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: Washington Post
January 2, 2009
NEW YORK -- For more than a hundred years, generations of New Yorkers, as well as tourists to the city, have made the trek up the spiral staircase to the crown of the Statue of Liberty, to peer through the small windows at the unparalleled view of New York Harbor.
But that iconic experience ended with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. All the national parks were briefly closed, but Liberty Island, the statue's home, remained shut for s
Source: CNN
January 1, 2009
The hotel that will be home to President-elect Barack Obama and his family
for the next couple of weeks offers one of Washington's best views of
their future home, the White House, and a past linked with political
movers and shakers.
The Obamas will be moving into the Hay-Adams hotel this weekend, aides
say. They're doing this in part so that the family's daughters, Sasha and
Malia, can begin school when classes reconvene after winter break.
They had hoped to move earlier into
Source: Washington Post
January 2, 2009
White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten and national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley remember conferring with President Bush during the darkest days of the Iraq war, in 2005 and 2006, when violence was out of control. In daily 7 a.m. meetings in the Oval Office, Bush reviewed "blue sheets" detailing incidents involving U.S. soldiers; he would circle the casualty figures and press his top aides for details about the deaths.
"It was pretty grim news," Hadley
Source: MSNBC
January 1, 2009
After more than 65 years, brothers find his sunken World War II submarine.
Longing can chart a better course than MapQuest. After more than 60 years,
the Abele brothers have finally found their father.
Lt. Cmdr. Jim Abele commanded the USS Grunion, a submarine that
disappeared off the coast of Alaska during World War II. Seven years ago
his sons made a deal with their hearts, not their heads, and went looking
for him.
It cost them a bundle."If this were an official Navy
Source: Time Magazine
January 1, 2009
Top 10 Campaign Gaffes
Top 10 Campaign Video Moments
Top 10 Crime Stories
Top 10 Editorial Cartoons
Top 10 Election Photos
Top 10 Green Ideas
Top 10 Medical Breakthroughs
Top 10 Oddball News Stories
Top 10 Open Mike Moments
Top 10 Outrageous Earmarks
Top 10 Photos
Top 10 Political Lines
Top 10 Religion Stories
Top 10
Source: Times of Malta
December 31, 2008
The fate of ancient rock-cut tombs found earlier this month on the site of
the planned new St James Hospital is still uncertain as investigations
into the discovery are still at an early stage, the Superintendence for
Cultural Heritage said.
The tombs were discovered during excavation works for the new hospital ....
Eight tombs have been found and are estimated to date back to the Punic
age, a span of time which lasted between roughly 600 BC and 1000 AD.
Source: International Herald Tribune
January 1, 2009
Vietnam and China have completed the demarcation of their long-disputed
land border in what they hailed as an event of"great historic
significance" 30 years after their brief but bloody border war, state
media reported Thursday.
The two countries signed a land border agreement in 1999, but it took them
nine years to demarcate the 1,350-kilometer, or 840-mile, frontier.
The Vietnam News Agency reported that the two countries issued a joint
statement, at the conclusion of four d
Source: International Herald Tribune
January 1, 2009
Four months after they appeared in the waters between Havana and Miami,
the four dead men remain nameless. At a morgue in the Florida Keys, they
lie on stretchers stacked like bunk beds, their bodies chewed by sharks,
their faces too putrified to be recognized.
The police suspect they were Cuban rafters. Nilda García thinks one of
them might be her son - and the thought makes her weep. Fourteen years
after she left Cuba on her own makeshift boat, she finds herself wondering
once aga
Source: CNN
January 1, 2009
Thursday marks the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution, when Fidel
Castro and a group of guerrillas toppled a longstanding U.S.-backed
dictator.
But January 1, 1959, was a long time ago. In Cuba today, when people refer
to"the revolution," they often mean the country's aging, established
government.
After so many years, people's hopes for the revolution's future are hardly
revolutionary."I hope that it continues to move forward, because this country needs
development.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 1, 2008
Britain learned that apartheid South Africa was preparing to test an
atomic bomb only after being alerted by the Russians.
Previously secret papers released at the National Archives show how James
Callaghan, the Labour prime minister, was informed in August 1977 of a
secret test site in the Kalahari Desert in a personal letter from Leonid
Brezhnev, the Soviet president.
