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: Fox News
Sep 11, 2008
Sept. 11: Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin speaks at a meeting with a group of Western foreign policy experts in Sochi on Russia's Black Sea.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned the West on Thursday not to instigate an arms race in Europe, Reuters reported.
The Russian leader said there is no basis for a new Cold War, as Russia has no imperialist ambitions.
Putin told a meeting of officials and experts at a forum in the Black Sea resor
Source: Fox News
Sep 11, 2008
The investigation into the unsolved 2004 dioxin poisoning of President Viktor Yushchenko has been completely politicized, Ukraine's prime minister said Thursday before she was questioned by prosecutors.
Yulia Tymoshenko suggested that she has being targeted because she is a potential competitor to Yushchenko in the 2010 presidential elections.
"When a person who is considered by the president as his rival at elections is simultaneously accused of state treason and
Source: CNN
Sep 11, 2008
With moments of silence punctuated by somber music, readings of names, and tears, Americans held solemn memorial services Thursday to honor the victims of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld returned to the Pentagon to help dedicate a memorial to victims of the attack there.
"Today we renew our vows to never forget how this long struggle began and to never forget those who fell first," said Rumsfeld, who despite
Source: NYT
Sep 11, 2008
Ever since he was tried and convicted with Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on espionage charges in 1951, Morton Sobell has maintained his innocence.
Until now. In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Sobell, who served nearly 19 years in Alcatraz and other federal prisons, admitted for the first time that he had been a Soviet spy. And he implicated his fellow defendant, Julius Rosenberg, in a conspiracy that delivered to the Soviets vital classified military information and what the American go
Source: International Herald Tribune
Sep 11, 2008
A district court in The Hague on Wednesday turned down a compensation claim by two families who lost relatives in the 1995 massacre of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica by Bosnian Serbs.
The families argued that Dutch United Nations peacekeepers at Srebrenica should have protected their relatives, some of whom worked on base.
The court ruled that the government could not be held responsible because the peacekeepers were under a United Nations mandate.
Source: International Herald Tribune
Sep 11, 2008
Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein has dubbed Germany a "fourth" Reich, drawing fire from Jewish groups who accused him of trivializing Nazi crimes, and stoking already-tense relations between the two countries.
The prince, Liechtenstein's head of state, made the comments in a letter to the Jewish Museum in Berlin explaining why he would not make a painting available to an exhibition of artworks stolen by the Nazis.
"I would really have liked to support
Source: BBC
Sep 11, 2008
Local historians in Surrey have confirmed evidence that baseball was played in the UK more than 20 years before American independence.
A diary that documents a game being played in Guildford in 1755 has been verified by Surrey History Centre.
William Bray, a Surrey diarist and historian from Shere, wrote about the game when he was still a teenager.
Major League Baseball, the governing body of the game in the US, has been informed of the discovery.
Source: History Today
Sep 11, 2008
A 19-metre statue of a Buddha believed to date from the third century has recently been discovered in central Afghanistan close to the site of the famous Bamiyan Buddhas. Two other Buddhas carved into the mountainside at Bamiyan were destroyed by the Taleban in 2001. Archaeologists have recently begun work on a decade-long project to restore the largest of the original Buddhas.
Source: History Today
Sep 11, 2008
‘I married and lived happily ever afterwards’ (Winston Churchill)
For the 100th anniversary of Winston Churchill’s marriage, the Churchill Archives Centre at the University of Cambridge has launched an appeal for information on lost photographs from the wedding. Following a brief engagement the previous month, Winston Churchill and Clementine Hozier were married on September 12th, 1908 in St Margaret’s Church, Westminster. According to recent research by the author Tom Norgate, phot
Source: Tehran Times
Sep 11, 2008
The 7000-year-old mound of Pardis in the Qarchak region is currently being bulldozed by a factory for brick production.
The mound is located in an area owned by individuals using the earth from the mound for producing bricks in their nearby factory, an informed source who preferred to remain anonymous told Tehran Times on Wednesday.
The upper strata of the ancient site have been seriously damaged and ruins of artifacts are visible nearby, said the source, who has rece
Source: Times (UK)
Sep 11, 2008
New excavations at a rich ancient cemetery in northern Greece have yielded gold jewellery, copper and iron weapons and pottery. Archaeologists digging in part of a vast burial ground near Pella, the ancient capital of Macedonia, have unearthed 43 new graves dating from 650-279BC, a Culture Ministry statement said.
