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: NYT Editorial written by Adam Cohen
September 15, 2008
When Rachel Ehrenfeld wrote “Funding Evil: How Terrorism Is Financed and How to Stop It,” she assumed she would be protected by the First Amendment. She was, in the United States. But a wealthy Saudi businessman she accused in the book of being a funder of terrorism, Khalid bin Mahfouz, sued in Britain, where the libel laws are heavily weighted against journalists, and won a sizable amount of money.
The lawsuit is a case of what legal experts are calling “libel tourism.” Ms. Ehren
Source: Guardian (UK)
September 15, 2008
The Church of England owes Charles Darwin an apology for misunderstanding his theory of evolution and making errors over its reaction to it, a senior clergyman said today.
In a bid to recognise its faults in the run up to next year's 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth, the church has launched a series of articles on its website.
An essay by the Rev Dr Malcolm Brown, the church's head of public affairs, called Good Religion Needs Good Science directly addresses Darwin.
Source: Deutsche Welle
September 15, 2008
Looking ahead to the 20th anniversary of the uprising in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the fall of the Berlin Wall, the party says it is concerned with an increasing sense of nostalgia for the old communist regime.
"Twenty years after the end of the GDR, there should be no forgetting and no repressing," reads the draft of the document, which is set to be signed on Monday, Sept. 15.
The 21-page paper will be presented as a motion at the CDU'
Source: History Today
September 15, 2008
Conversations between top US officials in 1970 show a secret plan to overthrow the newly-elected socialist government in Chile. The day before the 35th anniversary of the military coup, the National Security Archive in Washington published transcripts of telephone conversations between Henry Kissinger, President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State William Rogers. On September 11th, 1973, during economic difficulties and a constitutional crisis, Salvador Allende was deposed by the Chilean milita
Source: BBC News
September 15, 2008
A collection of previously unheard recordings of crime writer Agatha Christie talking about her life and work has surfaced in Devon after lying undiscovered for 40 years.
The reels of tape, over 13 hours long, were discovered by the author's grandson in a cardboard box during a spring clean-out at Christie's former home in Torquay.
They date back to the 1960s and are working notes for her autobiography which was published posthumously in 1977.
But the recor
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 15, 2008
Prosecutors will accuse Josef Scheungraber of ordering the killings of 14 civilians in Falzano, near Cortona in Italy.
Mr Scheungraber denies the charges, but he will have to face testimony from a survivor of the massacre, a 79-year-old former Carabinieri officer, who was a 15 year-old boy on June 27 1944.
That was the date that German soldiers from Mountain Infantry Battalion 818 set out on a reprisal operation after two of their number had been killed by partisans.
Source: Times (UK)
September 13, 2008
A frail but stiff-backed General Wojciech Jaruzelski strode into a Polish courtroom as if on parade yesterday to face trial for using tanks and bayonets to crush the Solidarity revolution in the bleak midwinter of 1981.
The 85-year-old man, who was once the very symbol of communist repression, faces a possible ten-year jail sentence for “directing a criminal organisation” – a reference to the Military Council that imposed and ran the martial law crackdown of the early 1980s. It is
Source: NYT
September 10, 2008
A large cache of audio tapes left behind at Osama bin Laden’s headquarters in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 2001 was released Wednesday, offering a portrait of his gradual transformation from Saudi militant to global threat and opening a window on the daily lives of men recruited for jihad.
While Mr. bin Laden’s evolution from opposing Saudi Arabia’s ruling dynasty to running an international terrorist organization has been detailed before, said Flagg Miller, an assistant professor at t
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
September 14, 2008
Back ramrod straight, heels together, hands behind his back, this is the moment General Sir David Richards became the first British commander since the Second World War to lead a multi-national force including the Americans in battle.
Wearing desert fatigues, cap badge pulled down over his left eye, a frown etched on his face, General Richards, second from the right, had just taken control of the Herat Room, the command centre at the heart of Nato's headquarters in Afghanistan.
Source: Times (UK)
September 13, 2008
A wrist watch that belonged to Albert Einstein has been put up for auction. Shaped in the tonneau fashion (like a barrel), the 14-carat gold Longines timepiece will be offered with no reserve by the online watch auctioneer, Antiquorum, in New York next month and is expected to fetch between $25,000 (£14,000) and $35,000.
