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: http://www.thenational.ae
Nov 6, 2008
The Turkish minister of culture and tourism, Ertugrul Gunay, examines the excavation work and archaeological finds at the site of the Marmaray project in Yenikapi, Istanbul. Sinan Gul / Anadolu Ajansi
Above ground, the Istanbul suburb of Yenikapi is a normal, modern-day bustling port on the Marmaris Sea. But beneath the waters, its newly discovered treasures are rewriting the history books.
So far, 32 wooden ships, Stone Age skeletons, coins, amphorae and even a basket
Source: LiveScience
Nov 6, 2008
The modern obsession with celebrity started in 18th-century Britain with obituaries of unusual people published in what served as the gossip sheets of the era, an English literature scholar says.
Some researchers think the phenomenon of celebrity was born with the 19th-century Romantic movement in art, music and literature (think of works by Chopin, J.M.W. Turner and Edgar Allen Poe). Instead, Elizabeth Barry of the University of Warwick in England claims the modern public fascinati
Source: International Herald Tribune
Nov 6, 2008
All the ominous predictions, all the fretting about hidden votes and closeted racists frustrating a victory for the nation's first African-American president came down to this: the so-called Bradley effect did not exist.
People did not lie — to pollsters or to themselves — about whether they would vote for a black man. The polls, national and statewide, generally predicted the results with accuracy.
"The unambiguous answer is that there was no Bradley effect,"
Source: NYT
Nov 6, 2008
One of the many ways the election of Barack Obama differed from recent presidential elections was that in the end, it did not all come down to one state....
So how does Mr. Obama’s 364, which could go as high as 376, measure up?
“It’s a normal win,” said John C. Fortier, a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, who edited “After the People Vote: A Guide to the Electoral College.” Mr. Fortier called it a respectable, solid mandate.
“It was not
Source: NYT
Nov 6, 2008
Forty years ago — before Richard Nixon was president, before the Chicago Seven were tried, before the shootings at Kent State — a 19-year-old Brooklyn man was shipped to Vietnam.
His name was Jose Ramon Sanchez and he was a private first class with the First Battalion, Fourth Regiment of the Third Marine Division, Headquarters and Support Company. On June 6 — D-Day — of 1968, his CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter was sent to extract a team of fellow grunts who were pinned down by the enem
Source: Wil Haygood in the WaPo
Nov 6, 2008
For more than three decades Eugene Allen worked in the White House, a black man unknown to the headlines. During some of those years, harsh segregation laws lay upon the land. He trekked home every night, his wife, Helene, keeping him out of her kitchen.
At the White House, he worked closer to the dirty dishes than the large desk in the Oval Office. Helene didn't care; she just beamed with pride.
President Truman called him Gene. President Ford liked to talk golf with him.
Source: http://nycitynewsservice.com
Nov 6, 2008
The FBI amassed a dossier on the late journalist David Halberstam for more than two decades – keeping tabs on his reporting, tracking his marriage to a Polish actress and preparing background reports on the Pulitzer Prize winner for other federal agencies, documents show.
The feds appear to have paid particular attention to Halberstam in the mid 1960s when he was a New York Times correspondent in Poland during the Cold War – when that nation was closely aligned with the Soviet Union
Source: Slate
Nov 6, 2008
What if the candidate dies after the election but before the inauguration on Jan. 20? The 20th Amendment states that if the president-elect dies before beginning his term, then the vice president-elect assumes his or her spot. However, the point at which a candidate officially becomes "president-elect" is debatable. He or she definitely assumes the title after Jan. 6, when a joint session of Congress officially counts the Electoral College votes and declares a winner. But the shift cou
Source: CNN
Nov 6, 2008
With record low approval ratings and intense criticism for his handling of the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina and the economy, the word most used to label George W. Bush's presidency will be "incompetent," historians say.
"Right now there is not a lot of good will among historians. Most see him as a combination of many negative factors," said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School.
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Source: BBC
Nov 6, 2008
As the 90th anniversary of the Armistice which brought World War I to an end approaches, signs of the bloody conflict on the Western Front are still very much apparent today.
