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: Daily Mail
Jul 18, 2011
A crack team of ten commandos who lead a secret underwater mission ahead of the D-Day invasions are to be honoured for the first time.The ten elite troops spent five days underwater in tiny crafts as they lay in wait on the seabed ahead before the invasion of Normandy in 1944.Their task was to spy from their 'X-crafts' on Nazi troops before guiding Allied forces across the treacherous rocky shoreline....
Source: Bloomberg
Jul 18, 2011
“Here, put these gloves on first. We must have some rules.” With that, ordnance expert Peter Ewler grins, then allows me to dip my hands into a bin of high explosives and lift out a 50-pound unexploded bomb.The rusted thing, from World War II, is of Russian origin and was found near the Polish-German border. If my hand slips, the concrete storage bunker we’re in probably would blow up.Unexploded bombs are still big business in Germany. Almost two million tons were dropped there by the U.S., Russia and Britain during World War II. An estimated 10 percent to 15 percent never exploded and now, seven decades later, are prolonging war into the 21st century.In Brandenburg alone, the area surrounding Berlin that I visited and the most infested of Germany’s states, around 350 tons of unexploded munitions are destroyed annually, including grenades, mortars, artillery shells, mines and aerial bombs. Some are found in fields, others in residential areas near homes and schools built after the war....
Source: Fox News
Jul 18, 2011
He's hanging up the hat. After decades of popularizing Egyptology -- from exploring the pyramids to studying mummies to digging for buried treasure -- Egypt's top archaeologist has lost his post, fired Sunday under pressure from critics who attacked his credibility and accused him of being too close to the regime of ousted President Hosni Mubarak.
Source: CNN
Jul 18, 2011
Driving cross-country in small-bus-size hot dog is kind of a big deal.Between 1,000 and 1,500 college seniors apply for the 12 posts piloting Oscar Mayer’s six Wienermobiles. Hopefuls have been applying for the position since 1988.“The lucky dogs who cut the mustard are known as ‘hotdoggers,’ ” said Reese Brammel, a hotdogger who just graduated from the University of Kentucky with a degree in “Economnomnomics,” according to his bio on the hotdogger blog.Brammel, who plans to apply to law school after his year-long tenure with Oscar Mayer, will face much more forgiving acceptance rates at even the most selective schools.
Source: Life
Jul 18, 2011
No person alive has been more closely associated, for so long, with America's triumphs in space during the late '50s and early '60s than Ohio native John Glenn. Here, on the occasion of his 90th birthday (July 18), LIFE.com presents unpublished photos of the first American to orbit the earth; the decorated Marine Corps veteran (WWII and Korea); and the earnest, novice politician, taken by LIFE photographers during one of the most thrilling, inspiring, nerve-wracking eras in the nation's history: the Space Race....
Source: BBC News
Jul 18, 2011
Magnus Malan, the defence minister who led apartheid South Africa's resistance to black rule, has died aged 81.He led the white minority government's "total onslaught" strategy.This included bombing southern African countries which supported the overthrow of apartheid and declaring a state of emergency in South Africa to end pro-democracy protests.He became the first minister to go on trial for apartheid-era atrocities but was acquitted in 1996.Gen Malan served as defence minister for 11 years until 1991, when then-President FW de Klerk removed him under pressure from Nelson Mandela.Mr Mandela accused Gen Malan of setting up hit squads to kill ANC activists and destabilise South Africa ahead of democratic elections.These took place in 1994, with the ANC winning a landslide and Mr Mandela becoming South Africa's first black president....
Source: BBC News
Jul 18, 2011
A silver urn stood by the altar in the Benedictine Abbey of Pannonhalma in Hungary.It was surrounded by a wreath of flowers and leaves in red, white and green - the colours of the Hungarian flag.It contained the heart of Otto von Habsburg, Archduke of Austria, Crown Prince of Austro-Hungary, Royal Prince of Hungary and Bohemia, of Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia, Lodomeria and Illyria - to give him just a few of his pre-World War I titles.The Habsburg family once ruled over a mighty empire, which dominated central Europe for hundreds of years. But Otto, who was endowed with brains and charm, was born just a few years before the monarchy collapsed at the end of WWI....
