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)
Jul 6, 2010
A bayonet bearing the family name of former French president Charles de Gaulle has been handed in at an Australian police station.
The sword, which is stamped with the date 1878 and the words "De Gaulle", was given to police at South Melbourne station along with a musket, a set of manacles and a curved dagger in a leather sheath.
While the date on the bayonet predates Charles de Gaulle's birth in 1890, Melbourne police believe it may have belonged to a membe
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 6, 2010
Thousands of supporters will gather today to celebrate the Dalai Lama's 75th birthday.
The Nobel laureate will address a crowd of 5,000 fans and followers at his temple in McLeod Ganj, a hill station in the Indian Himalayas where he has lived since fleeing Tibet in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule.
In apparently fine health and showing no signs of slowing down despite his advanced years, the Buddhist spiritual leader will break with recent birthday tra
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 6, 2010
A 90-year-old former SS sergeant who was No 4 on the most wanted list of Nazi war criminals has died in Germany before his case came to trial.
Adolf Storms died at his home in the western city of Duisburg on June 28, according to German authorities.
Storms, who worked unnoticed for decades as a train-station manager, was charged by Brendel's office last November with 58 counts of murder for alleged involvement in a wartime massacre of Jewish forced labourers in Austri
Source: AP
Jul 6, 2010
As Sen. Robert C. Byrd was being laid to rest after a week of memorials, a niece eulogized him Tuesday as a person who suffered from dyslexia. The revelation surprised others in Byrd's family, who later said they had no knowledge that the West Virginia senator suffered from the learning disability.
The 92-year-old senator, who served in Congress longer than anyone else, received a 21-gun salute as he was buried in a suburban Washington cemetery near his wife of nearly 69 years, Erm
Source: AP
Jul 6, 2010
Built on the edge of Soweto, Soccer City stadium will be the grand stage for Sunday's World Cup final. For many South Africans, though, the site has been hallowed ground for two decades — not because of sports, but as a historic venue in the anti-apartheid struggle.
In October 1989, with apartheid still in force, Soccer City's precursor stadium hosted an electrifying rally at which more than 70,000 blacks greeted newly freed leaders of the still-outlawed African National Congress. T
Source: AP
Jul 6, 2010
A German museum has discovered what it believes to be a previously unknown work by German Expressionist artist Ludwig Kirchner that languished in its cellar for decades.
The Staedel Museum announced the find on Tuesday, saying that it had discovered it as part of renovation. The canvas is painted on both sides, with a rare nude, believed to have been painted in 1910, on the back.
The Frankfurt museum plans to restore the work and put it on display for the first time whe
Source: CNN
Jul 6, 2010
A nearly 40-year-old board game is getting a lot of new attention because of eerie similarities between the scenarios of its play and the 78-day-old BP Gulf oil disaster.
The game BP Offshore Oil Strike, which came out in the 1970s and is adorned with an old BP logo, revolves around four players exploring for oil, building platforms and constructing pipelines – all in the name of being the first to make $120 million.
But like the real-life oil game there are some big ha
Source: AP
Jul 6, 2010
The Danish cartoonist who caricatured the Prophet Muhammad says he is quitting because he is getting old.
Kurt Westergaard says "one has to stop at some point." He says he has been working since the age of 23, first as a teacher and then as an artist. He turns 75 on July 13.
Westergaard says he hopes his retirement might help "lower the terror threat" against the Jyllands-Posten newspaper where he has been working for the past 27 years.
Source: CNN
Jul 6, 2010
Longtime White House reporter Helen Thomas has retired effective immediately, Hearst Corporation said Monday.
The media conglomerate had employed Thomas, age 89, as a syndicated columnist for its newspaper chain.
Thomas, who was considered the dean of the White House press corps, had come under fire since late last week when a YouTube video surfaced showing her saying that Israel should “get the hell out of Palestine,” and that the Jewish people should go home to “Polan
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 5, 2010
Winston Churchill was accused of ordering a cover-up of a Second World War encounter between a UFO and a RAF bomber because he feared public "panic" and loss of faith in religion, newly released secret files disclose today.
The former Prime Minister allegedly banned reporting of the “bizarre” incident, off the east coast of England, for half a century amid fears disclosures about unidentified flying objects would create public hysteria.
