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: http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com
Sep 15, 2008
he State Historic Preservation Division failed to follow
state law regarding Native Hawaiian burials in a Kaua'i beachfront
houselot where 30 sets of human remains were found, Fifth Circuit Judge
Kathleen Watanabe ruled this afternoon.
The agency must now consult with the Kaua'i-Ni'ihau Island Burial Council,
any lineal descendants of the remains, interested Hawaiian organizations,
and the landowner about a revised burial treatment plan, Watanabe said.
Source: National Geographic News
Sep 15, 2008
Eighty skeletons and stockpiles of textiles found in caves near the
ancient Inca site of Machu Picchu may shed light on the role that the
so-called lost city of the Inca played as a regional center of trade and
power, scientists say.
Researchers found the artifacts and remains at two sites within the Machu
Picchu Archaeological Park in southeastern Peru, said Fernando Astete,
head of the park (see map of Peru).
The remains, most of which were found in May 2008 at a site called
Source: AP
Sep 15, 2008
he Yugoslav war crimes tribunal convicted a former commander of the Bosnian Muslim army Monday of cruelty toward Bosnian Serb prisoners, who were forced to kiss the severed head of a fellow prisoner. But the court acquitted him of murder.
General Rasim Delic was sentenced to three years in prison for responsibility for Islamic volunteers under his command who abused captured Bosnian Serbs in the summer of 1995.
Source: Press Release--David S. Wyman Foundation
Sep 15, 2008
One hundred and thirty leading Holocaust scholars from around the world have signed a petition urging the International Criminal Court to proceed with the prosecution of Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir for his role in the Darfur genocide.
The ICC’s chief prosecutor recently announced plans to seek al-Bashir’s arrest, but the Arab League, African Union, China, and Russia are trying to prevent action against al-Bashir.“Prosecuting al-Bashir will help
Source: Deutsche Welle
Sep 15, 2008
Looking ahead to the 20th anniversary of the uprising in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the fall of the Berlin Wall, the party says it is concerned with an increasing sense of nostalgia for the old communist regime.
"Twenty years after the end of the GDR, there should be no forgetting and no repressing," reads the draft of the document, which is set to be signed on Monday, Sept. 15.
The 21-page paper will be presented as a motion at the CDU'
Source: Guardian (UK)
Sep 15, 2008
The Church of England owes Charles Darwin an apology for misunderstanding his theory of evolution and making errors over its reaction to it, a senior clergyman said today.
In a bid to recognise its faults in the run up to next year's 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, the church has launched a series of articles on its website.
An essay by the Rev Dr Malcolm Brown, the church's head of public affairs, called Good Religion Needs Good Science directly addresses Darwin.
Source: History Today
Sep 15, 2008
Conversations between top US officials in 1970 show a secret plan to overthrow the newly-elected socialist government in Chile. The day before the 35th anniversary of the military coup, the National Security Archive in Washington published transcripts of telephone conversations between Henry Kissinger, President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State William Rogers. On September 11th, 1973, during economic difficulties and a constitutional crisis, Salvador Allende was deposed by the Chilean milita
Source: BBC News
Sep 15, 2008
A collection of previously unheard recordings of crime writer Agatha Christie talking about her life and work has surfaced in Devon after lying undiscovered for 40 years.
The reels of tape, over 13 hours long, were discovered by the author's grandson in a cardboard box during a spring clean-out at Christie's former home in Torquay.
They date back to the 1960s and are working notes for her autobiography which was published posthumously in 1977.
But the recor
Source: NYT Editorial written by Adam Cohen
Sep 15, 2008
When Rachel Ehrenfeld wrote “Funding Evil: How Terrorism Is Financed and How to Stop It,” she assumed she would be protected by the First Amendment. She was, in the United States. But a wealthy Saudi businessman she accused in the book of being a funder of terrorism, Khalid bin Mahfouz, sued in Britain, where the libel laws are heavily weighted against journalists, and won a sizable amount of money.
The lawsuit is a case of what legal experts are calling “libel tourism.” Ms. Ehren
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 15, 2008
Prosecutors will accuse Josef Scheungraber of ordering the killings of 14 civilians in Falzano, near Cortona in Italy.
Mr Scheungraber denies the charges, but he will have to face testimony from a survivor of the massacre, a 79-year-old former Carabinieri officer, who was a 15 year-old boy on June 27 1944.
