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: International Herald Tribune
Jul 29, 2008
As thousands of far-right nationalists gathered here Tuesday to celebrate the man accused of engineering the worst massacre in Europe since World War II, Serbian human rights activists said the emotional outpouring showed that Serbia had yet to come to terms with its past.
"Karadzic is a hero because he defended Serb lives during the terrible wars of the 1990s," said Elena Pavovski, 24, a supporter of the far-right Radical Party. The party bused in supporters from across S
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 29, 2008
The king of Tonga, one of the world's last absolute monarchs, has vowed to end hundreds of years of feudal rule on the eve of a lavish coronation ceremony which will bring his restive South Pacific nation to a standstill.
Source: Times (UK)
Jul 29, 2008
A court in Bosnia has convicted seven Serbs of genocide for rounding up and executing more than 1,000 Bosnian Muslims in a single day during the Srebrenica massacre.
The Sarajevo court gave the men sentences ranging from 38 to 42 years for their participation in the murders — some of the 8,000 killings in the 1995 massacre for which Radovan Karadzic must answer in The Hague. Four other defendants were acquitted.
Source: Nixon Blog (Click here for picture.)
Jul 29, 2008
The Nixon Library suffered minor damage as the result of Tuesday’s earthquake, which was centered a few miles from Yorba Linda in the community of Chino Hills. No one was injured. The worst damage was in the White House East Room, where Martha Washington’s portrait and a few chandelier baubles fell to the floor. No structural damage was in evidence on the grounds or in the museum. As the situation was being assessed, Federal officials ordered the Library closed and sent their own and private Fou
Source: National Security Archive
Jul 29, 2008
Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola of the U.S. District Court today denied a motion by the White House to reconsider his earlier recommendations and reaffirmed his recommendation that the court order the Executive Office of the President (EOP) to search individual workstations used between March 2003 and October 2005 and preserve any e-mails located on those workstations or on portable media used by EOP employees.
In finding that the White House must search and preserve e-mails saved
Source: Reuters
Jul 29, 2008
Hungarian police evacuated thousands of people in central Budapest on Tuesday where experts prepared to defuse a huge World War Two bomb found on a construction site.
The two-tonne bomb is one of the biggest found in the Hungarian capital, which was heavily bombed by the Allies during World War Two. Earlier this month another part of Budapest was evacuated after a half-tonne bomb was discovered.
About 16,000 people live in the area where the latest bomb was found, said
Source: CNN
Jul 29, 2008
The nonbinding resolution, which is expected to pass, was introduced by Rep. Steve Cohen, a white lawmaker who represents a majority black district in Memphis, Tennessee.
While many states have apologized for slavery, it will be first time a branch of the federal government will apologize for slavery if the resolution passes, an aide to Cohen said.
By passing the resolution, the House would also acknowledge the "injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slave
Source: Independent (UK)
Jul 29, 2008
50 years, 50 giant leaps: How Nasa rocked our world
Today, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration marks its first half-century of exploration and discovery. But missions to the Moon and beyond are only part of the story. Without Nasa's scientists, life on Earth would be very different indeed.
1.The hand-held vacuum cleaner
The cordless miniature vacuum cleaner was born after Black & Decker developed a self-contained portable drill for the Apollo Mo
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 29, 2008
A former Ku Klux Klan member convicted in the killings of three Mississippi civil rights workers in the 1960s must be freed because the FBI used a Mafia enforcer to torture a key witness for information, his lawyers say.
Edgar Ray Killen, 84, was convicted in 2005 of ordering the Klan killings of the trio 41 years earlier, a crime that was dramatised in the film Mississippi Burning.
His lawyers have appealed against his life sentence for triple manslaughter, citing new eviden
Source: AFP
Jul 29, 2008
Laos has halted plans for new hotels in the town centre of
the ancient royal capital Luang Prabang after receiving a warning from
UNESCO about its World Heritage status, media reported Tuesday.
The city's heritage office chief, Manivone Thoummabouth, said the
provincial government had decided not to allow foreign investors to turn
any more state buildings into hotels, the Vientiane Times reported online."There are many hotels in the city and if more are built, the area would
be
Source: http://www.theargus.co.uk
Jul 29, 2008
Land soon to become a new housing estate has yielded an unexpected
treasure – a 2,000- year-old skeleton, believed to be that of a prince, a
warrior or a priest.
