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: NYT
Mar 30, 2009
In the past, the United States government had briefly nationalized steel makers and tried to run the railroads, with little success. In the last nine months it has taken control of the American International Group insurance firm and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, firing their management as well, at a cost that dwarfs what is unfolding in Detroit.
But directing the fate of a vast manufacturing company, one that still looms over the Midwest, is an entirely different kind of enterprise. A
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 30, 2009
A new museum charting the story of the ill-fated liner the Titanic could be built in Britain in time for the 100th anniversary of the sinking, it has been announced.
The £28 million project in Southampton, from where the liner set sail in 1912 on her maiden voyage, is set to feature a climb-aboard replica of the ship.
Many of the ship's crew also came from the city.
If successful, the city council's Civic Centre will be converted with the main exhibition h
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 30, 2009
British history has become "feminised" by female authors who concentrate on subjects like the six wives of Henry VIII rather than the king himself, Dr David Starkey has said.
Speaking shortly before the launch of a new Channel 4 series to mark the 500th anniversary of the Tudor monarch's accession to the throne, Dr Starkey said he found it "bizarre" that so much historical effort was now focused on the monarch's wives.
But he warned that the "s
Source: CNN
Mar 30, 2009
Susan Atkins is terminally ill; Charles "Tex" Watson is an ordained minister. They and other members of Charles Manson's murderous "family" now shun him.
After three decades behind bars, Manson family members Atkins, Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten have repeatedly been described as model prisoners who have accepted responsibility for their crimes.
Parole boards, however, continue to reject their bids for release, and a debate rage
Source: BBC
Mar 30, 2009
After months of pre-trial hearings, the former prison chief known as Comrade Duch listened while a court official read out the charges against him.
He is accused of crimes against humanity, torture and premeditated murder for his alleged role in the deaths of more than 10,000 people.
The Khmer Rouge killed up to two million people in less than four years.
Source: Boston Globe
Mar 29, 2009
The Dorchester Historical Society has seen it happen time and time again: An old Victorian is purchased by a developer; it gets torn down and replaced by condominiums.
It's a scene that plays out all too often in Boston's biggest neighborhood, according to preservationists who say a glut of older Dorchester homes have fallen victim to the recent boom of condo construction.
"These old buildings are very well-constructed . . . they've lasted for over 100 years,"
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 29, 2009
The Grade II* country house in Stanmore, Middlesex, closed in May last year and its operations were moved to nearby RAF Northolt.
Perched on a hill commanding views across the whole of London to the South Downs beyond, the building is revered as the nerve centre of the Battle of Britain.
It is seen as the spiritual home of "the Few" – the World War II fighter pilots who fought off the German aerial invasion in 1940 against all the odds.
VSM Est
Source: Latin American Herald Tribune
Mar 29, 2009
The archbishop of the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, Dadeus Grings, accused Jews of running the world’s propaganda and said that was why not everything has been revealed about the Holocaust in which, he says, more Catholics died than Jews.
“More Catholics died than Jews in the Holocaust, but that is never mentioned because Jews run the world’s propaganda,” the prelate said in an interview published Friday in the final edition of the Brazilian trade publication Press &
Source: Mail on Sunday (UK)
Mar 29, 2009
Their voices have not been heard since the First World War.
The soldiers in these photographs are all long dead – some meeting their fate only minutes after the pictures were taken. But now, thanks to a lipreader, we know what the Tommies were saying.
The stills are taken from a silent movie shot at the bloody Battle of the Somme in 1916, which on its opening day, July 1, alone claimed the lives of 20,000 British and Empire troops.
One wounded soldier swea
Source: http://www.fredericksburg.com
Mar 28, 2009
It went unnoticed amid Thursday's media hullabaloo over designation of more wilderness lands, but Congress has reinvigorated battlefield preservation.
As part of the gigantic public-lands bill the U.S. House of Representatives passed this week, legislators reauthorized the American Battlefield Protection Program. The bipartisan measure awaits President Obama's signature at the White House on Monday.
