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 Online (UK)
November 10, 2006
ON CHRISTMAS DAY 1914, from a trench in northern France, a British soldier who signed himself “Boy” wrote a letter to his mother: “My Dear Mater, This will be the most memorable Christmas I’ve ever spent . . . just before dinner I had the pleasure of shaking hands with several Germans . . . It all seems so strange.” Boy was merely doing what so many soldiers of the Great War did as a matter of routine: putting his thoughts and observations into words, and committing them to paper. He knew he was
Source: Reuters
November 10, 2006
Researchers in Timbuktu are fighting to preserve tens of thousands of ancient texts which they say prove Africa had a written history at least as old as the European Renaissance. Private and public libraries in the fabled Saharan town in Mali have already collected 150,000 brittle manuscripts, some of them from the 13th century, and local historians believe many more lie buried under the sand. The texts were stashed under mud homes and in desert caves by proud Malian families whose s
Source: AP
November 10, 2006
Suspected Neo-Nazis scattered candles and tore up floral wreaths placed at a memorial stone on the 68th anniversary of Kristallnacht, police said Friday. The vandalism came Thursday at a memorial to Kristallnacht, or Night of the Broken Glass -- a prelude to the Holocaust that saw thousands of Jewish homes, synagogues and businesses destroyed in 1938. Police in Frankfurt an der Oder said the group tore up wreaths on a stone marking the site where the synagogue stood before it was burn
Source: Reuters
November 11, 2006
It is 4.30 in the afternoon and the trees are"talking"
on a street corner in Hanoi's old quarter.
No one on the crowded pavement appears to be listening to the scratchy,
nasal sounds that are actually coming from loudspeakers, obscured by
trees, which are used for neighborhood announcements in Communist-run
Vietnam.
The loudspeakers are a throwback to the 1960s and 1970s war years when
they delivered news from the front and warned people to take shelter from
American aircraft b
Source: NYT
November 11, 2006
For most of the world, the cold war ended when the Berlin Wall came down. Not so in the Caribbean basin.
Here the stubbornness of old cold warriors in Washington and the equal tenacity of leftist governments in Cuba and Venezuela have kept a miniature cold war going. Just as it was 20 years ago, Nicaragua now finds itself smack in the middle of the conflict with the election this week of Daniel Ortega, the former Marxist rebel leader, as president.
Mr. Ortega faces a ba
Source: Dan barry in the NYT
November 11, 2006
Once there were elevators gliding up the sides of the towers to reveal a city unfolding; now they are rusted in mid-rise. Once there were stairwells winding within those towers; now they are rotted through. The call for a better tomorrow, for “Peace Through Understanding,” is answered by the flutter and coo of its hidden inhabitants.
Seeing again the New York State Pavilion, the massive space-age remnant of the 1964 World’s Fair that looms just beyond the Grand Central Parkway, seei
Source: AP
November 11, 2006
The National Gallery is buying one of the 19th century's best-known American paintings, ''The Gross Clinic'' by Thomas Eakins, for a record $68 million.
The sale price sets a record for a pre-World War II work of art created in the United States, The New York Times reported.
The Smithsonian's National Gallery of Art will share the work with Alice Walton, daughter of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, The Washington Post reported. Alice Walton founded the Crystal Bridges Museu
Source: Media Matters
November 9, 2006
In her syndicated column, Ann Coulter claimed that the Democratic Party made "pathetic gains" in the November 7 midterm elections. In fact, the Democrats' gains in the House are just slightly under the average for the party out of power in the White House in the sixth-year midterm elections over the past century, and the Democrats' Senate gains are above the average. Moreover, the 2006 elections were the first sixth-year midterms since 1918 in which control of both houses of Congress s
Source: Report of Lawrence Walsh
August 4, 1993
HNN: Defense Secretary-designate Robert M. Gates was implicated in the Iran-contra scandal of 1986.
He was not indicted by special counsel Lawrence Walsh. But Walsh in his report devoted a chapter to Gates and concluded:
Independent Counsel found insufficient evidence to warrant charging Robert Gates with a crime for his role in the Iran/contra affair. Like those of many other Iran/contra figures, the statements of Gates often seemed scripted and less than candid. Never
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 10, 2006
Markus Wolf, who died yesterday aged 83, was the highly successful East German Cold War spymaster who placed agents alongside two West German Chancellors.
