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: Fox News
August 24, 2011
Some New York politicians and religious leaders are criticizing Mayor Michael Bloomberg for not offering clergy members a role in the high-profile ceremonies marking 10 years since the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, The Wall Street Journal reported. A spokewoman from Bloomberg's office told The Journal that the focus, as in past years, will be on the family members of the fallen. Rabbi Joseph Potasnik told the paper he understood the mayor's decision, saying, "I don't know how to make it possible for everyone to have a place at the table."There was a plethora of interfaith events, and New York Magazine even named New York Fire Department chaplain Mychal Judge, who died in the attack and is immortalized in a picture being carried from a tower, the "most famous victim of the World Trade Center attack."....
Source: AP
August 24, 2011
Former Vice President Dick Cheney says he had a secret resignation letter signed and stored in a safe for most of the Bush administration in case he became incapacitated.
Cheney says he signed the resignation letter in March 2001, just about two months after taking office. He says only President George W. Bush and one of the vice president's staff members knew the letter existed.
Cheney says one of the reasons for having a resignation letter on hand was his history of health problems, including multiple heart attacks. He says the letter could have been used if he had been incapacitated by a heart attack or stroke....
Source: CNN
August 24, 2011
Almost a decade after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, a new set of remains from the site has been identified, the New York City medical examiner's office announced.The remains are those of Ernest James, 40, said Ellen Borakove, the spokeswoman for the office. James' identification brings to 1,632 the number of victims named so far. As many as 1,121 victims still have not been identified, according to the medical examiner's office.A statement from the office said 2,753 people were reported missing after the towers fell. DNA testing was used to identify the majority of the named victims.The last set of remains identified from the attacks was in May, according to Borakove....
Source: LA Times
August 24, 2011
The Washington Monument is closed today after cracking in stones at the top of the structure was discovered Tuesday.The cracking was possibly caused by the magnitude 5.8 earthquake that shook the East Coast Tuesday afternoon....
Source: NYT
August 22, 2011
STUTTGART, Germany — The swastika is illegal here, as is the Hitler salute. Germans have learned after decades of fighting their expression that the ideas behind them cannot be outlawed.But the question facing German officials today is whether pushing those ideas underground makes them more radical in the short term, and maybe even more attractive in the long run, precisely because they are forbidden.In the debate over the rise of the far right in Europe, Germany has remained, for obvious reasons related to its history, very much the exception. The kind of mainstream far-right parties so common in the rest of Europe are nowhere to be found here.But the anti-Islam and anti-immigrant ideas that have taken root across the Continent burst into the mainstream debate here last year when a book by an executive with Germany’s central bank, Thilo Sarrazin, blaming Muslims for “dumbing down” Germany sold more than a million copies. The national discussion culminated with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s declaration at a party conference last October that multiculturalism had “utterly failed.”
Source: NYT
August 22, 2011
WASHINGTON — Now we know: The arc of the moral universe is long, but it leads to a picturesque glade beside the Tidal Basin, with the Washington Monument providing sentry.After more than two decades of planning, fund-raising and construction, the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial — a four-acre tract south of the Mall featuring a granite statue of Dr. King — has officially opened to the public.The memorial will be formally dedicated on Sunday in a ceremony that is expected to draw perhaps a few hundred thousand people from around the country. But some of its earliest judges came on Monday, as hundreds of city residents and visitors stood in line for their turn to take a look.“I wanted to be part of this history,” said William Wilson, a retired federal employee. “This is the architecture of progress.”The dedication, which is to include remarks by President Obama, coincides with the 48th anniversary of the March on Washington and Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered at the Lincoln Memorial.
Source: HNN Staff
August 23, 2011
Compiled from various sources. Historic earthquake information is from the U.S. Geological Survey.Tuesday has been a day of rolling and tumbling on the East Coast.A magnitude 5.8 earthquake struck near Mineral, Virginia at 1:51 p.m., with its effects felt as far away as Maine and North Carolina. Buildings were evacuated in New York and Washington, D.C., and national monuments in the nation's capital were closed for the day.Damage appears to be light, although the central tower of the National Cathedral suffered the loss of three pinnacles on its central tower.TMineral, Virginia is a town about an hour northwest of Richmond, within the Central Virginia seismic zone, an area crisscrossed with small faults that are a vestige of the formation of the Appalachian Mountains some 400 million years ago.
