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: International Herald Tribune
Dec 12, 2008
As part of the wholesale effort to modernize its military, the Polish
government has officially brought a close to conscription, making last
week's class of drafted recruits the final one after 90 years of
compulsory military service on this soil, which felt the tremors of some
of the worst the last century's wars could offer.
The decision has come at a difficult time. Russia's incursion into
Georgian territory in August awakened real fears, catching policy makers
and citizens off g
Source: AP
Dec 12, 2008
Jimmy Carter said Friday he would have been "delighted" to meet with Hezbollah officials during his visit to Lebanon and regretted the militant group's leaders refuse to meet with current or former American presidents.
Carter spent five days talking to top Lebanese leaders and members of parliamentary blocs but didn't sit down with lawmakers from the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, which is on the State Department list of terrorist groups.
Carter offered to have his
Source: Guardian (UK)
Dec 12, 2008
It had seemed an appropriate memorial. In August, Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev decided to name a street in Moscow after Alexander Solzhenitsyn, shortly after the writer's death aged 89.
But the residents of Alexander Solzhenitsyn Street - as it is now known - appear to have other ideas. Together with Russia's communists, locals have waged a furious campaign against the change of name - and have demanded that the street get its old name of Big Communist Street back
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 12, 2008
Ukrainian-born Ivan Demjanjuk, 88, is alleged to have been involved in the murder of over 29,000 Jews when he served as a guard in several Nazi prisons including the death camp Sobibor in Poland during World War II.
Demjanjuk moved to America in 1952 and changed his first name to John, and now lives as a retired car worker in Ohio.
Last month, a court in Munich ruled that Demjanjuk, who was dubbed Ivan the Terrible for his role in the mass murder, could not be charged
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 12, 2008
"People need to look past the fact that Buckingham Palace is a royal residence and treat it like a national treasure," the television historian told Mandrake at a Waterstone's book signing for his latest tome, Henry: Virtuous Prince.
"As it is, the palace is a national disgrace. I have filmed there extensively and it has got to the point now that they are just slapping Dulux magnolia paint on the grubby bits. It needs some serious money spent on it. All the palaces a
Source: Times (of London)
Dec 12, 2008
The construction of an exact copy of the Taj Mahal has sparked a diplomatic fracas between India and Bangladesh - raising the vexing issue of whether or not it is possible to claim copyright on a building.
The row began after Ahsanullah Moni, a wealthy Bangladeshi film director, gave the first glimpse of his copy of the Taj Mahal this week.
The project has cost about £40 million and is being built about 20 miles northeast of Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital. But the India
Source: BBC
Dec 12, 2008
The top floors of several high-rises in the Chinese city of Hangzhou are
to be lopped off to help the city's bid for world heritage status,
officials say.
Two exclusive hotels, a TV tower and a number of other buildings around
the beautiful West Lake area will all be made shorter, the developer said.
The 40m yuan ($5.8m) project is to help the city become a Unesco World
Heritage site, Chinese media reports.
But one of the hotels named said it was unaware of the plans.
Source: FoxNews.com
Dec 12, 2008
He is the man who tracked down the Ace of Spades: Saddam Hussein, the top card in the U.S. military's deck of cards, found crouching like a mole in a darkened spider hole under a trap door at the back of a farm in Tikrit.
For the first time since the Army's 4th Infantry Division captured Saddam in a dramatic raid on Dec. 13, 2003, the U.S. intelligence officer who hunted him down has come forward with his story.
Speaking to FOX News, Staff Sgt. Eric Maddox, who still se
Source: International Herald Tribune
Dec 12, 2008
A report released Thursday by leaders of the Senate Armed Services
committee said that top Bush administration officials, including Donald
Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary, bear major responsibility for the
abuses committed by American troops in interrogations at Abu Ghraib prison
in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other military detention centers.
The report was issued jointly by Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the
Democratic chairman of the panel, and Senator John McCain of A
Source: History Today
Dec 12, 2008
Antiquity, an Archaeology quarterly, reports in its December issue on the often under-reported historical incidences of contact between Britain & Ireland and Islamic cultures. In a fascinating article, Andrew Petersen documents the different types of archaeological finds which suggest interaction through the centuries.
