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: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 20, 2008
Known as the Steel Magnolia in her youth, Miss Rice has guided the US through the war on terror, looked tyrants in the eye and faced down terrorist threats during her nation's darkest hours.
But a new book reveals that she was not so steadfast in facing down her own more personal enemies within the Bush administration.
Instead, Miss Rice was so fazed by former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that she burst into tears at a meeting in the White House situation room.
Source: AP
Sep 20, 2008
The history of the Mosaic Templars was believed to have drawn to a close in the 1930s, when the Great Depression swallowed one of the largest benevolent societies for blacks in the nation and likely the world.
Its finances ruined, the organization created by two freed slaves in the wake of the Civil War left little behind other than its iconic brick building in Little Rock's black business district. But even that relic is now gone, left in disrepair until transients trying to stay w
Source: AP
Sep 20, 2008
Deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Barack Obama the White House if the election is close, according to an AP-Yahoo News poll that found one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks — many calling them "lazy," "violent," responsible for their own troubles.
The poll, conducted with Stanford University, suggests that the percentage of voters who may turn away from Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the final difference be
Source: AP
Sep 20, 2008
Weary and recovering from illness, Richard Nixon looked so bad in his TV debate with John Kennedy that his mom called afterward to see if he was all right. Forty years later, Al Gore loudly sighed, shrugged in exasperation and got in George W. Bush's face in a display of pique and impatience.
In presidential campaign debates, a slip of the tongue, an awkward gesture, style points and the seemingly spontaneous one-liner have provided the telling moments that shape elections and live
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Sep 20, 2008
Artists and scientists have created the first model of a Neanderthal based in part on ancient DNA evidence.
She has been put together using analysis of DNA from 43,000-year-old bones that had be
Source: NYT
Sep 20, 2008
A federal judge on Saturday ordered Dick Cheney to preserve a wide range of the records from his time as vice president.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly is a setback for the Bush administration in its effort to promote a narrow definition of materials that must be safeguarded under by the Presidential Records Act.
The Bush administration's legal position ''heightens the court's concern'' that some records may not be preserved, said the judge.
Source: FoxNews.com
Sep 20, 2008
MOSCOW — A Russian archaeologist says he has found the lost 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.
Dmitry Vasilyev, a professor at Astrakhan State University, said his nine-year excavation near the Caspian Sea has finally unearthed the foundations of a triangular fortress of flamed brick, along with modest yurt-shaped dwellings, and he bel
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Sep 20, 2008
An entire wing of the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum that was built to hold a peerless collection of art from Papua New Guinea could be emptied by an inheritance battle between heirs of the Annenberg publishing fortune.
That threat in the coast-to-coast dispute prompted San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera to obtain an emergency court order Friday to prevent the art from being seized and sold.
"We're going to do everything possible to make sure the collection
Source: Tehran Times
Sep 20, 2008
Palestinians are paying the price of the West's guilt over the Holocaust through its failure to pressure Israel to reach a just and lasting peace, Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu said Thursday.
""I think the West, quite rightly, is feeling contrite, penitent for its awful connivance with the Holocaust,"" the massacre of Europe's Jews by German Nazis in World War II, Tutu told journalists.
""Now when you are contrite, when you are penitent, you
Source: Telegraph
Sep 20, 2008
One of the earliest number plates ever issued fetched a world record price of £397,500 after going under the hammer at auction last night...
The historic plate was the first registration number to be issued in Edinburgh and it belonged to a leading pioneer of motoring.
Tonight's sale marked the first time the registration number had come on the market since it was created in 1903...
The mystery bidder...said of the sale: "The registration number will r
Source: BBC News
Sep 20, 2008
A Berlin auction house says it has sold one of the few remaining sections of the Berlin Wall for more than 7,800 euros (£6,150 or $11,300).
The large graffiti-covered stretch of the wall, which once divided capitalist West Berlin from the communist East, was bought for display in an office.