Source: BBC News
Jul 18, 2011
The UN's highest court has ordered Thailand and Cambodia to withdraw troops from a disputed border region near an ancient temple complex.Cambodia had asked the International Court of Justice for a ruling after fighting broke out around the Preah Vihear temple earlier this year.The temple is in Cambodia. Both nations claim some of the surrounding area.The judgement is part of a long-running case in which the ICJ is attempting to clarify earlier border rulings.The BBC's Rachel Harvey in Bangkok says Monday's ruling is just the first round in what promises to be a lengthy and complex judicial process....
Source: BBC News
Jul 18, 2011
A Hungarian man, Sandor Kepiro, has been found not guilty of committing war crimes during a 1942 raid.A Budapest court acquitted the former police captain, now 97, of ordering the rounding up and execution of over 30 Jews and Serbs in Serbia in 1942.The prosecution had demanded at least a prison sentence for Mr Kepiro, but he insisted he had not killed.He previously topped the Simon Wiesenthal Center's list of most wanted Nazis.Many of the dozens of people attending the court session cheered and clapped after Judge Bela Varga read out the verdict of the three-judge tribunal, the AP news agency reported....
Source: BBC News
Jul 17, 2011
A village in Greece is at at the centre of an international legal battle in a fight for reparations for a World War ll Nazi massacre.Residents in Distomo won a court case in Italy, but the German government is worried it will set a precedent and has appealed to the International Court of Justice in the Hague.Malcolm Brabant in Greece spoke to Carsten Gerick from the Republic Attorneys' Association.
Source: National Post
Jul 17, 2011
Under a non-descript Old Montreal parking lot, archaeologists are combing for evidence of an early Canadian parliament burned down by rioters in 1849.
The building was burned down by an English-Canadian mob following the passage of the Rebellion Losses Bill, a controversial bill that gave government compensation to participants in an 1837 anti-government uprising. Mobs used a fire truck to smash their way through the building’s locked doors and began flipping over tables and slashing paintings. The fire erupted when a protester hurled rocks at a gas chandelier.
Canadian parliament buildings are remarkably flammable. In 1854, just months after their completion, fire consumed a set of replacement parliament buildings constructed in Quebec City. Most recently, in 1916, an unattended cigar burned down a set of 1866-vintage Parliament buildings on their current site....
Source: LA Times
Jul 17, 2011
Reporting from London —— Londoners could never decide whether they loved or hated the huge red Gothic Revival St. Pancras railway station and hotel. A fantastical pile better suited to Hollywood than North London, the hotel was closed to the public in 1935; much later the site was used as a location for "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" and "Batman Begins."A few years ago, the station was redeveloped as the terminus for Eurostar, the high-speed train that whisks passengers from London to Paris in just over two hours. Then this spring, after a meticulous $250-million, seven-year restoration of its high Victorian glories, the hotel reopened as the St. Pancras Renaissance, London's newest luxury lodging, operated by Marriott....
Source: WaPo
Jul 17, 2011
The USS Arthur W. Radford, a 563-foot naval destroyer, once rode the waves. Now it will break the tides.Private contractors are preparing to sink it into the Atlantic Ocean, the latest addition to a Navy recycling program that turns outworn battleships into marine life habitats.The Radford will go down 20 miles east of Fenwick Island, where officials are hoping it will prove a powerful lure for fish — and tourists — on the sandy sea floor.“It should dramatically increase the use of dive boats operating on all three states’ ports,” boosting tourism for Delaware, Maryland and New Jersey, said Jeff Tinsman, Delaware’s artificial reef coordinator....
