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: Telegraph (UK)
September 26, 2008
Iran's education minister looked on while a group of militant students unveiled a book ridiculing Holocaust victims during an anti-Israeli rally in central Tehran.
The book's cover depicted a Jew with a hooked nose dressed in traditional clothes drawing the outlines of dead bodies on the ground.
Written by student members of the Basij militia, the book comes two years after an Iranian newspaper commissioned a competition of Holocaust-themed cartoons.
Despit
Source: CNN
September 26, 2008
The first black heavyweight champion should be granted a presidential pardon for a racially motivated conviction 75 years ago that blemished his reputation and hurt his boxing career, the House recommended Friday.
Jack Johnson became world heavyweight champion in 1908, sparking a search for a white boxer, dubbed "the Great White Hope," who could beat him.
In 1913, Johnson was convicted of violating the Mann Act which outlawed the transportation of women across
Source: Guardian (UK)
September 27, 2008
A Spanish judge looking into the brutal repression of dictator General Francisco Franco's forces during the country's civil war has opened an investigation into the tens of thousands of victims of the so-called "red terror" unleashed by some of his leftwing opponents.
Judge Baltasar Garzón has asked authorities for a list of those killed on the orders of the tribunals set up by the leftwing Republican authorities in Madrid during the three-year civil war that ended in 1939
Source: LiveScience
September 26, 2008
Talk about secrets of the crypt: Two newly discovered species of bacteria have been found on the walls of ancient Roman tombs.
Bacteria often grow on the walls of underground tombs, causing decay and damaging these archaeological sites. Scientists in Italy found the two new microbes while studying decayed surfaces in the Catacombs of Saint Callistus in Rome.
The Catacombs of Saint Callistus are part of a massive underground graveyard that covers 37 acres. The tombs, named after
Source: AP
September 25, 2008
PLYMOUTH, Massachusetts: It's a handcrafted wooden chest with two rows of side by side drawers, a type found in 17th century New England.
But this beautiful piece of furniture, made from oak and pine, with decorative red and black applied moldings and wooden turned drawer pulls, is not an antique.
It's a brand new reproduction of a chest made in Plymouth colony in Massachusetts between 1660 and 1700. The artisan who made it, Peter Follansbee, works at Plimoth Plantation
Source: AP
September 25, 2008
For her birthday, Nina Stanke gets 16 candles - and one vote.
Austria will make history in the European Union on Sunday by becoming the first member of the 27-nation bloc to give 16-year-olds a voice in national elections.
And Stanke, one of up to 200,000 eligible Austrian teenagers, is not about to pass up this opportunity.
"Yes, I'm going to vote," Stanke, who turned 16 this week, said on a recent afternoon as she chatted with friends outside he
Source: International Herald Tribune
September 25, 2008
The Chechen boys and the young Chechen men filed into the gym just before 3 p.m. There was no locker room. Beneath a huge picture of Akhmad Kadyrov, the Chechen president slain four years ago, they slipped out of street clothes on the bleachers and then moved to the gym floor.
Soon they were in motion, shuffling in a wide circle, twisting their backs and loosening muscles in their chests, shoulders, quadriceps and arms.
It intensified. First they finished a regimen of n
Source: AP
September 25, 2008
CORINTH, Miss.: On a small-town Saturday night, a half-block from the town square where a deteriorating Confederate statue stands guard, state Sen. Eric Powell walks into a restaurant for dinner.
Powell orders fried pickles. Bubba Carpenter, a Republican state representative, ambles over with his 5-year-old son, Noah. The two freshmen legislators make small talk about a Civil War reenactment and plans to attend Friday's scheduled debate between Barack Obama and John McCain at the Un
Source: BBC News
September 26, 2008
A plan to give the streets around some of London's most famous museums more of a 'village' feel has taken its first key step forward.
Kensington and Chelsea Council has approved dismantling a one-way system around Exhibition Road.
This is the first step towards having cars and pedestrians "share" the road.
The busy area around west London's South Kensington Tube is home to the Victoria and Albert, Science and Natural History museums.
Source: US News & World Report
September 25, 2008
For decades after the disaster, there was little doubt about what sank the Titanic. When the "unsinkable" ship, the largest, most luxurious ocean liner of its time, crashed into an iceberg on its maiden voyage in 1912, it took more than 1,500 of its 2,200 passengers to the bottom. As the ship slipped into the North Atlantic, so, too, did the secret of how and why it sank....
