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: Los Angeles Times
Sep 24, 2008
WASHINGTON -- Senior Bush administration officials held a series of meetings in the White House in 2002 and 2003 to discuss allowing the CIA to use harsh interrogation methods on Al Qaeda detainees, according to a written statement Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently provided to Senate investigators.
Rice's written response to investigators on the Senate Armed Services Committee marks the first time a high-ranking White House official has formally acknowledged the White Hou
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 24, 2008
A statue of Ramses II, the most powerful of Egypt's ancient pharaohs, has been discovered five feet under the sands of a Nile delta town.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 24, 2008
The city, Itil, was the capital of the Khazars, a powerful nation that adopted Judaism as its official religion more than 1,000 years ago, only to disappear, leaving little trace of its culture.
It was mentioned in medieval travellers' accounts but Soviet dictator Josef Stalin banned any research into the city and the Khazars, fearing it would prove Russia was descended from a Jewish state.
The city made a fortune from trade but its prosperity declined and in the 14th c
Source: FoxNews.com
Sep 24, 2008
As the University of Mississippi prepares to hold the first debate of the presidential campaign on campus this Friday, it is also preparing a message for the millions who will be watching: Ole Miss has changed.
The university's chancellor, Robert Khayat, a former Ole Miss football star, sees the debate as an unprecedented opportunity to supplant the image of the university formed in 1962, when white students and residents rioted, leaving two dead, in protest against the enrollment o
Source: WFSB
Sep 24, 2008
MANCHESTER, Conn. -- Instead of dropping "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" from its reading list, the Manchester school system has decided to hold seminars for teachers on how to deal with issues of race before bringing the book back to classrooms.The goal of the seminars is to put the book into perspective and create a dialogue on race, white privilege, satire and stereotyping, which were also issues when Twain published it in 1885."It does provide a very good platform to talk abo
Source: CNN
Sep 24, 2008
Serbia's war crimes prosecutors formally launched proceedings Wednesday against a World War II veteran accused of participating in mass killings of Jews and Serbs during the Nazi occupation.
Prosecutors said they lodged a request for an investigation against Hungarian citizen Sandor Kepiro with the Belgrade war crimes court. The move is the first step toward an indictment and a trial.
Prosecutors also urged the court to seek Kepiro's extradition to Serbia.
Source: AP
Sep 24, 2008
For the first time, the stories of the arrival of Native Americans and African slaves to U.S. shores will be included in the Ellis Island Immigration Museum.
The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation announced Wednesday that it was creating The Peopling of America Center within the museum to tell the history of those who arrived before and after the peak immigration years between 1892 and 1954.
The story of the migration to America "goes back to the beginning o
Source: BBC News (Click here to watch clips.)
Sep 24, 2008
The televised presidential debates have played a key role in many of the US election campaigns since the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon contest. Here are some of the dramatic moments which changed the course of election history.
Source: AP
Sep 24, 2008
VIZNAR, Spain -- The tranquil, pine-carpeted hills in this patch of southern Spain hold awful secrets. Now, one of them has been thrust into the spotlight of a still painful accounting of atrocities committed in the Spanish Civil War.
The dispute has arisen over whether to open the grave of Federico Garcia Lorca, widely considered Spain's best 20th century poet and playwright.
At the start of the 1936-39 war, Viznar, near the ancient city of Granada, became one of many
Source: CNN
Sep 24, 2008
In a blistering speech before the United Nations General Assembly, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blamed "a few bullying powers" for creating the world's problems and said the "American empire in the world is reaching the end of its road."
And while he insisted Iran's nuclear activities are peaceful, Ahmadinejad blamed the same powers for seeking to hinder it "by exerting political and economic pressures on Iran, and threatening and pressuring" t
Source: WaPo
Sep 24, 2008
A brief survey of current events:
The stock market has gone nuts, and the federal government is treating Wall Street with experimental cures that will cost nearly $1 trillion. An unpopular foreign war, now in its sixth year, has resulted in more than 4,100 American deaths. For the first time in history, the presidential campaign includes an African American candidate for president and a Republican female candidate for vice president.
