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
November 13, 2007
The chestnut tree that comforted Anne Frank while she hid from the Nazis during World War II will be cut down Nov. 21 because it is too diseased to be saved, the city said Tuesday.
The 150-year-old chestnut, familiar to the many readers of “The Diary of Anne Frank,” suffers from fungus and moths that have caused more than half its trunk to rot.
“The state of this monumental chestnut is a real danger for its surroundings,” including the “secret annex” atop the canal-side
Source: AP
November 14, 2007
Episcopal Church leaders yesterday argued that a Civil War-era Virginia law governing church splits does not apply to its dispute with 11 Northern Virginia congregations in their effort to leave the denomination in a dispute over biblical authority and homosexuality.
At issue is an 1867 state law saying that a majority vote determines whether a congregation can realign and keep its property when a church faces internal division. The 11 congregations voted to leave the denomination,
Source: http://www.newsleader.com
November 12, 2007
STAUNTON — The sculpted figures of men, women and children writhe and twist as they are pulled through the layers of a whirlpool.
In the center of the oil clay maquette, a figure stretches its arm pleadingly as it is pulled down.
Local sculptor Ken Smith said the idea for his “Middle Passage,” a piece that tells the story of slaves crossing from Africa to the new world, was partially inspired by a scene in the movie “Amistad.” The scene depicts passengers, chained toget
Source: International Herald Tribune
November 11, 2007
The spectacle of the queen in a long evening dress and diamond-laden crown holding forth in a mellow monotone about "unclaimed money in dormant bank accounts" and other urgent legislative topics is unsettling enough.
But anyone watching the queen unveil the government's new legislative agenda at the State Opening of Parliament here last week, where that very scene took place, would have noticed something even more jarring. There was the Lord Chancellor, Jack Straw - former
Source: Earth Times
November 14, 2007
The German government is open to the possibility of reopening the issue of Holocaust reparations if the Israeli government makes a formal request, an official spokesman said in Berlin Wednesday. Government spokesman Thomas Steg was responding to comments that Israeli Pensions Minister Rafi Eitan made to an Israeli newspaper last week.
"If the Israeli government wants to talk formally to the German government, we will not refuse to hold talks of this nature," Steg said in a
Source: http://www.praguemonitor.com/
November 12, 2007
U.S. Ambassador Richard Graber handed over unique documentary film shots from the liberation of the Czech Lands in 1945 to the Czech National Film Archive director Vladimir Opela Friday, on the occasion of the November 11 Veterans Day.
The film, shot by U.S. military amateur photographers, has never been presented in the Czech Republic yet.
Graber said the shots are evidence of the joint U.S.-Czech history connecting both countries, and they enable to preserve the legac
Source: Earth Times
November 11, 2007
A new visitors' centre was opened on Sunday at the former Ravensbrueck concentration camp north of Berlin. The 400-square-metre glass-walled structure fits in well with the historic atmosphere of the complex, said Insa Eschebach, head of the Ravensbrueck Memorial Centre.
Tours of what was once the largest women's concentration camp on German soil begin at the new visitors' centre and also end there.
More than 133,000 women and children from Germany, Poland and other cou
Source: AP
November 14, 2007
An 85-year-old man accused of being a Nazi dog handler has returned to Germany rather than fight to stay in the U.S., a federal prosecutor told a judge at a deportation hearing.
Paul Henss was accused of training and handling attack dogs at the Dachau and Buchenwald concentration camps. U.S. Immigration Judge J. Dan Pelletier ordered him deported after a 30-minute hearing Tuesday conducted without Henss or an attorney on his behalf present.
Henss left Friday for his nat
Source: Reuters
November 14, 2007
Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney needs to assure evangelicals that his Mormon faith would not be his ultimate guide if he wants their support, an influential Southern Baptist official said on Tuesday.
"If Romney wants to get significant Southern Baptist and evangelical support he's going to have to give a Kennedy-style speech," said Richard Land, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
Land was ref
Source: BBC
November 12, 2007
Northern Ireland's largest loyalist paramilitary group, the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), has said it is standing down its units and putting beyond use - but not decommissioning - its weapons.
The UFF units have been ordered to stand down
Like a lot of things in Northern Ireland at the moment, if this had happened 10 years ago, it would have made front page headlines around the world.
