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: AP
Sep 27, 2008
Hillary Rodham Clinton campaigned in Michigan Saturday for one-time rival and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, telling voters they cannot afford to see another Republican in the White House.
"We cannot turn over our country with these deep deficits, with these serious economic problems, with the international challenges, to the same team that got us into this mess in the first place," Clinton told more than 1,000 people gathered at a park in this town 10 mil
Source: International Herald Tribune
Sep 27, 2008
The Senate galleries were packed, filled with both black and white spectators, and a murmur filled the air as the nation's first black member of Congress, Sen. Hiram Revels, stood to deliver his first speech to the chamber.
Nearly 140 years before Sen. Barack Obama's historic quest to become the nation's first black president, Revels captivated a nation in the midst of social upheaval following the Civil War. The date was March 16, 1870, less than five years after the 13th Amendmen
Source: Guardian (UK)
Sep 27, 2008
A Spanish judge looking into the brutal repression of dictator General Francisco Franco's forces during the country's civil war has opened an investigation into the tens of thousands of victims of the so-called "red terror" unleashed by some of his leftwing opponents.
Judge Baltasar Garzón has asked authorities for a list of those killed on the orders of the tribunals set up by the leftwing Republican authorities in Madrid during the three-year civil war that ended in 1939
Source: Politifact.com (St. Petersburg Times)
Sep 26, 2008
Early in the first presidential debate, Sen. John McCain veered into military history during a discussion of the financial crisis.
To make a point about accountability, he relayed an anecdote about Dwight D. Eisenhower. Only McCain got the story wrong in a way that undermined his point.
After moderator Jim Lehrer pressed McCain on whether he would support the financial bailout package Congress is crafting, McCain said, "I hope so, sure."
Then he s
Source: Archaeology Magazine Blog
Sep 26, 2008
Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Iceland chafed mightily against the moratorium levied by the International Whaling Committee on hunting the world’s endangered cetaceans. According to whaling advocates, Iceland possessed a tradition of subsistence whaling stretching back to the 12th century: Icelanders, they claimed, had long depended on supplies of whale meat and had developed a real taste for this fare. Environmentalists, however, suspected darker motives. Icelandic whalers, they charged,
Source: http://www.thesun.co.uk
Sep 26, 2008
THE Sun has confronted Europe’s most wanted Nazi war criminal at his Hungarian bolthole.
Dr Sandor Kepiro, 94, is accused of aiding the massacre of at least 2,000 innocents during the Second World War.
Now living near a SYNAGOGUE in Budapest, he insisted to us: “I sleep well at night.”
Source: Historian Eric Rauchway at the Edge of the American West (blog)
Sep 26, 2008
The failure of Washington Mutual put at risk $1.9bn in assets, or $1,900,000,000.
US GDP today is about $13,800bn, or $13,800,000,000,000.
The assets put at risk represent therefore around .01% of GDP. Which is a big deal, and we’re glad for the FDIC and JP Morgan Chase.
Consider, though, the failure in 1930 of Bank of United States. (Note: the absence of definite articles is critical, this was a private bank, not an official entity.) It’s supposed to have
Source: Chicago Tribune
Sep 26, 2008
Test your knowledge of the candiates. Click here for the McCain quiz. Click here for the Obama quiz.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 26, 2008
Iran's education minister looked on while a group of militant students unveiled a book ridiculing Holocaust victims during an anti-Israeli rally in central Tehran.
The book's cover depicted a Jew with a hooked nose dressed in traditional clothes drawing the outlines of dead bodies on the ground.
Written by student members of the Basij militia, the book comes two years after an Iranian newspaper commissioned a competition of Holocaust-themed cartoons.
Despit
Source: CNN
Sep 26, 2008
The first black heavyweight champion should be granted a presidential pardon for a racially motivated conviction 75 years ago that blemished his reputation and hurt his boxing career, the House recommended Friday.
Jack Johnson became world heavyweight champion in 1908, sparking a search for a white boxer, dubbed "the Great White Hope," who could beat him.
In 1913, Johnson was convicted of violating the Mann Act which outlawed the transportation of women across
Source: LiveScience
Sep 26, 2008
Talk about secrets of the crypt: Two newly discovered species of bacteria have been found on the walls of ancient Roman tombs.
