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
January 9, 2009
With the recession in full swing, the nation’s employers shed 524,000 jobs in December, the government reported Friday, and a rapidly deteriorating economy promised more big losses in the months ahead. December’s job losses brought the total for 2008 to 2.6 million, spanning a recession that started 12 months ago.
The unemployment rate jumped to 7.2 percent in December from 6.8 percent in November and 5 percent last April, when the recession was four months old and just beginning to
Source: BBC
January 9, 2009
Rwandan official Rose Kabuye has told the BBC she must return to France for her trial and prove her innocence.
The charges are in connection with the killing of former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana that triggered the 1994 genocide.
"Either I had to die with this charge on my head or face justice and prove myself innocent," she said.
She is one of nine senior Rwandan officials wanted over the shooting down of Habyarimana's plane.
Source: Times (UK)
January 9, 2009
Vladimir (Vova) Rubinstein was a pivotal figure in the BBC Monitoring Service, the organisation that, by listening to foreign radio broadcasts around the world, is a fundamental supplier of news to the Government and the media.
Nicknamed the “ears of Britain”, the Monitoring Service was set up in the dark days of the Second World War and refined during the Cold War. It was manned by an extraordinary collection of diverse and eccentric people, many of them intellectuals with origins
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 9, 2009
According to papers filed this week in Brooklyn federal court, a witnesses says John Favara was shot to death on orders of the outraged Gambino crime family chief and his body was dissolved in a barrel of acid. Authorities said a cooperating witness identified Charles Carneglia, a 62-year-old former mobster, as the perpetrator in the 1980 incident.
The court documents said Carneglia told another informant that acid was "the best method to use to avoid detection."
Source: International Herald Tribune
January 8, 2009
Bosnia's war crimes prosecutor indicted eight Bosnian Serbs on Thursday suspected of taking part in a massacre of more than 200 Muslims and Croats early in the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
The mass killing in central Bosnia occurred on Aug. 21, 1992, as part of an early wave of ethnic cleansing as rebel Bosnian Serb forces clashed with Bosnian Croats and Muslims during the break-up of the former Yugoslavia.
"Damir Ivankovic, Zoran Babic, Gordan Djuric, Milorad Radakovic, M
Source: Foxnews
January 7, 2009
Most of the chants [at a Ft. Lauderdale protest] were run-of-the-mill; men and women waving Palestinian flags called Israel's invasion of Gaza a "crime," while the pro-Israel group carried signs calling the Hamas-run territory a "terror state."
But as the protest continued and crowds grew, one woman in a hijab began to shout curses and slurs that shocked Jewish activists in the city, which has a sizable Jewish population.
"Go back to the oven,&q
Source: IHT
January 8, 2009
South Korea has railed for years against the Japanese government's waffling over how much responsibility it bears for one of the ugliest chapters in its wartime history: the enslavement of women from Korea and elsewhere to work in brothels serving the Japanese Imperial Army.
Now, several former prostitutes in South Korea have accused their country's former leaders of a different kind of abuse: encouraging them to have sex with the U.S. soldiers who protected South Korea from North K
Source: Reuters
January 8, 2009
Egyptian archaeologists have found the remains of a mummy thought to be that of Queen Seshestet, the mother of a pharaoh who ruled Egypt in the 24th century BC, the government said on Thursday.
After five hours spent lifting the lid of a sarcophagus in a pyramid discovered south of Cairo last year, they found a skull, legs, pelvis, other body parts wrapped in linen, and ancient pottery, the government's antiquities department said.
Source: Washington Post
January 8, 2009
Officials at Ford's Theatre have decided not to put on permanent display the embroidered overcoat Abraham Lincoln wore the night he was assassinated in 1865.
The theater, on 10th Street NW, had wanted to exhibit the bloodstained coat in a special protective glass case in the lobby, where it would have been visible through the windows 24 hours a day. The coat, its lining embroidered with the phrase "One Country, One Destiny," was to be a signature element of the theater's
Source: IHT
January 8, 2009
Bosnia's war crimes prosecutor indicted eight Bosnian Serbs on Thursday suspected of taking part in a massacre of more than 200 Muslims and Croats early in the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
The mass killing in central Bosnia occurred on Aug. 21, 1992, as part of an early wave of ethnic cleansing as rebel Bosnian Serb forces clashed with Bosnian Croats and Muslims during the break-up of the former Yugoslavia.