Source: AP
August 22, 2011
BERLIN -- Berlin's Central and Regional Library says it will return books the Nazis stole from the Social Democratic Party, including an English-language copy of the Communist Manifesto.The copy dates from 1883 and is believed to have belonged to Friedrich Engels, who penned the original German work with Karl Marx in 1848....
August 22, 2011
Related Links: Bill Moyers Interview with HNNBill Moyers will be back on TV in January with a new series on public television, HNN has learned. Mr. Moyers alerted public television stations to the news this afternoon in a letter that explained that even though he is now seventy-seven, "I surely have one more season in me."He left public television more than a year ago, saying “It’s time to go.” But when the Carnegie Corporation offered to provide the lead grant for a new show featuring creative thinkers he and his wife Judith, his long-time television partner, decided to return to TV. He says they had enjoyed the time they had spent with their grandchildren, and with the help of Netflix "caught up on a lot of movies and television we had missed while meeting one deadline after another." But after sitting "for long stretches of time watching the hawks circle above our trees," he and Judith concluded they were not ready, quoting Tennyson, "to rust unburnished."
Source: The Root
August 22, 2011
The National Mall, a wide expanse in the heart of the nation's capital, is home to numerous monuments honoring U.S. presidents and military sacrifice. This week, the setting's latest commemorative work opens to the public: the long-awaited Martin Luther King, Jr. National Memorial.Bordering Washington, D.C.'s Tidal Basin between the Jefferson and Lincoln memorials, a 30-foot granite sculpture of the prominent civil rights activist looms. It's flanked by a crescent-shaped wall inscribed with 14 excerpts from some of King's most notable sermons and speeches. Further enhancing the site are 182 cherry blossom trees, which will reach full bloom each April, the month of King's death. And the memorial's street address, 1964 Independence Avenue, references the 1964 Voting Rights Act, a milestone of the civil rights movement....The vision to build a national memorial for Martin Luther King Jr. was initially conceived in 1984 by Alpha Phi Alpha, the African-American fraternity of which King was a member. Congress authorized the memorial in 1996, and two years later the Alphas set up a foundation to manage fundraising -- to the tune of $120 million -- and design.
Source: Live Science
August 16, 2011
This mummy seems to be missing a brain and other vital organs, new images reveal, and the finding suggests the man held a high status when alive 2,500 years ago in ancient Egypt.
The images indicate that embalmers removed the man's brain and major organs and replaced them with rolls of linen, a superior embalming method used only for those of high status, researchers at the Smithsonian
Source: Guardian (UK)
August 17, 2011
Plague of 1348-49 spread so fast in London the carriers had to be humans not black rats, says archaeologist.
Rats weren't the carriers of the plague after all. A study by an archaeologist looking at the ravages of the Black Death in London, in late 1348 and 1349, has exonerated the most famous animal villains in history.
Sloane, who was previously a field archaeologist with the Museum of London, working on many medieval sites, is now attached to English Heritage.
Source: AP
August 22, 2011
Tourists and Washingtonians were about to get their first up-close look Monday at the memorial to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
The site was set to open without fanfare around 11 a.m. to kick off a week of celebrations ahead of Sunday's official dedication.
The memorial sits on the National Mall near the Tidal Basin, between memorials honoring Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson.
Source: Fox News
August 22, 2011
On the 10th anniversary of the Sept.11 terror attacks, the national memorial to commemorate that day will open its doors. It is the first new construction on the 16-acre World Trade Center site.
To mark that day Fox News has teamed with Harper Collins Publishers to bring you the “Rise of Freedom” series in a fascinating new medium.
The electronic book is nothing new, but the EEB, or enhanced electronic book is all new.