As it is, the main reaction from the public has been scepticism and
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE)
November 14, 2007
Enrollments in foreign-language classes at American colleges and universities have jumped 13 percent since 2002, with Arabic and Chinese showing the most dramatic increases, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Modern Language Association. The number of students studying Arabic soared 126.5 percent between 2002 and 2006, while the number studying Chinese grew by more than 50 percent. Korean also rose in popularity, with a 37.1 percent rise in enrollments.
Source: Der Spiegel
November 8, 2007
When the Taliban destroyed two Buddhist statues in Afghanistan in the spring of 2001, there was an international outcry. But similar incidents are now occurring in northwest Pakistan, where radical Islamists recently blew up a sculpture of Buddha in broad daylight.
Source: http://abc.net.au/
November 14, 2007
United States Democrats say the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost nearly $1.8 trillion - double the amount the Bush Administration has claimed.
The figure includes what the Democrats say are the hidden costs of higher oil prices and the long-term health care of wounded soldiers.
The US Congress is gearing up for yet another war funding showdown with the Bush Administration, just as the US military begins winding back the so-called troop surge in Iraq.
Source: NYT
November 14, 2007
The box had sat untouched in the attic of a Washington house until recently, when the sale of the house forced some cleaning out, some poking around in long-overlooked places.
Inside the box was a manila file folder headed: “Lee Harvey Oswald.”
Inside the folder was a handwritten letter that Oswald had sent from Russia, complaining that the Soviet Union would not grant him an exit visa to the United States. It was addressed to Senator John Tower of Texas, who had lived
Source: Baltimore Sun blog
November 13, 2007
President Bush calls his failure to win Social Security reform “the biggest disappointment’’ of his presidency.
In an interview with the Fox Business Network, Bush said: “The biggest disappointment is not getting a Social Security package, Social Security reform, because that truly is the big deficit issue. I'm sorry it didn't happen. I laid out a plan to make it happen, to enable it to happen. I'm the first president to have addressed it as specifically as I did. I wish Congress wa
Source: Baltimore Sun
November 10, 2007
Avoiding the glare of a media spotlight he once craved, Arthur H. Bremer was quietly released from a state prison in Hagerstown in the predawn hours yesterday - 35 years after shooting and paralyzing former Alabama Gov. George Wallace at a 1972 campaign rally in Maryland.
Rick Binetti, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, said Bremer will stay in Maryland but would not say where he will reside.
"The department feels that the pu
Source: Newsweek
November 19, 2007
Bill Clinton is never at a loss for company. When he's not globe-trotting or charming audiences for as much as $400,000 a speech, he's often schmoozing visitors in his suite of offices in Harlem. Last July, the former president sat down with a billionaire impressed with the William J. Clinton Foundation's campaign against AIDS in Africa. The two men chatted amiably over lunch for more than two hours, and the visitor pledged to write Clinton's foundation a generous check. But there was something
Source: NYT
November 13, 2007
Athletes taking performance-enhancing drugs. Growing concern about a reliance on pills for relief from pain, stress and anxiety. Medical leaders alarmed about drug fads, calling on doctors to exercise restraint when prescribing.
Headlines from 2007? Try 1957. Today, the drugs are OxyContin, steroids and Ritalin. Fifty years ago, they were tranquilizers, sedatives and amphetamines: America was a Cold War nation in need of both pep and relief.
And while the context is dif
Source: NYT
November 13, 2007
Buried deep in the largest domestic spending bill of the year is money for a library and museum honoring first ladies. The $130,000 was requested by the local congressman, Representative Ralph Regula, Republican of Ohio. The library was founded by his wife, Mary A. Regula. The director of the library is his daughter, Martha A. Regula....
Senators John McCain of Arizona and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, both Republicans, cited the first ladies library as one of the more egregious. Mr. McCa
Source: Newsweek
November 19, 2007
The 1968 election is four decades old, and yet we're still rehashing that moment—that era—in the 2008 contest. Why do we come back to it? And why won't it leave us alone?
Barack Obama was born in the 1960s but is not of them. Such is the constant promise of his presidential campaign. Announcing his candidacy last January, he vowed to lead a "new generation" unencumbered by the divisive struggles of the past. By last week, when a Fox News reporter asked him to define the di
