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: WaPo
Feb 18, 2009
Fifty years after his parents, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, traveled to India to study Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence, Martin Luther King III is in India to retrace his late father's footsteps.
"It is really a special mountaintop experience to be here," King said. "My parents had often shared with me how moving their experience in India was. My father said he came to many countries as a tourist, but he came to India as a pilgrim.
Source: NYT blog
Feb 18, 2009
First Lady Michelle Obama opened the doors of the White House to 180 sixth and seventh graders on Wednesday for a Black History Month celebration that included two pep talks and a rousing musical performance.
The students, who came from three local schools here, heard from Adm. Stephen W. Rochon, the chief usher, who runs the mansion and oversees everything from state dinners to redecorating. He is the first African-American to hold that position.
They also heard from M
Source: HNN Staff
Feb 18, 2009
While Bill Clinton was inside the San Diego Hyatt, gays were outside protesting the owner's support for California Prop 8, the anti-gay marriage amendment to the state constitution.
The hotel is the location of the next annual meeting of the American Historical Association.
In January the AHA was pressed by labor and gay members to join the gay boycott of the hotel. Instead, the AHA decided to sponsor a series of tea
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Feb 18, 2009
It’s not exactly news that the Internet is a perfect tool for violating copyright. In book publishing, the big concern has been best sellers that can be scanned and uploaded, with the idea that there is a worldwide audience for the latest Harry Potter installment or Oprah recommendation. While most university press books don’t have quite that commercial appeal, they are finding that they can still be the targets of pirates.
Press officials don’t want to provide too many details abou
Source: AP
Feb 18, 2009
Scientists are studying a huge cache of Ice Age fossil deposits recovered near the famous La Brea Tar Pits in the heart of the nation's second-largest city.
Among the finds is a near-intact mammoth skeleton, a skull of an American lion and bones of saber-toothed cats, dire wolves, bison, horses, ground sloths and other mammals.
Researchers discovered 16 fossil deposits under an old parking lot next to the tar pits in 2006 and began sifting through them last summer. The
Source: NYT
Feb 18, 2009
Shea Stadium, the site of the Mets’ two World Series victories, their many seasons of futility and a few historic concerts, met the fate of Ebbets Field and the Polo Grounds on Wednesday morning. At 11:21 a.m., a demolition crew pulled down the final section, and what remained of old blue stadium was gone in a cloud of dust: the final collapse at Shea. It was 45.
Besides several months of work by a wrecking crew, what killed the stadium was the need for a sprawling parking lot for t
Source: Indystar
Feb 18, 2009
Tom Mattice said he was trying to promote a "healing environment" when he removed the old, yellowing wall decoration from a hallway at the VA hospital.
But in doing so, the hospital director has opened an old wound -- and spurred debate about political correctness, free speech and how to be true to history without being offensive.
At issue is a framed newspaper front page from an August 1945 Indianapolis Times. The headline: "Japs Surrender."
Source: Times (UK)
Feb 18, 2009
There is one card that John Baxter will particularly treasure when he celebrates his 90th birthday tomorrow. It is from the Japanese guard who befriended him as a prisoner of war in Java during the Second World War.
On his release in 1945 Mr Baxter was little more than a living skeleton, his body ravaged by tropical diseases including malaria and dysentery. That he did survive was in part thanks to Hyato Hirano, one of the few guards who showed compassion to the prisoners.
Source: Deutsche Welle
Feb 18, 2009
Konrad Dannenberg's wife Jackie said he died Monday of natural causes, the Birmingham News reported on Tuesday, Feb. 17.
Dannenberg played a role in the Redstone, Jupiter and Saturn rockets. It was the Saturn V that put the first American astronaut on the moon.
In 1950, 118 German scientists came to Hunstville as part of Wernher von Braun's team. With Dannenberg's death, only six survive.
Born in 1912 in Weissenfels, Germany, Dannenberg earned his master's
Source: Spiegel
Feb 17, 2009
Original blueprints of the Auschwitz death camp, discovered by chance in a Berlin apartment last year, have gone on display in the German capital. Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, an Auschwitz survivor, said they give a glimpse of "true hell".
Original blueprints showing construction plans for the Auschwitz death camp have gone on display in Berlin in an exhibition opened on Monday evening by a survivor, 86-year-old former Polish Foreign Minister Wladyslaw Bartoszewski.
