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: NBC
November 22, 2008
Source: NYT
November 25, 2008
YPRES, Belgium — Ninety years after it ended, the First World War still hangs over this small Flemish town, a focal point of slaughter during the Great War, as they called it when they thought it would be the last. Monuments to the war’s fallen sprouted like mushrooms after the armistice, but it took nearly 85 years to erect a monument to a different group of dead: soldiers executed by their own side for refusing to continue the fight.
Five miles from Ypres, in a quiet court
Source: NYT
November 22, 2008
Here’s some advice for a New York governor who must fill a vacant United States Senate seat:
The replacement senator should be “an alert, modern, creative intellectual leader — a rare commodity in this party of ours” — whose appointment would “help you with the national party” and “validate your own regularity and discrimination where it would count most — and at the same time do no violence to your philosophy.” It also wouldn’t hurt to hail from upstate, be loyal and share the depa
Source: AP
November 25, 2008
LONDON – Eleanor Rigby: fact or fiction?
That question, which has bedeviled Beatles' fans for decades, may be answered in part by a 1911 hospital payroll sheet to be auctioned in London on Thursday.
The document, sent by Paul McCartney in 1990 to the director of a music charity who had asked for funding, contains the signature of a scullery maid named "E. Rigby" who worked in a Liverpool hospital.
The director of the company auctioning the documen
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
November 24, 2008
Voter turnout among Americans under the age of 30 rose to between 52 percent and 53 percent in this fall’s election, up from 48 percent in the previous presidential election, according to updated estimates released today by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University.
The highest participation rate on record for that age group is 55.4 percent, which was achieved in 1972, the first presidential election after the voting age was lowered
Source: Azzaman
November 22, 2008
Iraq says it is ready to return any stolen Iraqi antiquities in its possession, the Ministry of
Tourism and Antiquities said in a statement.
The statement was issued following a visit Tourism and Antiquities Minister Qahtan al-Jibouri made
to Tehran early this month during which he met Iranian President Ahmadi-Najad.
Source: http://www.jsonline.com
November 22, 2008
President-elect Barack Obama's personal identification with Lincoln, his embrace of him as a political model and his habit of quoting him have sent journalists flocking to Lincoln scholars in search of meaning.
Just what does his attraction to Lincoln say about Obama? What does Lincoln offer as a model? How relevant is that model today?
"I don't think you can really imitate Lincoln," historian Douglas L. Wilson said. But like other students of Lincoln, Wilson
Source: LAT
November 25, 2008
Some say having students dress up as pilgrims and Native Americans is 'demeaning.' Their opponents say they are elitists injecting politics into a simple children's celebration.
For decades, Claremont kindergartners have celebrated Thanksgiving by dressing up as pilgrims and Native Americans and sharing a feast. But on Tuesday, when the youngsters meet for their turkey and songs, they won't be wearing their hand-made bonnets, headdresses and fringed vests.
Parents in th
Source: AP
November 25, 2008
People in 18th century dress greeted visitors Tuesday at Federal Hall, commemorating the end of the Revolutionary War.
The costumed reenactors were busy answering questions about the 225th anniversary of Evacuation Day, the day in 1783 when the last British redcoats boarded ships in New York Harbor and sailed away, and Gen. George Washington and his victorious troops marched down Broadway.
At the Wall Street building, where a statue of Washington marks the site of his 1
Source: CNN
November 24, 2008
Mike Green's family is good at making things. Through four generations of putting cars together, they've built a city, created a community, and forged a legacy....
The Greens' GM dynasty is in jeopardy if General Motors doesn't survive the current crisis that has U.S. automakers asking Congress for financial help.
That dynasty includes 10 family members -- all current or former autoworkers -- who gathered around a table at the Local 652 hall in west Lansing recently. To
Source: AFP
November 15, 2008
Too poor and too few, Poland's several thousand Jews lack the resources to preserve their heritage, still in jeopardy after the destruction wrought by the Nazis and decades of communism.
"It's urgent. If we don't react now, in 10 years there will be even more ruins," laments Monika Krawczyk, head of the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland (FODZ).
