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: Talking Biz News
Oct 13, 2009
BusinessWeek magazine, which was founded in 1929, just weeks before the October stock market crash that led to the Great Depression, has been sold to Bloomberg LP. Bloomberg staff members were told of the deal this afternoon. When founded, the magazine had 14 staffers. That number grew to more than 600, but in recent weeks had been down around 400.
Unlike Forbes, which at the time was the only major competitor in the business magazine field, BusinessWeek paid more attention to the e
Source: NYT
Oct 13, 2009
PRAGUE — It was supposed to be an interview about the revolutions that overturned communism 20 years ago in Europe. But first, Vaclav Havel had a question.
Was it true that President Obama had refused to meet the Dalai Lama in Washington?...
... But Mr. Havel’s reticence did not prevent him, during a 45-minute interview, from aiming squarely at what he called the current “era of disgust” in Czech politics.
“If you look at the C.V.’s of current Czech politic
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
Oct 13, 2009
Patrick McGovern had just emerged from the ancient burial chamber in one of the most extensively excavated archaeological sites in China when a local scientist presented him with what he calls "the real treasure."
It was a sealed bronze drinking vessel that resembled a teapot from 1200 B.C.
With liquid still inside.
"I just about dropped over - a liquid sample from 3,000 years ago," said McGovern, a researcher at the University of Pennsy
Source: China View
Oct 13, 2009
The friendship between the Chinese and Jewish peoples, which boasts a history of more than 1,000 years, would be reflected in an exhibition of photos depicting relations between China and Israel, a leading Chinese historian told Xinhua Tuesday.
Pan Guang, head of the Center for Jewish Studies Shanghai, said the "Experience China in Israel" event in Tel Aviv, which ends on Oct. 25, would remind both Chinese and Jewish people of their shared experiences.
Source: Digital Journal
Oct 13, 2009
The Hungarian historian who was reported to have ‘discovered’ a house belonging to the real “Dracula,” says the claims were inaccurate. Dr Tamás Fedeles says the cellar can indeed be linked to Wallachian Duke Vlad III, but not with any certainty.
Dr. Fedeles, of the Medieval and Early Modern Department at Pécs University’s Historical Studies Institute, said in an interview with Digital Journal that there was no definite proof that Duke Vlad III ”Tepes” (The Impaler) of Wallachia own
Source: NYT
Oct 13, 2009
The National Park Service found the original deed from 1695 for the homestead in Virginia where George Washington was born and copies of John Peter Zenger’s New-York Weekly Journal from 1735 reporting on his landmark trial affirming freedom of the press. The Center for Jewish History discovered the 1944 document in which Raphael Lemkin coined the term genocide. The Morgan Library turned up a 1913 letter from the sister of Virginia Woolf saying that “Virginia was very much depressed yesterday” an
Source: Asia News
Oct 13, 2009
Kirkuk (AsiaNews) - For 1600 years, Iraq has been "a country of martyrs", which finds in the “Holy Spirit and the Eucharist" the strength to bear witness to the faith “despite persecution”. So says Mgr. Louis Sako, archbishop of Kirkuk, on the eve of a week of celebrations to mark 1600 years since the massacre of Iraqi martyrs. A long series of past and present violence, but one which has not stopped "the sacred history of the Christians ... and their journey."
Source: Arkansas Business
Oct 13, 2009
RICHMOND, Va. - Orange County officials asked a judge Tuesday to dismiss an attempt to block Wal-Mart Stores Inc. from building a Supercenter near an endangered Civil War battlefield.
The filing by the Board of Supervisors contends preservationists and residents who filed the legal challenge have no standing in the issue and defended the county's Aug. 25 vote approving the store near the Wilderness Battlefield.
Source: Fox News
Oct 13, 2009
SOUTHEAST, NY — An archaeologist has found ancient tool fragments and other artifacts at the site of a suburban New York sewer construction project...
... It's believed the artifacts are about 1,000 years old. They're being donated to the Southeast Museum in Brewster. The dig was required by state and federal historic preservation acts.
Source: NYT
Oct 13, 2009
A few weeks ago, a hearse left Tom Amorosi’s brownstone in Park Slope with the remains of 36 people who died in the 1840s and 1850s. The remains were on the final miles of a dizzying journey out of history. Mr. Amorosi, a forensic anthropologist, had been hired by the state to study them.
