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
September 12, 2008
The New York football teams, the Giants and the Jets, said Friday that they had ended talks with Allianz, a German-based insurance company with connections to the Third Reich, about selling the naming rights to the $1.6 billion stadium they are building in the Meadowlands.
The decision came after two days of largely negative reaction to the possibility of a deal with Allianz, which insured facilities at Auschwitz and other concentration camps, and which deprived many Jewish customer
Source: AP
September 11, 2008
Archaeologists in Greece have unearthed more than 1,400
ancient graves and tombs during excavation work for a new metro in the
northern city of Salonika, the culture ministry said on Thursday.
The graves and tombs spanned an 800-year period from the fourth century BC
to Roman times in the fourth century AD.
The finds range from humble pits and altar tombs of stone to marble
sarcophagi, the ministry said.
Source: AP
September 11, 2008
When John McCain decided to cast Barack Obama as feckless upstart, an empty suit, he reached for the dirtiest word he could use: "celebrity."
"He's the biggest celebrity in the world," a female narrator warns in breathless tones for a McCain ad, "but is he ready to lead?" Chants of "O-bama! O-bama!" form a mischievous backtrack to fleeting images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton — one a troubled singer and the other a socialite who is famous
Source: Telegraph
September 12, 2008
An airworthy Spitfire is expected to sell for £1 million when it is auctioned this weekend by Bonhams in New Zealand.
The original Spitfire MK XVI was completed in late April 1945, just days before the Germans surrendered...
Later it was flown in the 1957 Battle of Britain Memorial flight before being donated to the United States Air Force (USAF) in 1959, where it was displayed for the next 38 years.
Source: NYT
September 13, 2008
WASHINGTON — Countless federal records are being lost to posterity because federal employees, grappling with a staggering growth in electronic records, do not regularly preserve the documents they create on government computers, send by e-mail and post on the Web.
Federal agencies have rushed to embrace the Internet and new information technology, but their record-keeping efforts lag far behind. Moreover, federal investigators have found widespread violations of federal record-keepi
Source: Spiegel Online
August 21, 2008
Forty years ago [in August] the Soviet Union ended the so-called Prague Spring with a massive invasion of troops and tanks. Intelligence files from that era show that the largest military operation in Europe since 1945 took the West by surprise.
When it was over, Western officers, awkwardly, seemed surprised. Against their will they had to admit the camouflage hiding the march of Warsaw Pact troops into Prague had been "good," and the speed of their divisions "impres
Source: State Journal
September 11, 2008
Some of West Virginia's Civil War battlefields are scenes of new fighting.
For the past four years, a group of Jefferson County residents has been fighting to save an historic battlefield there, said Edward Dunleavy, president of the Shepherdstown Battlefield Preservation Association Inc.
"It's been difficult for the past four years," he said. "(A developer) bought a 122-acre farm and proposed building 152 houses on it."
The problem as a
Source: AP
September 11, 2008
The Museum of the Confederacy has taken one step forward in its plan to divide its collection among four sites in Virginia.
The Richmond museum and the town of Appomattox are eying a 4-acre site near the intersection of Route 24 and U.S. Route 460. The town has secured the right to purchase and finance the future site, which then would be leased to the museum.
Source: WSJ
September 11, 2008
Since his election three years ago, Pope Benedict XVI has devoted considerable time and intellectual effort arguing that religious faith and reason can coexist in modern society.
This week he will take that argument to France, one of Europe's most deeply secular states, which long ago segregated religion from public life.
The strict division between church and state in France began in the French Revolution with a bloody purge of Roman Catholic clergy from the pol
Source: CNN
September 12, 2008
Clashes that lasted through the night on the 35th anniversary of the 1973 military coup have left 31 people injured and 234 arrested nationwide.
The government said 22 police and nine civilians were injured. An 18-year-old man is in serious condition.
Source: AP
September 12, 2008
JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia: On a sweltering August morning, a small group of
Iranians crowded outside the green metal door of a cemetery. They wanted
to go in to look at the remains of one particular tomb: the tomb of
biblical Eve.
