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: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 18, 2011
Sir John Chilcot said he was ‘disappointed’ after being blocked from disclosing the contents of secret talks between Tony Blair and United States President George W Bush.
Correspondence between the two leaders in the run-up to the Iraq war will remain classified, along with notes of a meeting at which the then-prime minister is said to have “signed in blood” an agreement to send British troops to topple Saddam Hussein.
In a statement at the start of the resumed hearin
Source: Fox News
Jan 18, 2011
President Obama has started to come around to the Bush administration's way of thinking when it comes to fighting terrorism, former Vice President Dick Cheney said in an interview aired Tuesday.
Cheney, who two years ago accused Obama of endangering America by dismantling controversial counterterror policies from the Bush administration, said he's since observed Obama become "more sympathetic to the kinds of things we did." In the interview with NBC News, Cheney repeatedl
Source: AP
Jan 18, 2011
The composer of a song that inspired Romanians in their struggle against vestiges of the communist regime has died. He was 46.
A friend, Teodor Maries, told private Pro-Tv he found Cristian Paturca dead in his apartment Tuesday. Paturca was suffering from tuberculosis and long-term liver problems.
Paturca became one of Romania's most prominent democracy activists when he wrote "Imnul Golanilor" or "The Hooligans' Hymn" in 1990 for anti-government pr
Source: AP
Jan 18, 2011
Just months before the official opening of one of Christianity's holiest sites to visitors, the area where John the Baptist is said to have baptized Jesus remains surrounded by thousands of land mines.
Israel says the sites visited by pilgrims and tourists in an area known as Qasr el-Yahud will be safe, but advocacy groups warn that crowds could be in danger.
Worshippers from around the world dipped themselves in the muddy waters, facing fellow believers on the other si
Source: CNN
Jan 18, 2011
Rick Downes' mission has brought him here, to the National Archives in suburban Washington, D.C. His goal: to find any records, information -- anything at all -- that would tell him what happened to his father.
Lt. Harold Downes was a navigator on a B-26 bomber when his plane went down over North Korea on January 13, 1952. Some of the crew ejected and were captured by the North Koreans. Downes was never seen again. He remains to this day one of the more than 8,000 U.S. servicemember
Source: Yahoo News
Jan 18, 2011
BUCHAREST, Romania – Tears run down Elena Bocanu's careworn cheeks as she lights a candle and places it on the grave, next to chrysanthemums left by another admirer.
The object of her devotion is Nicolae Ceausescu, the communist dictator most Romanians associate with hunger, state paranoia, AIDS-ridden orphanages, and chronic power outages. Today, as the new EU member grapples with economic havoc and widening gaps between rich and poor, more people remember not the dysfunctional fin
Source: Times of India
Jan 18, 2011
An art form of French resistance at the height of Nazi occupation has come to the fore after it emerged that Adolf Hitler was portrayed as blood-thirsty King Herod killing a Jew in a church's stained glass window created during World War II.
The extraordinary work of art, depicting a black fringed Hitler as Herod, the infamous biblical king renowned for slaughtering children, remained unnoticed for 70 years at St Jacques Church in Montgeron, south of Paris, Britian's Daily Mail repo
Source: AP
Jan 18, 2011
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Haitian police led ex-dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier out of his hotel and took him to court Tuesday without saying whether he was being charged with crimes committed under his brutal regime. His longtime companion denied that he had been arrested.
A contingent of police led the former dictator known as "Baby Doc" through the hotel and to a waiting SUV. He was not wearing handcuffs.
Duvalier, 59, was calm and did not say anything, ig
Source: The Local (Germany)
Jan 18, 2011
Klaus Barbie, the Nazi war criminal known as the ‘butcher of Lyon’ for his hideous treatment of Jewish prisoners, was paid by the German intelligence services for political information during the 1960s, according to Der Spiegel.
Barbie fled to Bolivia after the war, in which he had served as the head of the SS in Lyon, and lived there under the name Klaus Altmann from 1951. It was there that he was recruited by the BND intelligence service, the magazine reported on Saturday.
Source: BBC News
Jan 18, 2011
A former Rwandan mayor has gone on trial accused of ordering three Tutsi massacres during the country's 1994 genocide, in the first such case prosecuted in Frankfurt, Germany.
Onesphore Rwabukombe, a 54-year-old ethnic Hutu who has lived in Germany for several years, was arrested by German police last summer.
He is charged with genocide, murder, and incitement to genocide and murder.