A Soviet spy satellite had discovered the site at Vastrap, in a remote
area south of South Africa's border w
Source: WaPo
January 1, 2009
After months of tortuous trading, Wall Street rang out its worst year since the Great Depression yesterday, leaving shareholders $6.9 trillion the poorer.
It hardly mattered that the market finished the last day of the year with a modest gain.
The losses in 2008 were so broad and deep that every sector in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index took a double-digit hit, and the financial sector lost more than half of its value. The Dow Jones industrial average, an inde
Source: CNN
December 23, 2008
Archaeologists believe they have unearthed only a small fraction of Egypt's ancient ruins, but they're making new discoveries with help from high-tech allies -- satellites that peer into the past from the distance of space.
"Everyone's becoming more aware of this technology and what it can do," said Sarah Parcak, an archaeologist who heads the Laboratory for Global Health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. "There is so much to learn."
Images
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 31, 2008
The last Nazi E-boat, which took part in an infamous raid during the Second World War, has been saved by a British military enthusiast [who paid 1 pound for it].
Schnellboot-130, once the fastest vessel in the world, helped attack an Allied convoy off Slapton Sands, in Devon, in a battle in which nearly 1,000 Allied soldiers were killed.
On the night of April 27, 1944, the boat was one of nine German vessels patrolling the English Channel when they stumbled upon Operati
Source: NYT
January 1, 2009
BERLIN — A hole has appeared in the center of town here. The symbolism is impossible to miss.
Berlin’s plan is to erect a fake Baroque palace, a copy of the Hohenzollern Stadtschloss that once stood where that hole is, the site culminating the great avenue called Unter den Linden, at whose other end is the Brandenburg Gate. In December a little-known Italian architect, Franco Stella, won what passed for the building’s competition, which required a design faithfully reproducing three
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 31, 2009
Previously secret papers released at the National Archives show how James Callaghan, the Labour prime minister, was informed in August 1977 of a secret test site in the Kalahari Desert in a personal letter from Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet president.
A Soviet spy satellite had discovered the site at Vastrap, in a remote area south of South Africa's border with Botswana, a week earlier. Two 750-foot shafts had been drilled in preparation for underground explosions. The Americans appe
Source: International Herald Tribune
January 1, 2009
Paul Hofmann, a Viennese who resisted the rise of Nazism in his homeland, acted as an informer for the Allies while serving on the staff of the German commandants of occupied Rome during World War II and later became a foreign correspondent for The New York Times and a prolific author of travel books, died Tuesday in Rome. He was 96.
His death was announced by his son Alexander Hofmann-Lord.
A diminutive, dapper man who spoke German, Italian, French and English fluently
Source: International Herald Tribune
January 1, 2009
Helen Suzman, the internationally prominent anti-apartheid campaigner who befriended the imprisoned Nelson Mandela and offered an often lonely voice for change among South Africa's white minority, has died, South Africa's SAPA news agency reported on Thursday. She was 91.
Suzman was for many years among the most venerated of white campaigners urging an end to the injustices of racial rule. But, while she challenged apartheid, her views on the creation of a new society fell well shor
Source: NYT
December 30, 2008
Democrats said they were confident of their standing under Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution, which says “each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own members.” On rare occasion, the Senate has denied seats to candidates whose election outcome was in doubt or who were caught up in corruption.
Yet constitutional experts question the extent of that authority, particularly in light of a 1969 Supreme Court decision in the case of Adam Clay
Source: CQ
December 30, 2008
Theodore G. Bilbo, a virulent white supremacist accused of intimidating black voters and corrupt campaign practices, was the last man denied a seat in the U.S. Senate, after the voters of Mississippi elected him to a third term in 1946.
According to the Senate historian’s office, Bilbo is one of just four appointed or clearly elected would-be senators who were not seated by the Senate since the April 8, 1913, ratification of the 17th amendment guaranteed the direct election of senat
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 31, 2008
Scientists in China say they have found the richest collection of dinosaur
fossils in the world in the north eastern province of Shandong.
More than 7,600 fossils have been recovered from a 980 ft-long pit near
Zhucheng city over the last seven months, and the number is still rising,
according to Zhao Xijin, the palaeontologist in charge of the project.
