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: Yahoo
August 4, 2007
PHILADELPHIA - An antiques collector stumbled upon a
Civil War-era rarity that was about to suffer the same
fate as yesterday's trash.
Antiques collector Stephen Burns discovered that a
pile of periodicals intended for the garbage heap
turned out to be dozens of issues of"Little Pilgrim,"
a children's reader published in Philadelphia in the
1850s and '60s. The periodical featured fiction,
poetry, riddles and other items for young readers.
Burns was at an auction when a bidder
Source: NYT
August 5, 2007
THE new hybrid Ford Escape taxis scuttling around New York City give their occupants an aura of environmental superiority. But as far as clean electric-powered cars are concerned, these high-mileage hybrids are actually a bit behind the times.
About 100 years behind.
Starting in 1914, the Detroit Taxicab and Transfer Company built and operated a fleet of nearly 100 electric cabs. Customers would often wait for a smoother, cleaner, more tasteful electric cab, even when a
Source: NYT
August 5, 2007
HAMPTONBURGH, N.Y. (AP) -- An artist has mowed an 850,000-square-foot rendering of a Purple Heart medal into a park field to honor the 75th anniversary of the medal that commends servicemembers killed or wounded in action.
The rendering, to be unveiled Sunday in Thomas Bull Memorial Park in this city 55 miles northwest of New York City, was done by field artist and painter Roger Baker, whose past works include the Statue of Liberty and Elvis Presley.
According to Baker,
Source: NYT
August 4, 2007
Trying to forestall an embarrassing protest march by survivors of the Holocaust, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel on Friday agreed to rethink a widely criticized plan to give them a monthly stipend of about $20.
Mr. Olmert had announced the plan in response to concerns about poverty among some of the 240,000 Holocaust survivors who live in Israel, but the size of the stipend was considered risible by an organization of survivors. The organization announced a protest march on Sun
Source: AP
August 3, 2007
When NASA's newest Mars lander
departs Earth this weekend, it will be carrying the
words and art of visionaries from Voltaire to Carl
Sagan.
The"Visions of Mars" mini-disk secured to the lander
will be the first library on Mars ˜ a gift from past
and present dreamers to possible future settlers.
"I'm glad you're there and I wish I was with you,"
Sagan said in a recording made for the mission before
his 1996 death. An excerpt from his book"Cosmos" is
also on board.
Other
Source: NYT
August 4, 2007
At slack tide off Red Hook, Brooklyn, there are usually lots of things floating in the water, most of which you would not want to touch without the help of a good hazmat suit. But just after sunrise yesterday, something truly strange was bobbing there in the shallows near Pier 41: a submarine fashioned almost completely from wood, and inside it a man with an obsession.
The man, Duke Riley, a heavily tattooed Brooklyn artist whose waterborne performance projects around New York have
Source: Chicago Tribune
August 2, 2007
In front of us is the entrance to Chicago's unique 46-mile freight tunnel system.
And we can't go in.
From 1906 to 1959, this underground world was filled with small-scale locomotive trains on narrow-gauge tracks, hauling freight between buildings in and near the Loop and carrying away ashes from coal-burning furnaces. At one point, there were 59 miles of tunnels extending nearly to Chicago Avenue on the north, out past Halsted Street on the west, to 16th Street along t
Source: Australian
August 4, 2007
CHINA'S chief censors gathered at the conference room of the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television several weeks ago to address the Government's leading propaganda concerns. Top of the list: getting history right.
China's communists are relaxed about letting go much of the economy, about the 137 million people with access to the internet, about letting people travel widely. But the Soviet experience has taught them that losing control of the past would be the step too f
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
August 1, 2007
On August 1, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee approved H.R. 1254, the “Presidential Donation Reform Act of 2007.” On March 14, 2007, the House of Representatives approved a similar bill by a vote of 390-34. The bill passed by the Senate panel would make changes from the House-passed version with regard to the triggering amount of a donation requiring disclosure and the length of time the presidential library must report contributions.
Presidential libr
Source: Bloomberg News
August 2, 2007
Billionaire philanthropist Eli Broad will give $1 million to the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia to help pay for the construction of its new home and future exhibitions.
The gift will be paid in five installments by 2012, Broad said in a telephone interview. His contribution helps push the museum's $150 million fund-raising goal to about $102 million, said Gwen Goodman, the museum's executive director.