Prior to World War II some 10,000 synagogues and houses of worship served Poland's communi
Source: AP
November 23, 2008
Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday prayed that no political ideology would ever again cost people their freedom and dignity, as he recalled the millions who died from famine in Ukraine and other Soviet regions under dictator Josef Stalin.
The pontiff spoke in Ukrainian to pilgrims from that country in St. Peter's Square, and noted that this month marks the anniversary of Holodomor, or Death by Hunger, as the famine is known in Ukraine.
The 1932-33 famine was orchestrated by Soviet authorities
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
November 25, 2008
Pittsburgh is no longer the smoke-filled place of its industrial heyday. But it was a smoky place from its inception, 250 years ago this week.
On the evening of Nov. 24, 1758, a Native American scout entered the British camp about 15 miles to the east to inform them that a "Cloud of Smoke" stood above the Point. Another scout arrived shortly to report that Fort Duquesne had been burnt and abandoned by the French. Henry Bouquet ordered cavalry to advance immediately in the
Source: Guardian (UK)
November 24, 2008
US intelligence officials kept a file on former prime minister Tony Blair's "private life", a former US navy communications operator claimed today.
David Murfee Faulk, who worked at a listening post in Fort Gordon, Georgia, told ABCNews.com he saw the file on Blair in 2006.
But he refused to provide details of what the file, held in an intelligence database called Anchory, contained, other than to say it was a file on his "private life" and included
Source: AP
November 25, 2008
WASHINGTON – Marine archaeologists have found the remains of a slave ship wrecked off the Turks and Caicos Islands in 1841, an accident that set free the ancestors of many current residents of those islands. Some 192 Africans survived the sinking of the Spanish ship Trouvadore off the British-ruled islands, where the slave trade was banned.
Over the years the ship had been forgotten, said researcher Don Keith, so when the discovery connected the ship to current residents the first r
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 25, 2008
In an operation lasting around eight hours, pathologists removed the body of Wladyslaw Sikorski from its two-ton marble sarcophagus in the crypt of Krakow's Wawel Cathedral, the resting place of many of Poland's national heroes.
The general's coffin was then taken to a laboratory to undergo tests as part of a criminal investigation to determine whether General Sikorski, who was prime minister of Poland's government in exile and commander of its armed forces, was murdered or died whe
Source: BBC
November 24, 2008
The small Movimento Sociale-Fiamma Tricolore (MS-FT) party denies its gesture is racist and says the names Benito and Rachele are merely "nice".
The party also wants parents to buy cribs, clothes and food with the money.
The cash incentive is available in five areas of southern Italy and is designed to help the region's low birth rate.
Together the names Benito and Rachele mean only one thing to Italians - they signify their former dictator and
Source: Boston Globe
November 24, 2008
It may be 2008, but staff members at Plimoth Plantation's Wampanoag Homesite regularly have to ask little boys to stop war-whooping and little girls to remove costume feathered headdresses and beaded dresses brought from home.
Parents must be admonished for making jokey greetings like "How" or calling the performers "Chief," "Squaw," or "Indian." Just last week, an adult chaperone of a school group had to be corrected for asking Tim Turner, a
Source: Boston Globe
November 24, 2008
NEXT MONTH, the Italian state railway will launch a 186-mile-per-hour train that will revolutionize travel in Italy. But below the track of that train's send-off from Milan's Central Station, another important door to history is being opened. The state railway recently signed an agreement to allow work to begin on a Holocaust memorial there.
The heart of the memorial will be the track used to deport Jews and others from 1943 to 1945. It has remained untouched since. "It's a rui
Source: National Geographic News
November 21, 2008
The remains of an ancient gate have pinpointed the location of the biblical city Sha'arayim, say archaeologists working in Israel.
In the Bible young David, a future king, is described as battling Goliath in the Elah Valley near Sha'arayim.
The fortified gate at the Elah Fortress—the second to be found at the site—proves the existence of Sha'arayim, which means "two gates" in Hebrew, said Hebrew University archaeologist Yosef Garfinkel.
"All
