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: WaPo
Sep 13, 2008
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin seemed puzzled Thursday when ABC News anchor Charles Gibson asked her whether she agrees with the "Bush doctrine."
"In what respect, Charlie?" she replied.
Intentionally or not, the Republican vice presidential nominee was on to something. After a brief exchange, Gibson explained that he was referring to the idea -- enshrined in a September 2002 White House strategy document -- that the United States may act militarily to coun
Source: NYT
Sep 13, 2008
WASHINGTON — Countless federal records are being lost to posterity because federal employees, grappling with a staggering growth in electronic records, do not regularly preserve the documents they create on government computers, send by e-mail and post on the Web.
Federal agencies have rushed to embrace the Internet and new information technology, but their record-keeping efforts lag far behind. Moreover, federal investigators have found widespread violations of federal record-keepi
Source: http://www.thesun.co.uk
Sep 12, 2008
BULLDOG Sir Winston Churchill was secretly a big SOFTIE, love letters from his wife revealed yesterday.
Soppy notes from his beloved Clementine — which emerged for the first time — show the wartime leader who saved us from Hitler was a sucker for romantic drawings of HEARTS.
Source: AP
Sep 12, 2008
The storm came without a name — without warning — and it shaped
the future of weather forecasting.
It's known simply as The Great Storm of 1900, and it was the worst natural
disaster ever to hit the United States.
At least 6,000 people on the 30-mile-long by 3-mile wide strip of sand
along the southeast Texas coastline were killed — one-sixth of the city's
population. Another 10,000 were left homeless. More than 3,600 buildings
were destroyed by a 16-foot storm surge fueled b
Source: USA Today
Sep 12, 2008
Restorers have lopped off two wings, obliterated 14 bathrooms, re-created two staircases and, overall, reduced by more than half the size of Montpelier, President James Madison's lifelong home here in the lush foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
On Wednesday, the scaled-down Georgian mansion two hours southwest of Washington will be ready for its close-up.
The five-year, $24 million restoration has returned the stately home to the way it appeared during the fourth U.
Source: Telegraph
Sep 12, 2008
An airworthy Spitfire is expected to sell for £1 million when it is auctioned this weekend by Bonhams in New Zealand.
The original Spitfire MK XVI was completed in late April 1945, just days before the Germans surrendered...
Later it was flown in the 1957 Battle of Britain Memorial flight before being donated to the United States Air Force (USAF) in 1959, where it was displayed for the next 38 years.
Source: NYT
Sep 12, 2008
The New York football teams, the Giants and the Jets, said Friday that they had ended talks with Allianz, a German-based insurance company with connections to the Third Reich, about selling the naming rights to the $1.6 billion stadium they are building in the Meadowlands.
The decision came after two days of largely negative reaction to the possibility of a deal with Allianz, which insured facilities at Auschwitz and other concentration camps, and which deprived many Jewish customer
Source: CNN
Sep 12, 2008
Clashes that lasted through the night on the 35th anniversary of the 1973 military coup have left 31 people injured and 234 arrested nationwide.
The government said 22 police and nine civilians were injured. An 18-year-old man is in serious condition.
Source: AP
Sep 12, 2008
JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia: On a sweltering August morning, a small group of
Iranians crowded outside the green metal door of a cemetery. They wanted
to go in to look at the remains of one particular tomb: the tomb of
biblical Eve.
Like hundreds of Muslims who visit Saudi Arabia for pilgrimage in nearby
Mecca, the Iranians had heard the legend that Eve was buried in that spot.
The two blue signs inscribed with"The Graveyard of our mother Eve"
flanking the cemetery entrance appeared to add
Source: Reuters
Sep 12, 2008
Poland's last communist leader, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, and seven other Soviet-era officials went on trial on Friday over the declaration of martial law more than a quarter of a century ago.Poland's National Remembrance Institute accuses the defendants, now grey-haired elderly men, of violating the law and flouting human rights with the 1981 decision, which led to the deaths of dozens of people and the jailing of hundreds more.
