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: Daily Mail (UK)
Sep 17, 2010
The country house where RAF chiefs commanded The Few in the Battle of Britain is to be restored.
Seventy years on plans have been approved to create a museum on the site of Bentley Priory, the headquarters of Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding's Fighter Command during the Second World War.
Harrow Council's planning committee have agreed to incorporate a museum within the Grade II listed mansion house in Stanmore, north London, alongside flats, as part of the development of
Source: The Guardian
Sep 17, 2010
UK scientist unearths 5,000-year-old rock art, including drawing of a mounted hunter, in Somaliland.
Striking prehistoric rock art created up to 5,000 years ago has been discovered at almost 100 sites in Somaliland on the Gulf of Aden in eastern Africa.
A local team headed by Dr Sada Mire – of the Institute of Archaeology at University College London (UCL) – made the finds which included a man on horseback, painted around 4,000 years ago – one of the earliest known depi
Source: The Washington Post
Sep 17, 2010
William H. Goetzmann, 80, who turned his Yale doctoral thesis into a Pulitzer Prize-winning book that revolutionized the way historians viewed American exploration of the Western territories, died of congestive heart failure Sept. 7 at his home in Austin.
A history professor at the University of Texas for more than 40 years, Dr. Goetzmann said legends about six-shootin' outlaws, pan-handlin' prospectors and eagle-feathered Indian chieftains helped forge the West into America's &quo
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 17, 2010
The country house from where RAF chiefs commanded “The Few” during the Second World War is to be converted into a Battle of Britain museum, after a five-year campaign.
Bentley Priory in Stanmore, north west London, will become a permanent memorial to Fighter Command’s crucial role in protecting Britain from Luftwaffe raids.
Under Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding, the mansion house acted as the RAF nerve centre during the air onslaught of 1940.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 17, 2010
Turkish prosecutors have opened an investigation into former general and president Kenan Evren, former navy commander Nejat Tumer and former air force chief Tahsin Sahinkaya over a 1980 coup, Milliyet newspaper has reported.
Rights groups and individuals had filed petitions with prosecutors on Monday, a day after Turks voted to approve reforms that among other things stripped Gen Evren and other coup leaders of immunity.
Sunday's referendum on a constitutional reform p
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 17, 2010
Mark Chapman, John Lennon's killer, has said that he considered trying to murder Elizabeth Taylor, or the US chat show host Johnny Carson, but decided the Beatle would be an easier target.
Chapman, 55, has been in jail since shooting Lennon outside the Dakota apartment building in Manhattan on Dec. 8, 1980 in front of his wife Yoko Ono.
In his latest parole hearing this month the killer, details of which have just emerged, Chapman said he chose to attack Lennon because
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 17, 2010
‘Greatest Briton’ will be tweeting, the former Prime Minister’s estate has announced.
The Estate of Sir Winston Churchill has launched its own iPhone app and is to use social media to bring the former Prime Minister’s “wit and wisdom” to a wider audience, it has been announced. Facebook and Twitter profiles have been set up and will launch on Friday, and an iPhone app will go on sale for £1.19, with all proceeds going to the Churchill Estate....
Source: Fox News
Sep 17, 2010
Across the country on Friday, institutions of education -- from the largest universities to the tiniest one-room schoolhouses -- are celebrating Constitution Day and Citizenship Day, offering educational programs about the Constitution of the United States on the 223rd anniversary of its signing.
From Columbia University in New York to the University of Arizona; from Montclair State University in New Jersey to the University of California-Berkeley; in public schools from Los Angele
Source: AP
Sep 17, 2010
North and South Korea agreed Friday to hold reunions of families separated by their war, but conflicting statements from the rivals about the details underscored the difficulty of repairing relations on the peninsula.
The North's official Korean Central News Agency reported that the reunions — popular on both sides of the border — would be held at the North's scenic Diamond Mountain resort between Oct. 21 to 27.
South Korea was more cautious in its statement, saying tha
Source: AP
Sep 17, 2010
The startling revelation that a revered civil rights photographer also was an FBI informant who tipped investigators about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and others has left his children denying he was a snitch and spurred some movement veterans to try to explain why he might have helped the feds.
This was to be the season when the late civil rights photographer Ernest C. Withers would be honored for his historic work, with his photos displayed at a museum bearing his name.
Source: CNN
Sep 17, 2010
The president of Rwanda on Thursday denied as "absurd" reports that Tutsis entered the Democratic Republic of Congo over the course of 10 years and massacred Hutu refugees there.
