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
Dec 14, 2008
As Georgia faces a potential $2 billion budget deficit, a state senator has created a stir with a plan for reducing education spending: merge two historically black universities in Albany and Savannah with nearby mostly white institutions.
The proposal was made this month by Seth Harp, a Republican who is the chairman of the State Senate Higher Education Committee, and quickly drew condemnation from many black educators, politicians and alumni.
But supporters say the pl
Source: AP
Dec 14, 2008
Sarah Palin lost the election, but she's a winner to a connoisseur of quotations.
The Republican vice presidential candidate and her comedic doppelganger, Tina Fey, took the top two spots in this year's list of most memorable quotes compiled by Fred R. Shapiro.
First place was "I can see Russia from my house!" spoken in satire of Palin's foreign policy credentials by Fey on "Saturday Night Live."
Palin actual quote was: "They're ou
Source: Tehran Times
Dec 14, 2008
An archaeological team working on the Kelar Tepe believes that they have
found a Neolithic settlement on the prehistoric mound located in the
Kelaradsht region in Iran's northern province of Mazandaran. However they
have said that more tests are needed to determine an accurate date for the
site."Excavations at the Rashak 3 Cave have uncovered an oven at a depth
of 5 meters," team director Hamed Vahdatinasab said."We have also
discovered shards in the oven, which are very similar to Neol
Source: AP
Dec 14, 2008
Enthusiasm among blacks and Democrats for Barack Obama's candidacy pushed voter turnout in this year's elections to the highest level in 40 years
Final figures from nearly every state and the District of Columbia showed that more than 131 million people voted, the most ever for a presidential election. A little more than 122 million voted in 2004.
This year's total is 61.6 percent of the nation's eligible voters, the highest turnout rate since 1968, when Republican Rich
Source: International Herald Tribune
Dec 14, 2008
It came to John Podesta during a jog through Rock Creek Park over the
Thanksgiving weekend. His boss was going to be impeached and there was no
way around it. It took Rahm Emanuel a little longer to reach that
conclusion. And it fell to Gregory Craig to pick up the pieces once it
happened.
Ten years ago this week, Bill Clinton became the first elected U.S.
president ever impeached by the House of Representatives, the culmination
of a sex-and-lies scandal that consumed the United Sta
Source: AP
Dec 14, 2008
A perplexing new chapter is unfolding in Barack Obama's racial saga: Many people insist that "the first black president" is actually not black.
Debate over whether to call this son of a white Kansan and a black Kenyan biracial, African-American, mixed-race, half-and-half, multiracial — or, in Obama's own words, a "mutt" — has reached a crescendo since Obama's election shattered assumptions about race.
Obama has said, "I identify as African-Ameri
Source: Larry Rothfield blog
Dec 13, 2008
[Mr. Rothfield teaches at the University of Chicago.]
As readers of this blog already know, in October the State Department issued a fact sheet laying out its support of what was described as “numerous activities relating to the protection and preservation of Iraq’s cultural heritage”:These include emergency response to the looting of the Iraq National Museum, training of Iraqi mus
Source: AP
Dec 13, 2008
ROCHESTER, N.Y. – Two explorers conducting underwater surveys of Lake Ontario have uncovered an aquatic mystery — a rare 19th-century schooner sitting upright 500 feet under the waves.
Jim Kennard and Dan Scoville located the 55-foot long dagger-board ship unexpectedly this fall using deep scan sonar equipment off the lake's southern shore, west of Rochester.
The ship is the only dagger-board known to have been found in the Great Lakes. Kennard said vessels of this type
Source: NYT
Dec 13, 2008
An unpublished 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure.
The history, the first official account of its kind, is circulating in draft form here and in Washington among
Source: Times (UK)
Dec 13, 2008
Russia’s Constitutional Court, which recently transferred from Moscow at Vladimir Putin’s command, is lit more brightly than any other building on St Petersburg’s beautiful English Embankment at night.
At the offices of the leading human rights group Memorial, however, a daylight raid by masked men speaks of a darker Soviet tradition of state power. Police confiscated computer hard drives containing 20 years’ work documenting victims of Stalin’s Terror and political persecution in
Source: BBC
Dec 13, 2008
Files released this autumn at the National Archives in Kew include one dossier showing how the Special Operations Executive - Churchill's "secret army" - was not disbanded at the end of the Second World War, as is commonly thought.
