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: Canadian Press
Oct 27, 2010
MUNICH — German judges heard a deceased Sobibor guard's statements made to Soviet authorities that he remembers John Demjanjuk from the Nazi death camp Wednesday despite defence objections.
The Demjanjuk, 90, a retired Ohio autoworker, is standing trial on 28,060 counts of accessory to murder, for allegedly having been a guard at the camp in occupied Poland. He denies ever having been a guard anywhere.
In the summarized statements from a 1949 KGB interrogation, Ignat Da
Source: Fox News
Oct 27, 2010
RALEIGH, N.C. -- A North Carolina legislator is apologizing after a campaign flier meant to tout his support for U.S. troops featured a photo of World War II re-enactors dressed as German soldiers.
The political consulting firm that produced the campaign piece for Democratic state Rep. Tim Spear said Wednesday it is solely responsible for the mistake....
Source: AP
Oct 27, 2010
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Two Civil War-era dolls thought to have been used to smuggle medicine past Union blockades have received a modern X-ray exam....
The conclusion: yes....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 27, 2010
The human family tree may not have taken root in Africa after all, claim scientists, after finding that its ancestors may have travelled from Asia.
While it is widely accepted that man evolved in Africa, in fact its immediate predecessors may have colonised the continent after developing elsewhere, the study says.
The claims are made after a team unearthed the fossils of anthropoids – the primate group that includes humans, apes and monkeys – in Libya's Dur At-Talah...
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 27, 2010
Germany has signalled its support for the proposed Bomber Command Memorial by donating a £25,000 yew tree to be planted at the site in central London.
The tree, which will take pride of place in a garden of remembrance next to the monument in Green Park, will be a symbol of reconciliation as well as recognising the sacrifice made by the 55,573 airmen who died to help free Europe, including Germany, from Nazi tyranny.
It was originally planted in Potsdam, near Berlin, t
Source: AP
Oct 27, 2010
LONDON (AP) — One of the world's most famous James Bond cars — the specially equipped silver Aston Martin first driven by Sean Connery in "Goldfinger" — was auctioned off Wednesday in London for 2.6 million pounds ($4.1 million.)
The unique car, which boasts an ejector seat, machine guns, rotating license plates and other spy gear, was initially expected to go for more than 3.5 million pounds ($5.5 million)....
Source: Reuters
Oct 27, 2010
Fishermen have found a dozen bombs believed to be from World War Two buried on the Galapagos Islands, a local government official said Tuesday.
The bombs were found on Bartolome Island, one of the Galapagos group located about 600 miles off South America's northwestern coast.
The islands are a province of Ecuador, which let the United States set up a military base on one, Baltra Island, during World War Two due to its strategic location southwest of the Panama Canal.
Source: BBC News
Oct 27, 2010
The former leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, has warned Nato that victory in Afghanistan is "impossible".
Mr Gorbachev said that the US had no alternative but to withdraw its forces if it wanted to avoid another Vietnam.
As Soviet leader, he pulled his troops out of Afghanistan more than 20 years ago after a 10-year war.
UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said troops would not be withdrawn from the country until their "very diffi
Source: BBC News
Oct 27, 2010
Argentina's former President, Nestor Kirchner, has died after suffering a sudden heart attack, doctors say.
Mr Kirchner, 60, who had been operated on in September for heart problems, died in the southern Argentine city of El Calafate, local media reported.
His wife, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, is the current president of the country.
Mr Kirchner served as president from 2003 to 2007, and was being tipped to stand for election again in 2011.
Source: NYT
Oct 27, 2010
MOSCOW — Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who once supported Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin, is voicing growing frustration with Mr. Putin’s leadership, saying that he had undermined Russia’s fledgling democracy by crippling the opposition forces.
“He thinks that democracy stands in his way,” Mr. Gorbachev said.
“I am afraid that they have been saddled with this idea that this unmanageable country needs authoritarianism,” Mr. Gorbachev said, referring to Mr. Putin and his close
Source: NYT
Oct 27, 2010
WASHINGTON — The most noted trend leading up to next week’s elections, of course, has been the emergence of a new generation of conservative leaders — so-called Tea Party candidates who have overturned the old political order in states like Kentucky and Nevada and who vow to confront the aging establishments of both parties in Washington.
