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 6, 2008
Despite decades of free-market rhetoric from Republican and Democratic lawmakers, Washington has a long history of providing financial help to the private sector when the economic or political risk of a corporate collapse appeared too high.
The effort to save Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is only the latest in a series of financial maneuvers by the government that stretch back to the rescue of the military contractor Lockheed Aircraft Corporation and the Penn Central Railroad under Pre
Source: LAT
September 7, 2008
Today's Home section introduces a new feature by Sam Watters. The first installment looks at the history of the Huntington estate in San Marino.
Source: AP
September 6, 2008
Ralph McClintock expected only a three-week mission when he boarded the USS Pueblo in January 1968.
Instead, he and his shipmates became pawns in a Cold War sideshow when North Korea captured the Navy spy ship and imprisoned its 82 crew members. Some still suffer the physical effects of torture or malnutrition they suffered in 11 months of captivity.
McClintock is proud of his service as a 24-year-old communications technician and the bonds he made with his crew mates,
Source: AP
September 7, 2008
It is not a tidy anniversary this year. Seven years between that
awful day and this Sept. 11, the terrorist attacks linger between the
immediate, a conscious part of Americans' days, and the comfortable remove
of the distant past. No longer yesterday and not yet history.
What happened seven years ago colors the country's life today. There are
the two wars, of course. But in smaller ways, too: People sing"God Bless
America" at the ballpark. They weigh"evil" as a campaign issue. They s
Source: National Geographic News
September 3, 2008
Deep inside an underwater cave in Mexico, archaeologists may have
discovered the oldest human skeleton ever found in the Americas.
Dubbed Eva de Naharon, or Eve of Naharon, the female skeleton has been
dated at 13,600 years old. If that age is accurate, the skeleton—along
with three others found in underwater caves along the Caribbean coast of
the Yucatán Peninsula—could provide new clues to how the Americas were
first populated.
The remains have been excavated over the past f
Source: Observer
September 7, 2008
Portraits of famous people tend to look like the painters because the artists were all simply depicting themselves, according to new research.
Computer-aided comparisons made between a series of portraits of British monarchs and the self-portraits of the artists who painted them prove that there has always been a hidden agenda in top-level portraiture, argues the art historian Simon Abrahams.
After lengthy research and the examination of hundreds of famous paintings fro
Source: The Forward
September 4, 2008
While Barack Obama has struggled to capture Jewish votes, it turns out that one of his wife’s cousins is the country’s most prominent black rabbi.
Michelle Obama, wife of the Democratic presidential nominee, is a first cousin once removed of Rabbi Capers Funnye, spiritual leader of a mostly black synagogue on Chicago’s South Side. Funnye’s mother, Verdelle Robinson Funnye, and Michelle Obama’s paternal grandfather, Frasier Robinson Jr., were brother and sister.
Funnye (
Source: Times
September 7, 2008
Good time Charlie, the hard-drinking, skirt-chasing Texan politician played by Tom Hanks in the film Charlie Wilson’s War, is facing a new battle.
Plans to endow a Charlie Wilson chair in Pakistan studies at the University of Texas have riled the college’s liberal academics, who feel he is too “gung-ho” to be a role model for students.
They say Wilson’s support for Afghans fighting Soviet occupiers during the 1980s, when he covertly funnelled American government aid t
Source: Independent
September 7, 2008
The assassination of the journalist Georgi Markov in London in 1978 by a man wielding a poison-tipped umbrella was one of the most infamous episodes of the Cold War and brought relations between Britain and Bulgaria to breaking point. Thirty years on, with the Bulgarian authorities closing the case on the anniversary of the dissident's death this Thursday, secret official documents have uncovered the truth behind the killing.
The papers, from the archives of Bulgaria's National Inte
Source: Times
September 7, 2008
A British spy who was a cross between James Bond and Robin Hood plotted to use a longbow to assassinate one of the most notorious Nazis, according to a new book.
Tommy Sneum lay in ambush in occupied Copenhagen armed with a bow and arrows to kill Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS. He planned to strike from a penthouse that belonged to a Danish film starlet he had seduced. Sneum chose a longbow because he did not want the sound of a bullet to be traced back to her flat.