Source: AP
August 2, 2007
Greece's Education Ministry announced changes Thursday to a sixth-grade history book following complaints by Greece's Orthodox Church and academics regarding Greece's historic rivalry with Turkey.
Greece's conservative government, likely to call general elections this fall, had faced criticism from right-wing supporters who argued the book minimized the suffering of Greeks following its defeat by Turkey in a 1919-1922 war.
And the church complained the book downplayed i
Source: Salt Lake Tribune
August 2, 2007
StoryCorps, the national oral-history project, began recording interviews between friends and family members this morning in this northern Utah city.
In a Gulf Airstream trailer customized into a recording booth and parked next to the LDS Tabernacle on Main Street, Logan Mayor Randy Watts interviewed his father, Cal Watts, the first of 130 conversations to be recorded here through Aug. 25.
Jose Camilo, an economics and finance student at Utah State University
Source: The Art Newspaper
August 2, 2007
The Baghdad Museum, which has been sealed with concrete, is to
be reopened to staff. ... After facing the dilemma of having to
balance security and environmental risks, Dr Abbas has decided that the
building should be reopened to staff. In the current security
situation, there is no immediate prospect of the museum being open to
visitors. The Italian government recently provided a massive steel
security door for the Baghdad museum. Last month a gap was breached in
the wall and the
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE)
August 3, 2007
A federal court has ruled against a group of academics who challenged restrictions imposed by the Bush administration in 2004 that virtually ended academic travel to Cuba.
Source: Times (UK)
August 2, 2007
The Queen’s grandson Peter Phillips could be forced to renounce his place in the line to the British throne if he goes ahead and marries his Canadian fiancee.
Mr Phillips, who is the son of the Princess Royal and her first husband Captain Mark Philips, is tenth in line to the throne but his marriage could cost him his birthright because his fiance, Autumn Kelly, is a Roman Catholic.
The Tablet , the Catholic weekly, reveals in this week’s edition that Miss Kelly, the da
Source: New Zealand Herald
August 2, 2007
Sergei Antonov, the Bulgarian accused of plotting the failed assassination bid against late Pope John Paul II on behalf of the Soviet Union, has died of natural causes, officials said yesterday.
Antonov, 59, was found dead in his apartment in downtown Sofia, the interior ministry said. It did not reveal the cause of the death, but doctors said he had probably died two days earlier.
A former representative of Bulgaria's national airline in Rome, Antonov was accused, but
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 3, 2007
A British prisoner of war has died from injuries he received when he was tortured by his Nazi captors more than 60 years ago.
Peter Vernon-Ward had been warned by doctors that he must have his leg amputated or face being slowly poisoned from ruptured wounds sustained when rifle butts were smashed into his legs in a German prison camp during World War Two.
But Mr Vernon-Ward refused the operation three years ago "because he saw it as giving in to the Nazis".
Source: NYT
August 3, 2007
Valerie Wilson may be the best known former intelligence operative in recent history, but a federal judge in New York ruled Wednesday that she was not allowed to say how long she worked for the Central Intelligence Agency in the memoir she plans to publish this fall.
Although the fact that Ms. Wilson worked for the C.I.A. from 1985 to 2006 has been published in the Congressional Record and elsewhere, the judge, Barbara S. Jones of Federal District Court in Manhattan, said Ms. Wilson
Source: NYT
August 3, 2007
AWJA, Iraq — The grave site has a forlorn, even jumbled air. There are filigreed inscriptions hailing him as a martyr, as a hero of the insurgency and as “the eagle of the Arabs,” his favorite sobriquet. But alongside these there is the mundane bric-a-brac of his life — a carved wooden eagle hung with his personal prayer beads, and a gallery of informal photographs, one showing him with a cigar.
Saddam Hussein’s burial place, in his native village on the banks of the Tigris, may be
Source: I'mwithFred.com
August 1, 2007
In an article posted on the web Fred Thompson compares a judge whose appointment to the United States Court of Appeals has been delayed by Congress to a victim of the Salem Witch Trials. Quote:
You’ve probably never heard of Rebecca Nurse, but bear with me for a moment. Nurse arrived in Salem, Massachusetts in 1640. There, despite being known as a woman of virtue and piety, she was accused of being a witch. On July 19, 1692, she was hanged.
Now almost 315 years to the day
