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: MSNBC
Sep 24, 2010
The Texas State Board of Education on Friday narrowly approved a resolution calling on publishers to correct a “pro-Islamic/anti-Christian bias” in history textbooks.
The 7-6 vote followed a spirited debate on the nonbinding resolution proposed by the board’s conservative majority aiming to correct what Dave Welch, head of the Texas Pastor Council, testified amounted to “whitewashing” of some negative aspects of Islam in the texts.
“We’re asking you to look at this ver
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Sep 24, 2010
Adolf Hitler and his mistress Eva Braun's silver cutlery is go up for auction later this month.
The bespoke pieces of silverware were taken by his housekeepers at the lavish mountain retreat 'Eagle's Nest' before Allied forces arrived in 1945.
But now the cutlery used by the leader of the Nazi party and Braun has been rediscovered and is expected to be auctioned off for thousands.
Willi and Gretl Mitlstrasser gathered up as many items as possible from the residen
Source: bbc News
Sep 24, 2010
One of Northern Ireland's smallest World War II heroes is to be honoured on Friday.
Paddy, a messenger pigeon who served with the RAF during the Normandy operations in June 1944, will be remembered in his home town of Larne.
PDSA, Britain's biggest veterinary charity, awarded Paddy the Dickin Medal, dubbed the animals' "Victoria Cross", 65 years ago this month.
He received it for being the first pigeon to reach England with a coded message from th
Source: BBC News
Sep 24, 2010
A controversial new movie telling the story behind an anti-Semitic film made in 1940 has been released in Germany.
Jud Suss - A Film without Conscience looks at why the earlier film, also called Jud Suss, was a huge success under the Nazi regime.
It focuses on the leading actor's decision to join the cast, suggesting he was forced into it by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.
The original movie was banned in 1945.
It is still kept under lock
Source: bbc news
Sep 24, 2010
A fossilised flower found in Patagonia by an Argentinean team is shedding light on the origins of sunflowers.
The large flower is highly unusual because most plant fossils are just pollen grains.
The fossil is from the Asteraceae family, the relatives of daisies, sunflowers, and dandelions.
Until now, scientists have relied on genetic evidence to work out where this plant family originated.
Finding this very well-preserved flower confirms that
Source: BBC News
Sep 24, 2010
Former Liberian warlord Prince Johnson has told the BBC there is no reason he cannot stand in the country's presidential elections next year.
Mr Johnson, now an elected senator, said military leaders been elected in other countries.
His party was given the green light to compete in the polls earlier this week.
He is notorious for a 1990 video, in which he was seen drinking beer as his men cut off the ears of ex-President Samuel Doe, before killing him.
Source: BBC News
Sep 24, 2010
A small but revealing group of letters written by the playwright Oscar Wilde have been sold at auction in Derby.
The five letters, sold as separate lots, reached a total of £33,900 and were all bought by one bidder.
Auctioneers, Bamfords of Derby, said the letters appear to reveal Wilde propositioning a magazine editor at a time when homosexuality was illegal.
They were written to Alsager Vian, during the Society Magazine era, and were sold off by his desce
Source: BBC News
Sep 24, 2010
Former Soviet Vice-President Gennady Yanayev, who led an abortive coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991, has died in a Moscow hospital aged 73.
Russia's Communist Party said he died on Friday after a lengthy illness.
Mr Yanayev famously appeared at a news conference with shaking hands to announce he was replacing Mr Gorbachev.
The 12-member State Emergency Committee held power for only three days but the coup was widely seen to have hastened the fall of th
Source: BBC News
Sep 24, 2010
US singer Eddie Fisher, who sold millions of records in the 50s and was married to Elizabeth Taylor and Debbie Reynolds, has died at the age of 82.
Fisher was a teen idol in the 1950s with dozens of Top 40 hits and his own TV show.
His marriage to Debbie Reynolds produced two children, including Carrie Fisher, who starred as Princess Leia in the original Star Wars trilogy.
Fisher was married five times in all, including also to Connie Stevens.
Source: Newsweek
Sep 24, 2010
Sweden has revealed the future direction of Europe, and not for the first time. For decades, Sweden led the way in defining the mixed model of free trade and social solidarity that became the European ideal. Not anymore. In the election this month Swedish voters joined their less successful EU neighbors in turning their backs on traditional politics, in which the pendulum swung between parties advocating more free trade and parties on the center left advocating more solidarity—but no further. No
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
Sep 23, 2010
Russia has handed to Poland 20 volumes of documents on the World War II Katyn massacre of Polish officers in an official ceremony in Moscow, Russian news agencies said.