The defendants deny the accus
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 12, 2008
The MoD said the 18th century warship could be too expensive to maintain and that her funding was currently under review.
This could see her looked after and run by a private firm or a charity to save cash, options which critics said would be a "tragedy".
The MoD said that increasing budgetary pressures meant it must review Victory's future like any other ship but insisted it would remain part of the Royal Navy.
But a former Commanding Officer
Source: Politifact.com (St. Petersburg Times)
Sep 11, 2008
In her first major news interview since being named the vice presidential nominee of the Republican Party, Sarah Palin answered questions about comments she had made about "God's plan" and Iraq.
The questioner was ABC News' Charles Gibson. Gibson asked her, "You said recently in your old church, 'Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God.' Are we fighting a Holy War?"
Palin: "That's a repeat of Abraham Lincoln's w
Source: http://blogs.abcnews.com
Sep 11, 2008
ABC News' Lisa Chinn reports: During her interview with ABC News' Charlie Gibson Thursday Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin attempted to deflect a question about the fact she has never met a foreign head of state by saying that "many" other vice presidential nominees in history hadn't met a head of state either.
However Palin was mistaken, at least where recent history is concerned.
Every vice president over the last 30 years had met a foreign h
Source: International Herald Tribune
Sep 11, 2008
PALOMARES, Spain: The rest of the world has mostly forgotten, but the brush with nuclear Armageddon is seared on the minds of locals here and still niggles, 42 years later.
On the morning of Jan. 17, 1966, a U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber returning from a routine Cold War alert mission exploded during airborne refueling, sending its cargo of B28 hydrogen bombs plummeting toward earth. One went into the azure waters of the Mediterranean and three others fell around this poor farming vill
Source: AP
Sep 11, 2008
Archaeologists in Greece have unearthed more than 1,400
ancient graves and tombs during excavation work for a new metro in the
northern city of Salonika, the culture ministry said on Thursday.
The graves and tombs spanned an 800-year period from the fourth century BC
to Roman times in the fourth century AD.
The finds range from humble pits and altar tombs of stone to marble
sarcophagi, the ministry said.
Source: AP
Sep 11, 2008
When John McCain decided to cast Barack Obama as feckless upstart, an empty suit, he reached for the dirtiest word he could use: "celebrity."
"He's the biggest celebrity in the world," a female narrator warns in breathless tones for a McCain ad, "but is he ready to lead?" Chants of "O-bama! O-bama!" form a mischievous backtrack to fleeting images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton — one a troubled singer and the other a socialite who is famous
Source: State Journal
Sep 11, 2008
Some of West Virginia's Civil War battlefields are scenes of new fighting.
For the past four years, a group of Jefferson County residents has been fighting to save an historic battlefield there, said Edward Dunleavy, president of the Shepherdstown Battlefield Preservation Association Inc.
"It's been difficult for the past four years," he said. "(A developer) bought a 122-acre farm and proposed building 152 houses on it."
The problem as a
Source: AP
Sep 11, 2008
The Museum of the Confederacy has taken one step forward in its plan to divide its collection among four sites in Virginia.
The Richmond museum and the town of Appomattox are eying a 4-acre site near the intersection of Route 24 and U.S. Route 460. The town has secured the right to purchase and finance the future site, which then would be leased to the museum.
Source: WSJ
Sep 11, 2008
Since his election three years ago, Pope Benedict XVI has devoted considerable time and intellectual effort arguing that religious faith and reason can coexist in modern society.
This week he will take that argument to France, one of Europe's most deeply secular states, which long ago segregated religion from public life.
The strict division between church and state in France began in the French Revolution with a bloody purge of Roman Catholic clergy from the pol
Source: National Security Archive
Sep 11, 2008
The Julius and Ethel Rosenberg grand jury transcripts released today as the result of legal action by the National Security Archive and a coalition of historians directly contradict the central charge against Ethel Rosenberg in the atomic espionage prosecution that J. Edgar Hoover called “the case of the century,” according to experts who analyzed the documents today.
The documents include the grand jury testimony of Ethel Rosenberg’s sister-in-law, Ruth Greenglass, in which she des
