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: MSNBC
Sep 6, 2009
NEW YORK - The five skyscrapers were all supposed to rise by early next decade to replace the ravaged World Trade Center, with the city's tallest towers set in a spiral evoking the Statue of Liberty's torch.
They would frame a massive memorial in a tree-filled park, plus a theater and a transportation hub with uplifted wings — one of several symbols intended to defy the terrorists who destroyed the 16-acre site in under two hours.
Standing on the site now — a multi-leve
Source: MSNBC
Sep 6, 2009
WASHINGTON - The new leader responsible for the overhaul of the deteriorating National Mall, with its crumbling sidewalks and dirty water, promises visible improvements within the next year.
It's only been a week since John Piltzecker became superintendent of America's "front yard," but the 25-year park ranger and administrator understands the public outrage over the mall's current condition. Piltzecker, 52, said he'll work to marshal both public and private money to renov
Source: NYT
Sep 6, 2009
MANCIANO, Italy — Commemorating the 70th anniversary of the start of World War II, Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday recalled the “tragedy of the Holocaust” and the deaths of “tens of millions” in the conflict.
Speaking at an outdoor Mass on Sunday in Viterbo, north of Rome, Benedict said: “We cannot forget the major events that took place during one of the most terrible conflicts in history, that left tens of millions dead and provoked so much suffering for our beloved Polish people,” he
Source: Time
Sep 6, 2009
Not long ago at Fort Bragg, N.C., the country's largest military base, seven soldiers sat in a semi-circle, lights dimmed, eyes closed, two fingertips lightly pressed beneath their belly buttons to activate their "core." Electronic music thumped as the soldiers tried to silence their thoughts, the key to Warrior Mind Training, a form of meditation slowly making inroads on military bases across the country. "This is mental push-ups," Sarah Ernst told the weekly class she leads
Source: Breitbart
Sep 6, 2009
SINGAPORE, Sept. 6 (AP) - (Kyodo)—Japanese atomic bomb survivors in Singapore as part of a Peace Boat global voyage Sunday categorically opposed calls from some quarters for Japan to become a nuclear weapons state as a deterrence measure.
Retired schoolteacher Shizuko Osaki said at a press conference, "I don't think we should go nuclear way even as a deterrence. It should be abolished altogether."
"Knowing how horrible and inhumane nuclear wars are, we ap
Source: BBC
Sep 6, 2009
The last letter ever written by Mary Queen of Scots is to go on display for the first time in 30 years.
The 422-year-old manuscript - written six hours before her execution - will go on show at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh on 15 September.
The letter, which will be displayed for seven days, was written on 8 February, 1587 to the King of France, Henri III.
The Catholic Queen told her brother-in-law she would die a religious martyr and not
Source: BBC
Sep 6, 2009
A war memorial to those killed since World War II has been unveiled by veterans in Lincolnshire.
It is the first in the country to display the new Elizabeth Cross, introduced by the Queen in July to honour Armed Forces killed in action.
Veterans spent a year raising the £9,000 needed for the memorial and planning the design.
At a ceremony on Sunday wreaths were laid to represent past, present and future lives lost in action.
Source: BBC
Sep 6, 2009
Gordon Brown has confirmed the UK will support compensation claims being made against Libya by IRA victims' families.
The government has been criticised for its closer ties with Libya by victims of the IRA, which was supplied with explosives by Tripoli.
Mr Brown insisted his government's priority had been to ensure Libya renounced terror and nuclear weapons.
Opposition MPs said the prime minister's "U-turn" undermined his authority and made Brit
Source: BBC
Sep 6, 2009
The bones and skulls of hundreds of people killed in one of Liberia's worst war-time massacres have been buried.
Victims were residents of Kolokpai village, in central Liberia, as well as displaced people who had sought refuge there in September 1994.
The killings were blamed on rival rebel groups that overran the nearby main provincial town of Gbarnga.
The burial, in a mass grave, was organised by a women's group following the discovery of the remains.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 6, 2009
Van Jones, a senior adviser to President Barack Obama, has resigned after it emerged that he had signed a petition stating that the Bush administration may have allowed the September 11 attacks to happen as a pretext to go to war. [HNN: Jones says he wasn't aware the petition made this claim.]
