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: Times (UK)
January 30, 2009
Tony Blair thinks every day about the soldiers and civilians who died in the war in Iraq, he has told The Times.
The former Prime Minister, now Middle East envoy for the Quartet group of the US, UN, EU and Russia, does not know whether history will vindicate him over the decision to invade. “I don't know. Nobody knows,” he told Ginny Dougary in an interview to be published tomorrow.
He said that he was not haunted by it “but of course I reflect on it, and am troubled b
Source: History Today
January 30, 2009
61 years ago today, Gandhi was shot whilst taking his evening public walk around the grounds of Birla House in New Delhi. The assassin was Nathuram Godse, a Hindu radical who had links with the Hindu extremist group Hindu Mahasabha, which notably blamed Gandhi for weakening India and sacrificing Hindu interests by insisting upon payment to Pakistan. He immediately surrendered himself to the police and was put on trial. He was sentenced to death for murder and hanged at Ambala Jail, on November 1
Source: Spiegel Online
January 30, 2009
According to the recipe, the meat was to be cut into small pieces or slices, sprinkled with "myrrh and at least a little bit of aloe" and then soaked in spirits of wine for a few days.
Finally, it was to be hung up "in a very dry and shady place." In the end, the recipe notes, it would be "similar to smoke-cured meat" and would be without "any stench."
Johann Schröder, a German pharmacologist, wrote these words in the 17th century
Source: Deutsche Welle
January 30, 2009
German Culture Minister Bernd Neumann said on Thursday, Jan 29, that the government had reached agreement with representatives of the eastern state of Saxony to set up a memorial to mark German unity and freedom in Leipzig by 2014 as the country gears up to mark 20 years of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
"We want to take shared responsibility to honor the outstanding contribution of the citizens of East Germany in the peaceful revolution of 1989," Neumann said after the meet
Source: AP
January 29, 2009
Once Europe's most forbidding coast, this sparkling stretch of the Ionian Sea is slowly revealing lost treasures that date back 2,500 years and shipwrecks from ancient times.
Over the past two summers, a research ship carrying U. S. and Albanian experts has combed the waters off southern Albania, using scanning equipment and submersible robots to seek ancient wrecks. In what organizers say is the first archeological survey of Albania's seabed, at least five sites were located, whic
Source: Yahoo News
January 28, 2009
Oetzi, the 5,000-year old man whose frozen body was discovered in a glacier in the Alps in 1991, may have been attacked not once but twice in his final few days, German researchers said on Wednesday.
It was known that Oetzi, the oldest ice mummy ever found, was shot in the back with an arrow but scientists at Munich's LMU university have now concluded that he may have survived this, if only for a few minutes or hours at most.
And in addition to his being whacked with a
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
January 29, 2009
Lynne Brindley, the chief executive of the British Library, is worried about whether we’re saving enough—not enough money, but enough of the digital evidence of our times. In an essay in Sunday’s Observer, Ms. Brindley worries that whole chunks of national memory are being lost and that “historians and citizens of the future will find a black hole in the knowledge base of the 21st century.”
Source: NYT
January 29, 2009
A resolution congratulating Barack Obama on his election as
president was rejected by a committee of the Arkansas House
of Representatives after lawmakers objected to language in
the measure that referred to the United States as"a nation
founded by slave owners." Eight of the 11 members of the
panel, the State Agencies Committee, who opposed the
resolution were Republicans, and one Republican joined five
Democrats in supporting it. Two Democrats abstained.
Opponents said the measure inac
Source: BBC
January 29, 2009
Investigators in Poland say there is no evidence to back up theories that the country's wartime leader, General Wladyslaw Sikorski, was murdered.
The general died when his plane crashed off Gibraltar in 1943, but some of the details of the crash remain unclear.
This has fuelled some people's belief that he may have been killed by the Soviet Union or Britain.
Two months ago, the Polish authorities exhumed the general's body in a bid to clear up the myster
Source: BBC
January 28, 2009
A Sudanese man has been jailed for 17 years for passing on sensitive files about a Darfur war crimes suspect to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Mohammed Alsary Ibrahim was convicted of spying, criminal conspiracy and passing on confidential military documents about a Sudanese minister.
Mr Ibrahim, who denied the charges, is the first person in Sudan to be prosecuted for helping the ICC.
