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: International Herald Tribune
October 1, 2008
The Russian Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled in favor of full rehabilitation for the last czar, Nicholas II, and his family, officially recognizing the executed royals as victims of Soviet repression 90 years after their deaths.
The ruling brings Russia closer than ever to public reconciliation with the execution, one of the most significant events in a bloody revolutionary period that led to more than 70 years of Soviet rule.
Nicholas II and the monarchy were reviled i
Source: FoxNews.com
October 1, 2008
A CENTURIES-old tradition of wearing a white horse-hair wig in court ended for many British judges on Wednesday when a simpler new dress code came into force.
While judges in criminal cases will still wear them, those in civil and family hearings will appear bare-headed in court, wearing a new-style plain black robe, the government said.
After a long debate that divided the legal profession, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, head of the judiciary in England and Wa
Source: Times (of London)
October 2, 2008
After more than 200 years of association with Grosvenor Square, the US will establish a new high security base in Nine Elms, Wandsworth, in the south of the city.
Known more for Battersea Power Station and its rescue home for cats and dogs, the primarily industrial area will see the construction of a state-of-the-art secure compound.
Ambassador Robert Tuttle said security fears had played a major role in the decision to move but also the current embassy had reached its
Source: SpyTalk
October 1, 2008
The FBI has blocked two of its veteran counterterrorism agents from going public with accusations that the CIA deliberately withheld crucial intelligence before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
FBI Special Agents Mark Rossini and Douglas Miller have asked for permission to appear in an upcoming public television documentary, scheduled to air in January, on pre-9/11 rivalries between the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency.
The program is a spin-off from The Shadow Factory:
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
October 1, 2008
"A steady stream of intelligence failures in the 1990s occurred in every facet of CIA activity, from intelligence collection to analysis to counterintelligence to covert action," writes John Diamond in a new book on "The CIA and the Culture of Failure."
This is of course well-trodden ground, and the author himself reported many of the underlying episodes for the Associated Press, Chicago Tribune and USA Today.
But Diamond probes beneath the familiar
Source: NYT
October 1, 2008
The French have always found American elections amusing, in a horror movie sort of way. They grumpily regard the American president as in some unfortunate sense also their own, but they see the campaign through their own cultural lens.
They value sophistication above almost anything, and so they regard their own hyperactive president, Nicolas Sarkozy, with his messy romantic life and model-singer wife, as "Sarko the American."
But this year has been difficult
Source: BBC
October 1, 2008
Dr Richard Beeching has become one of the villains of British history for dismantling the railway network in the 1960s. But, Ian Hislop asks, how much did he really change Britain?
In lists of the worst Britons, a physicist from the Isle of Sheppey commonly ranks alongside Richard III, Robert Maxwell and Fred West.
Dr Richard Beeching's crime was to cut 5,000 miles of railway as boss of British Railways, and his sentence is having his surname as a byword for the senseless axi
Source: Science News Daily
September 30, 2008
A new analysis of human remains buried at Machu Picchu reinforces the idea that royal retainers from all over the Inca empire were the permanent inhabitants of the famous Peruvian site.
Source: Deutsche Welle
October 2, 2008
The bombing of Dresden -- eastern Germany's cultural center -- has been a sore point in German relations with the countries of the Allied forces, coming with such vengeance so late in World War II.
The city was devastated, and there were enormous casualties among civilians and refugees. Historians have argued about just how many people were killed in the firebombing on the night of Feb. 13-14, 1945, with estimates ranging from 25,000 to 135,000.
Now, a special commissio
Source: Deutsche Welle
October 2, 2008
Former high school teacher Gerald Frederick Toben, 64, was refused bail in London's Westminster Magistrate's court and will appear again on Friday for an extradition hearing, Australia's ABC Radio reported.
Toben was arrested under a European Union arrest warrant because he is wanted by the District Court in Mannheim, Germany, on charges of publishing material on the internet of an anti-Semitic and/or revisionist nature.
Denying the Holocaust is an offense in Germany wi
Source: WaPo
October 2, 2008
GEORGETOWN, S.C. | The old plantation where Michelle Obama's great-great-grandfather lived is tucked behind the tire stores and veterinary clinics of U.S. Highway 521. But its history and grounds have been meticulously preserved, down to the dikes that once controlled the flow of water into its expansive rice fields.