The forests around Verdun, where so many died, are still and silent.
Nature has smoothed countryside torn up by shellfire, and undermined by the men who sheltered from it.
Ahead on the carpet of brightly coloured autumn leaves, Christina Holstein forced her way through low hanging branches t
Source: FoxNews.com
Nov 6, 2008
A stalagmite rising from the floor of a cave in China is providing clues to the end of several dynasties in Chinese history.
Slowly built from the minerals in dripping water over 1,810 years, chemicals in the stone tell a tale of strong and weak cycles of the monsoon, the life-giving rains that water crops to feed millions of people.
Dry periods coincided with the demise of the Tang, Yuan and Ming dynasties, researchers report in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 6, 2008
The leader of Belgium's far-Right National Front party, Michel Delacroix, resigned on Thursday a few hours after he was shown on television singing a song making light of the Holocaust.
"Mr Delacroix, perfectly aware of what his actions would mean for him, has decided to resign from his post as president of the National Front," the party said in a statement, underlining that his act was "inadmissible."
In a video on public RTBF television's midday ne
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 6, 2008
They include factory workers killed or maimed by their hazardous occupation and a soldier who survived virtually the entire war, only to be killed days from the armistice when a shell landed on the hospital where he was being treated.
Their stories are documented on the National Roll of the Great War, set up after the end of hostilities with the aim of recording the contribution of every person - civilian and military - to Britain's war effort.
But instead of being bure
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 6, 2008
The final resting place of Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco is to be opened and the remains of some of those who were killed by his fascist forces returned to their relatives.
The exhumation of eight bodies from the mass tomb has been ordered by Judge Baltasar Garzón, who last month launched a criminal investigation into the fate of tens of thousands of those who "disappeared" during the Spanish Civil War and ensuing dictatorship.
The Valley of the Fa
Source: AP
Nov 6, 2008
Aging, frail survivors of the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor gingerly sifted dirt as they helped to break ground on a new visitor's center for the USS Arizona Memorial.
The current visitor's center — across the harbor from the submerged battleship — is sinking because it was built on reclaimed land, causing water to seep into its basement. Engineers estimate the building will last only a few more years.
The center is where visitors board ferries taking them to the
Source: HNN Staff
Nov 6, 2008
This is the promo from Casemate publishers of a new book:
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Source: Guardian (UK)
Nov 6, 2008
Death was on Winston Churchill's mind on July 17 1915, as he sat down to write four neat pages to his wife, Clementine. She never read his letter, unlike millions of distraught widows who opened their own envelopes similarly marked "in the event of my death".
"Do not grieve for me too much," he wrote. "Death is only an incident, and not the most important that happens to us in this state of being. On the whole, especially since I met you, my darling one, I h
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 6, 2008
Raymond Scott, 51, from Washington, Tyne and Wear, was being questioned by Durham Police after detectives discovered fresh evidence.
The self-confessed "dilettante" antique dealer has publicly denied stealing the work, which police believe was taken in 1998 from a library at Durham University.
A Durham Police spokesman said: "A 51-year-old man at the centre of the inquiry into the stolen Shakespeare folio was re-arrested today.
"The mov
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 6, 2008
Seeping rainwater has threatened the structure of the Grade II listed Victorian Gothic building near Milton Keynes, described as being as important as the Cabinet War Rooms.
The Bletchley Park Trust spent £100,000 starting repairs on the Victorian roof this summer but ran out of money.
Simon Greenish, director of the trust, said the work was the "first really big step" in saving the building and turning it into a "world class" £10 million education a
Source: BBC
Nov 6, 2008
One of the five remaining veterans of World War I has died at the age of 108, it has been announced.
Sydney Maurice Lucas was born in Leicester on 21 September 1900. He was among the last batch of conscripts to be called up in 1918.
The Armistice meant he escaped the horror of the trenches but went on to serve in World War II.
He died on 4 November in his home town near Melbourne in Australia where he moved in 1928.
He was just 17 when he w
