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: BBC News
Jun 4, 2011
An original version of 1951 novel From Here to Eternity is to be reissued digitally, with previously censored references to homosexuality restored.
The heirs of author James Jones have struck a deal with ebook firm Open Road to put out a new edition that includes two scenes with gay content.
Jones's novel, about US soldiers serving in Hawaii in the months prior to Pearl Harbor, was filmed in 1953.
The uncensored version will be made available online from 10
Source: LA Times
Jun 3, 2011
Reporting from Chongqing, China—Although her musical tastes run to Mariah Carey and Norah Jones, Vicy Zhang didn't hesitate when she received an instant message inviting her to sing paeans to Mao Tse-tung at a celebration of the 90th anniversar
Source: EFE
Jun 3, 2011
A team of archaeologists from the University of Florida have discovered in St.
Source: NYT
Jun 3, 2011
FRANKFURT — In 1919, a soldier in Munich discovered that he could galvanize small groups of fellow trench warfare veterans with virulently anti-Semitic oratory. A superior officer, impressed with the soldier’s oral skills, asked him to commit his ideas to paper.
Source: Fairfax Times
Jun 3, 2011
The fate of a McLean property with historical ties to the War of 1812 and the Civil War will be decided by a task force that has been assembled by Dranesville Supervisor John Foust (D) and Fairfax County Park Authority Board member Kevin Fay.The formation of the task force was announced last week.The property, which is listed on the National Register of Historical Places and on the Virginia Landmarks Register, is known as historic Salona, the 19th-century estate where President James Madison is thought to have fled when British forces set fire to the White House in 1814.
Source: BBC News
Jun 3, 2011
Jack Kevorkian, the man known as "Dr Death", for helping the terminally ill end their lives, has died in the US aged of 83, his lawyer has said.Mayer Morganroth told the Associated Press news agency Kevorkian died on Friday at Michigan's Beaumont Hospital.Kevorkian died after a blood clot from his leg broke free and lodged in his heart, the Detroit Free Press reported.He was believed to have assisted in 130 suicides and was released from prison in 2007, after serving eight years....
Source: Huffington Post
Jun 3, 2011
Smurf Village or Hitler's Berlin? Same thing, posits one new book.French sociologist and author Antoine Buéno asserts in "Le Petit Livre Bleu," or, "The Little Blue Book," that the seemingly friendly little blue creatures living a mostly idyllic existence are actually packed with racial propaganda and are, "the embodiment of a totalitarian utopia, steeped in Stalinism and Nazism".
Source: CNN
Jun 3, 2011
When the last emperor of China fled Beijing's Forbidden City in 1924, the doors closed on one of its greatest treasures: the Qianlong Garden.
A secluded compound of pavilions and gardens built in the 1770s for the retirement of the Qianlong Emperor, it housed some of the most extravagant interiors found anywhere in the imperial palace complex.
As other areas were opened up to tourists, the garden remained mothballed for almost 100 years, its exquisite design and decorative treasures staying relatively unaltered since the 18th century.
Now some of those treasures are
Source: BBC
Jun 3, 2011
Key historical documents from India, including an illustrated history of Kashmir, have been sold in the UK.
The Kashmir manuscript contains nine paintings, including that of the famous Maharajah Ranjit Singh, and sold for £11,700 ($19,000) at auction.
Other items included original paintings, miniatures on ivory, historical documents and statues.
A portrait of Maharajah Rajinder Singh of Patalia - an honorary general in the British army - was also for sale....
Source: BBC
Jun 3, 2011
A bottle of nearly 200-year-old champagne has been sold for 30,000 euros ($43,900; £26,700) at an auction in Finland - in what is believed to be a new world record.
The Veuve Clicquot bubbly was bought by an anonymous bidder from Singapore, auctioneers in Mariehamn said.
The same buyer paid 24,000 euros for another bottle of champagne, which was made by the now defunct Juglar house.
They were found in a shipwreck at the bottom of the Baltic Sea last year.
In all, more than 140 bottles were discovered by divers, and the
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 3, 2011
The turning point came as Ratko Mladic put aside his evident physical frailty to taunt victims of the Bosnian war in the public gallery and to regain the pugnacity and arrogance of the notorious "butcher of Srebrenica".
Source: LA Times
Jun 3, 2011
Elmer G. "Geronimo" Pratt, a former Los Angeles Black Panther Party leader whose 1972 murder conviction was overturned after he spent 27 years in prison for a crime he said he did not commit, has died. He was 63. Pratt, whose case became for many a symbol of racial injustices during the turbulent 1960s, died Thursday at his home in a small village in Tanzania, said his sister Virginia. The cause was not given.
Source: WaPo
Jun 2, 2011
The Republican Party once had a home for the thinking of Tom Coburn, Mike Crapo and Saxby Chambliss. But that party is long gone.The three U.S. senators banded together a few months ago in support of higher tax revenue as a means of balancing the federal budget. Even with drastic spending cuts, they concluded, Washington could not vanquish its soaring $14.3 trillion debt without additional income.
Source: NYT
Jun 2, 2011
At a recent dedication ceremony for a Peoples Temple memorial in Oakland, Kathy Barbour, a survivor of the 1978 massacre, knelt on the lawn of Evergreen Cemetery to look at photos of the victims of Jonestown.As nearly 200 people milled around her, Ms. Barbour, a quiet woman with white hair, peered nervously toward the path leading to the cemetery gates. “I was expecting the gauntlet,” she said.
Source: BBC News
Jun 2, 2011
Pictures of Marilyn Monroe which the public have never before are on show at the Washington Square Hotel in New York.The star, who would have just turned 85 years old, was photographed by Murray Garrett in the late 1940s....
Source: NYT
Jun 1, 2011
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — NASA, it seems, is having trouble letting go.
Source: The Nation
Jun 1, 2011
Drawing from a trove of 1,918 Haiti-related diplomatic cables obtained by the transparency-advocacy group WikiLeaks, The Nation is collaborating with the Haitian weekly newspaper Haïti Liberté on a series of groundbreaking articles about US and UN policy toward the Caribbean nation.
Source: ENI News
Jun 1, 2011
(ENInews). In the wake of the destruction and surrender of the Japanese empire in August 1945, a "spiritual vacuum" emerged that the country's de-facto ruler, General Douglas MacArthur, sought to fill with religious and quasi-religious beliefs still new to Japan, from Christianity to Freemasonry.
Source: NYT
Jun 1, 2011
“Who the hell is Diane Nash?”That was Attorney General Robert Kennedy, barking a disparaging greeting over the phone to one of his deputies, John Seigenthaler.
Source: NYT
Jun 1, 2011
WASHINGTON — Sixty-six years after she survived the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, Renee Firestone is still trying to find out what became of an insurance policy that she suspects her father, who died in the Holocaust, took out from an Italian insurer before the war.