Saak Karapetyan, the head of the international legal cooperation at the Russian State Prosecutor's office, handed the volumes to Piotr Marciniak, a minister counsellor at the Polish Embassy in Moscow, on Thursday.
The materials included documents on Polish soldiers sent to prison camps, transcripts of in
Source: Digital Journal
Sep 23, 2010
Golancz - Archaeologists in northern Poland have uncovered a mass grave that they believe dates back to the 17th century and a battle to save Golancz Castle.
On the 3rd of May 1656 the Swedish army attacked Golancz Castle. In an attempt to defend the castle Polish gentry, clergy and peasants rose against the army but they failed and now archaeologists believe that there could be up to 80 of their bodies buried in this mass grave.
Artur Rozanski, from the Adam Mickiewic
Source: BBC
Sep 23, 2010
A man wanted in connection with a stolen drawing believed to be by Vincent van Gogh has been arrested in Vermont in the US.
Authorities say the Texan man is wanted for selling a $1 million (£640,000) sketch of van Gogh's The Night Cafe.
He was arrested on charges of occupying an abandoned camp, burglary and possession of stolen property.
The sketch turned up at a New Mexico antiques shop after being stolen from a home in 2009.
Police say they b
Source: BBC
Sep 23, 2010
A controversial new movie telling the story behind an anti-Semitic film made in 1940 has been released in Germany.
Jud Suss - A Film without Conscience looks at why the earlier film, also called Jud Suss, was a huge success under the Nazi regime.
It focuses on the leading actor's decision to join the cast, suggesting he was forced into it by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels.
The original movie was banned in 1945.
It is still kept under loc
Source: Fox News
Sep 23, 2010
A redevelopment project in this Albanian town has been halted after construction work discovered a 6th-century tomb.
Officials hailed the delay as a landmark decision in this impoverished Balkan country, where rampant construction often obliterates cultural heritage such as archaeological sites.
Vangjel Stamo of Albania's archaeological service said Tuesday that recent development in Durres has "damaged so much of the archaeology."
Two years ago,
Source: Shropshire Star (UK)
Sep 23, 2010
A number of paintings by Adolf Hitler, which are estimated to collectively be worth more than £145,000, are going under the hammer at a Shropshire auction at the end of the month.
The 17 pieces of work, which include watercolours of landscapes still life and a portrait, are expected to attract oa lot of interest when they are auctioned at the Mullocks sale at Ludlow Racecourse on September 30.
Many of the paintings, which are expected to fetch up to £10,000 each, date f
Source: cnn
Sep 23, 2010
An American imam took an eye-opening tour last month of the Dachau and Auschwitz death camps and said that what he saw was unfathomable - and undeniable.
"You see the ashes of people. You see the pictures. You walk the trail; you see the gas chambers," said Imam Muhamad Maged of the All-Dulles-Area Muslim Society in Virginia, vice president of the Islamic Society of North America.
"It is beyond imagination that somebody would do something like that."
Source: AP
Sep 23, 2010
A U.S. military team returned from the remote Pacific atoll of Tarawa this week with the remains of what are believed to be two U.S. servicemen who died in a fierce World War II battle there.
A C-17 plane with the remains landed at Hickam Air Force Base after a 6 1/2-week excavation mission, Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command spokesman Army Maj. Ramon Osorio said Wednesday.
Forensic scientists will analyze the bones to identify them. The process can take months or even ye
Source: Discovery News
Sep 23, 2010
The remains of sacrificed children suggest they were escorted from distant parts of the Inca realm.
The remains of seven children apparently killed in a ritual and buried beneath a 500- to 600-year-old building in Peru's Cuzco Valley have given scientists new glimpses of the sketchily understood Inca practice of sacrificing select children in elaborate ceremonies.
The children were buried at the same time, apparently after having been killed in a sacrificial rite that h
Source: BBC
Sep 23, 2010
The first female Afghan officers since the early 1990s have been commissioned into the army.
Twenty-nine women passed out from a class of new recruits who hope to take the lead role in security from foreign forces by 2014.
Their recruitment is part of a huge US-funded training programme. Women were forbidden from serving by the Taliban.
Women served in the army of Afghanistan's communist-backed regime in the 1980s but retreated from military service durin
