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: Times (UK)
September 21, 2007
By the beginning of the 21st century the Dixification of America was more or less complete. Bill Clinton, from Arkansas, had handed over the presidency to George Bush, a Texan. Congressional Republicans were led predominantly by Southerners. The governing agenda was low taxes, the revival of conservative moral standards and a hardened foreign policy.
But now consider this. Just six years later, Dixie is in eclipse. With the Democratic victory in the mid-terms last year the leadershi
Source: BBC
September 25, 2007
When Sarah Johnson died of dropsy in 1819 her doctors turned her gravestone into a ghoulish advert for their services, with full details of her agonising treatment.
Almost two centuries later her sufferings, and the remarkable way in which they were recorded, have come to light as part of a nationwide search for unusual historical epitaphs. The full results of the search are to appear in the BBC's Who Do You Think You Are? magazine.
Mrs Johnson's headstone is the winner
Source: NYT
September 25, 2007
It is the document that laid the foundation for fundamental principles of English law. Angry colonists complained long before the Boston Tea Party that King George III had violated it. The men who drafted the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights borrowed from it.
It is Magna Carta, agreed to by King John of England in 1215 and revised and reaffirmed through the 13th century. The tail dangling off the page is a royal seal.
And it is about to go on sale.
Source: AP
September 24, 2007
George Ray trudged for two hours through thick vegetation to a blurry mark found on Google Earth.
Mr. Ray is one of the many amateur archaeologists entranced by the Lost Colony — the 117 English settlers who disappeared from North Carolina's Outer Banks in the late 1500s, having left behind only a single clue to their fate. In all the years since, no one has found much of anything else.
But there have long been stories told about a rotting boat in the Great Dismal Swamp
Source: Fox News
September 24, 2007
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday questioned why Iran can't have a nuclear program when the United States has one, repeated his inference that historical accounts of the Holocaust are myths, and denied that there are homosexuals in Iran.
In animated remarks before students and faculty at a controversial speaking engagment at Columbia university, the Iranian leader also denied that Iran sponsors terror, and instead pointed the finger at the U.S. government as a supporte
Source: Azzaman
September 23, 2007
The Ministry of Tourism and Archaeology is to celebrate a decision by U.N.’s cultural organization, UNESCO, to inscribe Samarra’s
ancient sites on the list World Heritage in danger.
Jassem Jaafar, the minister, said his ministry was planning a major festival to mark UNESCO’s decision. “The festival has to match
the significance of Samarra as an ancient and holy Iraqi city,” he said.
Samarra is holy to both Muslim Sunnis and Shiites as it contains remains of the Great Mosque and
Source: Fox News
September 24, 2007
Columbia University said it would welcome any notable figure visiting the United States — even Adolf Hitler himself — to speak to students and faculty at the Ivy League college.
But there are those who question what the New York college's standards are. They ask why a school that will not allow an ROTC program to be part of its curriculum would allow Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, one of America’s avowed enemies, onto its campus....
University officials did not return calls from
Source: NYT
September 24, 2007
On June 23, 1967, Senator Thomas J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, was censured by the United States Senate for diverting $116,000 in campaign funds for his personal use. The vote was 92 to 5.
“I think a grave mistake has been made, and I am the one who must bear the scar of that mistake for the rest of my life,” Thomas Dodd told a hushed chamber. His voice broke, and he was led off the floor in tears. Four years later, he died a broken man.
Christopher Dodd, the fifth
Source: NY Sun
September 24, 2007
As the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, prepares to address Columbia University today amid a storm of student protest, state and city lawmakers say they are considering withholding public funds from the school to protest its decision to invite the leader to campus.
In an interview with The New York Sun, the speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver, said lawmakers, outraged over Columbia's insistence on allowing the Iranian president to speak at its World Leaders Forum, would c
Source: Reuters
September 24, 2007
A Malian historian married to the head of the African Union has challenged fellow academics to produce a continental history book as a riposte to French President Nicolas Sarkozy's view that Africans lack history.The French leader enraged many Africans when he laid out his Africa policy in July at one of French-speaking Africa's most prestigious educational institutions in a speech many denounced as patronising and out-dated.
