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: CNSNews
Nov 17, 2009
Beijing (AP) - Playing tourist on his first visit ever to China, President Barack Obama drew a chilly comparison between the Chinese capital and his Illinois hometown....
... Built in the 1400s, the Forbidden City once was home to 24 Chinese emperors who ruled the country for nearly 500 years, between 1420 and 1911. The former imperial palace is now known as the Palace Museum, and is open to Beijing's visitors.
"It's a testament to the greatness of Chinese history,
Source: The Washington Post
Nov 17, 2009
JERUSALEM -- It is one of the most watched pieces of real estate in the world, 35 acres where an under-the-breath prayer or a whiff of a rumor can rouse warnings of war.
In both Judaism and Islam, the area known respectively as the Temple Mount and the Noble Sanctuary is considered a formative location. Jews believe it to be the site of Solomon's Temple and key biblical events. Muslims regard it as the spot where Muhammad was brought by the angel Gabriel before embarking on a trip t
Source: BBC
Nov 17, 2009
Czechs and Slovaks are marking the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution - which brought down the Communist government of the then-Czechoslovakia.
Past and present students will re-enact a Prague march that started the events.
The Communist Party announced it would relinquish power after hundreds of thousands demonstrated for 12 days.
The dissident playwright Vaclav Havel, who led the revolution before becoming president, is to attend a Prague rock co
Source: BBC
Nov 17, 2009
German prosecutors have charged a 90-year-old alleged former Nazi SS member with the deaths of 58 Jewish forced labourers, officials say.
The man is accused of murdering the workers in Deutsch Schuetzen, an Austrian village, at the end of World War II.
The court has identified the suspect only as a "retiree from Duisburg".
The victims' remains were found in a mass grave in 1995 by the Austrian Jewish association.
Source: Politico
Nov 17, 2009
Thirty-three years ago this fall, a bitter, race-tinged fight over abortion matched Roman Catholic bishops and the House against the nation’s first popularly elected black senator, Republican Ed Brooke of Massachusetts.
Now, with health care reform on the line, the same male-dominated church hierarchy is dictating to the first woman speaker of the House, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, a Catholic herself and past ally for the bishops on everything from human rights in China to tax credits fo
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Nov 17, 2009
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour on Monday proposed combining the state's three public black colleges into one of the institutions, Jackson State University. While Barbour said that campuses would continue to exist at what are now Alcorn State University and Mississippi Valley State University, the proposal marks the most dramatic state challenge in recent years to the continuation of some public black colleges -- and the move comes in the state whose higher education system was the subject of the
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Nov 17, 2009
Many advocates for free speech were outraged when Yale University Press, in publishing a book about the controversy over the Danish cartoons of Muhammad, refused to publish the cartoons themselves. Gary Hull, a Duke University professor, decided the best response would be to publish a book that included the controversial images, and through his new Voltaire Press, he has now done so. The book, Muhammad: The "Banned" Images, includes an introduction by Hull on "the basic choice bet
Source: WSJ
Nov 17, 2009
Federal prosecutors trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, could get a big boost from evidence that helped to acquit another alleged conspirator.
In statements submitted to a military commission last year, Mr. Mohammed said Salim Hamdan was a barely literate functionary with no involvement in the Sept. 11 conspiracy or other al Qaeda plots, contrary to prosecutors' allegations. Mr. Mohammed explained that his role as an al Qae
Source: Slate
Nov 17, 2009
Ever since President Obama moved into the White House, "the background players in his family drama—half-brothers, stepgrandmothers—are experiencing a disorienting measure of reflective fame," writes New York magazine. "They're doing their best to handle it, with varying degrees of grace." George Obama, the president's youngest half-brother, will be publishing a memoir and traveling to the United States for a publicity tour. But despite the reported six-figure advance, George
Source: Poynter Online
Nov 17, 2009
Over the years publications that target gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender audiences have come and gone -- witness today's tumult at Window Media LLC. A key newsweekly, The Washington Blade, may be no more after celebrating its 40th anniversary last month.