Planning permission has been granted for more than 600 houses in open
fields at North Bersted near Bognor.
But before the work could go ahead, an archaeological survey had to be
carried out on the site to check if there was anything of historical
interest under the topsoil.
What the team from the Thames Valley
Source: Daily News (Sri Lanka)
Jul 29, 2008
A United Nations committee meeting has determined that two Baha’i shrines in Israel possess “outstanding universal value” and should be considered as part of the cultural heritage of humanity.
The decision today by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee means that the two most sacred sites for Baha’is - the resting places of the founders of their religion - join a list of internationally recognised sites like the Great Wall of China, the Pyaramids, the Taj Mahal, and Stonehenge.
Source: Wired.com
Jul 28, 2008
1958: President Eisenhower signs the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The plot had thickened months before.
Beep … beep … beep …
They were steady, almost metronomic, signals coming from a tiny radio beacon orbiting the Earth every 96 minutes aboard an aluminum sphere measuring a mere 22-inches across. In an instant, everything changed.
It was Oct. 4, 1957, when the Soviet news agency Tass announced to a stu
Source: http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk
Jul 28, 2008
A NUN who worked with Manchester's poor in the 19th century could become Britain's next saint.
Sister Elizabeth Prout opened schools and gave a lifeline to thousands during the industrial revolution from her city centre base.
Her work, which centred around impoverished female immigrants who rushed to the city to work in the mills, has now put her in line to become the first female British saint for 40 years.
A file of her life, which took 14 years to prepar
Source: AP
Jul 28, 2008
The ceremony commemorates the death of the seventh Shiite imam, Moussa
al-Kadhim, who died in 799.
Each year, Shiite worshippers gather at a mosque in the northern Baghdad
neighborhood of Kazimiyah that is believed to sit atop his tomb.
Pilgrims walk to the shrine — some flogging themselves with iron chains or
slicing their foreheads. The bloody ritual was banned during the rule of
Saddam Hussein.
The ceremony is not one of the most important to Shiites, but still draws
Source: AP
Jul 28, 2008
The [National Park Service] has proposed restoring a block of the barracks [used to house interned Japanese-Americans during WW II in Idaho] to
recreate the living conditions that roughly 13,000 ...
experienced at the camp. The initiative is part of an overall plan to
preserve sections of Minidoka, which became a national historic site seven
years ago and now sits mostly deserted
But most of the barracks found so far are ghosts of their former selves,
long since converted into homes,
Source: Contra Costa Times
Jul 28, 2008
How many students know that a 1946 California court case on segregation actually set a precedent for the widely heralded Brown v. Board of Education?
The case of Mendez v. Westminster is one of the great triumphs in California legal history - five Latino parents challenged a white private school in court for admission and won, leading to desegregation of all schools in the state.
"All Californians should be proud that we were the first state in the nation to dese
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 28, 2008
More than 40 women typhoid sufferers were locked up for life in a mental asylum to prevent them spreading the disease, according to newly-found records.
The patients, all women, were taken to Long Grove in Epsom, Surrey, between 1907 and its closure in 1992.
Although they were sane when admitted many went mad as a result of their incarceration, nursing staff said.
Virtually all had recovered from typhoid but were still considered a public health risk becaus
Source: Telegraph
Jul 28, 2008
The rock, which was found on a beach during a family holiday by Peter Parvin, 74, a former policeman, was taken in for testing after it was suggested it might be more than just unusually-shaped.
Mr Parvin, who is now deputy mayor of Maidstone, Kent, mentioned the stone in a conversation with a constituent who works at Maidstone Museum, during a surgery at The Ten Bells pub in Leeds village. The constituent said Mr Parvin should submit the rock for testing by Dr Ed Jarzembowski, a ke
Source: Telegraph
Jul 28, 2008
The animal's remains have been brought to the surface after a 12-year operation to clear an entrance blocking where they lay.
It was found in 1995 by cave divers exploring the two mile-long stream cave Uamh an Claonaite in the network of caves at Assynt in Sutherland.
It took the cavers from the Grampian Speleological Group until the end of last year to unblock an old 100ft-deep entrance shaft and provide a dry way into the cave.
The group removed the sk
