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: Time
May 18, 2011
Why does people's skepticism go out the window when it comes to military matters -- especially any that are secret? Granted, the recent dispatch of Osama bin Laden does make the U.S. military look all-but-omnipotent. But it's important to note that grand success was striking...because it was so rare.
Source: BBC News
May 18, 2011
Museum officials at the former Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland have restored the metal entrance sign damaged in a theft 17 months ago.The "Arbeit macht frei" (work sets you free) sign was stolen by a gang of Polish thieves acting at the behest of a Swedish far-right-winger.Technicians unveiled the restored sign in the laboratory of the camp museum.More than one million people, mostly Jews from across Europe, were murdered by the Nazis at the camp.
Source: Fredericksburg.com
May 17, 2011
A federal agency has ordered a Culpeper County man to stop building a pond on his property that has dammed a creek and affected part of the Brandy Station battlefield.The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, via a letter sent Friday, instructed Tony Troilo to "cease and desist" bulldozing along Flat Run, a perennial tributary of Mountain Run, which feeds the Rappahannock River.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 17, 2011
The national anthem was also played as the the Queen and President Mary McAleese stood side by side at the site where Ireland commemorates the men and women who died resisting British rule.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 17, 2011
Stefan De Clerck, a Flemish Christian Democrat, has polarised Belgium, fuelling the country's one year political crisis, by supporting a blanket amnesty for the 56,000 Belgians who were convicted of collaborating with the Nazis after the war."Perhaps we should be willing to forget, because it is the past. At some point one has to be adult and be willing to talk about. perhaps to forget, because this is the past," he said at the weekend.
Source: Slate
May 17, 2011
There are so many obscure specializations, subspecializations and subcortical subspecializations within the brain sciences that even the sharpest brain has scarcely enough brainpower to learn everything there is to know about itself. But if there's one fact that the teacup-Yorkie-sized prune in your head might want to ponder, it's that it shares a peculiar past with something considerably lower in your anatomy—your genitalia.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
May 17, 2011
The Allies would have crushed Nazi Germany 'within three years' if the RAF had not rejected plans by a British inventor to build the world's first jet-powered fighter planes, according to new research.Inventor Sir Frank Whittle was told his designs for a 500mph jet were 'totally unrealistic' and RAF chiefs refused to invest a penny in their development.It meant the RAF engineer was forced to circulate his patent internationally in the hope of finding a private investor.
Source: History.com
May 17, 2011
We’ve all heard of the prediction—loosely based on the Mayan calendar—that the world is slated to end on December 21, 2012. Now, members of a fringe religious group are preparing for an even earlier Armageddon, alerting their friends and neighbors that, according to the Bible, Judgment Day is just four days away. On May 21, 2011, they say, true believers will ascend to heaven while others will face destruction. While it is unclear how many people subscribe to this theory, it likely originated with Family Radio, a Christian network founded by Harold Camping.
Source: NYT
May 17, 2011
A five-year study commissioned by the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops to provide a definitive answer to what caused the church’s sexual abuse crisis has concluded that neither the all-male celibate priesthood nor homosexuality were to blame.Instead, the report says, the abuse occurred because priests who were poorly prepared and monitored, and were under stress, landed amid the social and sexual turmoil of the 1960s and ’70s.
Source: WaPo
May 17, 2011
LONDON — Wearing a green hat and coat, Queen Elizabeth II on Tuesday became the first British monarch in a century to set foot on Irish soil, during a trip designed to celebrate improved Anglo-Irish relations.
Source: BBC News
May 17, 2011
Former Rwandan army chief Augustin Bizimungu has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for his role in the 1994 genocide.The UN war crimes tribunal for Rwanda also convicted ex-paramilitary police chief Augustin Ndindiliyimana but released him for time already served.Two other senior generals were each sentenced to 20 years in prison.Some 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in the 100-day genocide.
Source: BBC News
May 17, 2011
A court in northern Argentina has sentenced eight ex-army officers to life in jail for killing unarmed activists during military rule.Twenty-two people, mostly members of the Montoneros rebel group, were tortured and killed on 13 December 1976 after surrendering to the army.The massacre is named after the town of Margarita Belen where it happened.The killings are among the most prominent cases of abuse from the 1976-1983 Dirty War era.
Source: Fredericksburg.com
May 16, 2011
Orange County's Payne's Farm battlefield is open for business.The scene of the heaviest casualties during the Union army's 1863 Mine Run campaign, the 685-acre battlefield is one of the most pristine on the East Coast--and least-known.
Source: Jerusalem Post
May 16, 2011
NEW YORK – The consul-general of Poland in New York sent a letter to media organizations on Friday, in the wake of John
Source: Truthdig
May 16, 2011
From May through November 1961, more than 400 black and white Americans risked their lives by simply traveling together on buses and trains as they sojourned through the Deep South.
Source: Oakland Tribune (CA)
May 16, 2011
A relic of America's naval history has been stolen.Somehow, a team of thieves broke and later made off with a giant metal ring weighing more than a ton from a public park Friday night, officials believe.The giant brass ring was once used to port torpedoes on the USS Maine, a battleship that sank in Havana harbor in 1898, helping draw the United States into the Spanish-American War.
Source: Prague Monitor
May 16, 2011
Two powerful cranes lifted a fifty-tonne military bunker from the Sverma coal mine Monday and a lorry will drive it to the Military Technical Museum in Lesany, central Bohemia, Oldrich Obermajer, from the Regional Military Transport Office, has told CTK.No fortification from the interwar Czechoslovakia has been ever before moved to such a distance. It is also the heaviest transported military bunker, Obermajer said.The weight of the bunker posed the biggest problem, he added.
Source: BBC
May 16, 2011
Chinese officials have denied the Beijing palace that was once home to China's emperors is being used as a club for the rich.
Chinese media reports claim wealthy people can buy access to a restored section of the Forbidden City to entertain family and friends.
The reports have led to widespread criticism on the internet.
This is more bad publicity for the palace, following a break-in last week in which valuable items were stolen.
Media reports suggest wealthy people can buy membership to the exclusive club for $150,000
Source: CNN
May 16, 2011
Judge me by what I can do for America now, rather than only by my mistakes in the past, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said Sunday.
The former House speaker, who announced his candidacy last week, told NBC's "Meet the Press" that he has made mistakes in life, including an adulterous affair that led to one of his two divorces.
Now the American people must decide whether he's the right person to lead the country at what Gingrich called a crucial moment in its history.
Gingrich, who turns 68 in
Source: The Express (UK)
May 16, 2011
FORMER SS officer Rochus Misch, the last surviving member of Hitler's inner circle is terminally ill. Misch, the Fuhrer's bodyguard gives his final interview... IN A Berlin suburb, just a few miles from Hitler’s Führer bunker is a small, white detached house with a grey metal gate and crumbling plaster.