The unique watch was made in 1930 and presented to Einstein on February 16, 1931, in Los Angeles. Collectors will be able to see the timepiece in New York, Los Ang
Source: Times (of London)
September 14, 2008
John le Carré, the espionage writer, has revealed that he was tempted to defect to the Soviet Union during the cold war.
The author, whose real name is David Cornwell, wrote his first novel while working for MI6 in 1961. He says he was not attracted to communism –- he was just curious to find out what life was like behind the iron curtain in the 1960s.
His books, including The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, portray a world of moral ambig
Source: Contra Costa (Calif.) Times
September 13, 2008
A dusty stagecoach roared into a bleak place called San Jose 150 years ago this week, got fresh horses and raced off into history.
For 1858, this was a giant leap in modern communications.
Monday marks the sesquicentennial of the first transcontinental stagecoach mail route, bringing California and the Inland Empire far closer to the rest of the United States.
That San Jose stage stop, later called Spadra, is now part of today's Pomona.
On Sept
Source: NYT
September 14, 2008
In a previously unpublished interview, Richard M. Nixon said that Ethel Rosenberg, the convicted spy, might have been spared the death penalty by President Dwight D. Eisenhower had he been aware that evidence against her was tainted.
“If I had known — if we had known that at the time — if President Eisenhower had known it, he might have taken a different view with regard to her,” Nixon, who was Eisenhower’s vice president, is quoted as saying. “In other words, tainted evidence, even
Source: National Security Archive
September 11, 2008
The Julius and Ethel Rosenberg grand jury transcripts released today as the result of legal action by the National Security Archive and a coalition of historians directly contradict the central charge against Ethel Rosenberg in the atomic espionage prosecution that J. Edgar Hoover called “the case of the century,” according to experts who analyzed the documents today.
The documents include the grand jury testimony of Ethel Rosenberg’s sister-in-law, Ruth Greenglass, in which she des
Source: NYT
September 11, 2008
Ever since he was tried and convicted with Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on espionage charges in 1951, Morton Sobell has maintained his innocence.
Until now. In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Sobell, who served nearly 19 years in Alcatraz and other federal prisons, admitted for the first time that he had been a Soviet spy. And he implicated his fellow defendant, Julius Rosenberg, in a conspiracy that delivered to the Soviets vital classified military information and what the American go
Source: WaPo
September 13, 2008
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin seemed puzzled Thursday when ABC News anchor Charles Gibson asked her whether she agrees with the "Bush doctrine."
"In what respect, Charlie?" she replied.
Intentionally or not, the Republican vice presidential nominee was on to something. After a brief exchange, Gibson explained that he was referring to the idea -- enshrined in a September 2002 White House strategy document -- that the United States may act militarily to coun
Source: http://blogs.abcnews.com
September 11, 2008
ABC News' Lisa Chinn reports: During her interview with ABC News' Charlie Gibson Thursday Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin attempted to deflect a question about the fact she has never met a foreign head of state by saying that "many" other vice presidential nominees in history hadn't met a head of state either.
However Palin was mistaken, at least where recent history is concerned.
Every vice president over the last 30 years had met a foreign h
Source: National Geographic News
September 8, 2008
Live fast, die young—this is how our closest relatives the Neanderthals were traditionally thought to progress through life.
But a new study of Neanderthal skeletons suggests the species grew quickly but reached sexual maturity later than so-called modern humans—and quite possibly survived to a ripe old age.
The study also suggests that Neanderthals had a harder time of child bearing and possibly child raising. As a result, modern humans may have simply outbred their he
Source: USA Today
September 12, 2008
Restorers have lopped off two wings, obliterated 14 bathrooms, re-created two staircases and, overall, reduced by more than half the size of Montpelier, President James Madison's lifelong home here in the lush foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
On Wednesday, the scaled-down Georgian mansion two hours southwest of Washington will be ready for its close-up.
The five-year, $24 million restoration has returned the stately home to the way it appeared during the fourth U.
Source: International Herald Tribune
September 11, 2008
PALOMARES, Spain: The rest of the world has mostly forgotten, but the brush with nuclear Armageddon is seared on the minds of locals here and still niggles, 42 years later.
On the morning of Jan. 17, 1966, a U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber returning from a routine Cold War alert mission exploded during airborne refueling, sending its cargo of B28 hydrogen bombs plummeting toward earth. One went into the azure waters of the Mediterranean and three others fell around this poor farming vill
