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)
November 2, 2008
The animation, posted on the New Zealand company's internet website for Hallowe'en and still on display, depicts Sir Edmund's decaying corpse flanked by the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and the late Australian actor Heath Ledger.
The three are seen climbing out of their graves and gyrating to the tones of the Michael Jackson song Thriller.
Sir Edmund died in January, aged 88.
His son Peter Hillary called the advertisement "a little grotesque&q
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 3, 2008
Carlos Arias Navarro, the last Spanish prime minister to serve under Gen Franco, met with US officials to garner support for such a move, according to documents held in the American National Archive and made public on Monday.
The declassified documents, released to Spanish daily newspaper El Pais, revealed that Gen Franco's government was "deeply concerned" by events across the border following the Carnation Revolution of April, 1974.
The event, a bloodless co
Source: Deutsche Welle
November 4, 2008
Radio transcripts in which the Nazi-era Pope Pius XII purportedly denounced totalitarian rule have gone on show in a new Vatican exhibition.
Some historians and Jewish groups have charged that Pius XII failed to speak out against the Nazi massacre of Jews.
But the exhibition sets out to paint Pius in a different light.
"The purpose is to allow the general public to get to know the full life of Pope Eugenio Pacelli (Pius XII)," Pontifical Committe
Source: BBC
November 3, 2008
Demonstrations have been held in Iran to mark the 29th anniversary of the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran.
The Islamic revolution in 1979 took over from the US backed regime of the Shah and installed the clerical rule of Ayatollah Khomeini.
Students stormed the US Embassy on 4 November 1979 taking 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.
The hostages were released in 1981 and relations between Washington and Tehran have never recovered.
The o
Source: International Herald Tribune
November 2, 2008
Iraq is demanding Iran provide information about Iraqi artifacts that have been stolen from the country's archaeology sites.
A government statement asks for Iran's help in tracking down some 12,000 archaeological pieces that are still missing.
Looters snatched some 15,000 priceless artifacts and smuggled them out of the country in the chaos following the 2003 U.S.-led war.
Source: NYT
November 3, 2008
Timothy J. Petumenos, the independent counsel to the Alaska
Personnel Board, concluded that in the firing of the former
Alaska public safety commissioner Walt Monegan,"There is no
probable cause to believe that the governor or any other
state official violated the Alaska Executive Ethics Act in
connection with these matters."
Source: AP
November 1, 2008
Spain began allowing citizenship applications Saturday from the descendants of people who went into exile after its Civil War. The government said as many as 500,000 people could be eligible under the program to address the painful legacy of the conflict.
The government says 300,000 of those children and grandchildren of war emigres live in Argentina.
Source: http://politiken.dk
October 20, 2008
A young couple walking along Horsens Fjord in August this year made a sensational discovery – a 5-7,000 year old stone with a scratched motif.
The 13x10x4 cm. limestone shows a man with an erect phallus and two fish. Archaeologists at Horsens museum were taken aback, and immediately passed the stone on the National Museum to determine whether the motif was indeed from the Stone Age or simply a later work of art using an ancient style.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
October 24, 2008
A graveyard of former Nazis bent on creating a 'foreign Fatherland' in the Amazonian rainforests from which to spread Hitler's maniacal beliefs has been discovered in Brazil.
The relics betray a madcap plan back in the 1930s to create a master race thousands of miles from Germany.
The graveyard and other ruins that fanatical Nazis left behind are chronicled in a new book.
Entitled ’The Guayana-Projekt. A German Adventure on the Amazon’ it says die-hard Nazi
Source: http://civilwarinteractive.com/
November 3, 2008
On the verge of crisis 145 years ago, the Confederate States of America sought an economic rescue not unlike the one U.S. financial institutions recently got.
Confederate accounts were overdrawn, and credit from overseas investment firms was about to dry up because lenders weren't confident the Southern states could repay their mounting debts.
So, in 1863, Alabama businessman Colin J. McRae was sent to Europe to orchestrate a bailout of the Confederacy.
A r
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 3, 2008
One of the great mysteries surrounding the collapse of the Chinese empire may have been solved by scientific tests suggesting the last emperor but one was poisoned with arsenic.