Like hundreds of Muslims who visit Saudi Arabia for pilgrimage in nearby
Mecca, the Iranians had heard the legend that Eve was buried in that spot.
The two blue signs inscribed with"The Graveyard of our mother Eve"
flanking the cemetery entrance appeared to add
Source: Reuters
September 12, 2008
Poland's last communist leader, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, and seven other Soviet-era officials went on trial on Friday over the declaration of martial law more than a quarter of a century ago.Poland's National Remembrance Institute accuses the defendants, now grey-haired elderly men, of violating the law and flouting human rights with the 1981 decision, which led to the deaths of dozens of people and the jailing of hundreds more.
The defendants deny the accus
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 12, 2008
The MoD said the 18th century warship could be too expensive to maintain and that her funding was currently under review.
This could see her looked after and run by a private firm or a charity to save cash, options which critics said would be a "tragedy".
The MoD said that increasing budgetary pressures meant it must review Victory's future like any other ship but insisted it would remain part of the Royal Navy.
But a former Commanding Officer
Source: USA Today
September 10, 2008
Despite a national discussion about whether Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin sought to ban books as mayor more than a decade ago, the city says there is no record of any books being yanked from the shelves.
Since being selected as John McCain's running mate, Palin has faced questions over discussions she had with Wasilla's librarian in 1996. In recent days, a bogus list of"banned books" has been widely circulated on the Internet.
But on its website, the city of Wasi
Source: WaPo
September 8, 2008
For tourists, the new memorial to 184 people who died at the Pentagon in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is not especially convenient. Nor is it ideal from a security perspective to have 24-hour public access right outside the U.S. military's nerve center.
But there is little dispute that the new memorial, which opens to the public Thursday, was built right where it should have been: at the spot where American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the west wall of the Pentagon.
Source: National Security Archive
September 10, 2008
On the eve of the thirty-fifth anniversary of the military coup in Chile, the National Security Archive today published for the first time formerly secret transcripts of Henry Kissinger’s telephone conversations that set in motion a massive U.S. effort to overthrow the newly-elected socialist government of Salvador Allende. “We will not let Chile go down the drain,” Kissinger told CIA director Richard Helms in one phone call. “I am with you,” the September 12, 1970 transcript records Helms respo
Source: Fox News
September 11, 2008
Sept. 11: Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin speaks at a meeting with a group of Western foreign policy experts in Sochi on Russia's Black Sea.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned the West on Thursday not to instigate an arms race in Europe, Reuters reported.
The Russian leader said there is no basis for a new Cold War, as Russia has no imperialist ambitions.
Putin told a meeting of officials and experts at a forum in the Black Sea resor
Source: Fox News
September 11, 2008
The investigation into the unsolved 2004 dioxin poisoning of President Viktor Yushchenko has been completely politicized, Ukraine's prime minister said Thursday before she was questioned by prosecutors.
Yulia Tymoshenko suggested that she has being targeted because she is a potential competitor to Yushchenko in the 2010 presidential elections.
"When a person who is considered by the president as his rival at elections is simultaneously accused of state treason and
Source: CNN
September 11, 2008
With moments of silence punctuated by somber music, readings of names, and tears, Americans held solemn memorial services Thursday to honor the victims of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld returned to the Pentagon to help dedicate a memorial to victims of the attack there.
"Today we renew our vows to never forget how this long struggle began and to never forget those who fell first," said Rumsfeld, who despite
Source: AP
September 10, 2008
Archaeologists in Peru say they have discovered the jawbone
of a fetus among the remains of a sacrificed woman in a pre-Inca tomb,
suggesting the Lambayeque culture practiced the atypical sacrifice of
pregnant women and their children.
The remains of the woman and unborn child were found in a tomb with three
other sacrificed women and several sacrificial llamas, lead archaeologist
Carlos Wester La Torre told The Associated Press.
In all, Wester La Torre's team reported findin