Bacteria often grow on the walls of underground tombs, causing decay and damaging these archaeological sites. Scientists in Italy found the two new microbes while studying decayed surfaces in the Catacombs of Saint Callistus in Rome.
The Catacombs of Saint Callistus are part of a massive underground graveyard that covers 37 acres. The tombs, named after
Source: BBC News
Sep 26, 2008
A plan to give the streets around some of London's most famous museums more of a 'village' feel has taken its first key step forward.
Kensington and Chelsea Council has approved dismantling a one-way system around Exhibition Road.
This is the first step towards having cars and pedestrians "share" the road.
The busy area around west London's South Kensington Tube is home to the Victoria and Albert, Science and Natural History museums.
Source: NYT City Room (blog)
Sep 26, 2008
More testimony released Friday from the spy case against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg suggested further inconsistencies between what a key witness told the grand jury and what he testified to at trial.
The 1950 grand jury testimony of Harry Gold, an admitted courier in the case, was released in response to a suit by the National Security Archive and several historians and journalists.
Lawyers say it is not unusual for witnesses to remember additional details or even diffe
Source: http://www.news.com.au
Sep 26, 2008
SIGNS of strength in the polls for Barack Obama yesterday were tempered by news of sickening racist taunts aimed at the Illinois senator, including a likeness of him found hanging from a tree at a university in Oregon.
Along with the cut-out of Senator Obama, hanging on fishing line at the Quaker-founded George Fox University outside Portland, there was graffiti alluding to "Act 6" - a reference to black recipients of the scholarship programs at the university, The Austral
Source: ANSA
Sep 25, 2008
Archaeologists in Sardinia said Thursday they have found the port of the Phoenician city of Tharros, held by some to be the ancient people's most important colony in the Mediterranean after Carthage.
Researchers from the University of Cagliari and Sassari found the submerged port in the Mistras Lagoon, several kilometres from the city ruins.
Excavations have long been going on at the site of the city itself, on a peninsula overlooking the Bay of Oristano in western Sard
Source: AFP
Sep 25, 2008
Archaeologists are racing against the little time left to salvage a fortune in coins and items from a 500-year-old Portuguese shipwreck found recently off Namibia's rough southern coast.
Despite its importance, the project, in a restricted diamond mining area, is itself costing a fortune in sea-walling that cannot be sustained after October 10.
"The vast amounts of gold coins would possibly make this discovery the largest one in Africa outside Egypt," said Fr
Source: AP
Sep 25, 2008
PLYMOUTH, Massachusetts: It's a handcrafted wooden chest with two rows of side by side drawers, a type found in 17th century New England.
But this beautiful piece of furniture, made from oak and pine, with decorative red and black applied moldings and wooden turned drawer pulls, is not an antique.
It's a brand new reproduction of a chest made in Plymouth colony in Massachusetts between 1660 and 1700. The artisan who made it, Peter Follansbee, works at Plimoth Plantation
Source: AP
Sep 25, 2008
For her birthday, Nina Stanke gets 16 candles - and one vote.
Austria will make history in the European Union on Sunday by becoming the first member of the 27-nation bloc to give 16-year-olds a voice in national elections.
And Stanke, one of up to 200,000 eligible Austrian teenagers, is not about to pass up this opportunity.
"Yes, I'm going to vote," Stanke, who turned 16 this week, said on a recent afternoon as she chatted with friends outside he
Source: International Herald Tribune
Sep 25, 2008
The Chechen boys and the young Chechen men filed into the gym just before 3 p.m. There was no locker room. Beneath a huge picture of Akhmad Kadyrov, the Chechen president slain four years ago, they slipped out of street clothes on the bleachers and then moved to the gym floor.
Soon they were in motion, shuffling in a wide circle, twisting their backs and loosening muscles in their chests, shoulders, quadriceps and arms.
It intensified. First they finished a regimen of n
Source: AP
Sep 25, 2008
CORINTH, Miss.: On a small-town Saturday night, a half-block from the town square where a deteriorating Confederate statue stands guard, state Sen. Eric Powell walks into a restaurant for dinner.
Powell orders fried pickles. Bubba Carpenter, a Republican state representative, ambles over with his 5-year-old son, Noah. The two freshmen legislators make small talk about a Civil War reenactment and plans to attend Friday's scheduled debate between Barack Obama and John McCain at the Un
