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: LAT
August 13, 2008
Aplatoon of double-crested cormorants took flight from the eastern shore of the Columbia River, skimming the sun-sparkled surface as two slender white egrets stood in the nearby shallows, hunting small fish hiding in the reeds.
Twenty kayakers, mostly tourists from the Pacific Northwest, paddled along, letting the steady current do most of the work. They coasted past mule deer grazing on the shore, coyotes stalking the sandy beaches and cliff swallows buzzing the nearby white bluffs
Source: Telegraph
August 13, 2008
Kaczynski has written to a panel of senior judges to complain that the public exhibition of his former Montana hideaway infringes the expressed wish of his victims to avoid further publicity.
In a handwritten note sent from prison and obtained by The Smoking Gun website, Kaczynski attacks the US government for releasing the cabin - from where he conducted his mail bombing campaign - to the museum.
The mathematics professor, who is currently serving a life term with no
Source: International Herald Tribune
August 13, 2008
In a world where preserving ethnic identities has acquired almost a sacred character, the Kristang people of this historic, picturesque seacoast trading port are something of an exception, and it's impossible not to feel melancholy about that.
The Kristang have been part of this part of the world since 1511, when Alfonso de Albuquerque, the governor-general of Portugal's expanding empire, seized Malacca from the local sultan and ordered his men to marry local women.
Alb
Source: Telegraph
August 12, 2008
General Hideki Tojo lashed out at his countrymen in his journal even after atomic bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The journal, found in the National Archives of Japan, covers the two-week period from Aug 10, 1945, a day after the second atomic bomb had struck Nagasaki.
"The Japanese government has accepted the notion that Japan is the loser and it appears to be going to accept unconditional surrender," Tojo wrote. "Such a position frus
Source: Civil War Interactive
August 13, 2008
Kym M. Elder, a 21-year NPS veteran, has been named the first superintendent of Ford's Theatre National Historic Site. Elder's appointment became effective August 3rd.
The position Elder assumes was recently created, as the Ford's Theatre site is now a separate, stand-alone unit of the National Park System. Prior to this change, Ford's Theatre National Historic Site had been managed as a part of the National Mall & Memorial Parks. Ford's Theatre National Historic Site als
Source: Deutsche Welle
August 13, 2008
Germany is marking the 47th anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall. Speaking at a memorial ceremony in Berlin, Parliament President Norbert Lammert urged that the memory of Germany's division and its victims be kept alive. Lammert and Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit laid wreaths at a memorial at one of the few sections left standing of the Wall. Communist East Germany started building the barrier on August 13, 1961. The Berlin Wall was one of the most notorious symbols of the Cold War an
Source: USA Today
August 13, 2008
...More than five years after the fall of Baghdad, the fate of Iraq's antiquities still torments archaeologists.
The looting of the National Museum garnered headlines in April 2003. But the widespread pillaging of archaeological sites — 10,548 sites are registered, with perhaps 100,000 actually buried there — bewilders and saddens scholars. They believe they are witnessing the ransacking of the cradle of civilization, a calamity "almost impossible to overstate for the destruct
Source: Columbus Dispatch
August 13, 2008
t's a guide to improving Columbus' economy and creating a dynamic and inspirational urban heart.
It calls for more parks for children and parkways to link neighborhoods, as well as more public art and an effort to beautify the Scioto River's banks.
It's a comprehensive plan to rebuild the central city.
It's also 100 years old.
The 1908 "City Beautiful" plan discusses ideas that planners, civic leaders and residents are talking about n
Source: Telegraph
August 14, 2008
Japanese researchers are hoping to trace British prisoners of war who appear in photographs that have been kept secret since the end of the Second World War
Source: New Zealand Herald
August 14, 2008
A Perth family's 25-year search to find their missing uncle, a soldier from World War I, has come to an end.
The federal government has confirmed the remains from a grave discovered in 2006 at Westhoek, in Belgium, are those of 21-year-old farmhand Private George Storey, from Perth.
Private Storey's nephew David Storey says he was first contacted by the Army history unit 18 months ago, but it has taken all that time to confirm the identification.
"They
Source: Tehran Times
August 14, 2008
Pakistan will celebrate its 61st Independence Day today with traditional enthusiasm and a renewed pledge to make the country prosperous and strong.
