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: Inside Higher Ed
August 30, 2007
Survey after survey reports that American students — while concerned about the world around them — are apathetic about politics. Events like Katrina or Darfur spark activism and voluntarism. And to be sure, college Democrats and Republicans are good at organizing competing speakers. But voter registration (and voting), turnouts at town hall meetings and knowledge of the political process remain embarrassingly low.
Research that will be presented this week at the American Political S
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 30, 2007
A 17th-century medical handbook advises men to put chicken manure on their scalps as a cure for baldness and offers other bizarre remedies for infertility, "stinking breath", head lice and aching breasts.
The Path-Way to Health, written by Peter Levens and published in London in 1654, was recently discovered among a collection of antiquarian books and is due to be auctioned by Bonhams in Oxford on Oct 9.
Source: Novelist Andrea Camilleri in the NYT
August 23, 2007
[NYT CORRECTION 8/30/07:"A recent Op-Ed article about the execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti described the original charges against the two men incorrectly. The charges did not include possession of subversive pamphlets. And Sacco and Vanzetti faced only one trial together, not three."]
In the previous century millions of men and women died in wars, epidemics, genocides and persecutions, and unfortunately their memory is all too much in danger of vanishing. Yet the deaths
Source: Guardian
August 29, 2007
Recently declassified secret documents reveal how at the end of the second world war an elite British unit abducted hundreds of German scientists and technicians and put them to work at government ministries and private firms in the UK.
The programme was designed to loot the defeated country's intellectual assets, impeding its ability to compete while giving a boost to British business.
In a related programme, German businessmen are alleged to have been forced to travel
Source: NYT
August 30, 2007
States would be able to develop assessments of progress, and tests would go beyond English and math to include history and science, according to a proposal on the House education committee’s Web site [concerning a draft bill to amend the No Child Left Behind act]. Schools would be judged partly on graduation rates and college enrollment. “This draft is a work in progress, subject to change over the coming weeks,” said Representatives George Miller, Democrat of California and chairman of the comm
Source: NYT
August 30, 2007
JASPER, Ind. Msgr. Othmar Schroeder was revered in this town of 12,000 for starting a parish and a school. The Knights of Columbus Council in Jasper was named for him. He served his entire 50-year career locally.
Now the bishop is calling on churches here to remove photos of the late priest and rescind honors that were given him, because he is suspected of having molested scores of young boys.
The bishop, Gerald A. Gettelfinger, has also prevailed upon the Knights of Co
Source: NYT
August 30, 2007
Shiites believe that Imam Mahdi, the 12th imam in a direct bloodline from the Prophet Muhammad, is alive but has remained invisible since the late ninth century, and that he will reappear only when corruption and injustice reach their zenith. This year, in keeping with the government effort to promote and enforce religious values under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the celebration [of the Mahdi's birthday] is receiving plenty of attention from the state, even to the point of being extended an e
Source: AP
August 28, 2007
- Did someone kill Beethoven? A Viennese pathologist claims the composer's physician did — inadvertently overdosing him with lead in a case of a cure that went wrong.
Other researchers are not convinced, but there is no controversy about one fact: The master had been a very sick man years before his death in 1827.
Previous research determined that Beethoven had suffered from lead poisoning, first detecting toxic levels of the metal in his hair and then, two years ago,
Source: ABC
August 29, 2007
Western sections of the Great Wall of China are being reduced to "mounds of dirt" by sandstorms and may disappear entirely in 20 years, a report said Wednesday.
The reasons for the deterioration are entirely manmade, the official Xinhua News Agency said, pointing to destructive farming methods in the 1950s that desertified areas of northern China, causing sandstorms.
Source: WaPo
August 29, 2007
Researchers studying Iceman, the 5,000-year-old mummy found frozen in the Italian Alps, now believe he died of head trauma, not the wound of an arrow.
Two months ago, researchers in Switzerland published an article in the Journal of Archaeological Science saying the man known as Oetzi died after an arrow tore a hole in an artery beneath his left collarbone, leading to massive blood loss, shock and heart attack.
Source: Yahoo
August 29, 2007
Hurricane Dean's rampage over Mexico's Caribbean coast last week unearthed
three rusted 18th century cannons that had lain buried
under a sandy beach for decades.