Analysis of hair and other fragments taken from the tomb of the Guangxu emperor, who died 100 years ago this month, showed high levels of the chemical.
The findings are seen as proving suspicions that the emperor was murdered, and the implications will be eagerly discussed, not just by historian
Source: International Herald Tribune
November 3, 2008
Much of South Africa's self-image is built on the iconography of the African National Congress: the long walk to freedom, the devotion to democratic principles, the racially tolerant rainbow nation of Nelson Mandela. In the three national elections since the end of apartheid, the ANC has won each time with the overwhelming support of voters.
So this weekend's convention led by an ANC breakaway faction was somewhat jarring. Dissidents repeatedly described the party they once loved as
Source: Science News Daily
November 1, 2008
The 2008 presidential campaign, as reflected in candidates' television spots, has been one of the most negative campaigns in history. A University of Missouri professor analyzed this year's candidates' television spots, including last night's 30-minute ad by Sen. Barack Obama and found that only one other campaign matched this level of negativity.
William Benoit, professor of communication in the College of Arts and Science, found that in television spots from 1952-2004, candidates
Source: Guardian (UK)
November 2, 2008
A unique museum honouring Germans who helped persecuted Jews stay alive under the Nazi tyranny has opened in Berlin. The Silent Heroes Memorial Centre is the first of its kind dedicated to individuals who helped to hide, feed and care for people who otherwise would have gone to the gas chambers.
Tucked away in a tenement block on Rosenthaler Strasse, it lies in the heart of Berlin's pre-war Jewish quarter, not far from the site of the former paintbrush factory where an anti-Nazi ac
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 2, 2008
A senior government official said that the yacht, the palatial 270-foot Ocean Breeze, has been moored off the southern French resort of Nice. It has been estimated that it could fetch approximately £20 million.
The official, Ali al-Dabbagh, said that the government hopes for a sale within the next few weeks.
While grand when it was built in 1981, the Ocean Breeze is modest in size compared with the "megayachts" commissioned by a new wave of super-rich.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
November 3, 2008
On a trip out in London just days after being freed from jail, this is the only terrorist to survive the Iranian Embassy siege - enjoying his new life on benefits.
Fowzi Nejad, 51, has been granted parole after serving 28 years for his part in the hostage-taking, and will not be deported back to his native Iran because of human rights laws.
Instead, he has been placed in a safe house in London and receives hundreds of pounds every week in free housing and benefits.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
November 3, 2008
Headstones at the Commonwealth War Graves commission cemetery in France are being re-engraved to ensure the writing remains legible.
The war graves in La Targette, near Arras in the north of the country, are being repaired by stone cutters to combat the ravages of time.
The natural erosion of the Portland Down headstones, first engraved 80 years ago, has made reading the inscriptions increasingly difficult.
Source: BBC
November 3, 2008
Adolf Hitler had ambitious plans for Linz, the city where he grew up.
He wanted to make the town on the Danube into one of the five Fuhrer cities of the Third Reich, along with Berlin, Hamburg, Nuremberg and Munich.
Linz is now examining this page of its past in an exhibition called the Fuhrer's Capital of Culture.
Martin Heller, the artistic director of Linz 2009, says there was an obligation to tackle the city's Nazi history.
"We wan
Source: Washington Post
November 3, 2008
TOKYO -- Once again, a Japanese official with nationalist sympathies -- in this case, the head of the air force -- has glossed over the Asian suffering caused by Japan during World War II.
Once again, China and South Korea -- principal victims of Japan's wartime depredations -- have expressed shock and anger.
And once again, the government in Tokyo has restated its official policy, which is that Japan deeply regrets and apologizes for its wartime aggression.
Source: NYT
November 2, 2008
Most people do not believe that Tim Dufel can push 2,000 tons of steel all the way across New York State. Isn’t the old Erie Canal dried up, they ask him, its locks broken, its ditch filled in and forgotten?
They ask these questions even on days like this one, when Mr. Dufel is standing in an orange life vest, watching brown water flood Lock 16 here and lift his loaded barge like a toy battleship in a bathtub.
“Sixty percent of the people I meet have no idea the Erie C
