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: AP
October 11, 2008
Baruch Milch was hiding from the Nazis in occupied Poland in the summer of 1943. His wife and 3-year-old son had been killed in Hitler's Holocaust.
All the Jewish doctor had was his diary — a chronicle he hoped would help "take this huge weight off my heart and off my soul." Over 1,600 pages of thin copybooks and slips of paper, he scrupulously recorded his feelings.
Now, his Israeli-born daughter wants Warsaw's Jewish History Institute to hand over the journa
Source: AP
October 12, 2008
The announcement came in 1800 in the back of a Connecticut newspaper just above a farmer's reward for a stray cow. A man named Noah Webster was proposing the first comprehensive "dictionary of the American language."
Webster was mocked and scorned for challenging the King's English. About 60 percent of the country spoke English at the time, while others spoke German, Swedish and Dutch. Even among English speakers, regional dialects were strong.
A teacher afte
Source: International Herald Tribune
October 12, 2008
Survivors, relatives and tourists remembered victims of the 2002 Bali nightclub bombings on their sixth anniversary Sunday by lighting candles and laying wreaths in two small but emotional ceremonies on the resort island.
Many of the 100 people who participated in the 45-minute memorial at the site of the bombings, which killed 202 people, were moved to tears. Others were frustrated by delays in plans to execute three Islamic militants found guilty of planning and helping orchestrat
Source: Independent (UK)
October 11, 2008
The last remaining treasures of the French royal family – including a silk purse embroidered by Queen Marie Antoinette in her prison cell – will be auctioned in Paris next week. The objects, including jewellery, paintings, miniatures and furniture, are the remnants of one of the greatest royal fortunes in Europe, diminished first by revolution and, more recently, by scandal. The auction is also the latest chapter in a dispute that broke in 1999 upon the death of the pretender to the French thron
Source: Times (UK)
October 12, 2008
Tony Blair personally ordered an exemption for motor racing from a tobacco sponsorship ban after Labour received a secret £1m donation from Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula One boss.
New documents released under the Freedom of Information Act show he demanded a change of policy within hours of a meeting with Ecclestone on October 16, 1997, and his aides went on to blur the truth.
The affair was the first sleaze scandal of the new Labour era. At its height, Blair feared
Source: Observer (UK)
October 12, 2008
A lawyer running the Omagh civil case against several suspected Real IRA leaders has challenged the Northern Ireland Assembly to press Gordon Brown to give his legal team secret GCHQ surveillance transcripts of the bombers.
Jason McCue, whose firm H20 is behind the civil action, said the best thing the assembly could achieve for Omagh victims and their families would be to issue a united call for the Prime Minister to release the intercepts of conversations between the Real IRA plo
Source: Mail on Sunday (UK)
October 12, 2008
The Government body responsible for maintaining the nation's historic monuments has been forced to withdraw a children's guide to Stonehenge because it was littered with factual errors.
The book, called The Ghastly Book Of Stonehenge, has become a laughing stock among archaeologists because of its many blunders.
English Heritage, which receives £129million a year in Government funding, has recalled 4,500 copies of the £3 book and now plans to pulp them.
A s
Source: Deutsche Welle
October 11, 2008
A German Waffen-SS batallion stationed in neighbouring Chatellerault was responsible for the attack during World War II, Le Figaro reported, quoting prosecutor Ulrich Maass on Saturday, Oct. 11.
"I received the translation of the testimonies in the archives, and they are very interesting," he told the paper. "I am practically sure that the SS battalion based at Chatellerault, as has already been suspected, was responsible for the massacre."
Maass has
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 12, 2008
The remote kiosk was put up in the 1960s when the Post Office gave permission for it to be painted black and white to blend in with its surroundings in the village of Achfary, on the duke's Reay Forest Estate in Sutherland.
The duke, who is godfather to Prince William and was named by Forbes magazine this year as the world's 46th richest man, is a regular visitor to the remote Highland sporting estate.
The phone box was converted to take cards only two years ago and i
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 12, 2008
"Azincourt" – the French name for Agincourt – has achieved something most serious historians can only dream of by selling 13,000 copies in five days.
The book has rocketed to the top of book charts with readers enjoying the story of the battle between the English and French in 1415 told with a bit of literary licence.
Its popularity echoes that of Shakespeare's version, which has kept the battle alive in the public imagination for centuries.
