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: Pittsburgh Post Gazette
May 3, 2009
1793 accounts ledger indicates 1756 date on cornerstone may be accurate.
Pittsburgh's Historic Review Commission is expected to vote Wednesday on whether to recommend historic status for the Old Stone Inn, a West End landmark at 434 Greentree Road. If the inn is as old as growing evidence indicates, it may be older than the nation, even older than Pittsburgh.
No historic nomination in recent memory has led to such depths of discovery. Researchers have become giddy as th
Source: Los Angeles Times
May 3, 2009
A New York-born and Princeton-educated historian and commentator on Middle East affairs has been chosen Israel's next ambassador to Washington, Israeli news media reported Saturday.
According to the online edition of the newspaper Haaretz, Michael B. Oren’s selection by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman will be submitted to the Cabinet for approval at its meeting today. Oren would replace Sallai Meridor.
Oren is a senior fellow at
Source: BBC
May 3, 2009
A man who was saved by a woman from a fatal crush at a London Underground station during World War II has met his rescuer's family after 66 years.
Alfie Morris was 13 years old when he went to take shelter in Bethnal Green Tube station, east London, on 3 March 1943 from an impending air-raid.
Maude Chumbley grabbed his hair and saved him from the crush as hundreds of people climbed down the stairs. A total of 173 people, including many
Source: BBC
May 3, 2009
A huge wave crashed into the New York City region 2,300 years ago, dumping sediment and shells across Long Island and New Jersey and casting wood debris far up the Hudson River.
The scenario, proposed by scientists, is undergoing further examination to verify radiocarbon dates and to rule out other causes of the upheaval.
Sedimentary deposits from more than 20 cores in New York and New Jersey indicate that some sort of violent force swept the Northeast coastal region
Source: AP
May 2, 2009
Doctors at the University of Maryland School of Medicine say John Paul Jones, known as the father of the United States Navy, died of chronic inflammation of the kidneys two centuries ago. Jones was born in Scotland in 1747 and died at age 45. Previously, his cause of death was listed as “dropsy of the chest.”
Source: NYT
May 2, 2009
WHAT is the chance that the current downturn will morph into another Great Depression? That question has been preoccupying people for months.
The popular mood has a huge impact on the economy, so it’s worth noting what many people seem to forget: Depression scares come and go. And by one authoritative measure, the current outbreak of concern has been surprisingly mild....
Source: NYT
May 2, 2009
Many American presidents have been lawyers, but almost none have come to office with Barack Obama’s knowledge of the Supreme Court. Before he was 30, he was editing articles by eminent legal scholars on the court’s decisions. Later, as a law professor, he led students through landmark cases from Plessy v. Ferguson to Bush v. Gore. (He sometimes shared his own copies, marked with emphatic underlines and notes in bold, all-caps script.)
Now Mr. Obama is preparing to select his first S
Source: Linda Greenhouse in the NYT
May 2, 2009
David H. Souter had no agenda 19 years ago when he took his seat on the Supreme Court, but he did have a goal: not to become a creature of Washington, a captive of the privileges and power that came with a job he was entitled to hold for the rest of his life. In this, no matter what else can be said about his tenure on the court, he succeeded brilliantly.
Just a few decades ago, this would hardly have been a singular accomplishment. Even the most distinguished Supreme Court justices
Source: NYT
May 2, 2009
After decades of dictatorship and disrepair, Iraq is celebrating its renewed sovereignty over the Babylon archaeological site — by fighting over the place, over its past and future and, of course, over its spoils.
Time long ago eroded the sun-dried bricks that shaped ancient Babylon, the city of Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar, where Daniel read the writing on the wall and Alexander the Great died.
Colonial archaeologists packed off its treasures to Europe a century ago. S
Source: NYT
May 2, 2009
In American politics, the symbolic and the concrete are seldom far apart. Consider the fanfare surrounding President Barack Obama’s 100th day in office.
On the surface it seemed a classic instance of what the historian Daniel Boorstin once described as a “pseudo-event,” an exercise in public relations masquerading as news. “The celebration is held, photographs are taken, the occasion is widely reported,” Mr. Boorstin wrote of such staged episodes.