The dead included 20 warriors who had been buried in the Archaic period, between 580 and 480 BC, with copper helmets, left, and iron swords, daggers and spearheads. Ornam
Source: NYT
Sep 10, 2008
A large cache of audio tapes left behind at Osama bin Laden’s headquarters in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 2001 was released Wednesday, offering a portrait of his gradual transformation from Saudi militant to global threat and opening a window on the daily lives of men recruited for jihad.
While Mr. bin Laden’s evolution from opposing Saudi Arabia’s ruling dynasty to running an international terrorist organization has been detailed before, said Flagg Miller, an assistant professor at t
Source: National Security Archive
Sep 10, 2008
On the eve of the thirty-fifth anniversary of the military coup in Chile, the National Security Archive today published for the first time formerly secret transcripts of Henry Kissinger’s telephone conversations that set in motion a massive U.S. effort to overthrow the newly-elected socialist government of Salvador Allende. “We will not let Chile go down the drain,” Kissinger told CIA director Richard Helms in one phone call. “I am with you,” the September 12, 1970 transcript records Helms respo
Source: AP
Sep 10, 2008
Archaeologists in Peru say they have discovered the jawbone
of a fetus among the remains of a sacrificed woman in a pre-Inca tomb,
suggesting the Lambayeque culture practiced the atypical sacrifice of
pregnant women and their children.
The remains of the woman and unborn child were found in a tomb with three
other sacrificed women and several sacrificial llamas, lead archaeologist
Carlos Wester La Torre told The Associated Press.
In all, Wester La Torre's team reported findin
Source: AP
Sep 10, 2008
New excavations at an ancient cemetery in northern Greece have yielded gold jewelry, copper and iron weapons and pottery.
Archaeologists digging in part of a vast burial ground near Pella, the ancient Macedonians' capital, have unearthed 43 new graves dating from 650-279 B.C., the Greek Culture Ministry said in a statement Wednesday.
Source: Telegraph
Sep 10, 2008
Analysis of animal remains found near to Stonehenge has shown that cattle were brought to the area from as far away as Wales or even the Scottish Highlands.
Scientists tested the chemical fingerprint of cattle teeth found at Durrington Walls, a Neolithic monument built 500 years before Stonehenge.
They found that far from being local, the animals could only have been reared in areas of Wales or Scotland, which have high levels of the chemical element strontium in the so
Source: International Herald Tribune
Sep 10, 2008
It was one of the legends of the Cold War: a Bulgarian dissident writer, Georgi Markov, dying in a London hospital of a mysterious fever after being injected with a poison pellet from a specially adapted umbrella as he walked to work across Waterloo Bridge.
A prominent novelist in his native land when he defected to the West in 1969, Markov had become a journalist at the BBC's Bulgarian service and an unflinching critic of communist rule and Bulgaria's longtime leader Todor Zhivkov.
Source: WaPo
Sep 10, 2008
From the moment Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin declared that she had opposed the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere," critics, the news media and nonpartisan fact checkers have called it a fabrication or, at best, a half-truth. But yesterday in Lebanon, Ohio, and again in Lancaster, Pa., she crossed that bridge again.
"I told Congress: 'Thanks but no thanks for that Bridge to Nowhere up in Alaska,' " Palin told the crowds at the "McCain Street USA" rallies. "If
Source: Guardian
Sep 10, 2008
The UN is threatening to put the Tower of London on its list of world heritage sites in danger after its experts accused the UK of damaging globally significant sites such as Stonehenge, the old town of Edinburgh and the Georgian centre of Bath, the Guardian has learned.
Unesco, the UN's cultural agency, has told ministers in London and Edinburgh that it wants urgent action to protect seven world heritage sites which it claims are in danger from building developments, and said in so
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
Sep 10, 2008
The House of Representatives yesterday passed the Overclassification
Reduction Act, a bill that is intended to help reduce inappropriate
classification of information in government.
The bill would require the National Archivist to develop regulations to
help combat overclassification. The bill would mandate increased
accountability for classification actions, with incentives for challenging
improper classification and penalties for abuse of classification
authority. Importantly, i
