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: CNN
Nov 24, 2008
Mike Green's family is good at making things. Through four generations of putting cars together, they've built a city, created a community, and forged a legacy....
The Greens' GM dynasty is in jeopardy if General Motors doesn't survive the current crisis that has U.S. automakers asking Congress for financial help.
That dynasty includes 10 family members -- all current or former autoworkers -- who gathered around a table at the Local 652 hall in west Lansing recently. To
Source: Guardian (UK)
Nov 24, 2008
US intelligence officials kept a file on former prime minister Tony Blair's "private life", a former US navy communications operator claimed today.
David Murfee Faulk, who worked at a listening post in Fort Gordon, Georgia, told ABCNews.com he saw the file on Blair in 2006.
But he refused to provide details of what the file, held in an intelligence database called Anchory, contained, other than to say it was a file on his "private life" and included
Source: BBC
Nov 24, 2008
The small Movimento Sociale-Fiamma Tricolore (MS-FT) party denies its gesture is racist and says the names Benito and Rachele are merely "nice".
The party also wants parents to buy cribs, clothes and food with the money.
The cash incentive is available in five areas of southern Italy and is designed to help the region's low birth rate.
Together the names Benito and Rachele mean only one thing to Italians - they signify their former dictator and
Source: Boston Globe
Nov 24, 2008
It may be 2008, but staff members at Plimoth Plantation's Wampanoag Homesite regularly have to ask little boys to stop war-whooping and little girls to remove costume feathered headdresses and beaded dresses brought from home.
Parents must be admonished for making jokey greetings like "How" or calling the performers "Chief," "Squaw," or "Indian." Just last week, an adult chaperone of a school group had to be corrected for asking Tim Turner, a
Source: Boston Globe
Nov 24, 2008
NEXT MONTH, the Italian state railway will launch a 186-mile-per-hour train that will revolutionize travel in Italy. But below the track of that train's send-off from Milan's Central Station, another important door to history is being opened. The state railway recently signed an agreement to allow work to begin on a Holocaust memorial there.
The heart of the memorial will be the track used to deport Jews and others from 1943 to 1945. It has remained untouched since. "It's a rui
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 24, 2008
Germany is embroiled in a controversy over a monumental Nazi-era holiday resort on the German island of Ruegen that is to be opened to holidaymakers for the first time.
The giant complex of hotels in the Prora resort on the country's biggest island in the Baltic Sea was designed to house 20,000 tourists as part of Adolf Hitler's Strength Through Joy program to keep the German nation healthy.
The construction of the mammoth project began in 1936 but was abandoned in 1943 due to the war, a
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 24, 2008
The Prince of Wales has told "Kindertransport" refugees how "incredibly proud" he felt of his grandmother for sheltering Jewish refugees when the Second World War broke out.
Prince Charles met a member of the "Kinder" - now elderly citizens - and their families over tea at a reunion in north west London, to mark the 70th anniversary of the decision to allow thousands of children into Britain from Nazi-occupied Europe.
In a short speech to t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 24, 2008
The bacteria can cause serious heart disease in humans are being spread by rat fleas, sparking concern that the infections could become a bigger problem in humans.
Research published in the Journal of Medical Microbiology suggests that brown rats, the biggest and most common rats in Europe, may now be carrying the bacteria.
Since the early 1990s, more than 20 species of Bartonella bacteria have been discovered. They are considered to be emerging pathogens, because they
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 24, 2008
Conflicting claims over the ownership over a cluster of four islands off north Japan has prevented the two nations agreeing a peace treaty to formally end the Second World War.
However, Taro Aso, Japan's prime minister, and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, have agreed to produce "concrete" measures to resolve the six-decade dispute in a bid to normalise relations in the region.
During a private meeting during the Asia-Pacific leader summit in Lima, Mr Aso to
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 24, 2008
The letter, which sets up a new rendezvous point for the fleet, was written 20 months before the Battle of Trafalgar at a time when Nelson's fleet were blockading the French inside Toulon.
The secret order reads: "Rendezvous No 99 - Twelve leagues due West from Cape Corse. To be added to the list of Rendezvous."
It is addressed from "Victory at the Madalina Islands, 13th February 1804" and sent to Sir Richard Bickerton bart, Rear Admiral of the Whi
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 24, 2008
The pagoda was wedged tightly inside an iron case that was discovered at the site of a former temple in the city in August.