The cannons, around 1.80 meter (5.9 feet) long, were
spotted poking through the sand on a beach near the
arty resort of Tulum after Dean hit on August 21,
Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and
History (INAH) said on Wednesday.
Believed to be from a shipwrecked European galleon,
the badly corroded cannons
Source: AP
August 29, 2007
A New York architectural firm has been hired to design President Bush’s presidential library.
The firm, Robert A. M. Stern Architects, was one of three finalists. The decision was made after Mr. Stern met with Mr. Bush last week at Mr. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Tex., said Donald L. Evans, chairman of the selection committee.
Source: AP
August 29, 2007
Richard Jewell, the former security guard who was erroneously linked to the 1996 Olympic bombing, died Wednesday, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said.
Jewell, 44, was found dead in his west Georgia home, GBI spokesman John Bankhead said.
"There's no suspicion whatsoever of any type of foul play. He had been at home sick since the end of February with kidney problems," said Meriwether County Coroner Johnny Worley.
The GBI planned to do an autopsy Th
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 29, 2007
It looks for all the world like an ordinary key but this unremarkable piece of metal could have saved the Titanic from disaster.
It is thought to have fitted the locker that contained the crow's nest binoculars, vital in detecting threats to the liner lurking in the sea in the pre-sonar days of 1912.
Catastrophically for the Titanic and the 1,522 lives lost with her, the key's owner, Second Officer David Blair, was removed from the crew at the last minute and in his ha
Source: BBC
August 28, 2007
A group of Israeli archaeologists is protesting about fresh excavations at Jerusalem's holiest religious shrine, saying it threatens priceless relics.
Muslim authorities at al-Aqsa mosque, also venerated by Jews as the Temple Mount, are digging a 150-metre trench for water pipes and electricity cables.
Israeli critics say the work is causing irreparable damage, indiscriminately piling up earth and carved stones.
Mosque officials insist it is urgent infrastr
Source: Press Release--WGBH
August 28, 2007
Muhammad Ali discussing his refusal to fight in Vietnam; African American students arriving at school during Boston’s court-ordered de-segregation; Bill T. Jones performing a monologue and solo dance; Robert McNamara reading from a letter sent by Nikita Khrushchev to President Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis — that’s just a taste of the resources available on Open Vault. Launched by the WGBH Media Library and Archives (MLA), the Open Vault (http://ope
Source: NYT
August 27, 2007
MOSCOW, Aug. 25 — Two months ago, Roxana Contreras was exploring a provincial Russian town when a street vendor persuaded her to buy some Red Army medals and old ruble notes the day before she was to return to her home in St. Louis, she said.
Now she is stuck in Russia, mired in a legal and bureaucratic imbroglio, accused of trying to smuggle cultural treasures out of the country. Pending a court hearing, she has been ordered to remain in Voronezh, about 365 miles south of Moscow, w
Source: NYT
August 27, 2007
The Reagan administration was only a few months old when it faced a major test: Senators were calling for the head of the president’s new director of central intelligence, and no one knew if he would survive their investigation into his tangled past business dealings and questionable agency management.
But the White House’s worries were quickly set to rest by the man the Senate had chosen to get to the bottom of the matter, Fred D. Thompson. In July 1981, just one day into his job a
Source: McClatchy
August 26, 2007
If Harry S Truman did it, why can’t George W. Bush?
Truman came back from the political abyss — his public approval rating sank as low as 22 percent thanks in large part to America’s entry into the Korean War and his handling of labor disputes at home — to become regarded by historians as one of the nation’s top 10 presidents. Lately, some Bush administration officials and White House associates have predicted that President Bush — mired in an unpopular war in Iraq and saddled with
Source: AP
August 23, 2007
Spanish police on Thursday arrested a right-wing writer and publisher wanted in his home country of Austria for repeatedly denying the existence of the Jewish Holocaust and the use of gas chambers, officials said.
Gerd Honsik was arrested in the southern city of Malaga, a police spokeswoman said. No more details on his arrest were immediately available.
Honsik had fled to Spain after being convicted in 1992 in Austria of neo-Nazi activities and sentenced to 1 1/2 years