The old bones spoke, but did not give direct answers. “I’d look at some of them, and think, ‘How the heck did you get up in the morning?’ ” Mr. Amorosi said, tracing the ravages mapped in the bones
Source: Google News
Oct 13, 2009
TOPEKA, Kan. — A Kansas priest already under consideration for sainthood has won the endorsement of the Army's top civilian leader to receive the Medal of Honor.
The Rev. Emil Kapaun was a captain and chaplain in the Army in Korea and taken prisoner in 1950 when the Chinese captured his unit. Kapaun continued to serve the men's needs, risking his life to provide them with food and water amid squalid conditions.
Kapaun, a Roman Catholic, died in a prison camp in 1951.
Source: Google News
Oct 13, 2009
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon's personnel chief said Tuesday the military has completed its best recruiting year since 1973, meeting all its goals and bringing in a better educated group of young people.
The Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps met goals for active duty and reserve recruiting during the budget year ended Sept. 30 — the first time that has happened since the all-volunteer force was established, said Defense Department head of personnel Bill Carr...
... He
Source: Google News
Oct 13, 2009
DETROIT — An 88-year-old retired auto engineer told a judge Tuesday that he never shot Jews while serving in a Nazi-controlled police force during World War II, during an initial hearing over whether the government can deport him.
Speaking through his lawyer, John Kalymon, of suburban Detroit, denied the U.S. Justice Department's assertion that he claimed to have fired his gun at least eight times and killed a Jew in August 1942, when Jews were being rounded up and removed from what
Source: Asian News Internationa
Oct 13, 2009
Ankara (Turkey), October 13 (ANI): Archaeologists have found traces of a temple built for the Greek goddess of divine retribution, Nemesis, during excavations in the ancient city of Agora in the Aegean port city of Izmir in Turkey.
According to a report in Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review, Akin Ersoy of Dokuz Eylul University’s archaeology department and heading the archaeological excavations in the ancient city, said that there might be a temple built for Nemesis in the area
Source: NYT
Oct 13, 2009
The Supreme Court will consider throwing out the convictions of the former Enron chief executive Jeffrey K. Skilling for his role in the collapse of the one-time energy giant.
The court said Tuesday that it would hear Mr. Skilling’s appeal of lower court rulings that upheld all 19 of his 2006 convictions of conspiracy, securities fraud, insider trading and lying to auditors involving the 2001 collapse of Enron.
Mr. Skilling, serving a 24-year prison term, is asking the
Source: National Security Archive
Oct 13, 2009
For nearly four decades, the government of Japan, under the seemingly perpetual control of the Liberal Democratic Party, has repeated a well-rehearsed litany of denials in response to queries from the Diet or the press about alleged secret understandings with the United States regarding nuclear weapons. No, there are no such secret understandings. No, in line with former Prime Minister Eisaku Sato's Three Non-Nuclear Principles, the Japanese government has not allowed the introduction o
Source: Spiegel Online
Oct 13, 2009
For many of the now-adult children of white German women and African-American GIs, adopted by families in the United States after World War II, the search for the truth has been difficult. Online communities are helping.
Rudi Richardson knew something about what it meant to be a black man in the United States. But after being deported to Germany, the country where he was born, shortly before his 47th birthday, he had to start figuring out what it meant to be black and German -- in a
Source: Truthout
Oct 13, 2009
The Obama administration indicated in court papers it may appeal a federal judge's ruling ordering the Justice Department to release portions of the transcribed interview between former Vice President Dick Cheney and Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor appointed to probe the roles Bush administration officials played in the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson six years ago.
Last week, Jeffrey M. Smith, an attorney in the Justice Department's civil division,
Source: Medieval News
Oct 13, 2009
In one of the most amazing recent examples of intuition, detective work, technical innovation and connoisseurship, a new addition to the very limited corpus of paintings by Leonardo da Vinci has now come to light.
The painting, actually a mixed-media of white, red and black chalks with additions of watercolour, and executed on vellum, was discovered in a private Swiss collection. Originally purchased in a New York auction ten years ago, the painting was catalogued as 'German early
Source: BBC
Oct 13, 2009
The small Canadian cattle-ranching city of Brooks, in south-eastern Alberta, is preparing to celebrate its 100th anniversary next year.
Painted murals depicting a proud western heritage of cattle farming, cowboys, ice hockey and the oil and gas industry have appeared throughout the city.
A century ago, immigrants cried when they reached Brooks because the landscape was so dry and inhospitable before irrigation helped it to become an oasis in the desert for cattle ranch