And yet, a less noticed undercurrent is pulling politics in the opposite direction, too. The latest polling suggests we may see the election of se
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Oct 26, 2010
A Pennsylvania English professor whose anti-Israel rhetoric and denial of the Holocaust as a historic certainty have ignited controversy is citing academic freedom as his defense.
Kaukab Siddique, associate professor of English and journalism at Lincoln University of Pennsylvania, appeared last month at a pro-Palestinian rally in Washington, where he called the state of Israel illegitimate. “I say to the Muslims, ‘Dear brothers and sisters, unite and rise up against this hydra-heade
Source: AP
Oct 26, 2010
An Armenian archaeologist says that scientists have discovered a skirt that could be 5,900-year-old.
Pavel Avetisian, the head of the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography in Yerevan, said a fragment of skirt made of reed was found during recent digging in the Areni-1 cave in southeastern Armenia. Avetisian told Tuesday's news conference in the Armenian capital that the find could be one of the world's oldest piece of reed clothing.
Earlier excavation in the same lo
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 26, 2010
The leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland has backed calls for an independent inquiry into the conviction of the Lockerbie bomber.
Cardinal Keith O'Brien said he would add his name to an online petition calling for a review of the 2001 jailing of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103.
The appeal is being led by pressure group Justice For Megrahi (JFM), whose members include Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was killed in the terror
Source: AP
Oct 26, 2010
An audit prompted in part by the loss of the Wright Brothers' original patent and maps for atomic bomb missions in Japan finds some of the nation's prized historical documents are in danger of being lost for good.
Nearly 80 percent of U.S. government agencies are at risk of illegally destroying public records and the National Archives is backlogged with hefty volumes of records needing preservation care, the audit by the Government Accountability Office found.
The repor
Source: AP
Oct 26, 2010
PROVIDENCE, R.I. – This state's official name — The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations — is more than just a mouthful. To many, it evokes stinging reminders of Rhode Island's prime role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Voters next Tuesday will decide whether to change the name by dropping the words "and Providence Plantations." The issue has been debated for years, but lawmakers last year authorized a ballot question for the first time following an impassio
Source: NYT
Oct 26, 2010
Maya Angelou’s paper trail includes a rambling, typewritten letter from James Baldwin, dated Nov. 20, 1970, addressed to “Dear, dear Sister” discussing everything from his new book to his feelings about death.
And one from Malcolm X, written on Jan. 15, 1965, assuring her, “You can communicate because you have plenty of (soul) and you always keep your feet firmly rooted on the ground.”...
All of these things and more — a total of 343 boxes containing her personal papers
Source: AP
Oct 26, 2010
Authorities in Bosnia and Serbia said Tuesday they had recovered the skeletal remains of at least 97 people from the banks of a border lake that was partially drained this summer for maintenance.
Officials from the Bosnian and Serbian Commissions for Missing Persons said 372 bone fragments were found on the Bosnian bank of Perucac lake and 79 on the Serbian side.
By counting the right femurs recovered, experts determined the bones belonged to at least 97 people — victim
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 26, 2010
A court on Tuesday ordered a French mayor to take down a portrait of Philippe Petain, leader of France's wartime Vichy regime, from the wall of a town hall.
The portrait of Petain, branded an anti-semitic Nazi collaborator, hung in a municipal marriage chamber in Gonneville-sur-Mer, near the Normandy landing beaches used in World War II by Allied forces.
The court overruled a decision by Bernard Hoye, the town's independent mayor, to keep the portrait which he said had
Source: Japan Today
Oct 26, 2010
Two swords found under the Great Buddha of Todaiji temple in the Meiji era have been identified as sacred swords that had been missing for some 1,250 years since around 760 after Empress Komyo, the wife of Emperor Shomu who built the Buddha, dedicated them along with other items to the temple, the temple said Monday.
The swords, decorated with gold, silver and lacquer, appear on the top of about 100 swords in the weapon list of the Kokka Chimpo Cho (the book of national treasures to