Not much is known about Jim Robinson, however, including how or when he came to Friendfield, as the property is still called. But records show he was born around 1850 a
Source: China Daily
October 2, 2008
The country's top leaders observed its 59th National Day by paying respects in Beijing yesterday to those who had sacrificed themselves to the founding of New China.
Led by President Hu Jintao, the leaders presented flowers before the Monument to the People's Heroes at Tian'anmen Square, with 18 soldiers lifting the flower baskets to the base of the monument.
"The wreath-laying ceremony is a great way to honor the Chinese people's indomitable spirit of struggle and
Source: Canada.com
October 1, 2008
Amnesty International appealed to Mexico's President Felipe Calderon Thursday to establish the truth behind a deadly clampdown on student protesters 40 years ago and punish the perpetrators.
The failure to confront the massacre on Oct. 2, 1968, when security forces opened fire on students gathered in the Tlatelolco square in the capital Mexico City, had left a "deep scar" in Mexican society, the rights group said.
The details of that day remain unclear, even t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 2, 2008
The University of Gloucestershire confirmed it is trying to trace the people in a video which shows a group of students being paraded around with carrier bags on their heads.
A student in a Nazi officer uniform walks up and down the line while some members of the group, who appear to be drunk, are physically sick
The footage, which has no sound, was obtained by the BBC. The subjects were seemingly unaware that they were being filmed.
It is believed the f
Source: Guardian (UK)
October 2, 2008
He may have been dead for over two centuries but that did not stop Germany's tenacious TV licence-collecting agency from sending two reminders to one of the nation's favourite poets and playwrights telling him he had failed to pay his fee.
Friedrich Schiller received a notice from the agency GEZ at an address in the town of Weigsdorf-Köblitz in the eastern state of Saxony, telling him if he did not pay the monthly €17.03 (£14) for using his radio and television sets, legal proceedin
Source: History Today
October 2, 2008
A public inquiry has began (September 30th) into proposals for the construction of houses on one of the largest US Air Force bases in Europe during the Cold War. The North Oxford Consortium plans to develop 1,075 houses on the RAF Upper Heyford Site in Oxfordshire. The airbase housed reconnaissance and fighter aircraft including the F-111 fighter plane or ‘Aardvark’. It has a runway almost two miles long and was redeveloped in the 1950s to handle the heavy B52 bombers used by the US air force at
Source: BBC
October 1, 2008
A £1m Treasury note has fetched £78,300, twice the expected price, at an auction in London.
The note, numbered 000008, was issued after World War II in connection with the Marshall Aid Plan.
The Marshall plan was a programme of funding given to Western Europe by the United States to help with recovery after the 1939-45 conflict.
Another £1,000,000 note numbered 000007 was sold for £8,000 in 1977, through a private sale.
Source: BBC
October 1, 2008
Newsnight asked you to help decide the UK's greatest and worst post-war prime minister.
We received more than 27,000 votes and below are the results:
1. Winston Churchill
2. Clement Attlee
3. Margaret Thatcher
4. Harold Macmillan
5. Harold Wilson
6. Tony Blair
7. Edward Heath
8. John Major
9. James Callaghan
10. Alec Douglas-Home
11. Anthony Eden
12. Gordon Brown
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
October 1, 2008
Ink from these bronze wells and the blotter that accompanies them sealed the fate of peoples and nations during the Second World War.
Now the U.S. soldier who liberated them from Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s study as a souvenir of his military experiences has put them up for sale.
Bidding began online on Tuesday – an ominous day in history and one in which the bronze desk set played a significant role.
British prime minister Neville Chamberlain used it t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 30, 2008
The band was temporarily disbanded earlier this year when its musicians, all serving marines, were sent off to fight in Afghanistan.
But the Navy has announced the band will not be returning to Dartmouth, and the musicians will be relocated.
Cdre Jake Moores, of the college, said: "It is the end of an era for BRNC to say farewell to our RM band."
Earlier this year it was announced that band members would be deployed to Afghanistan as part of 3 Com
