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: NBC affiliate
Aug 8, 2008
hieves have stolen a pair of presidential medals awarded to a Seneca Indian from western New York who wrote the final draft of the surrender terms that ended the Civil War.
The medals were awarded after the war to Union officer Ely Parker, the son of an Iroquois chief who became General Ulysses S. Grant's right-hand man during the war.
Officials at the Niagara County Historical Society say the medals were stolen late Saturday afternoon from a Civil War display in one of
Source: Simon Wiesenthal Center
Aug 7, 2008
Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus today received the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's Director for International Relations, Dr.Shimon Samuels, at the Presidential Palace in Vilnius.
Samuels raised the following issues of concern in the Jewish-Lithuanian context:
-the poisonous political climate conflating the fate of Jewish Holocaust victims mass murdered in Ponar with that of Lithuanians exiled to the Soviet Gulag
-the subsequent antisemitic media attacks and judici
Source: Daily Post
Aug 7, 2008
A STATUE commemorating Noel Chavasse, only British winner of the VC and bar, and all of Liverpool’s Victoria Cross recipients, is about to be unveiled.
After three years of fundraising, the statue, by city sculptor Tom Murphy, will be situated in Abercromby Square where the Chavasse family once lived.
The memorial, which depicts Captain Chavasse and a Liverpool Scottish stretcher bearer attending a wounded soldier, will be unveiled in the course of a drumhead service on
Source: International Herald Tribune
Aug 7, 2008
Win Min has spent the past 20 years trying to recover a moment of hope in Myanmar, when it seemed that the people had defeated their brutal military rulers and freedom lay ahead.
Friday is the anniversary of a huge popular uprising, on Aug. 8, 1988, that was crushed by soldiers at the cost of some 3,000 lives, leaving the country in the grip of a military junta and setting the course of Myanmar's history ever since - and very likely well into the future.
"We had a
Source: Telegraph
Aug 7, 2008
A damning report has accused France of knowing that a genocide was being planned as early as 1990. It also claims that French soldiers took part in rape, sexual harassment and torture during the period in 1994 when 800,000 people were killed in ethnic violence.
In an interview with The Telegraph, Rosemary Museminali, the Rwandan Foreign Minister, said that the people responsible for the murders still needed to be brought to justice.
Rwanda cut diplomatic ties with Fra
Source: Telegraph
Aug 7, 2008
The Anglo Saxon artefact is set with red gemstones and might have originally held a relic such as bone from a Disciple or fragment of the Cross.
Measuring just over an inch long, the 18 carat gold cross has been decorated with fine detail and is thought to have been worn as a pendant.
It is English made with gold that was probably melted down from Merovingian French coins.
Two of the red cabochon gemstones are missing as is the relic that would have been
Source: Washington Post
Aug 7, 2008
Government officials asserted yesterday that a troubled bioweapons scientist acted alone to perpetrate a terrorism scheme that killed five people, a case that centered on a near-perfect match of anthrax spores in his custody and a record of his late-night laboratory work just before the toxic letters were mailed.
Federal investigators uncovered e-mail messages written by bacteriologist Bruce E. Ivins describing an al-Qaeda threat that echoed language in the handwritten letters mail
Source: Boston Globe
Aug 7, 2008
Officials at Plimoth Plantation today offered a reward of $1,000 and a lifetime membership to anyone who can provide information leading to the arrest and conviction of vandals who struck the replica 17th-century Colonial village Friday.
“The total damage and losses will exceed $10,000,” said Paula Peters, a spokeswoman for the living museum. The invaders, described as a group of kids, allegedly stole a range of items, most notably beaver and muskrat pelts, as well as two steel piec
Source: BBC
Aug 7, 2008
Pakistan's ruling coalition parties say they will begin impeachment proceedings against President Pervez Musharraf.
Party leaders Asif Ali Zardari and Nawaz Sharif made the announcement after three days of talks. They would need a two-thirds majority to impeach.
Mr Musharraf took power in a bloodless coup in 1999.
He gave up control of the army last year and his allies were defeated in February's elections but he retains the power to dissolve parliament.
Source: Telegraph
Aug 7, 2008
Raila Odinga was speaking at a memorial service in central Nairobi commemorating those who died in coordinated al-Qa'eda bombings exactly ten years ago.
The blasts, against the US embassies in Nairobi and Tanzania's main city, Dar es Salaam, were the first blamed by Washington on the then largely unknown organisation headed by Osama bin Laden.