A flag-hoisting ceremony will also be held in Tehran, where Pakistan’s ambassador to Iran, Mr. Shafkat Saeed, will perform the ritual.
After the Independence Day function, the ambassador will address a press conference.
Pakistan and India gained independence from Great Britain in August 1947. The splitting of
Source: CNN
August 12, 2008
John Lennon's killer, Mark David Chapman, was denied parole for the fifth time Tuesday.
The New York State Division of Parole issued a release saying Chapman's request was denied "due to concern for the public safety and welfare."
Chapman, 53, is serving a sentence of 20 years to life in prison for shooting to death the former Beatle outside his New York City apartment on December 8, 1980.
The killer has served 24 years of his sentence at the maxi
Source: China Daily
August 12, 2008
Venezuela has found the first fossils of an extinct scimitar cat -- of the saber-toothed cat genus -- in South America, during oil prospecting activities southeast of Caracas, paleontologists announced.
"It's South America's most important discovery in 60 years," Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Investigation paleontologist Ascanio Rincon said on Monday.
He said fossils of six scimitar cats, or Homotherium, were found along with those of panthers, wolves, ca
Source: BBC
August 12, 2008
The building, which dates to the second century AD, was found during an excavation at Zippori, the capital of Galilee during the Roman period.
The temple walls were plundered in ancient times and little more than its foundations now remain.
Coins minted in the town suggest Roman gods Zeus and Tyche may have been worshipped at the site.
The building is located south of the "decumanus" (colonnaded street) which ran east to west through the town a
Source: Washington Post
August 12, 2008
One of the most infamous examples of what can happen when a nonnative species is introduced into a new environment involves the brown tree snake -- a voracious, semi-venomous species that in less than 50 years all but destroyed bird life on the northern Pacific island of Guam. Introduced inadvertently from the South Pacific just after World War II, apparently on a cargo ship, the snake has killed off 10 bird species on the island and is in the process of wiping out the remaining two.
Source: Knoxville News Sentinel
August 12, 2008
The constitutionality of Anderson County school system’s long-standing dress code banning display of the Confederate flag was being tested today in a Knoxville federal courtroom.
It will be up to an all-white jury to decide if the free speech rights of Tom Defoe, then a senior at Anderson County High School, were violated by the ban on a flag that to some symbolize Southern heritage and to others racial hate.
There were no black jurors in the pool summoned to appear tod
Source: AP
August 12, 2008
From Abraham Lincoln's boyhood residence to the Mary Todd Lincoln house, visitors this year are flocking to Kentucky sites dedicated to the 16th president.
But Lincoln's Confederate counterpart, Jefferson Davis, is experiencing a similar resurgence. Kentucky, which claims both men as native sons and has statues of both in its Capitol Rotunda, isn't the only place experiencing a Davis boost.
"It'll be hard for anyone to approach the level of attention that Abraham L
Source: Telegraph
August 11, 2008
Private Arthur Haines was in a Singapore military hospital with malaria when invading Japanese troops stormed the building and killed more than 200 people.
Although his life was spared, the soldier witnessed the gruesome killings of his comrades, doctors and nurses who were either bayoneted, shot or suffocated to death.
After being taken prisoner, Pte Haines, 24, managed to jot down the bloody episode on a four page letter.
In it he wrote of the moment a pr
Source: LAT
August 12, 2008
It was an open-and-shut case. Kuwaiti cops showed up at the dealer's house and seized more than 22 pounds of cocaine and 165 pounds of hashish. The suspect was accused of drug trafficking and, a few months later, sentenced to death.
But the convicted drug dealer, Talal Nasser al Sabah, was no ordinary Kuwaiti -- he was a member of the Persian Gulf kingdom's ruling family.
Now everyone is watching to see whether the authorities will follow through on the ruling by
Source: Independent
August 11, 2008
Spain's Defence Minister, Carme Chacon, continues to cut a swathe through Spain's stiff-necked military establishment, with a pioneering proposal made public yesterday to declassify secret documents held in military archives.
In a nation that endured three years of civil war and 40 years of dictatorship, this is a revolutionary move comparable to Germany opening up the Stasi secret police files. Ms Chacon's motive is similar: to provide public access for historians and those w