Source: Live 5 News
Feb 17, 2009
Tuesday marked the 145th anniversary of the night the H.L. Hunley submarine attacked and sank the Union war ship U.S.S Housatonic.
Thirteen men lost their lives that night in 1864: eight from the Hunley and five from the Housatonic.
But their mark had been left; naval warfare had changed.
After a march from Fort Moultrie to the Sunrise Presbyterian Church at Breach Inlet on Sullivans Island was a memorial service and a reading of the names of each of the fa
Source: Quad-City Times (Iowa)
Feb 17, 2009
Some 1,700 years ago, the people who live in what is known officially as archaeological site “13LA582” west of Oakville, Iowa, were hunter-gatherers who also grew native crops like sunflower seeds.
They lived in a doughnut-shaped village around a communal area and occupied 20 to 25 tree branch and bark wigwams capable of housing up to 10 people each.
The group is believed to be part of the Weaver culture located not far from the confluence of the Iowa and Cedar rivers i
Source: IHT
Feb 17, 2009
The Chinese government is increasing pressure on Christie's auction house to withdraw two bronzes from its sale of Yves Saint Laurent's vast collection next week in Paris, saying they were looted from the imperial Summer Palace near Beijing nearly 150 years ago.
The two Qing dynasty bronze animal heads, one depicting a rabbit and the other a rat, are believed to have been part of a set comprising 12 animals from the Chinese zodiac that were created for the imperial gardens during th
Source: Politico.com
Feb 17, 2009
In his first weeks in office, President Barack Obama shut down his predecessor’s system for reviewing regulations, realigned and expanded two key White House policymaking bodies and extended economic sanctions against parties to the conflict in the African nation of Cote D’Ivoire.
Despite the intense scrutiny a president gets just after the inauguration, Obama managed to take all these actions with nary a mention from the White House press corps.
The moves escaped notic
Source: http://minnesota.publicradio.org
Feb 17, 2009
A new survey of more than 700 principals in Minnesota finds nearly all of them are doubtful about meeting federal No Child Left Behind standards by 2014.
The group Minnesota 2020 asked the state's 1,600 school principals to fill out an online survey. More than 700 did and the results of one question particularly stand out.
When asked whether they think all schools will meet the federal standards by 2014, 97 percent said no. Another large majority also said they have alr
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 17, 2009
Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom apologised to Cuba on Tuesday for his country's having allowed the CIA to train exiles in the Central American country for the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.
"Today I want to ask Cuba's forgiveness for having offered our country, our territory, to prepare an invasion of Cuba. It wasn't us, but it was our territory," Mr Colom said during a speech at the University of Havana.
He added that he wished to apologise "as president and hea
Source: Foxnews
Feb 17, 2009
It's the stuff of legends: an elite secret society that includes what would become some of the most powerful men of the 20th century allegedly invading the grave of an Apache chief to steal his skull for fraternal rituals. It's also the stuff of a new lawsuit filed Tuesday by descendents of that Apache chief.
On the 100th anniversary of the death of Geronimo, 20 of his blood relatives have asked the courts to force Yale University and the school's secret organization, Skull and Bone
Source: UPI
Feb 17, 2009
Political sources say former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney is bitter that President George Bush wouldn't pardon Cheney aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
Cheney pushed Bush so hard to pardon Lewis that Bush refused to discuss the matter any further before he left office Jan. 20, The New York Daily News said in an exclusive published Tuesday. "He's furious with Bush," said a Cheney aide.
In an interview with The Weekly Standard last month, Cheney denounce
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 17, 2009
Stuart Manley, who owns Barter Books in Alnwick, Northumberland, liked the red and white Second World War propaganda poster much that he framed it and hung it up in his shop. It is one of only two original prints known to have survived after the Government reconsidered releasing the poster and pulped the original print run.
To his astonishment, Mr Manley was inundated with customers desperate to have a copy or buy the original.
He decided to make and sell a facsimile v
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 17, 2009
Wilm Hosenfeld, the German officer made famous by the film 'The Pianist', has been recognised by Israel for his role in helping Jews.
Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust memorial and museum, recognised Hosenfeld posthumously as "Righteous Among the Nations", an acknowledgement for those who aided Jews during the Holocaust.
Hosenfeld was made famous by Roman Polanski's celebrated 2002 film The Pianist, which was based on the true story of the Polish musician Wlady