But a draft U.N. report is the latest to allege that the Rwandan military and an allied rebel group massacred ethnic Hutu in neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo between 1993 and 2003.
More than 1 million Rwandans -- most of them Hutu -- fled west to neighboring Congo after th
Source: CNN
Sep 17, 2010
How would you like to own a baseball signed by six U.S. presidents, Frank Sinatra's cigarette lighter, Mickey Mantle's love letter to his future wife or part of Lady Liberty's nose?
They are among the hundreds of iconic objects from America's past going on the auction block at Guernsey's in New York later this month.
The Statue of Liberty, which has graced the New York harbor for more than 100 years, was starting to deteriorate a few decades ago. The paper-thin tip of
Source: NYT
Sep 17, 2010
...On [Carl Paladino's] campaign Web site, prominently displayed near the top of the home page, is a notice that says in large white-on-black type, “The last NY governor from Buffalo became president of the United States.” This message is rendered in capital letters, just to make sure you don’t miss it.
The reference is to Grover Cleveland, who indeed was from Buffalo, who indeed became governor and who indeed went on to the White House....
Though Cleveland was a Democr
Source: NYT
Sep 17, 2010
During the Jewish “Days of Awe,” culminating with Yom Kippur, many Conservative Jews will be turning the pages of a prayer book that no longer regards God as “awesome.”
The word, which has become an all-purpose exclamation that spread from Valley Girls to much of American teenagerdom, has lost its spiritual punch and dignity, say the authors of a new book for the High Holy Days that tries to bring the prayers in tune with contemporary times.
The authors prefer “awe-insp
Source: Time.com
Sep 16, 2010
Of the 10-12 million Roma living in Europe, Spain has the second biggest community, estimated at 970,000, or about 2% of the total population. And the country spends almost €36 million annually bringing them into the fold. In Spain, only 5% of gypsies live in makeshift camps, and about half of Roma are homeowners. Just about all Gypsies in Spain have access to health care, and while no recent figures exist, at least 75% are believed to have some sort of steady income....
But can the
Source: Illinois National Guard
Sep 16, 2010
A long-lost Civil War cannon has found its way back to the Illinois State Military Museum in Springfield after more than 30 years.
"I feel a sense of victory," said Lt. Col. Mark Whitlock, Director of the Illinois State Military Museum. "I feel that the cannon is an important piece of Illinois military history and it makes me feel good that we got it back."
The cannon was originally donated to the museum in 1865 by Lt. Col. Edward Kitchell, Regiment
Source: AP
Sep 16, 2010
The Battle of Tarawa was one of the first U.S. amphibious campaigns of World War II. It also was one of the most ferocious.
Thousands of Marines charged the beach, only to be killed by Japanese machine gun fire when their boats got stuck on a coral reef. Hundreds of Marines died, thousands more were injured in three days of fighting.
Sixty-seven years later, the U.S. military is back on the tiny Pacific atoll just 80 miles north of the equator to search for the remains
Source: Spiegel Online
Sep 16, 2010
Even before World War II, Nazi strategists came up with a number of plans to strike New York City -- whether with super missiles, kamikaze pilots, long-range bombers or secret agents. Some were ambitious and some were foolish, but all of them failed.
Captain Hans-Heinz Lindner was gradually losing his nerve. As dawn broke on June 13, 1942, the first cars were already driving along the waterfront in the village of Amagansett, Long Island. But the U-202 was stuck. The gray steel colos
Source: CBS News
Sep 16, 2010
The late Sen. Ted Kennedy, champion of the recent health plan legislation, actually delayed comprehensive coverage for Americans for decades, says former President Jimmy Carter. It was Kennedy's actions to kill Carter's own health care bill that made Americans wait more than 30 years for meaningful coverage, says Carter in an interview with "60 Minutes" correspondent Lesley Stahl.
The interview will be broadcast on Sunday, Sept. 19, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
"T
Source: BBC
Sep 16, 2010
A former Guatemalan soldier has been sentenced to 10 years in prison in the United States for concealing his part in a massacre during Guatemala's civil war when he applied for US citizenship.
Gilberto Jordan failed to reveal his participation in the 1982 killings of at least 162 villagers at Dos Erres.
Jordan admitted throwing a baby down a well during a raid on the village by his elite military unit.
Campaigners in Guatemala want him sent home for trial