In two new books, a group of historians, naval architects, and materials scientists argue that fres
Source: Telegraph
September 25, 2008
Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, two of the most popular state-owned tourist attractions in the country, require at least £20 million to be spent on new roofs and updated heating systems.
The Queen, who is renowned for being thrifty in her personal expenditure, has averted a cash crisis within the Royal Household...
But it is the plight of some of the palaces, whose maintenance is paid for by the taxpayer, which is causing growing concern to the Queen and other sen
Source: NYT
September 17, 2008
The federal and New York State governments have agreed to become anchor tenants in the Freedom Tower, the tallest, most symbolic and most scrutinized skyscraper project at ground zero, under a plan announced today by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York City and the governors of New York and New Jersey.
Source: AP
September 25, 2008
KEY WEST, Fla. -- The famed six-toed cats at Ernest Hemingway's island home aren't going anywhere.
The Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum announced Thursday it reached an agreement with the federal government that lets the 50 or so cats continue roaming the grounds, ending a five-year battle that could have resulted in them being removed or caged.
The cats descend from a cat named "Snowball" given to the novelist in 1935 and freely wander the grounds of the Span
Source: NYT City Room (blog)
September 26, 2008
More testimony released Friday from the spy case against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg suggested further inconsistencies between what a key witness told the grand jury and what he testified to at trial.
The 1950 grand jury testimony of Harry Gold, an admitted courier in the case, was released in response to a suit by the National Security Archive and several historians and journalists.
Lawyers say it is not unusual for witnesses to remember additional details or even diffe
Source: cnet
September 25, 2008
SEBASTOPOL, Calif.--From a corner of a nondescript office building at the edge of wine country, Carl Malamud is masterminding an electronic guerrilla war against governments across the nation.
Most geeks tend to be a bit obsessive, and Malamud is no exception. He's devoted his life to liberating laws, regulations, court cases, and the other myriad detritus that governments produce daily, but often lock up in proprietary databases or allow for-profit companies to sell for princely su
Source: AP
September 24, 2008
German Chancellor Angela Merkel assured Poland on Wednesday that a memorial center to Germans expelled from eastern Europe after World War II would not be a means to reinterpret history or absolve Nazi crimes.
Three weeks ago, the German government took a first step toward setting up a memorial to millions of ethnic Germans who were forced from their homes in Poland, Czechoslovakia and elsewhere in eastern and central Europe when the borders shifted westward following World War II.
Source: http://www.news.com.au
September 26, 2008
SIGNS of strength in the polls for Barack Obama yesterday were tempered by news of sickening racist taunts aimed at the Illinois senator, including a likeness of him found hanging from a tree at a university in Oregon.
Along with the cut-out of Senator Obama, hanging on fishing line at the Quaker-founded George Fox University outside Portland, there was graffiti alluding to "Act 6" - a reference to black recipients of the scholarship programs at the university, The Austral
Source: FoxNews.com
September 25, 2008
A British village expecting a scooter and music festival found itself invaded by more than 800 neo-Nazis instead.
Racist skinheads from across Britain, Germany and Eastern Europe arrived draped in swastika flags.
Wearing leather jackets and army boots, they stomped through the streets chanting: "Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil," a Nazi WWII chant meaning "hail victory."
Horrified locals watched as the beer and whisky-drinking supremacists urinated
Source: AP
September 23, 2008
Albert Einstein's long-lost telescope, forgotten for decades in a Jerusalem storage shed, goes on display this week after three years and $10,000 spent restoring the relic.
The old reflecting telescope is cumbersome by modern standards, but a demonstration for The Associated Press showed it still works well enough to see five of Jupiter's moons and stripes on the surface of the huge planet.
The legendary physicist who famously theorized relations among energy, speed and
Source: Reuters
September 24, 2008
A forest fire has damaged two archeological sites in the valley between the Peruvian city of Cuzco and the ancient Incan fortress of Machu Picchu, Peru's national institute of culture said on Wednesday.
At least 600 firefighters are battling the blaze high in the Andes mountains. They have brought the fire under control at times, only to see it whipped up again by winds.
Two ancient sites, Wayna Q'ente and Torontoy, were hit by flames, though the government did not say
