK)
Feb 14, 2009
A Spitfire that is still airworthy is expected to fetch £1.5 million when it is sold at auction.
The fighter, built by the British Vickers-Armstrong company in 1944, will be the first two-seater Spitfire to be offered at public auction for more than 20 years when it comes up for sale at the Royal Air Force Museum in Hendon on April 20.
The plane was restored to flying condition by its late owner Paul Portelli, a collector of historic aircraft, during five years of wor
Source: BBC
Feb 14, 2009
It is 20 years since Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against the author Salman Rushdie after the publication of The Satanic Verses.The novel's release led to widespread protest by Muslims who regarded it as blasphemous, including public burning of the book.
Rushdie had to live in hiding and under special protection for several years.
And while he is now able to live a more public life, he says the affair remains "an albatross around his neck".
Source: Civil War Interactive
Feb 13, 2009
A student at Miami University has discovered what experts say is a fingerprint belonging to Abraham Lincoln from nearly 150 years ago.
Lydia Smith, a first-year psychology major from Granville, Ohio, was transcribing a letter written by Lincoln on Oct. 5, 1863, for a class project when she noticed a smudge that she suspected could be Lincoln’s thumbprint.
The Papers of Abraham Lincoln, a project of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency and Abraham Lincoln Presidenti
Source: The State ( South Carolina)
Feb 13, 2009
A 6-pound cannonball found in the Broad River this week likely was fired by Confederate troops in the effort to slow Gen. William T. Sherman’s march on the city 144 years ago this week.
Wednesday’s discovery of the cannonball was announced Friday by the S.C. Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum.
The museum plans to conserve the cannonball — which contained no explosives — to stabilize it from corrison, Roberson said.
The discovery adds to the evidence
Source: Leicster Mercury
Feb 13, 2009
For years it gathered dust – maybe in an attic or a shed somewhere, possibly in a box on top of somebody's wardrobe.
Somehow, a First World War pistol was scooped up in a pile of clothes and handed into a charity shop.
Now, the gun – a prized possession of Captain Hugh Winfield Sayres, who died on the first day of the Battle of the Somme – is finding a new home in a museum.
The discovery of the pistol – a Wilkinson Webley revolver – was made when staff at t
Source: Foxnews
Feb 13, 2009
German authorities have received original documents indicating the world's most-wanted Nazi fugitive died in Cairo in 1992, and are investigating their validity, an official said Friday.
The papers — personal musings, official documents and other items that allegedly belonged to SS doctor Aribert Heim — were turned over to the Baden Wuerttemberg state police office that has led the manhunt for the former Nazi for decades, spokesman Horst Haug said.
He told The Associate
Source: National Security Archive
Feb 13, 2009
Twenty years ago today, the commander of the Soviet Limited Contingent in Afghanistan Boris Gromov crossed the Termez Bridge out of Afghanistan, thus marking the end of the Soviet war which lasted almost ten years and cost tens of thousands of Soviet and Afghan lives.
As a tribute and memorial to the late Russian historian, General Alexander Antonovich Lyakhovsky, the National Security Archive today posted on the Web (www.nsarchive.org) a seri
Source: BBC
Feb 13, 2009
A museum director in Turkey has been sentenced to nearly 13 years in jail for stealing precious artefacts from a collection in his care.
A court convicted Kazim Akbiyiklioglu and nine other members of staff for the theft of a coin and a golden brooch in the shape of a winged horse.
The items in the museum in Usak were part of the treasures of King Croesus, dating back to the 6th-7th Century BC.
The theft was exposed by an anonymous letter to local offici
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 13, 2009
While America and Canada are paying for their veterans to travel to the event, British war heroes are having to stump up the cash themselves.
Thousands of them are hoping to travel to Normandy for the commemoration in June, which for many will be their last.
But the Ministry of Defence has told them that the next time public money will be used for a commemoration will be the 100th anniversary in 2044, when they will all be dead.
Source: Spiegel Online
Feb 13, 2009
Ataba is a neighborhood in Cairo where tourists rarely go astray. This was probably precisely what made it such a perfect hiding place for the tall German man. Abd al-Hakim Duma remembers the slim, athletic man well. Everyone in the neighborhood called him "the foreigner."
Duma's father owned the Hotel Kasr al-Medina on Port Said Street. The foreigner lived in a plain room on the eighth floor, directly adjacent to the Duma family. "He often came to our apartment for l
Source: BBC
Feb 13, 2009
On the eve of the fourth anniversary of the murder that changed Lebanon's history, Saad Hariri, the young leader of the country's pro-Western Sunni parliamentary majority, received a phone call from Hillary Clinton.
The US secretary of state was ringing to assure him that the new American administration would do everything in its power to bring to justice those who killed his father, Lebanon's former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
Last week, seated next to his father's
Source: BBC
Feb 13, 2009
A number of Indian MPs are calling for Mahatma Gandhi's personal possessions, due for auction in New York next month, to be returned to India.Mahatma Gandhi's spectacles, which he once said gave him "the vision to free India", a pair of his sandals and his pocket watch are among the items.
MPs across Indian parties have said that all efforts should be made to retrieve the possessions.
Auctioneers have put an estimate of £30,000 ($42,000) on the items.
Source: American Scientist (date unknown)
Feb 13, 2009
Conventional wisdom long held that the human immune system was no match for cancer. Born of native cells, the logic went, cancer fooled the immune system into concluding it was harmless. Thus protected from attack, cancer easily thrived until its host died.
A deeper understanding of our biological defenses has changed that. The human immune system does battle cancer. But we could better optimize our defenses to fend off malignant disease. That’s clear from cancer treatments attempte
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 13, 2009
A leading college at Cambridge University has renamed its controversial colonial-themed Empire Ball after accusations that it was "distasteful".
Students were urged to "Party like it's 1899" and organisers promised a trip through the Indian Raj, Australia, the West Indies and 19th century Hong Kong.
But anti-fascist groups said the theme as "distasteful and insensitive" because of the British Empire's historical association with slavery, re
Source: Bloomberg
Feb 12, 2009
Dec. 2 (Bloomberg) -- The tunnel stank, yet I could scarcely keep from leaping into it after my guide said, “You are now standing on the ruins of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.”
We were in ancient Mesopotamia’s greatest city, on the grounds of one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The gardens are long gone, and I was looking at a reconstruction of their foundation. Animals, and possibly their caretakers, had moved in, one example of the chaos visited upon Iraq’s archaeolo
Source: CNN
Feb 12, 2009
Washington (CNN) -- Will the Iraq troop surge strategy of 2007 help serve as a guidepost for President Obama's troop increase in Afghanistan?
Some say comparing President Bush's decision to send an additional 20,000 troops into Iraq four years into that war and President Obama's announcement that he's sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan is comparing apples with oranges.
By most assessments, Bush's decision in 2007 to implement a "surge" of troops into Ir
Source: CNN
Feb 12, 2009
London, England (CNN) -- It is a truth universally acknowledged -- or nearly so -- that Jane Austen, the author of "Pride and Prejudice," died of a rare illness called Addison's disease, which robs the body of the ability to make critical hormones.
Katherine White doesn't believe it.
White, herself a sufferer of Addison's disease, has studied Austen's own letters and those of her family and friends, and concluded that key symptoms just don't match what's known