He could face life in prison if convicted.
"Between Apri
Source: CNN
Jan 18, 2011
Former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier's return to Haiti has surprised many and pushed at least one person to seek criminal charges against the former ruler.
Duvalier returned to his homeland Sunday after some 25 years in exile, injecting a further dose of uncertainty into an already turbulent political situation.
Michele Montas, a Haitian journalist and a former spokeswoman for the U.N. Secretary-General, said Monday night that she plans to f
Source: CNN
Jan 18, 2011
After more than 40 years in television, Regis Philbin is retiring from the small screen.
Philbin, 77, made the announcement Tuesday at the start of the long-running "Live with Regis & Kelly."
"This will be my last year on this show ... but there is a time, there is a time that everything needs to come to an end for certain people on camera, especially certain old people," Philbin said.
The show, now in its 22nd year in national syndi
Source: AP
Jan 17, 2011
COLUMBIA, S.C. —
Speakers at an annual rally honoring Martin Luther King Jr. said Monday the Confederate battle flag flying above their heads on Statehouse grounds is a symbol of the injustice that still exists 43 years after the civil rights leader was slain.
They renewed a call to legislators to move the flag, and concentrate on ideas that will put people to work, keep them healthy and provide children of all backgrounds a good education.
"Take down that f
Source: BBC News
Jan 17, 2011
Medieval weather records, including details from monks' diaries are helping experts work out how and why climates have changed over the past 500 years.
Edinburgh University scientists found the historic data, such as harvest records, matched modern computer simulations of climate patterns.
Researchers have assembled climate models to account for past events.
They expect the models to work well for forecasting future climate conditions, especially predicting
Source: Medievalists.net
Jan 17, 2011
A community archaeology project entirely run by volunteers has made a remarkable discovery in a remote Norfolk priory that could help to shed light upon one of British architectures greatest mysteries. The Norfolk Medieval Graffiti Survey (NMGS) was established in 2010 to search for medieval graffiti inscriptions in Norfolk churches. To date they have surveyed over fifty of the county’s 650 medieval churches and already made a number of groundbreaking discoveries. However, the most recent find,
Source: Guardian (UK)
Jan 17, 2011
Police arrest tomb raider loading part of 2.5 metre statue into lorry near Lake Nemi, south of Rome, where Caligula had a villa.
The lost tomb of Caligula has been found, according to Italian police, after the arrest of a man trying to smuggle abroad a statue of the notorious Roman emperor recovered from the site.
After reportedly sleeping with his sisters, killing for pleasure and seeking to appoint his horse a consul during his rule from AD37 to 41, Caligula was descr
Source: The News (Pakistan)
Jan 17, 2011
As many as 30 ‘rock shelters,’ some dating back to the Stone Age, in the capital and its surroundings are on the verge of destruction due to the negligence of the relevant authorities.
According to information, there were around 30 ‘rock shelters’ in the city, which have either been partially destroyed due to construction work or facing danger of being destroyed.
A ‘rock shelter’ (also known as rock house, crepuscular cave or ‘abri’) is a shallow cave-like opening at th
Source: Guardian (UK)
Jan 17, 2011
Visitors are causing so much damage to the tomb of Tutankhamun that Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities wants to close it and open a replica instead.
What excites us about the past is being there: feeling the heat as we climb a Mexican pyramid; adjusting our eyes to the light in the Pantheon; watching the paint peel off the walls of Tutankhamun's tomb. Peeling paint? If, in the brief, crushed tour of the Egyptian boy-king's rooms at Luxor we don't actually see it happen, we can c
Source: Moving Image Archive News
Jan 17, 2011
Thanks to a small band of advocates, the fields of medical and public-health history have been paying increasing attention to the visual – to the vast assortment of still and moving images that illustrate and in many cases constitute those histories. In a new book, Imagining Illness: Public Health and Visual Culture (University of Minnesota Press), editor David Serlin gathers contributions about many compelling areas of the latest research on the visual history of illness.
Among man
Source: NYT
Jan 17, 2011
As they did in other corners of the city and the country, shadows of Arizona hovered gloomily on Monday over Brooklyn’s annual tribute to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
How could they not? Dr. King, born 82 Januarys ago, was murdered with a firearm 39 years later. Now, out West, yet more insanity with a gun has claimed fresh victims, including a badly wounded congresswoman. The leap from Memphis, 1968, to Tucson, 2011, was predictable and easy for a series of elected officials
