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: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 28, 2008
Allan "Chirpy" Campbell claims the bank gained permission to use the image of celebrated indigenous author and inventor David Unaipon from a woman who was posing as his daughter, and did not obtain authorisation from a genuine family member.
"They jacked this woman up and proclaimed that she is the daughter of my uncle, and when we found out they blocked us and they chucked all the barricades there," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 28, 2008
A market town's 400-year-old Christmas custom of firing muskets into the sky has been banned because of fears the noise will scare children.
Wimborne council in Dorset has told the town's Militia, which re-enacts traditions dating back to the 17th century, that it can no longer fire muskets over the Christmas tree.
The council said the noise of the blank shots would be too loud for children and would keep families away from the annual event to mark the switching on of t
Source: AP
Nov 28, 2008
For the first time, federal legislation has set aside the day after Thanksgiving — for this year only — to honor the contributions American Indians have made to the United States.
Frank Suniga, a descendent of Mescalero Apache Indians who lives in Oregon, said he and others began pushing in 2001 for a national day that recognizes tribal heritage.
Suniga, 79, proposed his idea to a cultural committee that is part of the Portland-based Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians. Th
Source: Times (UK)
Nov 28, 2008
The daughter of General Franco has revealed that her father feared being kidnapped by Adolf Hitler in an effort to force Spain into the Second World War.
Carmen Franco Polo, 82, said her father nominated three substitutes to assume power should the Nazi leader abduct him when they met at a conference in 1940.
Ms Polo spoke publicly for the first time about life with El Caudillo in her book, Franco, My Father, which is published today in Spain.
The sole d
Source: Times (UK)
Nov 28, 2008
A fold-out album of 144 Second World War postcards collected by a German naval officer is to be auctioned tomorrow in Chudleigh, Devon. It includes pictures of Adolf Hitler and of the Graf Spee and other German vessels. The officer gave the album to a British soldier at the end of the war and it has been in his family ever since. There are also wryly humorous postcards. One shows three sailors leaning over the side of a ship above the caption: “Seasick – oh what a joy!” Michael Bowman, the aucti
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 28, 2008
Dutch-born singer and actor Johannes Heesters, 104, began a lawsuit yesterday in a bid to force author and documentary film maker Volker Kuhn to withdraw claims that he sang for guards at Dachau in 1941.
Mr Heesters, who rose to fame in Germany in the Third Reich, says he was ordered by the Nazis to attend the camp in an attempt to deceive the public about what was really going on inside.
But the entertainer, thought to be the world's oldest performing actor, denied eve
Source: Jerusalem Post
Nov 27, 2008
Archbishop of Lublin, Josef Zycinski, said this week ahead of a visit to Israel that there was a "new era" of Polish openness to Jews and defended controversial Holocaust-era Pope Pius XII as a "pragmatist."
"I would say that the situation has changed in free Poland," said the archbishop in a telephone interview from Lublin.
"In the late 1970s it was impossible to have access to the parts of Auschwitz that showed the enormity of the Je
Source: NYT
Nov 27, 2008
Corn, beans and squash — the “three sisters” of Native American agricultural tradition — will appear on the nation’s one-dollar coins next year, in a design to be announced Friday by the United States Mint.
By the dictates of an act that Congress passed last year, the reverse side of the gold-colored Sacagawea dollars will bear a new design each year starting in 2009, as part of a thematic series showing Native American contributions to the history and development of the United Stat
Source: NYT
Nov 27, 2008
As they have for 50 years, Americans here packed St. Paul’s Cathedral on Thursday for an annual Thanksgiving service that, as evocatively as any event on the calendar, nurtures the home thoughts from abroad that are a staple of expatriate life....
For the 220,000 Americans living in Britain, the annual gathering at St. Paul’s, Sir Christopher Wren’s masterpiece, provides an opportunity to celebrate the two nations that are the pillars of their lives. A centerpiece of the occasion e
Source: NYT
Nov 27, 2008
For sale: a vast tunnel complex in central London. Former tenants include Britain’s secret service, the famous hot line between America and the Soviet Union during the cold war and 400 tons of government documents. The asking price is $7.4 million.
After years of lying unused beneath the traffic-jammed streets of the city, the tunnel complex — one mile of underground corridors and adjacent rooms — is now for sale by the BT Group, Britain’s largest phone company. BT hopes the site’s
Source: WaPo
Nov 27, 2008
President-elect Obama named the 81-year-old Volcker yesterday to head a new economic advisory panel, citing "his sound and independent judgment." But nearly three decades ago -- when Obama was still a college student -- the towering 6-foot-7-inch Volcker was one of the most disliked public figures in the United States.
