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: Charlotte Observer
July 15, 2007
The S.C. state flag is a tourism bureau's dream -- a palmetto tree that appears to be rustling in a nighttime breeze, illuminated by a perfect crescent moon.
But the flag, one of the most recognizable and best-selling state banners in the nation, has nothing to do with condos or beaches, smiling faces or beautiful places.
Because that's not necessarily the moon.
Nearly 150 years after it was adopted as the state flag, historians and scholars still can't agr
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 17, 2007
America's first Muslim congressman has provoked outrage by apparently comparing President George W Bush to Adolf Hitler and hinting that he might have been responsible for the September 11 attacks.
Addressing a gathering of atheists in his home state of Minnesota, Keith Ellison, a Democrat, compared the 9/11 atrocities to the destruction of the Reichstag, the German parliament, in 1933. This was probably burned down by the Nazis in order to justify Hitler's later seizure of emergenc
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
July 15, 2007
Residents of Lower Providence Township who live next to Valley Forge are feeling like George Washington at the Battle of the Brandywine - completely outflanked.
"It's disturbing how secretive this has been," said Craig Crawford, whose home is next door to the park. "Why wasn't this in a township newsletter? The public is not aware of what's going on, and it seems like it's a done deal."
This anger, verging on rage, is directed at what many neighbors regard
Source: Middle East Times
July 16, 2007
A Bulgarian archaeologist announced Sunday that his team had found a gold mask that belonged to a Thracian king in the fourth century BC, near the eastern town of Sliven.
"The discovery of this mask proves that the Valley of the Thracian Kings stretches from the center of Bulgaria to the east of the country," archaeologist Georgi Kitov said.
The Thracians lived in southeastern Europe, the Carpathians and the Caucasus from about 4,000 BC to the 3rd century AD
Source: LiveScience
July 16, 2007
The world’s first atomic bomb test might have exposed unaware civilians in New Mexico to thousands of times the recommended level of public radiation exposure, according to reconstructed data in a new study.
The research, led by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), found that ingestion of radioactive materials—primarily from irradiated rainwater and goat’s milk—might have been a substantial contributor to public radiation exposure that was largely not accounted for.
Source: NYT
July 16, 2007
There has been a lot of criticism of Senator John McCain and his campaign advisers for the touchstone strategic assumption they made in planning his presidential campaign. With Vice President Cheney having long ago ruled out running, Mr. McCain built his approach on the belief that he would be viewed as the Republican heir apparent. That meant rustling up big name consultants and then awaiting the deluge of campaign contributions needed to finance a Rolls Royce campaign.
As has beco
Source: NYT
July 15, 2007
DURING her years in the White House, Lady Bird Johnson, who died last week, kept a voluminous journal of the downhill trajectory of her husband’s presidency.
Mrs. Johnson documents, perhaps too copiously, the glamour and banalities of White House life — the state dinners, her highway beautification program, her wardrobe. But the diary also documents the pressures of an ambitious administration cracking under the pressures of an increasingly unpopular war.
[The article i
Source: NYT
July 15, 2007
AFTER John McCain discovered that his campaign was nearly broke — at a time when he was already hemorrhaging in public opinion polls — he did what presidential candidates in trouble always seem to do: he forced out his top consultants....
Nelson Warfield, a media consultant advising Fred Thompson, a likely Republican presidential candidate, said: “How are important are they? I think in a presidential race there are larger dynamics at work than some guy can fix by telling you how to
Source: Independent (UK)
July 6, 2007
Only one out of 20 would-be teachers on a Cambridge University history and education course knew anything about Christopher Columbus, a conference was told yesterday.
The figure was revealed by Kate Pretty, pro-vice chancellor of Homerton College, as evidence of the decline in history in primary and secondary schools. Later this month, a report by Ofsted, the education standards watchdog, will reveal that seven out of ten pupils have ditched the subject by the time they are 14. Only
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 17, 2007
How can a man who pays $400 a time for a haircut be the champion of America's working poor?
The Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards hopes to prove this week that wealth and privilege are no obstacle to campaigning against poverty as he sets out on a three-day tour of some of the poorest parts of the US....
