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: AP
October 20, 2008
Some Hispanics in the nation's ninth-largest city are suspicious of why efforts for a "Cesar Chavez Avenue" in Dallas have stumbled.
The name of the famed labor leader and civil rights activist won handily when the city asked residents to come up with a new name for Industrial Boulevard, a dull strip lined with liquor stores and bail bond offices
"Cesar Chavez Avenue" beat such names as "Riverfront" and "Trinity Lakes," but Dallas Mayor
Source: Randy Boswell at Canwest
October 20, 2008
It's a familiar lament in Canada: Declining public knowledge about the country's history is leading to a diminished sense of national pride.
But a new survey by the Montreal-based Association for Canadian Studies suggests the long-held assumption may not be true, and relative ignorance about Canada's past may actually foster a certain patriotic bliss.
The telephone survey of 1,500 Canadians, conducted Oct. 5-8 by Léger Marketing, showed that 73 per cent of those with ju
Source: BBC
October 20, 2008
The first woman to command an Irish Naval Ship is to take up her post next month.
Lieutenant Commander Roberta O'Brien, who is in her early 30s, will command the LE Aisling, one of eight ships of the service's flotilla.
A native of County Tipperary, Lt Com O'Brien is currently serving at Irish naval headquarters at Haulbowline.
Her appointment comes four years after a woman was first given command of a ship in the Royal Navy.
Source: International Herald Tribune
October 19, 2008
This is the year, according to an order from a president whom few dare to disappoint, that the architectural scars of war in Grozny, Chechnya's capital, will be removed.
That the order has nearly been fulfilled is a feat.
Not long ago, Grozny (the name means "terrible" in Russian) offered a panorama of sagging husks of buildings and unmarked graves, scenes that eerily resembled the ruins left by the most destructive urban battles of World War II.
Source: International Herald Tribune
October 20, 2008
It is one of a flow of disarming asides that Russia's ambassador to Kabul deploys while warning of the grim prospects that he says will doom the American enterprise in Afghanistan if the United States fails to learn from mistakes made during the Soviet occupation of the 1980s.
"I know quite a lot about the past," the ambassador, Zamir Kabulov, said in polished English with a broad smile during an interview in Kabul one morning last week. "But almost nothing about the
Source: NYT
October 19, 2008
Tensions heightened this weekend between the Vatican and Israel after a Vatican official said that Pope Benedict XVI had halted the beatification of Pius XII, the pope during World War II, for fear of repercussions from Jewish groups.
The official, the Rev. Peter Gumpel, a Jesuit priest who is directing beatification efforts, also told the ANSA news agency on Saturday that the pope would not visit Israel until a plaque criticizing Pius was removed from the Yad Vashem Holocaust muse
Source: BBC
October 20, 2008
Spanish prosecutors have asked the high court to stop an investigation into atrocities during Gen Franco's rule, saying they are covered by an amnesty.
Judge Baltasar Garzon last week began investigating what happened to thousands of people who vanished during and after the civil war.
But chief prosecutor Javier Zaragoza said a 1977 amnesty covered the crimes.
A ruling on the appeal could take two months, but the inquiry can continue in the meantime.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 20, 2008
Harry Allen, who oversaw dozens of executions between 1941 and 1964, kept a precise log of prisoners and how they died.
His matter-of-fact journal recorded details of each prisoner's age, weight, height and his calculations of how long the rope needed to be to generate the speed required to ensure a swift death.
Referring to one hanging, Allen suggested that, with hindsight, the rope had been too short.
He noted: "Very good job but should have had anot
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
October 20, 2008
A tender letter written by Sir Winston Churchill to his wife to be opened only in the event of his death is to be seen by the public for the first time.
Churchill sent the revealing letter before he went to fight on the Western Front during the First World War and asks his wife 'not to grieve too much'.
The politician, who later led Britain to victory as Prime Minister in World War II, displays his unshakable self confidence, resilience, spiritual and romantic side.
Th
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
October 20, 2008
A team of adventurers claim they have discovered footprints made by the legendary yeti said to roam the highest part of the Himalayas.
The large hairy creature resembling a human or bear is said to live in the regions of Nepal and Tibet. While the scientific community largely regards the creature as folklore, given the lack of evidence, reports of the yeti go back hundreds of years.