The victims of the massacre, most of them men, were told they were bein
Source: Times (UK)
January 8, 2009
German children will be obliged to visit the site of a Nazi concentration camp as part of their regular school curriculum. The move — to be introduced in Bavaria and likely to become the norm throughout the country — is in response to the almost fatal stabbing of a senior police officer by a neo-Nazi.
"We have to take a stand against this far-right octopus, this tentacled monster," said Host Seehofer, the prime minister of Bavaria, who has ordered every ministry to come u
Source: Foxnews
January 8, 2009
Pin-up art — a morale-booster for troops fighting overseas during World War II — is making a comeback, or will be if a California woman has anything to say about it.
Gina Elise, 26, is bringing retro back with her third annual "Pin-Ups for Vets" calendar, which features herself in costumes and poses that were popular among America's fighting men in the 1940s. Profits from the sales of the calendars provide assistance to U.S. military hospitals.
Source: Examiner
January 8, 2009
The remains of a Civil War soldier have surfaced at the Antietam National Battlefield in western Maryland after 146 years underground.
Battlefield Park Superintendent John Howard says a visitor happened upon some bone fragments and a uniform button near a groundhog hole in October.
The bones have been sent to the Smithsonian Institution for further analysis, but Howard says individual identification is unlikely.
Source: Times (UK)
January 8, 2009
A question mark hangs over Pope Benedict XVI's planned trip to Israel in May after Israeli officials expressed outrage over a Vatican statement comparing Gaza to a "big concentration camp".
The Pope today condemned the use of violence by both Israel and Hamas in his annual speech to diplomats accredited to the Holy See. "Once again I would repeat that military options are no solution and that violence, wherever it comes from and whatever form it takes, must be firmly
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
January 7, 2009
The end may finally be in sight to the seven-year battle historians and archivists have waged to overturn President Bush’s Executive Order 13233 of November 2001 that restricted access to presidential records. On January 7, 2009, the House of Representatives approved H.R. 35,
Source: McClatchy
January 6, 2009
When Barack Obama lifts his hand from Abraham Lincoln's Bible at his inauguration, he won't be just the new president of the U.S. He'll be the face of a new era.
He's not the cause of the changing times, either the upheaval in the land or the hunger for something new seen in the million or more faces who'll stream into Washington to watch him take the oath.
Rather, he reflects a new age that's already dawning. It's one marked by sweeping cultural, demographic and economic cha
Source: Independent (UK)
January 7, 2009
President Nicolas Sarkozy will raise a political and legal storm today by pronouncing a death sentence on the "examining magistrates" who have been the linchpin of the French judicial system for two centuries.
In a speech to France's highest court, M. Sarkozy will call for the abolition of the juges d'instruction created by the Emperor Napoleon in 1808, magistrates with independent, sweeping powers to investigate serious crimes ranging from murder to political corruption.
Source: National Security Archive
January 5, 2009
American Presidents from Eisenhower to George W. Bush have sought to distinguish themselves from their predecessors with sudden shifts in Middle East policy and questionable strategies that have contributed to undermining American credibility in the region, according to a new book, "A World of Trouble," by veteran correspondent Patrick Tyler, a fellow of the National Security Archive at George Washington University.
Tyler's account begins with a raucous night of recriminat
Source: Foxnews
January 6, 2009
President Bush won the praise of environmentalists Tuesday for leading the largest marine conservation effort in history, but his critics are still bitter over his environmental legacy.
Some went so far as to compare Bush to Teddy Roosevelt, who created the national park system a century ago.
But others said Bush's conservation effort, while laudable, was not enough to erase the lowlights of his environmental record. Groups like the National Resources Defense Council
Source: Los Angeles Times
January 7, 2009
WASHINGTON -- Millions will cram shoulder to shoulder to watch Barack Obama take the oath of office this month as the nation's 44th president, another indelible snapshot of American democracy in full display on the National Mall.
But beyond the reach of the camera's lens, the historic promenade that stretches from the Lincoln Memorial to the U.S. Capitol -- the place often called "America's Front Yard" -- is itself a monument to neglect.
Patches of the once-lu