The ousting of Van Jones, a Left-wing activist appointed by Mr Obama as his "special adviser for green jobs", is a victory for Republicans and a sign of growing weakness within the
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 6, 2009
The distributors of a film that refers to Benito Mussolini's granddaughter as a "bitch who wants to kill all the Romanians" have agreed to cancel screenings pending a court decision on her complaint.
Francesca, about a Romanian who dreams of moving to Italy to open a kindergarten, screened twice at the Venice film festival and was to have been shown in public cinemas in the area on Sunday and Monday.
Alessandra Mussolini, 45, lodged a complaint last week over
Source: New York Daily News
Sep 5, 2009
Just as a river is considered the lifeblood of any city, within the murky waters of the Hudson flows the history of New York - the great metropolis that began as a little Dutch trading colony named Nieuw Amsterdam.
As New York State gets ready to throw a big birthday bash this week for the "oldest" river in the U.S., the boatload of events and exhibits around town aren't just for commemorating Henry Hudson's discovery 400 years ago - they're a celebration of the city itsel
Source: NYT
Sep 5, 2009
WASHINGTON — Before Congress’s August break, the chief aides to Senate Democrats met in a nondescript Senate conference room with three former advisers to President Bill Clinton. The topic: lessons learned the last time a Democratic president tried, but failed disastrously, to overhaul the health care system.
With the aides as divided as their bosses on President Obama’s signature initiative, their typically tedious weekly session turned hotly spirited. So the Clinton White House ve
Source: NYT
Sep 5, 2009
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — It took more than four decades to indict a former Alabama state trooper in a 1965 civil rights killing, and getting him to trial is taking years, too.
The former trooper, James B. Fowler, was indicted in May 2007 in the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was shot to death 44 years ago during a civil rights protest in western Alabama.
A trial date for Mr. Fowler seems to be nowhere in sight because of feuding between the prosecutor and the judge.
Source: Russia Today
Sep 5, 2009
Attempts to belittle Russia’s role in fighting Nazism is unacceptable, said Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrey Nesterenko during his latest regular media briefing.
He also elaborated on Russia–US relations, cooperation with South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the Iranian nuclear program, and many other international issues concerning Russia.
RT presents the full transcript of the address.
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, good day.
Welcome to our regular br
Source: NYT
Sep 5, 2009
BAULER, Germany — At the start of the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, an American bomber was shot down by German fighter planes and sent into a fiery, nose-first crash in a cow pasture here. The pilot’s body was never found.
Almost 65 years later, on a recent late summer day, a 10-member Defense Department team was in the same pasture, searching through mounds of excavated mud for a trace of the airman. The group had already unearthed shreds of a parachute and part of a leathe
Source: Foxnews
Sep 5, 2009
Trade and oil considerations played a big part in the decision to include the Lockerbie bomber in a prisoner transfer agreement between Britain and Libya, a senior British official said in an interview published Saturday.
Justice Secretary Jack Straw said trade, particularly a deal for oil company BP PLC, was "a very big part" of the 2007 negotiations that led to the prisoner deal. The agreement was part of a wider warming of relations between London and Tripoli.
Source: Drudge Report
Sep 5, 2009
A new public safety commercial for a German AIDS charity depicts a woman having sex with a man who turns out to be Adolf Hitler. "AIDS is a mass murderer," the tagline reads. "Protect yourself!"
Related article...Adolf Hitler sex video condemned by Aids charities
Source: The Wall Street Journal
Sep 5, 2009
LONDON -- British oil giant BP PLC lobbied the U.K. in late 2007 over a controversial prisoner transfer agreement with Libya, and oil-rich Qatar lobbied Scotland on the case in June. Revelations of the efforts Friday fed speculation by opposition politicians and victims' families that the recent release of the convicted Lockerbie bomber is entangled with oil interests.
U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said the U.K. didn't pressure Scotland to free Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the Lib
Source: Truthout
Sep 4, 2009
While Republicans are busy gnashing their teeth over President Obama's imminent indoctrination of the nation's schoolchildren, there's an education story bubbling up in Texas that could have considerably more far-reaching consequences.
The GOP-controlled State Board of Education is working on a new set of statewide textbook standards for, among other subjects, U.S. History Studies Since Reconstruction. And it turns out what the board decides may end up having implications far be