As Federal Reserve chairman, he took an uncompromising stance against inflation, jacking up interest rates as high as 20.5 percent. Unemployment soared to 1
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 27, 2008
Sir Roderick Murchison was presented with the dagger when he visited Russia in 1840 to carry out the first geological survey of the western half of the country.
In so doing he coined the geological term the Permian Period - which relates to rocks laid down 299 to 251 million years ago - after the region of Permia in the Ural mountains.
On the expedition he was presented with the dagger by a Russian commander.
Besides the Murchison crater, Sir Roderick has
Source: Time Magazine
Nov 27, 2008
In 1953, someone at Swanson severely overestimated the amount of turkey Americans would consume that Thanksgiving. With 260 tons of frozen birds to get rid of, a company salesman named Gerry Thomas ordered 5,000 aluminum trays, recruited an assembly line of women armed with spatulas and ice-cream scoops and began creating mini-feasts of turkey, corn-bread dressing, peas and sweet potatoes — creating the first-ever TV dinner. Thomas later said he got the idea from neatly packaged airplane food...
Source: http://www.channelnewsasia.com
Nov 27, 2008
Mumbai's Taj Mahal Palace and Tower hotel, which erupted in flames early Thursday after heavily armed men stormed the building, taking guests hostage, is a symbol of national pride for Indians.
The impressive red-domed structure sits opposite the landmark Gateway of India monument on the edge of the Arabian Sea through which the last colonial British troops departed after independence in 1947.
But while the 105-year-old Taj saw off the last of the foreign occupiers, i
Source: Times (UK)
Nov 27, 2008
Fossilised remains of the most ancient turtle yet discovered are helping scientists to unravel the Kiplingesque puzzle of how the animal grew its shell.
Only the underside of the turtle is covered by a fully formed protective shell, giving researchers an invaluable glimpse into how it evolved.
The discovery of Odontochelys semi-testacea – “half-shelled turtle with teeth” – is being hailed as the long-sought missing link between turtles that have full shells and their
Source: Guardian (UK)
Nov 27, 2008
Seven London bridges were granted graded listings yesterday to protect them against unsympathetic development.
On the advice of English Heritage, Grade II listings were given to Chelsea, Lambeth and Richmond Railway bridges. Cremorne (or Battersea Railway bridge), Hammersmith, Twickenham and Vauxhall bridges were listed at, or upgraded to, the higher Grade II*.
The culture secretary, Andy Burnham, said: "These seven examples represent the very best of Britain's bri
Source: Guardian (UK)
Nov 27, 2008
The medals of a wartime flying ace who was given the delicate job of leading an attack on enemy ships in Venice docks without destroying the city's historic buildings and priceless works of art are being sold at auction next week.
In 1945, Group Captain George Westlake headed Operation Bowler, so called because he and others feared they would be "bowler hatted" - thrown out of the military back into civilian life - if their attack was not precise enough.
On
Source: NYT
Nov 27, 2008
TOMSK, Russia — For years, the earth in this Siberian city had been giving up clues: a scrap of clothing, a fragment of bone, a skull with a bullet hole.
And so a historian named Boris P. Trenin made a plea to officials. Would they let him examine secret archives to confirm that there was a mass grave here from Stalin’s purges? Would they help him tell the story of the thousands of innocent people who were said to have been carted from a prison to a ravine, shot in the head and toss
Source: Time Magazine
Nov 26, 2008
Prosperity has its favorite hobbies, its gold-trimmed roadsters and superyachts and the million-dollar platinum fishing lure studded with 100 carats of diamonds. But in an age of austerity, when we seek satisfaction on the cheap, some pursuits are all about value, but not necessarily about money. This is the beauty of the collector's world. When you don't like the look of the economy, you get to make your own.
At the moment, people have decided that anything related to Barack Obama-
Source: http://www.knoxnews.com
Nov 26, 2008
JEFFERSON CITY — Capt. E.J. Cannon fell to an enemy’s bullet within sight of the home he hadn’t seen in two years.
Today he’d barely be able to find the place where his men fought.
Years of development have almost obliterated every trace of the running battle Cannon, an officer of the Union Army’s 1st Tennessee Cavalry, and more than 8,000 other Union and Confederate soldiers fought four days after Christmas 1863 near the community then known as Mossy Creek.