Many fake pieces of the Berlin Wall have been sold in the past, but the auctioneers said this item was genuine...
Much of the demolished wall was used for constructing r
Source: Washington Post
Sep 20, 2008
GETTYSBURG, Pa. -- For generations, kids have begged to see it, and for generations they have walked away wondering, is that all?
The Gettysburg Cyclorama, a huge dinosaur of a painting left over from the heyday of circuses, magic shows and brass bands playing on the town square, has never been a great painting. Its cartoonish soldiers and clutter of horses never really delivered on the promise of an illusion so real you'd swear you were in the middle of the great Civil War battle.
Source: NYT
Sep 20, 2008
HANOI, Vietnam — Senator John McCain’s wartime jailer thrust two fingers into the air as if he were on a campaign trail and shouted: “John McCain! My friend! Victory!”
It is a fiction he seems to revel in — the jailer who was actually the prisoner’s friend, who has watched his political career with paternal pride, and who is now hurt and offended when Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, says he was tortured by his captors.
Tran Trong Duyet, 75, was head of
Source: Guardian (UK)
Sep 19, 2008
Taro Aso, who is likely to be installed as Japan's new prime minister next week, today refused to acknowledge the use of hundreds of allied prisoners of war by his family's coal mining business during the second world war.
Aso, a former foreign minister who is widely expected to be elected leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic party [LDP] on Monday, would not comment directly on Aso Mining's use of an estimated 10,000 Korean forced labourers and 300 allied POWs at its Yoshikuma pi
Source: LAT
Sep 19, 2008
Suddenly it seem everyone is weighing in on whether George W. Bush will be remembered kindly or poorly by history.Conservative columnist George Will issued a blistering attack on the White House Thursday night for bailing out mismanaged Wall Street giants, saying Bush's intervention makes
Source: NYT
Sep 19, 2008
Does the Resolution Trust Corporation — the government entity formed in 1989 to dispose of hundreds of failed savings banks and hundreds of billions of dollars in their bad loans and other assets — offer a model for dealing with today’s financial crisis?
Although some lawmakers and former officials are tempted by the idea, other experts say the analogy is faulty and the current situation is vastly larger and more complex than the comparatively contained savings and loan mess of two
Source: Yahoo
Sep 19, 2008
Archaeologists have found two groups of complete
Neolithic human remains in peninsular Malaysia and on Borneo island that
may better explain prehistoric human life, reports said Friday.
Archaeologists say the remains are more than 3,000 years old and were
found within two months of each other, in prehistoric burial grounds
surrounded by ceremonial beads, pottery, shells and animal bones, the Sun
daily reported."These remains are very important as the skeletons are almost fully
co
Source: NYT
Sep 19, 2008
TWO by two, the dozen or so people in my tour group took turns lying on
our backs, hands at our sides, and slowly sliding ourselves into a narrow
crevice under a rocky overhang, like mechanics sliding under a car. “Don’t
touch the ceiling!” our guide implored.
“It’s better if you just wriggle and scooch yourself in,” someone said
helpfully as one pair tried the maneuver.
A moment later a voice from inside called out, “Oh my God, amazing!” and
another yelled, “Woooowww! Incredi
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 19, 2008
Police said the bomb went off when an excavator driving a digger drove over it. He injured his hand while the other victims were treated for light injuries and shock.
Safety officials said the victims were lucky the damage had not been much worse, however the bomb did damage several buildings in the area.
Armin Gebhard, head of the Arnsberg department for military ordnance removal, told local media: "The hole was astoundingly small for such a large bomb full of so
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Sep 19, 2008
Archaeologists are using cutting-edge technology -- including ground radar and laser scanning -- to uncover vanished walls and dwellings of the original Spanish Presidio of San Francisco...
There are written accounts, pictures and drawings of the fort dating from the late 18th century, but the real El Presidio of Spanish times lies under a couple of streets, a parking lot and lawn that rings Pershing Square, where the main flagpole marks the center of the Presidio as it was in U.S.