Congressional renewal of the ABPP is crucial to local, state and federa
Source: Newsweek
Mar 28, 2009
In the world of international diplomacy, small missteps can cause big problems. When George W. Bush gave German Chancellor Angela Merkel a quick shoulder rub—in what he thought was a friendly gesture—he was mercilessly pilloried for weeks. Hillary Clinton's embrace of Suha Arafat dogged her for years. One of the most important tests of a globe-trotting president: picking out just the right gift for your foreign counterpart. Barack Obama is learning this the hard way.
Only a few week
Source: LAT
Mar 28, 2009
In a cultural war that has pitted Old South against New, defenders of the Confederate legacy have opened a fresh front in their campaign to polish an image tarnished, they say, by people who do not respect Southern values.
With the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War coming up in 2011, efforts are underway in statehouses, small towns and counties across the South to push for proclamations or legislation promoting Confederate history.
Alabama, Virginia, Missi
Source: NYT
Mar 28, 2009
Looking for something to celebrate? How about the commemoration of New York’s 400th birthday beginning next Saturday?
On April 4, 1609, the English navigator Henry Hudson left Amsterdam harbor to search for a shortcut to Asia. Hudson’s instructions from the Dutch East India Company were to sail east, as he had on two earlier voyages that were thwarted by Arctic ice.
Instead, inspired by insights gleaned from other explorers, Hudson steered his triple-masted ship toward
Source: NYT
Mar 28, 2009
Republicans are in a tizzy because Democrats are threatening to use the budgetary procedure known as reconciliation — it reconciles policy with fiscal guidelines — to overhaul the health care system, possibly enact climate change legislation and rewrite education policy.
They have good reason to fret: If Democrats successfully invoke reconciliation, such major bills could pass by a simple majority vote, denying Republicans the filibuster, their sole remaining weapon to influence fed
Source: AP
Mar 28, 2009
A Spanish court has agreed to consider opening a criminal case against six former Bush administration officials, including former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, over allegations they gave legal cover for torture at Guantanamo Bay, a lawyer in the case said Saturday.
Human rights lawyers brought the case before leading anti-terror judge Baltasar Garzon, who agreed to send it on to prosecutors to decide whether it had merit, Gonzalo Boye, one of the lawyers who brought the charges
Source: United Press International
Mar 28, 2009
A 4,000-year-old male human skeleton has been discovered in Tajikistan, experts say.
The well-preserved skeleton was found by a group of local residents in the foothills near the Tajik village of Tudakavsh, ITAR-TASS reported Saturday.
The Russian news service reported that experts said the skeleton's face-down posture indicates the man was not buried, but likely died in battle.
Yusuf Yakubov of the Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnography of the N
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Mar 28, 2009
The rows of silver dials and tangle of scarlet wires look more like a telephone exchange.
But this is the inside of the Turing Bombe, the part-electronic, part-mechanical code-breaking machine and forerunner of the modern computer, which cracked 3,000 messages a day sent on Nazi Enigma machines during the Second World War.
There were 210 such bookcase-like Bombes that gave Britain advance warning of Hitler’s plans and shortened the conflict by two years.
A
Source: Science News
Mar 28, 2009
Sales of illegal antiquities total at least $7.8 billion annually. It’s a black market that ranks behind only drugs and weapons as the most profitable, according to a United Nations analysis.
What comes out of the ground passes through international networks of plunder. At the end of the line, people purchase archaeological artifacts in shops, on the Internet and in private and public auctions. Buyers rarely know or, apparently, care how a $2.99 Native American arrowhead or a $75,00
Source: AP
Mar 28, 2009
BOONSBORO, Md. -- The last known surviving American female World War I veteran, a refined Civil War buff who met face-to-face with the Secretary of the Navy to fight for women in the military, has died. She was 109.
Charlotte Winters died Tuesday at a nursing home near Boonsboro in northwest Maryland, the U.S. Naval District in Washington said in a statement. Her death leaves just five known surviving American World War I veterans.
In 1916, Winters met with Secretary of
Source: Anasa
Mar 27, 2009
The Vatican on Friday rapped the teachings of a medieval Christian mystic cited three times by Barack Obama as someone who wanted a better world.
''Few of those who expound on Gioacchino da Fiore (Joachim of Fiore, 1130-1202 AD) on the Internet know, or go to the trouble of finding out, what this character really said,'' said Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the Pontifical Household.
According to the most ''vogueish'' interpretations, Cantalmessa said, the utopi