Markus Wolf
Wolf was the head of the Hauptverwaltung Aufklarung, the East German foreign intelligence service, from 1952 until 1986, making a speciality of sending so-called "Romeo" spies into West Germany to seduce female government employees. The hallmark of Wolf's operations was
Source: AP
November 8, 2006
The Dutch government plans to give a citation to troops who served as peacekeepers in Srebrenica but failed to stop the massacre of Bosnian Muslims 11 years ago in what was supposed to be a U.N.-protected safe haven.
The plan to award a unique insignia for duty at Srebrenica outraged survivors and victims' families Wednesday, who called it an insult to those who died.
The award was meant to heal a painful wound in the military, which felt unfairly blamed for the massa
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 11, 2006
A notebook kept by Sir Winston Churchill's nurse has revealed a regimented routine in his final years which included her looking after his pet budgerigar.
Muriel Thomson looked after Sir Winston as he neared death and, in addition to making sure he had his cigars and whisky to hand, was expected to put the bird 'to bed'.
The former prime minister was an animal lover and it seems that, towards the end of his life, his budgie was seldom far from his side, even accompanyin
Source: NYT
November 10, 2006
The accusations lodged against Robert M. Gates the last time he came before the Senate for confirmation, in 1991, sound eerily contemporary in the wake of the debate over skewed prewar intelligence on Iraq.
Mr. Gates, in the words of one Central Intelligence Agency subordinate, Jennifer L. Glaudemans, “politicized intelligence analysis,” insisting on slanted reports that became the basis for “momentous foreign policy decisions.”
The Senate will have to decide whether su
Source: NYT
November 10, 2006
The Army-issued memorial flag, tucked away in storage for decades at the Queens College library, was a tantalizing clue. But it needed some decoding.
On the flag were two stars and two numbers: a gold star followed by “58” and just below that a black star with “1235”.
Joel Allen, a history professor at the college who had been on a quest to track down the names of students who died during World War II, knew that the flag represented the number of Queens College students
Source: NYT
November 9, 2006
Scientists have found new genetic evidence that they say may answer the longstanding question of whether modern humans and Neanderthals interbred when they co-existed thousands of years ago. The answer is: probably yes, though not often.
In research being published online this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists reported that matings between Neanderthals and modern humans presumably accounted for the presence of a variant of the gene that regu
Source: Reuters
November 9, 2006
Christie's fall sale of Impressionist and modern art lived up to its billing as the biggest auction in history, led by a group of four Nazi-looted Klimts restored to their rightful heirs that raked in nearly $200 million.
The Klimts included a portrait that fetched the third-highest auction price ever, while new records were also set for Gauguin, Schiele and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner at the $491,472,000 sale.
In the end, however, the night belonged to Klimt, and to Maria Al
Source: Inside Higher Ed
November 9, 2006
Whitman College called off classes Thursday for a day of diversity programs after photographs appeared online of some students wearing blackface at a party, as part of an attempt to dress like participants in the “Survivor” reality television show in which team members were divided by race, the Associated Press reported. At Texas A&M University, officials are denouncing an online video by three students in which one student, in blackface, plays the role of a “slave” who is whipped and sodomi
Source: Sweden's News in English
November 8, 2006
Archaeologists excavating ancient graves in western Sweden have found shards from ceramic vessels made in the Roman Empire, in a find that could challenge assumptions about contacts between people in Sweden and the Romans.
Source: Independent (UK)
November 8, 2006
From archaeological ruins in Scotland to 13th century mosques in the Sahara, the effects of climate change could destroy some of the world's most important natural and cultural heritage sites, a report has revealed.
Heritage sites that have existed for thousands of years "may, by virtue of climate change, very well not be available to future generations," said Achim Steiner, head of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
Seaside cities that have lasted f
Source: AP
November 8, 2006
Part of a speech by World War II Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels was played over the public address system before a high school soccer game, prompting an apology by the home team's principal.
Forestview High School principal Robert Carpenter said neither he nor his team's coach knew about the speech before the 90-second excerpt was played during pre-game training Saturday, according to a letter he sent Monday to visiting Charlotte Catholic High School.
Carpente