Taken together, these data points gi
Source: Reuters
Sep 24, 2008
Forensic experts said on Wednesday they had unearthed the remains of 362 Muslim victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre from a mass grave in eastern Bosnia.
It was the 10th mass grave found in the village of Kamenica, in an area labeled "Death Valley," that contained the remains of many of about 8,000 Muslim men and boys killed by Bosnian Serb forces as they fled Srebrenica in July 1995.
Source: BBC News
Sep 24, 2008
A prominent French writer, Pierre Pean, is on trial in Paris accused of inciting racial hatred in a book on the Rwandan genocide.
Mr Pean wrote that the Tutsis had a culture of lies and deceit, and this had somehow spread to the Hutus.
He said it made investigating Rwanda "an almost impossible task". Some 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered in 1994.
A French rights group, SOS Racisme, filed the lawsuit against Mr Pean.
Source: AP
Sep 24, 2008
VERSAILLES, France -- The Petit Trianon was Marie Antoinette's refuge, the mini-chateau where she escaped from queenly protocol and played at living a simpler life. Curators who oversaw its renovation have tried to recreate that intimate atmosphere.
The boxy neoclassical building on the grounds of the immense chateau at Versailles reopened Wednesday after a yearlong, $7.34 million renovation funded by Swiss watchmaker Breguet, which once made a timepiece for the queen...
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 24, 2008
A hotelier who saved three historic country houses from ruin has given them to the National Trust in one of the biggest donations ever made to the charity.
The properties include Middlethorpe Hall near York, a William III country house that served as a nightclub for an inglorious decade before being rescued by businessman Richard Broyd.
Hartwell House, a Jacobean and Georgian property set in 90 acres of grounds near Aylesbury, Bucks, has also been handed to the Trust al
Source: http://www.winchesterstar.com
Sep 24, 2008
When the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Association distributed its new tourist guide “Shenandoah at War” last spring, officials at the organization crossed their fingers for a positive response.
To their surprise, the response was greater than expected, especially after the guide got some exposure in a Richmond Times-Dispatch story.
“We were inundated,” said Elizabeth Stern, the Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation’s associate director for policy and communication
Source: Times (UK)
Sep 24, 2008
The anguish of a First World War soldier who was forced to fight despite being a conscientious objector has come to light after seven letters he wrote home were found in a dusty cupboard.
Donald McNair was a member of the Plymouth Brethren who registered as a conscientious objector when conscription was introduced in 1916. As a member of the Exclusive Brethren, a branch of the Plymouth Brethren, McNair avoided the temptations of society. He never went to the cinema or theatre, neve
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 24, 2008
Three academics and a computer assistant have died after working in the same building.
The one-time laboratory at Manchester University was used by Ernest Rutherford at the turn of the last century.
He is known to have begun a series of experiments using radioactive material in 1906.
Officials from the Health and Safety Executive have now ordered a review to determine whether former lecturers, students and ancillary staff were contaminated by traces of rado
Source: Tehran Times
Sep 24, 2008
Iran’s Cultural Heritage, Tourism and Handicrafts Organization (CHTHO) is searching for more documents to enable the country to win the court case against the University of Chicago on the matter of the Achaemenid tablets.
CHTHO’s Judicial Office has set up a team of experts to look for the documents at the archives of Iran’s Customs Office, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and former prime ministerial office -- present Presidential Office, the office director Omid Ghanami told CHN on M
Source: AP
Sep 23, 2008
Albert Einstein's long-lost telescope, forgotten for decades in a Jerusalem storage shed, goes on display this week after three years and $10,000 spent restoring the relic.
The old reflecting telescope is cumbersome by modern standards, but a demonstration for The Associated Press showed it still works well enough to see five of Jupiter's moons and stripes on the surface of the huge planet.
The legendary physicist who famously theorized relations among energy, speed and