That was the date that German soldiers from Mountain Infantry Battalion 818 set out on a reprisal operation after two of their number had been killed by partisans.
Source: WaPo
Sep 14, 2008
This is the first of two stories adapted from [WaPo reporter Barton Gellman's]"Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency," to be published Tuesday by Penguin Press. Original source notes are denoted in [brackets] throughout.
A burst of ferocity stunned the room into silence. No other word for it: The vice president's attorney was shouting."The president doesn't want this! [1] You are not going to see the opinions. You are out . . . of . . . your . . . lane!"
Five government lawy
Source: WaPo
Sep 14, 2008
Palin says her time as mayor taught her how to be a leader and grounded her in the real needs of voters, and her tenure revealed some of the qualities she would later display as governor: a striving ambition, a willingness to cut loose those perceived as disloyal and a populist brand of social and pro-growth conservatism.
But a visit to this former mining supply post 40 miles north of Anchorage shows the extent to which Palin's mayoralty was also defined by what it did not include.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Sep 14, 2008
Back ramrod straight, heels together, hands behind his back, this is the moment General Sir David Richards became the first British commander since the Second World War to lead a multi-national force including the Americans in battle.
Wearing desert fatigues, cap badge pulled down over his left eye, a frown etched on his face, General Richards, second from the right, had just taken control of the Herat Room, the command centre at the heart of Nato's headquarters in Afghanistan.
Source: Times (of London)
Sep 14, 2008
John le Carré, the espionage writer, has revealed that he was tempted to defect to the Soviet Union during the cold war.
The author, whose real name is David Cornwell, wrote his first novel while working for MI6 in 1961. He says he was not attracted to communism –- he was just curious to find out what life was like behind the iron curtain in the 1960s.
His books, including The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, portray a world of moral ambig
Source: NYT
Sep 14, 2008
In a previously unpublished interview, Richard M. Nixon said that Ethel Rosenberg, the convicted spy, might have been spared the death penalty by President Dwight D. Eisenhower had he been aware that evidence against her was tainted.
“If I had known — if we had known that at the time — if President Eisenhower had known it, he might have taken a different view with regard to her,” Nixon, who was Eisenhower’s vice president, is quoted as saying. “In other words, tainted evidence, even
Source: http://www.historynet.com (date uncertain)
Sep 13, 2008
General Thomas J. Jackson is fascinating for many reasons. He was a brilliant tactician, a very determined student, a man intent on improving himself, a man enamored of home and family, a Virginia gentleman. In today’s language, Jackson’s vision of how the Civil War should be fought would be called guerilla warfare.
Housed in Special Collections, University of Virginia Library are two memoirs about Jackson written by Clement Daniels Fishburne (1832-1907), a good friend from Lexingto
Source: NYT
Sep 13, 2008
WASILLA, Alaska — Gov. Sarah Palin lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal.
So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.
Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms.
Source: Times (UK)
Sep 13, 2008
A wrist watch that belonged to Albert Einstein has been put up for auction. Shaped in the tonneau fashion (like a barrel), the 14-carat gold Longines timepiece will be offered with no reserve by the online watch auctioneer, Antiquorum, in New York next month and is expected to fetch between $25,000 (£14,000) and $35,000.
The unique watch was made in 1930 and presented to Einstein on February 16, 1931, in Los Angeles. Collectors will be able to see the timepiece in New York, Los Ang
Source: Times (UK)
Sep 13, 2008
A frail but stiff-backed General Wojciech Jaruzelski strode into a Polish courtroom as if on parade yesterday to face trial for using tanks and bayonets to crush the Solidarity revolution in the bleak midwinter of 1981.
The 85-year-old man, who was once the very symbol of communist repression, faces a possible ten-year jail sentence for “directing a criminal organisation” – a reference to the Military Council that imposed and ran the martial law crackdown of the early 1980s. It is
Source: Contra Costa (Calif.) Times
Sep 13, 2008
A dusty stagecoach roared into a bleak place called San Jose 150 years ago this week, got fresh horses and raced off into history.
For 1858, this was a giant leap in modern communications.
Monday marks the sesquicentennial of the first transcontinental stagecoach mail route, bringing California and the Inland Empire far closer to the rest of the United States.
That San Jose stage stop, later called Spadra, is now part of today's Pomona.
On Sept