Instead, nearly 300 agents were brought into the Secret Intelligence Service - later MI6.
Officially SOE, the organisation set up to run resistance in occupied countries, was "liquidated" in January 1946.
S
Source: Spiegel Online
Dec 12, 2008
Archaeologists in Germany say they have found an ancient battlefield
strewn with Roman weapons. The find is significant because it indicates
that Romans were fighting battles in north Germany at a far later stage
than previously assumed.
The wilds of Germany may not have been off-limits to Roman legions,
archaeologists announced on Monday. At a press conference in the woods
near the town of Kalefeld, about 100 kilometers south of Hanover,
researchers announced the discovery of a bat
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 12, 2008
Jack Straw's review of the law banning Roman Catholics from succeeding to the throne may have some intriguing ramifications. It had been envisaged that any change to the law would apply only to future members of the Royal family, but the present Duke Francis of Bavaria, who claims to be the rightful king of Scotland, England, Ireland and France, is likely to be consulting learned friends about how it will apply to him.
The duke, whom Jacobites refer to as King Francis II, is descend
Source: Times (UK)
Dec 12, 2008
After 65 years a frescoed "lost chapel" created by British troops to honour the war dead after the landings at Salerno in southern Italy during the Second World War has been found - but has been turned into an ironmonger's basement storeroom.
The hunt for the chapel began after former British soldiers who took part in the landings in September 1943 told Harry Shindler, spokesman in Italy of the "Star Association", which represents Italian campaign veterans, that
Source: AP
Dec 12, 2008
Polish archaeologists believe silk-draped skeletons found in a cathedral
crypt are those of three grand masters who more than 600 years ago ruled
the Teutonic Knights — an order that spread religion through force.
An archaeologist in the city of Kwidzyn — the Teutonic fortress of
Marienwerder in the Middle Ages — said Friday that DNA tests indicate the
remains are those of Werner von Orseln, the knights' leader from
1324-1330; Ludolf Koenig, who ruled from 1342-1345; and Heinrich von
Source: MSNBC
Dec 12, 2008
Archaeology magazine's top 10 finds of 2008 include Maya paint and ancient poop. And there are bonus finds as well, including a monumental discovery that the discoverers have been trying to keep under wraps.
Most of these revelations haven't gotten the kind of hype that we saw this year for "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull."
"But as much as crystal skulls were the year's most prominent 'artifacts,' we're more likely to remember 2008 as
Source: NYT Book Review
Dec 12, 2008
Villagers, acting as human minesweepers, walked ahead of troops in dangerous areas to keep Americans from being blown up. Prisoners were subjected to a variation on waterboarding and jolted with electricity. Teenage boys fishing on a lake, as well as children tending flocks of ducks, were killed. “There are hundreds of such reports in the war-crime archive, each one dutifully recorded, sometimes with no more than a passing sentence or two, as if the killing were as routine as the activity it int
Source: FoxNews.com
Dec 12, 2008
Admirers of former dictator Augusto Pinochet inaugurated a museum in his
honor on Friday, a move they hope will burnish the image of a man reviled
by much of the world.
Visitors to the four-room museum can see the general's uniform, sabers,
books and knives — even his collection of toy soldiers.
Guided visits for groups of 12 will start on Monday and more than 150
people have registered to visit.
Pinochet's widow, Lucia Hiriart, said the inauguration shows that"little
b
Source: Miami Herald
Dec 12, 2008
In 1943, a German pilot decided not to shoot down Charlie Brown's damaged
plane. Brown died last month, but he lived to finally see his heroism
recognized.
When World War II bomber pilot Charlie Brown is laid to rest Saturday, his
burial will close a chapter on one of the most remarkable war stories in
modern history.
It's a tale of two pilots -- one American, the other German -- and of a
bloody, deadly battle in the sky that led to an extraordinary friendship.
Source: http://hitlernews.cloudworth.com
Dec 12, 2008
Australia, Hungary and Lithuania are failing to investigate and prosecute
suspected Nazi war criminals largely due to a lack of political will, the
Simon Wiesenthal Center said Thursday.
The Nazi-hunting group said the same holds true for Croatia, Estonia,
Latvia and Ukraine, adding all countries in question face no legal
obstacles in bringing suspects to justice.
The findings were published in the center's annual report, which graded
the investigation and prosecution efforts