Source: NYT
Jul 17, 2011
They were three fabric scraps trimmed from the flag later planted on the moon by Neil Armstrong during the Apollo 11 mission. They never made it to the moon, but rather were discarded in a trash bin and recovered by Thomas Moser, a NASA engineer. And now — mounted to a poster with a nice photograph, and signed by Mr. Armstrong himself — they have sold for $45,000.The price was less than Mr. Moser had hoped for. As the featured attraction in an auction of space memorabilia in Beverly Hills, Calif., on July 9, the flag pieces had been offered for a minimum of $100,000. When the highest bid — about $50,000 — fell far short of that, Mr. Moser and the auction house changed plans and instead offered the scraps to the highest bidder in a private sale....
Source: BBC
Jul 15, 2011
The world will next month remember the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 atrocities in New York.
But 100 years ago another disaster rocked the city.
A new musical, From the Fire, at the Zoo Roxy as part of the Edinburgh Fringe, remembers the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911.
The production dramatises the fire and also looks at the earlier uprising which saw 20,000 young women in New York stage a significant strike for the first time.
It celebrates the part the women played in labour reform but also draws parallels with the perilous conditions in which many people still work today....
Source: Seattle Times
Jul 15, 2011
Archaeologists are toiling side by side with construction workers on the Alaskan Way Viaduct and Highway 520 projects.They're collecting broken bottles, peach pits and peanut shells. But instead of litter sticks and garbage bags, they are wielding trowels and shovels, and paying $342,000 for a space to preserve the junk.Because one man's trash is another man's ... really, really old trash."What archaeology is, is people's garbage," Washington State Department of Transportation cultural-resources specialist Kevin Bartoy said. "But what that garbage is to archeologists is little bits of data."Though they won't find "the gold idol," archeologists are piecing together a picture of 19th- and 20th-century Seattle society that is not well recorded, Bartoy said....
Source: WaPo
Jul 15, 2011
LONDON — Queen Elizabeth II has unveiled a monument to hundreds of mathematicians and cryptographers who worked in secret during World War II to crack Nazi Germany’s communications codes.The monarch and her husband visited Bletchley Park northwest of London, former home of the top-secret Code and Cypher School, whose staff cracked Adolf Hitler’s supposedly unbreakable codes....
Source: IOL News
Jul 15, 2011
Five Saddam-era officials, including two of the late dictator's half-brothers, will be executed within a month after being handed over to Iraqi authorities by the US military, an official said on Friday.The group, transferred to Iraqi custody on Thursday morning, were among 206 high-value detainees still being held by American forces ahead of a US military pullout due by the end of the year.“We received the final 206 Iraqi prisoners being held by US forces, including five senior officials from the former regime,” said justice ministry spokesman Haidar al-Saadi. “They (the five officials) will be executed within one month.“They include Watban Ibrahim Hassan and Sabawi Ibrahim al-Tikriti,” two half-brothers of former dictator Saddam Hussein....
Source: CNN.com
Jul 15, 2011
Los Angeles (CNN) -- Democratic California Gov. Jerry Brown said Thursday he had signed a bill that will require public schools in the state to teach students about the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.The bill, believed to be the first of its kind in the nation, will also require teachers to provide instruction on the role of people with disabilities."History should be honest," Brown said in a statement."This bill revises existing laws that prohibit discrimination in education and ensures that the important contributions of Americans from all backgrounds and walks of life are included in our history books. It represents an important step forward for our state, and I thank Senator Leno for his hard work on this historic legislation."
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Jul 15, 2011
Osama bin Laden was planning a terrorist outrage to mark the 10th anniversary of 9/11 with Barack Obama number one on his hit list.The former leader of Al Qaeda wanted to shoot down the U.S. President’s jet Air Force One during a trip abroad.He also wanted to murder General David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and was still obsessed with using planes to carry out terror attacks.The terror chief had already begun putting a team of militants together for the attack, according to communications seized by Navy Seals from his Pakistani lair.