"The scale of this atrocity shocked our nation to the core," Mr Odinga said after laying a wreath at the site of Nai
Source: Benton County Daily Record
Aug 7, 2008
BENTONVILLE - Although the statue of the Confederate soldier on the Bentonville Square will be honored with a centennial celebration Friday, no Confederate flags will fly at the event.
A 100-year celebration is planned for 11 a.m. Friday at the Bentonville Public Library to honor the monument. The event will feature speakers who will discuss the history behind the statue.
Johnny Haney, a downtown businessman and Bentonville resident, explained why the Confederate flag
Source: Telegraph
Aug 7, 2008
The naval leader, who became a national icon after his death in the battle of Trafalgar, comfortably topped a poll whose results covered more than 800 years of British military history.
They ranged from Richard the Lionheart, whose exploits on the Crusades earned him fourth place on the list, to Lt Col Herbert "H" Jones, posthumous winner of a Victoria Cross for charging Argentine positions during the Falklands War in 1982, who came eighth.
Admiral Lord Nels
Source: AP
Aug 7, 2008
Archaeologists have unearthed a 1,900-year-old well-preserved chariot at an ancient Thracian tomb in southeastern Bulgaria, the head of the excavation said Thursday.
Daniela Agre said her team found the four-wheel chariot during excavations near the village of Borisovo, around 180 miles east of the capital, Sofia.
"This is the first time that we have found a completely preserved chariot in Bulgaria," said Agre, a senior archaeologist at the Bulgarian Academy of Sci
Source: Independent
Aug 7, 2008
The fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square is being kept free for a statue of the Queen riding a horse which will be commissioned after she dies, say senior officials.
The plan sheds new light on why the plinth has never had a full-time occupant and has been used recently to showcase the work of modern artists. It also explains why the Mayor of London, who has been informed of the plan, recently performed a mysterious U-turn on proposals for a permanent statue to be placed on the m
Source: U.S. News and World Report
Aug 7, 2008
Ten years on, the American-brokered Good Friday agreement, which laid the framework for ending 30 years of violence between Northern Ireland's Roman Catholics and Protestants, is rightfully considered proof positive that negotiations can bring entrenched sectarian wars to peaceful ends. Nevertheless, a recent and worrisome spate of violence by a small cadre of hard-core Catholic dissidents—splinter groups of the Irish Republican Army, which has abandoned armed revolt against British rule—is a re
Source: AP
Aug 7, 2008
President Bush is eagerly awaiting the start of the Summer Olympics, making history as the first president to attend this world athletic competition on foreign soil.
But his arrival in Beijing Thursday night on the eve of the opening of the games came amid an atmosphere of tension with China's leaders over his high-profile speech in Thailand exhorting the growing world power to grant more freedom to its people.
Bush, first lady Laura Bush and their daughter Barbara ca
Source: LAT
Aug 7, 2008
The military jury deciding the fate of Osama bin Laden's driver today sentenced him to 5 1/2 years in prison for providing material support for terrorism, far less than the minimum 30 years in prison the prosecution sought.
The military judge hearing the case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Navy Capt. Keith J. Allred, has said previously he will credit Hamdan with at least five years of the 6 1/2 years he has been imprisoned at Guantanamo.
Prosecution lawyers asked for a life term but
Source: Telegraph
Aug 7, 2008
Luftwaffe veteran Willi Schludecker, 88, flew scores of missions over the UK during the 'Baedeker Blitz' of 1942.
Earlier this year the remorseful pilot visited Bath for a memorial service to apologise for his role in bombings of the town which killed 400 people.
Last Friday he returned to Bath after promising event organiser Chris Kilminster, 61, a flight in one of his planes.
But just moments after taking off from a private airstrip near Marshfield, Glos, the
Source: BBC
Aug 6, 2008
It was discovered in a rubble-filled building where parts of a huge statue of the emperor Hadrian were unearthed last year.
The discovery, at the ancient site of Sagalassos, is thought to show Faustina the Elder, wife of Roman emperor Antoninus Pius.
Sagalassos was once an important urban centre.
It was abandoned after being hit by several strong earthquakes.
A team led by Marc Waelkens, from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgi
Source: AP
Aug 6, 2008
The theater where "The Merchant of Venice" and "Romeo and Juliet" likely debuted and where William Shakespeare himself may have trodden the boards has likely been discovered in east London, archaeologists at the Museum of London said Wednesday.
The possible foundations of what is known as simply, The Theatre, were unearthed by builders excavating the site — a vacant garage — for another structure. Museum archaeologists were called to the location to make sure not