Yoshiteru Takahashi, the leader of the Yeti Project Nepal, made the discovery leading hi
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
October 20, 2008
Former US Air Force fighter pilot Milton Torres is convinced he had an encounter with an alien spaceship in the skies over England in the 1950s.
He was warned to keep quiet about the incident, but eventually talked about it 31 years later, the newly-released Ministry of Defence files show.
On the night of May 20 1957, Dr Torres, then aged 25, was on standby at RAF Manston in Kent when he received an urgent order to scramble.
He was told to intercept a UFO with &q
Source: Deutsche Welle
October 20, 2008
The global financial crisis could strengthen far-right extremists, a German political scientist said, adding that he sees parallels between today's current turmoil the Nazis' rise to power in the 1930s.
"I am, of course, not prophesying that far-right extremists grab power like they did on January 30, 1933," political scientist Christoph Butterwegge told German news agency dpa. "But it is striking how similar the cycles are."
The bankruptcy of financ
Source: BBC
October 20, 2008
South Korean and American officials are to search the border dividing North and South Korea for the remains of troops killed in the 1950-53 Korean War.
It will be the first ever search in the demilitarised zone (DMZ) - which in spite of its name is the world's most heavily armed frontier.
The move was announced by South Korea's defence ministry.
It said more than 13,000 South Korean troops and about 2,000 US troops were believed to be buried in the zone.
Source: BBC
October 20, 2008
A photo montage which superimposed a Nazi swastika over Pope Benedict has appeared on a website run by supporters of Israel's leading political party.
The image was later removed from the Yalla Kadima website, apparently on the orders of party leader Tzipi Livni.
The incident comes amid a row with the Vatican over Israeli claims that the late Pope Pius XII could have done more to prevent the Jewish holocaust.
Ms Livni is currently trying to form a govern
Source: Reuters
October 20, 2008
ATHENS -- In the past two and a half thousand years, the temples of the Acropolis have suffered fire, bombing and earthquake. Now, scientists are trying to save them from a new modern enemy: pollution.
Standing on a hilltop at the centre of Athens, a city of 4 million people, the Acropolis' elaborately sculptured stones have fallen prey to a film of black crust from car exhaust fumes, industrial pollution, acid rain and fires.
A team of Greek engineers and restorers are
Source: NYT
October 18, 2008
As important as the economy may be for voters when they go to the polls, many economists contend that presidents have little power over general economic performance during their terms of office, even though some things, like the minimum wage, are set by the government.
David Backus, an economist at New York University, recently wrote on the blog of the economist N. Gregory Mankiw that while presidents might contribute to long-term performance, the normal ups and downs of the busines
Source: NYT
October 18, 2008
While Hawaii’s surf-loving chiefs ruled from Waikiki because they liked its steady waves and idyllic weather, European and American ships turned nearby Honolulu Harbor into a forest of masts, spawning a mariner’s village that eventually became the Pacific archipelago’s capital.
The ship carrying the last of those masts — four to be exact — was sold recently for a symbolic dollar to a group of cash-strapped enthusiasts who hope to save that 266-foot square-rigger, the Falls of Clyde.
Source: AP
October 18, 2008
As U.S. forces withdrew from Vietnam in early 1974, Seaman Apprentice Frederic D. Jones was fighting his own battles.
The cocky Baltimore teenager spent nearly three months AWOL in the Philippines. There, he said, he played cat-and-mouse with shore patrol while fending off a murderous drug dealer, romancing the sister of a militia leader and robbing other servicemen to feed his heroin habit.
Eventually caught, Jones negotiated an honorable discharge but couldn't stay cl
Source: San Jose Mercury News
October 17, 2008
Nobody who swung a sledgehammer Friday at a slice of San Jose history shed any tears.
And with the help of a powerful backhoe, the crowd standing around a drab concrete guard shack on Hedding Street cheered and whooped as slabs of the small, boxy structure crashed to the ground and dust choked the air.
By midday, the guard shack built in 1972 for the trial of Black Panther activist Angela Davis was reduced to a mere memory.
Police Chief Rob Davis was glad.
Source: AP
October 18, 2008
For all Barack Obama's talk about change, there are signs that in style — if not substance — a new White House under Democrat Obama would operate much like the current one under President Bush.
Think discipline, efficiency and secrecy. These are hallmarks of Obama's campaign, just as they have been for the last eight years in the leak-proof, tightly managed Bush administration.
If Obama becomes the nation's 44th president, however, the extraordinary history-making aspec