In a push to get the poverty issue back on the national agenda, Mr Edwards, says he is taking a break from his campaign to bring attention to poverty and dep
Source: BBC
July 16, 2007
The gap between rich and poor in the UK is as wide as it has been for forty years, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) has said in a report.
The JRF found that households in already wealthy areas had become "disproportionately" richer compared to society as a whole.
But the number of "poor" households has risen over the past 15 years.
Source: BBC
July 16, 2007
South African national prosecutors have charged two of the most senior public security officials of the apartheid era with attempted murder.
Former Police Minister Adriaan Vlok and ex-police chief Johan van der Merwe are accused of plotting to kill a prominent opponent of apartheid in 1989.
Prosecutors said they and three others attempted to kill Rev Frank Chikane by lining his clothes with a nerve toxin.
Source: Guardian
July 17, 2007
Hundreds of elderly Germans are being confronted with the revelation that they were recruited into the Nazi party during the second world war.
Historians researching Nazi party archives in Frankfurt have discovered that a string of prominent Germans were among those automatically granted membership to celebrate Adolf Hitler's birthday.
Writers, a cabaret artist, scientists, journalists and politicians, including former cabinet ministers, are among those whose names are
Source: Haaretz
July 16, 2007
A German historian has called for Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's anti-Semitic hate book Mein Kampf to be reprinted and put back on sale in German bookshops with notes on its errors, saying this would be preferable to a flood of unrefuted editions.
Horst Moeller, director of the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich, said Monday this would be better than waiting until 2015 when anybody could publish it after copyright in Germany lapses on the book.
The newspaper Fran
Source: Chicago Tribune
July 15, 2007
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on Sunday labeled President Bush's tenure in the White House "the most radical presidency" in U.S. history, as she and four other Democratic presidential contenders courted the support of the nation's influential trial lawyers at a meeting in Chicago....
"We need to continue America's forward motion toward progress, toward that more perfect union," Clinton told a large, crowded convention room at the Hyatt Regency Chicago, addressing t
Source: CBS
July 12, 2007
Preparing a story for The Evening News, we played some of the [new Nixon] tapes for Senator George McGovern. He was in Washington to celebrate his 85th birthday this weekend in a reunion with friends and former staff members.
"I do think it's kind of sad that the president of the United States in the moment of his greatest triumph was so angry, so peevish about the whole situation," he said. "I have no malice towards him. I didn't then, and I don't today."
Source: Time
July 16, 2007
The U.S. commanders in Iraq seem to sense some new horror for the country is
near. On July 7, Gen. David Petraeus predicted that insurgents would lash out
with spectacular attacks in the coming weeks, as the clock runs down on time
ahead of the September progress report due in Washington. And yesterday Maj.
Gen. Rick Lynch, the commander of U.S. forces in southern Iraq, echoed the fear
when talking to reporters in the Green Zone."We're concerned about some kind of
Tet offensive that'
Source: Azzaman
July 16, 2007
The Antiquities Department has included an ancient synagogue where Biblical prophet Nahum is
purportedly buried in its 2008 renovation plans.
“The Antiquities Department has added the tomb of Prophet Nahum, peace be on him, to its 2008
preservation plan,” said department’s chief, Abbas al-Hussaini.
The synagogue and the tomb are situated in the northern Christian Iraqi town of al-Qoush, 40
kilometers north of Mosul.
Al-Qoush, a major Christian center in northern Iraq, had a large Jewish
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE)
July 16, 2007
This year marks a computing milestone, but it’s not one that will have IT officials popping any corks: The computer virus has turned 25, according to Scientific American.
And boy, has it matured. The first computer virus to spread in the wild, Scientific American says, was “Elk Cloner,” a relatively simple piece of software created by a high-school student in Pittsburgh. Cloner didn’t attempt to destroy the data of Apple II users; it merely serenaded them with a poem:
I
Source: New York
July 13, 2007
Thirty years ago tonight, the lights went out in New York City. Unlike the
placid blackout of 2003, the 1977 blackout plunged a weary, wary city into
inky mayhem. Fires burned in Bushwick. Looters tore into Crown Heights. A
significant chunk of Broadway was ablaze. Damages went into the hundreds
of millions. And no one got shot. In a special issue on the blackout
published on August 1, 1977, New York's Thomas Plate wrote about what the
cops did and didn't do that dark night.