On Tuesday, Aug. 23, the digital-only enhanced e-book, RISE OF FREEDOM: The New World Trade Center will be released.
It is the modern twist on the good old fashioned coffee table book and something you can enjoy again and again....
Source: WaPo
August 17, 2011
It was around this point in August 1963, in the sweltering days before the March on Washington, that Eleanor Holmes Norton was waiting for someone to say something really nasty about her boss.She was a march volunteer. The boss was Bayard Rustin, the march’s chief organizer and the man widely viewed as the only civil rights activist capable of pulling off a protest of such unprecedented scale.And he was gay. Openly gay. That year again? 1963.“I was sure the attacks would come because I knew what they could attack Bayard for,” says Norton, now the District’s nonvoting delegate to Congress.The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom will be forever known as the day that ensured the success of the civil rights movement and launched the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. into the highest pantheon of American champions. Next week, on the 48th anniversary of the march, King will be anointed into that ultra-selective fraternity of national leaders memorialized on the Mall....
Source: MSNBC
August 19, 2011
An ancient clay vessel reconstructed from pieces discovered at a Canadian museum is riddled with tiny holes, leaving archaeologists baffled over what it was used for.
The jar, just 16 inches (40 centimeters) tall and dating back about 1,800 years, was found shattered into an unrecognizable 180 pieces in a storage room at the Museum of Ontario Archaeology. But even after it was restored, the scientists were faced with a mystery. So far no one has been able to identify another artifact like it from the Roman world.
Source: BBC
August 19, 2011
Plans are afoot to secure a dedicated memorial to an Ulster war hero in his home town.
The possibility is being examined of having a dedicated memorial or sculpture in Bushmills to honour Sergeant Robert Quigg, who was awarded a Victoria Cross for his heroics in the Battle of the Somme.
Discussions have taken place at Moyle Council in Ballycastle and it was agreed to write to the Royal British Legion in Bushmills and the MacNaghten Estate in Bushmills to get their views.
Many would like to see a memorial in place in Bushmills ahead of 2016 which will be the centenary of
Source: BBC
August 20, 2011
A new drama tells the story of a Jewish lawyer who confronted Hitler 80 years ago - earning the dictator's life-long hatred. So who was Hans Litten?
In the Berlin courtroom, Adolf Hitler's face burned a deep, furious red.
The future dictator was not accustomed to this kind of scrutiny.
But here he was, being interrogated about the violence of his paramilitary thugs by a young man who represented everything he despised - a radical, principled, fiercely intelligent Jewish lawyer called Hans Litten.
The Nazi leader was floundering in the witness stand. And when Litten asked why his party published an incitement to overthrow the state, Hitler lost his composure altogether.
He was among the first of the fuehrer's political opponents to be rounded up after the Nazis assumed power.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 20, 2011
For their new book, 'The Eleventh Day’, Anthony Summers and Robbyn Swan trawled through thousands of documents, piecing together a definitive account of the attacks.
On September 11, bereaved family members will mark the 10th anniversary of the cataclysmic terrorist attacks on American cities. They will gather around the pools of remembrance at the newly opened memorial, where the names of the 2,982 known victims who died on the day and in the earlier bombing of 1993 are engraved on parapets of bronze. President Obama and his predecessor, George W Bush will be on hand.
In the months that followed, President Bush and Vice President Cheney – especially Cheney – insinuated publicly that Iraq had been involved in 9/11. Polls showed that by 2003, when the US invaded Iraq, millions of Americans had come to believe that was the case. The US 9/11 Commission, however, would conclude that Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks.
Rumsfeld's other suspects after 9/11 had included Libya, Sudan and Iran, all countries associated with terrorism.
Source: Fox News
August 20, 2011
Two New Jersey senators are demanding that any new Libyan government agree to extradite to the United States the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing two years after he was released from prison to die of cancer.
The second anniversary of al-Megrahi's release comes as Libyan rebels gain ground in their six-month civil war against Qaddafi's Tripoli-based regime. Some politicians in Britain and the U.S.