The ICC prosecutor has accused President Omar al-Bashir of r
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 29, 2009
Germany is contemplating a bill that will pardon Nazi-era "traitors" executed by military courts during the Second World War.
Among the most high-profile cases is that of Private First Class Johann Lukaschitz from Vienna, who was sentenced to death at the age of 24 for "failing to report a planned act of treason" – a secret cell of malcontents in his unit.
The verdicts against men like Lukaschitz were never repealed. Around 30,000 deserters, conscien
Source: Foxnews
January 29, 2009
William Stone was laid to rest in Oxfordshire, England, Thursday watched by hundreds of people who gathered to salute the last veteran to have fought for Britain in both world wars.
The Royal Navy serviceman was one of four veterans from the First World War who lived long enough to see last year’s 90th anniversary of the 1918 armistice.
Stone, who was born on September 23, 1900, laid a wreath at the Cenotaph in November. Inside St. Leonard’s Church in Watlington, Michae
Source: Times (UK)
January 29, 2009
Anger boiled over yesterday at the publication of a government-commissioned report into how to heal the wounds of Northern Ireland.
Lord Eames and Denis Bradley, two former churchmen invited 18 months ago to come up with a plan, had not even begun to speak before the ballroom of the Europa Hotel in Belfast — once reputed to be the world’s most-bombed hotel — was seething with the bad blood that sparked and sustained nearly 40 years of terrorism, causing more than 3,700 deaths.
Source: Independent (UK)
January 29, 2009
Whether it is carrying armour-clad knights into battle, hauling iron ploughs through fields of thick English mud, greasing the wheels of the Industrial Revolution or dragging artillery guns during both world wars, shire horses have played a pivotal role in Britain's history for 1,000 years.
But many of the country's finest draught breeds could be extinct within a generation following a dramatic drop in the number of people willing to breed them, experts predict.
The Rar
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 28, 2009
Astronaut Neil Armstrong walking on the moon is the most memorable television first, according to a survey of 3,000 people.
More than half chose the moment in 1969 when man first walked on the moon as their most memorable television world first.
Among the other events which left their mark on viewers was the election of Barack Obama as the first African-American president, nominated by 37.5 per cent of people questioned.
Third most memorable was the assassi
Source: IHT
January 28, 2009
A schismatic Roman Catholic society that Pope Benedict XVI recently rehabilitated apologized to the pope on Tuesday and distanced itself from the comments of one of its members, who has denied the Holocaust.
On Saturday, the pope revoked the excommunication of four bishops from the St. Pius X Society, including Bishop Richard Williamson, who said in a television interview last week that there was no historical evidence for the Nazi gas chambers. The pope's decision has angered Jewis
Source: NYT
January 28, 2009
The capital flew into a bit of a tizzy when, on his first full day in the White House, President Obama was photographed in the Oval Office without his suit jacket. There was, however, a logical explanation: Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat.
“He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. “He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.”
Source: BBC
January 29, 2009
The 7th Earl of Lucan vanished in 1974 after the murder of his children's nanny at the family's London home.
His body has never been found and the disappearance remains one of the great unsolved mysteries of recent times.
Bonhams has been instructed by Lady Lucan to sell the 19th Century desk, used at her former home at 46 Lower Belgrave Street, at a sale on 11 March.
Guy Savill, head of Bonhams' fine furniture department, said: "Because of its asso
Source: Deutsche Welle
January 28, 2009
At a gathering at Berlin's landmark Potsdamer Platz, the city's Senate representative Richard Meng said 2009 is a "year of remembrance," as well as a "year of respect for the people who contributed to the peaceful fall of the Wall."
Throughout the year, exhibitions, talks and guided walks will remind people of the huge changes Berlin has undergone.
The highlight of the year will be a weekend of celebrations and a huge series of domino stones, set to
Source: NYT
January 28, 2009
A day after President Obama struck a conciliatory tone toward Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged America on Wednesday to apologize for its actions toward his country over the past 60 years and said it was unclear whether the new administration was merely shifting tactics or wanted real change.
But he did not explicitly rebuff Mr. Obama’s gesture. “We are waiting patiently,” he said, referring to the policies of the new administration. “We will listen to the statements closely