Azinc
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 12, 2008
The Nationalist MSP Christine Grahame has lodged a motion in parliament calling for the monarch's remains to be buried in Scotland.
The move to repatriate the Catholic monarch has the backing of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, historians and the composer James MacMillan.
Mary, who was born at Linlithgow Palace, fled to England after she was forced to abdicate in 1567. She was held prisoner by her cousin Elizabeth I, found guilty of treason and executed at Fotheri
Source: Times (UK)
October 11, 2008
Schoolchildren are celebrating, commentators are astonished and purists are fuming over what they describe as a scandalous attack on 500 years of French history.
In the most sweeping linguistic reform in France for centuries, Le Petit Robert, the nation's premier dictionary, has cast aside tradition to allow alternative spellings for thousands of words. Accents have become optional, consonants can be doubled on a whim and hyphens will float in and out of literary texts under the ch
Source: CQ & http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk
October 10, 2008
Evidently taking a page from John Kerry ’s quest for the presidency in 2004, John McCain ’s campaign has decided — for now, anyway — not to respond to provocative attacks aimed squarely at his strong point: his reputation as a military hero.
The much talked about main broadside came in the form of a 12,000-word attack in Rolling Stone, which portrayed the hard-partying young McCain as a reckless pilot who totaled three jets, and whose career as a pilot was saved only by the pull of
Source: Guardian (UK)
October 11, 2008
Seventy years have passed since they marched out of Barcelona amid crowds of weeping, cheering Spaniards, but it is only now that the last few British volunteers who fought in Spain against General Franco's fascist-backed rebels are finally to be rewarded by the Spanish state.
The handful of British survivors from the 2,300 men and women in the International Brigades during the civil war are now in their 90s or have passed 100, and most are physically frail.
They still
Source: Spiegel Online
October 10, 2008
The fall of Pompeii began with a small cloud of smoke drifting out of Mt. Vesuvius. Within a few days, though, the affluent Roman city lay coated in a meter-thick shroud of ash. Even more devastating were the effects of a giant meteorite that crashed into the Gulf of Mexico 65 million years ago, bringing an end to the age of the dinosaurs.
Such violent events, putting human beings and animals at the mercy of destructive natural forces, have always stimulated the fantasies of those b
Source: Deutsche Welle
October 11, 2008
The move to change the spelling of the name, which reads as “Kopernik” in Polish and “Kopernikus” in German, reportedly came at the insistence of European Commission Vice President Guenter Verheugen, a German.
Poles have consequently accused the commission of Germanizing the name of the father of astronomy, Nicolas Copernicus.
But there is more to the matter than simply a few letters. Copernicus' nationality has since long been a source of argument between Germans and
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 11, 2008
Mr Haider, 58, who earned worldwide notoriety for making statements sympathetic to Hitler's Nazi regime, suffered fatal head and chest injuries after the car he was driving plunged down an embankment near his home town of Klagenfurt.
Detectives are still investigating the cause of the crash, but said he was driving alone at the time in a government-owned vehicle.
The death of Mr Haider, who was governor of Carinthia province in southern Austria, comes less than a fort
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 11, 2008
He also dismisses the notion that his theories were difficult to understand as "twaddle".
Einstein's correspondent, the psychoanalyst Walter Marseille, had suggested an idea of a world government in a paper entitled "A Method to Enforce World Peace".
Einstein wrote in correspondence in 1948: "Better to let Russia see that there is nothing to be achieved by aggression, but there are advantages in joining [a world government]: Then the Russian r
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 11, 2008
English Heritage has spent over a year painstakingly recreating the garden once known as the "Glory of England" and wants to finish it off authentically by planting carnation varieties that were available to 16th Century gardeners.
Unlike the modern version, which are better known for being found wrapped in cellophane on a garage forecourt, 400 years ago the carnation was considered one of the most beautiful flowers around.
It is hoped they will provide the
Source: AP
October 10, 2008
Tourists in Switzerland can soon sleep in the world's first "zero-star hotel," a former nuclear bunker several yards below the ground.
A group of 15 guests inaugurated the hotel, sleeping the night from Thursday to Friday in the former bunker embellished with artistic decoration and real hotel duvets.
But that was only a trial run, and regular operation of the hotel will require approval of an operating budget by the town of Sevelen.
The hostelry