The four-storey pagoda, which is almost four feet high and one-and-a-half feet wide, is thought by archaeologists to be one of the 84,000 pagodas commissioned by Ashoka the Great in the second century BC to house the remains of the Buddha.
Ashoka, one of India's greatest emperors, converted to Buddhism after waging a bloody war in the eastern sta
Source: BBC
Nov 24, 2008
The event in Nagasaki was organised by the Roman Catholic church and a cardinal sent by the Pope is attending.
It commemorates some of many thousands of people who lost their lives when the ruling shoguns were attempting to wipe out Christianity in Japan.
Today, fewer than 1% of Japanese people identify themselves as Christian; most follow Buddhist or Shinto faith.
About 30,000 people, including a Vatican envoy, were expected to attend the event in a bas
Source: BBC
Nov 24, 2008
Red Army Faction leader Christian Klar, aged 56, is serving five life terms but will have served the minimum required 26 years by January.
The court in Stuttgart said there were no grounds to keep him in custody.
The group, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang, targeted bankers, businessmen, judges and US servicemen.
More than 30 people were killed by the gang, before it disbanded 10 years ago.
Source: Newsweek
Nov 24, 2008
It is the season to compare Barack Obama to Abraham Lincoln. Two thin men from rude beginnings, relatively new to Washington but wise to the world, bring the nation together to face a crisis. Both are superb rhetoricians, both geniuses at stagecraft and timing. Obama, like Lincoln and unlike most modern politicians, even writes his own speeches, or at least drafts the really important ones—by hand, on yellow legal paper—such as his remarkably honest speech on race during the Reverend Wright imbr
Source: AP
Nov 23, 2008
Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday prayed that no political ideology would ever again cost people their freedom and dignity, as he recalled the millions who died from famine in Ukraine and other Soviet regions under dictator Josef Stalin.
The pontiff spoke in Ukrainian to pilgrims from that country in St. Peter's Square, and noted that this month marks the anniversary of Holodomor, or Death by Hunger, as the famine is known in Ukraine.
The 1932-33 famine was orchestrated by Soviet authorities
Source: AP
Nov 23, 2008
More than half a century ago, a prominent Egyptian archaeologist unearthed a stunning ancient mummy mask at the Saqqara pyramids near Cairo — the golden image of a noblewoman's face.
Mohammed Zakaria Ghoneim deposited the 3,200-year-old relic in a warehouse at Saqqara, where he meticulously documented his discovery. Seven years later, in 1959, Egyptian records show it was still in the same storeroom.
What happened to the burial mask of Ka Nefer Nefer in the four decade
Source: Boston Globe
Nov 23, 2008
In 1762, the Huntsberry family settled the land along Redbud Run, outside Winchester, with a deed from Lord Fairfax. Eight generations later, Bob Huntsberry spent his summers there as a child, finding old minie balls that had been fired from the muskets of Civil War soldiers. He grew up steeped in elders' stories of the day, late in the summer of 1864, when Union General Philip Sheridan and 39,000 troops came marching in.
Now, Huntsberry, 80, has reached a $3.35 million deal with Ci
Source: Times (UK)
Nov 23, 2008
The spot in the Roman Forum where Romulus, the first King of Rome, is said to have met a grisly end at the hands of senators who resented his high handed autocratic rule is to be shown as a tourist attraction after being covered up for half a century.
Professor Angelo Bottini, Superintendent of Archeology in Rome, said the underground area of black marble paving stone or "Lapis Niger" marking the spot where Romulus is traditionally said to have been killed and dismembered
Source: BBC
Nov 23, 2008
A former RAF serviceman is hoping to set up a museum in the officers' mess of one the UK's oldest RAF bases.
RAF Sealand in Flintshire, shut in 2006, bringing to end an association with air force planes which stretched back to the World War I.
Now Carl Mann, who worked there until his retirement, is gathering support for a permanent museum on the site.
He said: "It has a long, important history that will simply be forgotten if we can't get a museum bui
Source: Sky News
Nov 23, 2008
It is believed to be more than 3,600 years old and experts say it is one of the most "enigmatic artefacts" in existence.
The Mitchell-Hedges Crystal Skull, better known as The Skull of Doom, is made from a block of clear quartz with a detachable jaw and is the size of a small head.
It has gone on show in Edinburgh as part of the Histories and Mysteries conference at the Hub in the city.
English adventurer Frederick Albert Mitchell-Hedges, describe
