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: NYT
Jun 29, 2008
Soon after American forces toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, Gen. Tommy R. Franks surprised senior Army officers by revamping the Baghdad-based military command.
The decision reflected the assumption by General Franks, the top American commander for the Iraq invasion, that the major fighting was over. But according to an Army history that is to be made public on Monday, the move put the military effort in the hands of a short-staffed headquarters led by a newly promoted three-star gen
Source: Sify News
Jun 28, 2008
Eight perfectly preserved mummies, believed to be some 4,500 year old, were found by workers engaged in a restoration project in Chile's far north, Spain's EFE news agency reported on Saturday quoting media report.
"These mummies date back to between 2,000 BC and 5,000 BC." archaeologist Calogero Santoro told the daily El Mercurio.
The mummies are remains of individuals belonging to the Chinchorro culture, which was one of the first to practice mummification a
Source: http://www.nzherald.co.nz
Jun 28, 2008
A replica 3000-year-old Pacific canoe, modelled on the world's first ocean-going vessels, has been tested in a world-leading Auckland wind tunnel.
Preliminary results show the canoes of the type sailed from New Guinea to Fiji, Tonga and Samoa about 1000BC were so well designed they could probably sail against the wind.
The 3m-long scale model has been tested and analysed in the University of Auckland's Tamaki campus wind tunnel, famed for its role in America's Cup yacht
Source: AP
Jun 28, 2008
SREMSKA MITROVICA, SERBIA -- When entrepreneur Mitar Tasovac purchased a long-abandoned factory intending to develop a housing complex on the site, he uncovered a chilling chapter of local history that had lain dormant for 60 years.
After World War II, the sprawling complex on the outskirts of this northern Serbian town served as a prison camp for local Germans, and about 2,000 people died there.
Before the Nazi invasion in 1941, about 520,000 members of the minority li
Source: Spiegel Online
Jun 28, 2008
When the fans of the German and Spanish teams throng into Vienna's Ernst Happel Stadium on Sunday to watch the Euro 2008 finals they will be hoping to enjoy a day of thrilling sport in Austria's most historic stadium. Many may not realize, however, that this history spans back to the 1930s when the stadium served as a Nazi barracks and then as a prison where Jews were held before being deported to concentration camps.
The dark chapter in the stadium's history began in 1934, three ye
Source: NYT
Jun 28, 2008
A BUBBLY and witty presence, the tall, older gentleman with the cane does not instantly come across as an Auschwitz survivor, or a fighter in the Warsaw Uprising, or a imprisoned dissident under Communism.
In fact, Wladyslaw Bartoszewski is all those and more. Yet he is also the type of man who, on a busy day, stops to chat with the hotel maids and is sure to make them laugh before he goes on his way.
The world is unlikely to produce many more Wladyslaw Bartoszewskis (p
Source: WaPo
Jun 28, 2008
The e-mail landed in Danielle Allen's queue one winter morning as she was studying in her office at the Institute for Advanced Study, the renowned haven for some of the nation's most brilliant minds. The missive began: "THIS DEFINITELY WARRANTS LOOKING INTO."
Laid out before Allen, a razor-sharp, 36-year-old political theorist, was what purported to be a biographical sketch of Barack Obama that has become one of the most effective -- and baseless -- Internet attacks of the
Source: AP
Jun 28, 2008
Barack Obama's political success might claim an unintended victim: affirmative action, a much-debated policy that he supports.
Already weakened by several court rulings and state referendums, affirmative action now confronts a challenge to its very reason for existing. If Americans make a black person the leading contender for president, as nationwide polls suggest, how can racial prejudice be so prevalent and potent that it justifies special efforts to place minorities in coveted
Source: Times (UK)
Jun 28, 2008
It set off a massive explosion that flattened millions of trees in the Siberian wilderness and lit up the sky as far away as Britain.
A century later the Tunguska event still provokes intense debate over a blast 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.
This week advocates of rival theories have been holding conferences in Moscow to try to answer the question of what took place in the forests along the Tunguska River on June 30, 1908.
Most argue th
Source: Chicago Tribune
Jun 28, 2008
It's not what you heard in grade school history, of course, but it is somehow consoling to note how unbelievably vile politicians were early in the nation's history.
You probably don't remember "The Public Character and Conduct of John Adams," a letter written by Alexander Hamilton at the height of the 1800 presidential campaign.
There are "great and intrinsic defects in his character, which unfit him for the Office of Chief Magistrate," the Hamilton
Source: Philadelphia Daily News
Jun 28, 2008
Although Oney Judge died 160 years ago, her life as one of George Washington's house servants has not been forgotten.