There's one very important angle that gets overlooked when minority media outlets go out of existence: archives. In today’s digital world, what happens to the online archives? Earlier this year the New York Blade shut down and all its onl
Source: History Today
Nov 17, 2009
At the end of last week, the University of Southampton launched a campaign to raise the necessary funds to preserve public access in the UK to hundreds of thousands of papers and photographs relating to Lord Mountbatten and Lord Palmerston. The Broadlands Archives have been on loan to the University’s Hartley Library since 1989, where they were transferred from the home of Lord Romsey. They were inherited by Lord Romsey, Mountbatten's grandson, on Mountbatten's assassination by the IRA off the I
Source: Culture24
Nov 17, 2009
All 32 surviving quarto editions of Shakespeare's Hamlet have been collated in a free digital archive launched yesterday.
Shakespeare Quartos Archive allows scholars to compare early printed copies of the famous play in one place, without travelling between the world's great libraries.
The website's interactive format means high-quality page images can be annotated, searched and compared side by side for the first time.
The Transatlantic venture – funded by
Source: Taegan Goddard's Political Wire
Nov 17, 2009
"A lack of competitive open-seat House races in 2010 could complicate Republican efforts to fully maximize a favorable national environment and make large seat gains after back-to-back elections where the political winds were blowing in the opposite direction," Roll Call reports.
"So far, 18 Members have announced they are not seeking re-election in 2010 and are running for other office instead -- but only six of those races are currently considered competitive. No M
Source: WSJ
Nov 17, 2009
WASHINGTON -- The Washington Redskins ended their four-game losing streak Sunday. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court handed the professional football team another victory, declining to hear a petition alleging its use of the "Redskins" mascot is racially disparaging.
Suzan Harjo v. Pro-Football Inc., a case that began in 1992, centered on whether a dispute over a potentially offensive trademark can be dismissed if the challenge was not filed promptly. Though the Trademark
Source: Times (UK)
Nov 17, 2009
Muslims in many countries are increasingly rejecting Darwin’s theory of evolution, under the influence of conservative elements in Islam, a science conference was told yesterday.
Nidhal Guessoum, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates, told the conference, being held in Egypt by the British Council, that in too many places students and academics believed they had to make a “binary choice” between evolution and creationis
Source: Times (UK)
Nov 17, 2009
The past and present heads of MI6 will be among the first witnesses to give evidence at the official inquiry into the Iraq war.
Sir John Scarlett, who retired as Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service on November 1, and Sir John Sawers, his successor, are among 20 top advisers, diplomats and military figures required to attend.
Sir John was chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee which was responsible for the Government dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruc
Source: The Times (UK)
Nov 17, 2009
For the perfect Nazi Christmas you had to hang glittering swastikas and toy grenades from the pine tree in the living room and, in your freshly pressed uniform, belt out carols urging German women to make babies for the Führer rather than worship the Jewish Baby Jesus. Then came the moment to light the pagan candle-holders — hand-made by labourers at Dachau.
Hitler’s dream of a 1,000-year Reich came to an end long before the world was subjected to 1,000 of his Christmases but an exh
Source: Project Q Atlanta
Nov 16, 2009
With a simple three-sentence notice taped to the door, the publishers of Southern Voice and David magazine ended two decades of gay media in Atlanta on Monday.
The publications, owned along with several others by Window Media and Unite Media, abruptly closed their doors overnight Sunday, ending a months-long battle with federal receivership that imperiled the gay media company.
Laura Douglas-Brown, the paper’s editor since 2006 and an employee for nearly 13 years, says
Source: Costa Rica Pages
Nov 16, 2009
An indigenous cementery was uncovered within a two hectare plot of land in Guapiles, Costa Rica, about an hour and a half east of San Jose. The cementary, which was constructed by the Huetares tribe during the pre-Colombian era, was discovered while doing environmental studies that are required to obtain a construction permit for the building of a new high school in the area.
Researchers from the National Museum, led by archaeologist Francisco Corrales, proved the existence of a fun
Source: LA Times
Nov 16, 2009
Two decades after his party was banned from running for seats in the parliament, Rabbi Meir Kahane and his ideas are once more on its agenda.
Recently, right-wing legislator Michael Ben-Ari asked to hold a discussion in parliament in memory of Kahane, an American-born rabbi who had founded the Jewish Defense League before moving to Israel and founding the militantly nationalist Kach movement that advocated removal of Arabs from biblical Israel. In 1988, Israeli law was amended to ba