The Obama administrat
Source: Times (of London)
May 2, 2009
by Charles Powell
Thirty years on from Margaret Thatcher becoming Prime Minister, it is being suggested that we have come to the end of the Thatcher era. Don't believe it. Iron does not rust that easily.
There have been reversals of the direction that she set, with the partial nationalisation of banks and the increase in the higher rate of tax to 50 per cent...
The real story is not that the Thatcher era is over but that it continues unabated. Nineteen yea
Source: NYT
May 2, 2009
Jack Kemp, the former football star turned congressman who with an evangelist’s fervor moved the Republican Party to a commitment to tax cuts as the central focus of economic policy, died Saturday evening at his home in Bethesda, Md. He was 73....
Mr. Kemp was secretary of housing and urban development under the first President George Bush and the Republican vice-presidential nominee in 1996. But his greatest legacy may stem from his years as a congressman from Buffalo, especially 1
Source: AP
May 2, 2009
TOKYO — When Google Earth added historical maps of Japan to its online collection last year, the search giant didn't expect a backlash. The finely detailed woodblock prints have been around for centuries, they were already posted on another Web site, and a historical map of Tokyo put up in 2006 hadn't caused any problems.
But Google failed to judge how its offering would be received, as it has often done in Japan. The company is now facing inquiries from the Justice Ministry and ang
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 2, 2009
A hero Gurkha who lost his arm and sight in one eye fighting for Britain has appealed to the Queen and the Prime Minister for his granddaughter to be allowed to stay in the country to care for him.
Lachhiman Gurung won the VC after he single-handedly repelled a Japanese attack for four hours in World War Two despite suffering horrific injuries.
Now aged 91, he needs constant care from his granddaughter, Amrita, but she faces deportation after being refused leave to re
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 2, 2009
Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to save thousands of Jewish refugees during the Second World War, a new book has claimed, disputing the widely held view that America's wartime presdient was indifferent to the fate of Europe's Jews.
The book, "Refugees and Rescue," claims that Roosevelt developed plans in 1938 for the United States to fill its immigration quota with 27,000 Jews from Germany and Austria and to send others to British-held Palestine and friendly nations in Af
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 2, 2009
The African San people have been found to be the most ancient race in the world in a huge genetic study.
The people, who have lived as hunter-gatherers for thousands of years, are the direct relations of early modern humans who migrated from the continent to spread their DNA throughout the world.
A study by the University of Pennsylvania has found all populations descended from just 14 ancient African populations.
Researchers discovered the genetic DNA of
Source: BBC
May 2, 2009
Brazilian police and soldiers have begun an operation to remove non-indigenous residents from an Indian reservation in northern Brazil.
The operation follows a landmark ruling by the country's Supreme Court that the Raposa Serra do Sol reservation should be solely for indigenous people.
The non-indigenous rice farmers and farm workers say they are victims of "legalised robbery".
But the authorities say they will be properly compensated.
Source: The Times (UK)
May 2, 2009
A mysterious “Mexican suitcase” has been unpacked to reveal a treasure trove of classic photo-journalism taken in the 1930s by Robert Capa and two other pioneers.
The three cardboard boxes contain 126 rolls of 35mm film with about 4,300 images of the Spanish Civil War, most never seen before.
They were saved from wartime Europe and appeared in Mexico City half a century later among the effects of a former Mexican diplomat, before finding their way to New York.
Source: Times (UK)
May 2, 2009
The Garden of Eden may not have looked much like its traditional image of a lush, fertile corner of the Earth.
Instead, a genetic study of Africa suggests that the origin of humanity lies in a sandy, inhospitable region near the coastal border of Namibia and Angola.
The area is populated by the Bushmen, or San people, who may be the closest thing to a biblical Adam and Eve. ...
Scientists suggest that the clicking sounds characteristic of the San’s language may b
Source: Times (UK)
May 2, 2009
Publication of a controversial report into security failings before the July 2005 bombings has been delayed, causing mounting concerns among survivors and relatives of the dead.
The 7/7 families had been told to expect the report, into security lapses which left Mohammed Sidique Khan free to carry out the attacks, “within days” of the end of the trial of three men accused of helping him.
That trial finished this week but no date has been set for publishing the report,