A Philadelphia group helped to make sure of that yesterday outside the Liberty Bell Center, at 6th and Market streets, by honoring Judge in a ceremony that included a City Council citation and a proclamation from Mayor Nutter.
A so-called Slave House memorial is planned to be built within a few feet of the Liberty Bell Center. The lead architect, Emmanue
Source: Discovery Channel News
Jun 27, 2008
Medieval bones from six different Danish cemeteries reveal that monks who wrote Biblical texts and other religious materials may have been exposed to toxic mercury, which was used to formulate just one of their ink colors: red.
The study, which will be published in the August issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science, also describes a previously undocumented disease, called FOS, which was like leprosy and caused skull lesions. Additionally, the researchers found that mercury-co
Source: AFP
Jun 27, 2008
Some 300 rare and valuable books confiscated from Iraq's
Jewish community by Saddam Hussein's regime have been secretly spirited into
Israel, an Israeli newspaper reported on Friday.
The books include a 1487 commentary on the biblical Book of Job and another
volume of biblical prophets printed in Venice in 1617, the Haaretz daily said.
The volumes are part of a massive collection of books confiscated by the secret
police of the executed Iraqi dictator and stored in security in
Source: AP
Jun 27, 2008
HAIPHONG, Vietnam - John McCain has an unusual endorsement — from the Vietnamese jailer who says he held him captive for about five years as a POW and now considers him a friend.
"If I were an American voter, I would vote for Mr. John McCain," Tran Trong Duyet said Friday, sitting in his living room in the northern city of Haiphong, surrounded by black-and-white photos of a much younger version of himself and former Vietnam War prisoners.
At the same time, he
Source: National Security Archive
Jun 27, 2008
Washington, DC, June 26, 2008 - Responding to a petition filed in January by the National Security Archive and several leading U.S. historical associations for the release of grand jury records from the 1951 indictment of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, federal prosecutors in New York conceded that a substantial portion of the grand jury materials could be made public after more than 55 years.
In a court filing this week, the government said it would not oppose the release of transcript
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 27, 2008
The 2000 presidential election debacle was the fault of Al Gore, who should have followed Richard Nixon's 1960 example and conceded without legal action, according to the Supreme Court's leading conservative judge.
"Richard Nixon, when he lost to [John F.] Kennedy thought that the election had been stolen in Chicago, which was very likely true with the system at the time," Justice Antonin Scalia told The Telegraph.
"But he did not even think about bringin
Source: AFP
Jun 26, 2008
A US defence department team has arrived in India to prepare a search for the remains of hundreds of American personnel who went missing over the Himalayan "Hump" during World War II, diplomats and officials said.
The team, from the Prisoner of War/Missing in Action Accounting Command (JPAC), will fly to the northeast frontier state of Arunachal Pradesh for a "site survey" ahead of the search once monsoon rains stop in October.
"It's still very early
Source: AP
Jun 26, 2008
From prison brothels to slave labor camps, 15 scholars concluded a two-week probe Thursday of an untapped repository of millions of Nazi records, and hailed it as a rich vein of raw material that will deepen the study of the Holocaust.
It was the first concentrated academic sweep of the long-private archive administered by the International Tracing Service since it opened its doors last November to Holocaust survivors, victims relatives and historical researchers.
Germa
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 26, 2008
Mexicans are being encouraged to reclaim a piece of Texas, more than 150 years after they lost the Lone Star state to the United States.
Texan estate agents are heading south of the border to drum up the interest in buying cut-price land and property in the foreclosure-hit state.
Thanks to a rising Mexican peso and an economy which is growing faster than that of the US, a country that has previously been looked on by America as a source of cheap labour is now seen as a
Source: National Security Archive
Jun 26, 2008
American signals intelligence collectors tracked the activation of Soviet air defenses prior to the shootdown of a U.S. spy plane at the peak of the Cuban missile crisis, according to documents published on the Web today by the National Security Archive. A new book by Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs shows that the destruction of the U-2 piloted by Major Rudolf Anderson, Jr. on October 27, 1962, was closely connected to the deployment of Soviet nuclear cruise missiles in the vicinity of the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo. Soviet generals feared that the spy plane had uncovered the forward launch position of the cruise missiles, just 15 miles from Guantanamo. This is the fourth of five postings looking at the new material in One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War, which draws on the National Security Archive's long-standing documentary work on the Cuban missile crisis. The book provides new details about U.S. SIGINT (signals intelligence) activities in and around Cuba at the height of the missile crisis. Next week, in the final installment from One Minute to Midnight, the National Security Archive will publish key primary sources behind the "Eyeball to Eyeball" confrontation between U.S. and Soviet ships that never happened.