Pottery, glass and ceramics originating in the Middle East, Moorish Spain, or merely bearing the influence of Islamic art have been found in sites throughout both
Source: Independent (UK)
Dec 12, 2008
One of the most dramatic episodes in the life of Basil Kelly, a High Court and then appeal judge in NorthernIreland, and indeed in the eventful history of the province's legal system during the recent Troubles, came in August 1983. Presiding over one ofthe biggest IRA cases ever to come before the courts, Kelly was equipped with certain extras, which included a bullet-proof vest and SAS bodyguards. In court he was flanked bytwo vigilant police officers armed with M1 carbines.
It wa
Source: BBC
Dec 12, 2008
The team, excavating a York University site, discovered a skull containing a yellow substance which scans showed to be shrunken, but brain-shaped.
Brains consist of fatty tissue which microbes in the soil would absorb, so neurologists believe the find could be some kind of fossilised brain.
The skull was found in an area first farmed more than 2,000 years ago.
More tests will now be done to establish what it is actually made of.
The team fr
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 12, 2008
The documents, which included a three-page handwritten draft of King's first anti-Vietnam war speech in 1967 and notes found in his suit pocket after his 1968 assassination, had been put up for sale by Belafonte, a former close friend of King.
The 81-year-old said earlier that the papers had been given to him by King and his late wife, Coretta Scott King, and that he intended to donate the proceeds of the sale – estimated at up to 1.3 million dollars – to charities that help "
Source: Austin-Statesman
Dec 11, 2008
Many, many years ago, the area now known as Zilker Park (Austin, Texas -
USA) was a settlement for some of North America's early hunter-gatherers.
As many as 10,000 years ago, those people used stone tools to cut meat,
chop wood, scrape hides, and fashion spear points. Artifacts of their
lives have long been entombed under layers of mud and sediment washed
ashore by the flooding Colorado River.
The Austin City Council could decide to pay as much as $700,000 for a
three-month dig i
Source: International Herald Tribune
Dec 11, 2008
It's not as if President-elect Barack Obama doesn't have enough on his
plate with a financial meltdown and a home-state scandal. But now he is
delving into the thorny question of who can send the country into war.
In between interviewing cabinet nominees and announcing health care plans,
Obama plans to meet Thursday with the leaders of a commission that has
proposed revamping the legal process for launching military action, to
require more consultation between a president and Congres
Source: International Herald Tribune
Dec 11, 2008
Thirteen years after the United States brokered the Dayton peace agreement
to end modern Europe's most ferocious ethnic war, fears are mounting that
Bosnia and Herzegovina, poor and divided, is again teetering toward
crisis.
On the surface, this haunted capital, its ancient mosques and Orthodox
churches still pocked with holes from mortar fire, appears to be enjoying
a renaissance. Young professionals throng to stylish cafés and gleaming
new shopping centers while the muezzin herald
Source: CNN
Dec 11, 2008
[David] Plouffe served as Obama’s campaign manager and is often referred to as the"unsung hero" of the president-elect's White House bid. He was largely
responsible for designing the strategy that ultimately dashed Clinton's
own ambitions for the Oval office.
Now, the camera-shy Plouffe is revealing what surprised him the most about
Clinton’s campaign: the New York senator's strategists willingness to
concede a string of caucus states to the Obama camp. In the process Obama
won a vas
Source: http://www.publicbroadcasting.net
Dec 11, 2008
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act is a federal
law that requires museums and federal agencies to return human remains and
other cultural items to their linear descendants. That means it's up to
people like U.S. Fish & Wildlife archaeologist Debbie Corbett to locate
all of the remains that were taken off of federal lands in Alaska,
identify who they belong to, and try to get them home. But Corbett says
the process isn't always straight forward for the dozens of rema
Source: BBC
Dec 11, 2008
Masood Sobhan told the BBC the former Beatle and serving US senator played "key roles" during the country's 1971 war of independence from Pakistan.
Mr Sobhan said it was a "disgrace" that the pair had not been recognised.
His case for them to be honoured is expected to be heard by the Bangladeshi High Court at the end of December.
Source: History Today
Dec 11, 2008
On Tuesday December 9th, a group of forensic anthropologists confirmed that almost 10,000 bone fragments found in the ‘Arana pit’ in La Plata were those of victims of the Argentine military dictatorship under General Videla, from 1976 to 1983. The pit is situated on the site of a once-secret detention centre where dissidents were imprisoned, tortured and executed in what has become known as the Dirty War. A wall with over 200 bullet marks was also found bordering the grave.
It is th