"The tragedy of Africa is that
Source: NYT
September 24, 2007
None of the stars at Radio City Music Hall last week to raise money for the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial mentioned the quarrel that has been bubbling up over plans for the towering three-story monument in Washington.
For months now critics have been grumbling about the selection of Lei Yixin, a Chinese sculptor — rather than an African-American — to carve a stone statue of Dr. King on a four-acre plot between the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials. Then last week Harry Wu,
Source: AFP
September 24, 2007
Several hundred Hindu nationalists protested Monday against a visit by a group of Britons to honour their ancestors who crushed an anti-colonial uprising in India in 1857.The activists from India's main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) shouted "English go home" and "Hail Mother India" in Lucknow city, where the visitors were due to arrive later Monday.
The British tourists intend to follow a trail across several sites in northern India
Source: Yahoo
September 21, 2007
In a provocative article, an Italian medical professor argues that Pope John Paul II didn't just simply slip away as his weakness and illness overtook him in April 2005. Intensive care specialist Dr. Lina Pavanelli has concluded that the ailing Pope's April 2 death was caused by what the Catholic Church itself would consider euthanasia. She bases this conclusion on her medical expertise and her own observations of the ailing pontiff on television, as well as press reports and a subsequent book b
Source: David Margolic in the NYT
September 23, 2007
FIFTY years ago this week, all eyes were on Little Rock, Ark., where nine black students were trying, for the first time, to desegregate a major Southern high school. With fewer than 150 blacks, the town of Grand Forks, N.D., hardly figured to be a key front in that battle — until, that is, Larry Lubenow talked to Louis Armstrong.
On the night of Sept. 17, 1957, two weeks after the Little Rock Nine were first barred from Central High School, the jazz trumpeter happened to be on tour
Source: NYT
September 23, 2007
The twin forces of rising life expectancy and falling birthrates have accelerated the process. This is apparent from the United States, where policy makers fret over the baby boom generation beginning to retire, to Japan, which has the highest share of people older than 60 in the world. As in Japan, more than a quarter of the population in Italy and Germany is over 60, and the phenomenon extends to Poland and Russia.
Although the German government has begun to address the issue, it
Source: AP
September 23, 2007
Ultimately, rising seas will likely swamp the first American settlement in Jamestown, Va., as well as the Florida launch pad that sent the first American into orbit, many climate scientists are predicting.
In about a century, some of the places that make America what it is may be slowly erased.
Global warming - through a combination of melting glaciers, disappearing ice sheets and warmer waters expanding - is expected to cause oceans to rise by one meter, or about 39 in
Source: NYT
September 23, 2007
In his 18 years on the federal bench, Judge Michael B. Mukasey issued more than 1,500 decisions concerning matters as cataclysmic as the Holocaust and as mundane as milk, beer and cigarettes....
His decisions almost always start with an exceptionally detailed account of the facts, often coupled with a keen awareness of how hard it is to know anything for sure.
His writing benefited from a stint at United Press International, the news agency. “It was good practice in wri
Source: Washington Times
September 22, 2007
A plane carrying about 120 World War II veterans is scheduled to land at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport this morning, bringing a group of heroes from the past to visit a memorial honoring their legacy.
For most of the veterans, today will be the first time they have toured the 56-column, three-year-old World War II Memorial on the Mall.
And with World War II veterans — who once numbered 16 million — dying at a rate of at least 1,200 each day, organizers say t
Source: AP
September 22, 2007
The Museum of the Confederacy, which has been considering spreading the bulk of the world's largest collection of Civil War artifacts among three new locations, has proposed that one branch be sited at Fort Monroe after the Army departs in 2011.
Museum president and CEO S. Waite Rawls III presented the museum's proposal to the Fort Monroe Federal Area Development Authority this week. The authority is charged with designing the future of the Hampton, Va., fort after the Army leaves a
Source: WaPo
September 22, 2007
Latinos came home from World War II to a different struggle. A Medal of Honor for bravery didn't guarantee service in certain restaurants. A soldier's body in a coffin and an American flag for his widow didn't merit admission to some funeral homes.
Fast-forward to 2007. One of the nation's premier documentarians is ready to unveil his opus on World War II. It's mainly the stories of non-Hispanic whites, but Ken Burns made sure to include the experience of African Americans and Japan