Source: Observer (UK)
September 7, 2008
The great landmark that once separated the Roman empire's British citizens from the Celtic tribes of the north will be highlighted, literally, next year by a spectacular art installation as all of Hadrian's Wall is lit up.
The team behind the Northumberland Lights project are to announce plans this week to set up lights along the 73 miles of the wall for three days to draw visitors to the site at night.
'This will be a way of getting people to see the landscape in a di
Source: Telegraph
September 6, 2008
The Communist rulers of former East Germany used to inflate their hunting
prowess by displaying frozen carcasses bought from the butcher, it has
emerged.
Details of how the state's former leader, Erich Honecker, cheated at
shooting parties have been revealed out as a unique collection of guns
owned by him and other top party officials has come up for sale.
The 31 rifles, shotguns and pistols which once belonged to Honecker and
other Communist officials, including the hated Sta
Source: National Parks Traveler Online
September 6, 2008
In the classic movie History of the World Part II, actor/writer/producer
Mel Brooks, playing French “Sun King” Louis XIV, looks toward the audience
and remarks: “It’s Good to be the King.” Well, at least where visiting
national parks is concerned, “It’s Good to be the President.”
Consider the special treatment that President George W. Bush received
during his Friday, September 5, afternoon tour of Gettysburg National
Military Park.
You and I will have to wait until the grand
Source: http://www.mdcoastdispatch.com
September 5, 2008
OCEAN CITY – A large section of what is likely a fairly ancient wooden
vessel was discovered in the surf at 43rd Street this week and now awaits
its fate in a town-owned storage facility in West Ocean City as state
historians and maritime archaeologists attempt to date it and perhaps
discover from whence it came.
The roughly 25-foot long, L-shaped artifact was first discovered in the
surf by swimmers in the 43rd Street area on Monday. Ocean City Beach
Patrol staffers tried to remove
Source: NYT
September 6, 2008
The disappearance of Iowa’s iconic barn, a building whose purpose shifted, then faded away, tells the story of how farming itself has changed markedly in the state.
Source: NYT
September 6, 2008
Robert Giroux, an editor and publisher who introduced and nurtured some of the major authors of the 20th century and ultimately added his name to one of the nation’s most distinguished publishing houses, died on Friday in Tinton Falls, N.J. He was 94.
He died in his sleep at Seabrook Village, an independent-living center, a niece, Kathleen Mulvehill, said.
If the flamboyant Roger Straus presented the public face of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, presiding over the busines
Source: NYT
September 6, 2008
In Britain, judges are wedded to a tradition of elegant attire: scarlet and ermine robes, tippets over the shoulders, black girdles and, of course, the crimped, gray horsehair wig.
In the United States, judges have been less attached to such grand garb. Robes were not even a necessary part of their attire in the decades after the Revolutionary War, though it eventually became the accepted fashion. But even today, New York does not require judges to wear robes, and various judges spu
Source: Deutsche Welle
September 6, 2008
An 87-year-old Ukrainian immigrant lost his appeal to keep his US citizenship after a US federal court ruled he had collaborated with Nazis and helped liquidate a Jewish ghetto in Poland.
Ruling in the four-year-old case, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals said that John Ivan Kalymon had lied about his involvement with the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police (UAP) when he emigrated to the US from Germany in 1949, US justice officials said Friday, Sept. 5.
The Troy, Michigan, r
Source: BBC
September 5, 2008
Jack the Ripper may have killed his first victim 25 years earlier than previously thought, a retired murder detective has claimed in a new book.
It is thought that Jack the Ripper killed and mutilated at least five prostitutes in the East End between August and November 1888.
But Trevor Marriott says he may have struck in 1863 and 1872.
Mr Marriott will be presenting his findings at the Docklands Museum which is hosting an exhibition on the killer.
Source: Politico.com
September 5, 2008
The White House released an unusual 700-word statement Friday evening that charges author Bob Woodward with distorting the effectiveness of the Iraq “surge” policy in his new book, “The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008,” set for publication Monday.
The statement is extremely surprising because it was issued by National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley, who shepherded Woodward’s interaction with the West Wing and encouraged top administration officials to grant i