He is said to have ma
Source: The Boston Globe
Jul 5, 2010
...Vic Mastone, a state archeologist, is an excited bundle of animation as he scans the Revolutionary War battlefield. Like a general on high ground, he surveys a checkerboard of fuel tanks, mountains of road salt, rotted wharf pilings, and a jumble of shoehorned tenements.
Welcome to Chelsea Creek.
The two-day fight in May 1775 is largely forgotten, overshadowed by the momentous clashes at Lexington and Concord the month before, and the Battle of Bunker Hill in June. B
Source: NYT
Jul 5, 2010
The gates of the Gulf Coast International Jousting Championships opened at 6 p.m. one Friday in January at a 4,500-seat arena 13 miles outside Pensacola, Fla. Some of the spectators were dressed in leather doublets and velvet gowns; some wore jeans and cowboy hats or American-flag-patterned do-rags. Most seemed to have come out of idle curiosity rather than any previous knowledge of the sport. “From what I hear, the combat’s going to be smackin’,” a man named Paul Johnson told me, punching his k
Source: Seattle PI
Jul 5, 2010
Research illuminating an ancient language connection between Asia and North America supports archaeological and genetic evidence that a Bering Strait land bridge once connected North America with Asia, and the discovery is being endorsed by a growing list of scholars in the field of linguistics and other sciences.
The work of Western Washington University linguistics professor Edward Vajda with the isolated Ket people of Central Siberia is revealing more and more examples of an anci
Source: Rutland Herald
Jul 5, 2010
Vermont officials are preparing to seize a Civil War era cannon at the center of a longstanding and pitched battle between the state and a group of historic re-enactors.
The bronze, 12-pound Napoleon cannon paid for by the Proctor family is owned by the state but has been maintained, repaired and used for three decades by re-enactors from the 2nd Battery Vermont Light Artillery — named after the original unit that used the cannon.
That arrangement worked comfortably unt
Source: BBC
Jul 5, 2010
The full state honours on the airport tarmac in San Antonio de Tachira, on the border with Colombia, suggested that one of the Venezuelan government's closest allies was about to touch down.
But, as the plane landed and the door opened, it was not a head of state or a neighbouring president who emerged but a delegation carrying a small wooden box.
Inside are what the government of Hugo Chavez calls the "symbolic remains" of one of the country's 19th Century
Source: BBC News
Jul 5, 2010
A UK historian is trying to find more about a woman and her children who could have been killed during the German air raid on Jersey.
Alan Blackmore is looking into the life of a soldier called Ivor Powell.
Jersey has been marking the 70th anniversary of the bombing of St Helier by the Luftwaffe, when dozens of civilians were killed.
Soon after a story in a newspaper in Clevedon wrote of a lady called Mrs Powell being one of those victims.
The
Source: Salon.com
Jul 5, 2010
In the last half century, air conditioning has joined fireworks, swimming pools and charred hamburgers as a ubiquitous ingredient of an American summer. It’s no exaggeration to say it has changed the way this country functions, shaping everything from where we’re willing to live (Las Vegas, anyone?) to the amount of sex we have (more: It’s never too hot to get it on when the A.C. is blasting). Nine out of 10 new homes in this country are built with central air conditioning, and Americans now use
Source: BBC
Jul 5, 2010
An ancient anchor found buried in peat is to return to Skye following analysis by experts at National Museums Scotland in Edinburgh.
Graeme MacKenzie discovered the rusting artefact while digging a drain close to his home on the island.
Under Treasure Trove rules, the crofter said he would receive a "modest sum".
Mr MacKenzie, a member of Sleat Local History Society, said he was pleased it would be displayed at the Museum of the Isles in Armadale.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 5, 2010
The fifth most wanted Nazi fugitive is living out his old age safe within Germany, despite being wanted in Britain and the Netherlands on war crimes charges.
Klaas Faber, now 88, volunteered for Adolf Hitler's notorious SS during the Second World War and worked as part of a Gestapo death squad.
Despite being sentenced to death for his crimes in 1947, Faber is immune from prosecution because he escaped from prison in the Netherlands in 1952 and fled back to Germany.
Source: AP
Jul 5, 2010
A cancer expert whose medical assessment of the Lockerbie bomber helped lead to his early release has been quoted as saying the Libyan could live for another 10 years.
Last year, Karol Sikora examined Abdel Baset al-Megrahi for Libyan authorities and estimated he had three months to live. Al-Megrahi, who has prostate cancer, was freed from a Scottish prison on compassionate grounds and sent to Libya.
He had been convicted in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which
