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: USA Today
Sep 10, 2008
Despite a national discussion about whether Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin sought to ban books as mayor more than a decade ago, the city says there is no record of any books being yanked from the shelves.
Since being selected as John McCain's running mate, Palin has faced questions over discussions she had with Wasilla's librarian in 1996. In recent days, a bogus list of"banned books" has been widely circulated on the Internet.
But on its website, the city of Wasi
Source: BBC
Sep 10, 2008
Politics, religion and marching can be a dangerous combination but on this occasion - a special service to remember the soldiers who died in the Troubles in Northern Ireland - they came together with great dignity.
At a time when critics say the Army no longer receives the recognition it deserves, people from all parts of the UK came together at St Paul's Cathedral to pay their respects.
In particular, they honoured the 763 servicemen and women killed as a direct resu
Source: Tehran Times
Sep 10, 2008
Once again, the Tehran City Council may abandon the plan to name a Tehran street after Mohammad Mosaddeq, the former prime minister who is viewed as an icon by many Iranians for his decision to nationalize the oil industry.
“The investigations carried out by the council show that Dr. Mosaddeq does not have the qualifications for being discussed in the council’s Naming Committee because his views and thoughts are not acceptable to Iranian officials,” committee director Masumeh
Source: Tehran Times
Sep 10, 2008
The nails found around ancient skeletons at a newly discovered cemetery of Tahluj have puzzled the team of archaeologists working at the 3000-year-old site.
The cemetery dating back early Islamic era was discovered during the rescue excavation, which has begun at the site near the village of Mirar-Kola in northern Iran in late August.
The Tahluj site, home to several sites dating back from Iron Age to early Islamic era, will be completely submerged under water a
Source: BBC
Sep 10, 2008
A US appeals court has overturned the conviction of a former Ku Klux Klansman jailed last year over the deaths of two black teenagers in Mississippi in 1964.
James Ford Seale, 72, was serving three life terms on charges of kidnapping and conspiracy over the deaths.
The court agreed with arguments by Mr Seale's lawyer that a legal time limit for prosecuting the case had lapsed.
Dozens of black people were killed in the 1950s and 1960s by white people want
Source: Times
Sep 10, 2008
A 215-year-old Jewish manuscript stolen in Israel a decade ago will be returned by the German library where it resurfaced. The Book of the Levite’s Worship, left, a 1793 treatise by a Berlin rabbi, was found to be missing from the Rambam Library in Tel Aviv in 1998. One year later it appeared at auction in New York at Sotheby’s but went unsold. It was bought later by an unidentified dealer and lost again. In 2005 it was found in the German National Library in Berlin, which has agreed to return i
Source: Telegraph
Sep 10, 2008
The line is to be cut up and sold in pieces in an internet auction that is expected to attract millions of bids.
The hallowed strip from the old Wembley Stadium has been the subject of decades of debate thanks to Geoff Hurst's controversial goal.
His shot famously crashed into the underside of the crossbar and cannoned straight back down - prompting protests from Germany's players.
They insisted the ball didn't actually cross the line - but Swiss referee
Source: http://www.dailymail.com
Sep 9, 2008
ST. ALBANS, W.Va. -- Many 11-year-olds breathe and live video games. Zane Samples chooses to spend his time wearing Confederate gray and living history.
"They hated the blue devils (Union troops), and they had nice hearts," he said of Confederate soldiers. "The rebels stood strong. They didn't have anything, but they still held together."
A fifth-grader at St. Francis Assisi School in St. Albans, Zane shared his love for Civil War history last weeken
Source: http://www.whsv.com
Sep 9, 2008
Construction workers have made an unusual find inside the wall of a Charles Town home: a live ten-pound Confederate artillery round.
American Public University System, which operates an online college primarily for the military, recently bought the home and construction crews found the ordnance while replacing siding and insulation. American Public facilities director Joseph Sladki says it was sitting on a sill plate.
Sladki says the round was given to the Jefferson Cou
Source: Spiegel Online
Sep 9, 2008
Experts with the United States military expend enormous resources to
search for the bodies of missing soldiers. A team is currently at work in
the northern Eifel Mountains region of western Germany, where tens of
thousands of Americans died during World War II.
"We can make French fries for lunch out of those," jokes archeologist
Denise To, pointing to three rows of potato plants on the edge of a field.
The leaves have shriveled and turned brown, and a few potatoes sticking
out of the
Source: Guardian
Sep 9, 2008
Archaeologists are creating a permanent digital record of shipwrecks
around European coasts. By recording the precise 3D arrangement of timbers
and cargo from the wrecks the researchers aim to preserve the information
they contain about past civilisations even if the wrecks are damaged or
destroyed.
Scientists and members of the general public would in future be able to
float over the wrecks in a virtual submarine from the comfort of their own
desks. For researchers, this would allo
Source: Politico.com
Sep 9, 2008
The candidate is new, a different face on the national scene, with roots outside the continental United States and sudden, massive popularity.
With good reason, Sarah Palin has been touted as the right’s answer to Barack Obama. And in one especially important way, her abrupt rise from obscurity has given her something else in common with the Democratic nominee: she has catalyzed a fevered subculture of forwarded e-mails and viral conspiracy theories.
Now the race is o
Source: http://www.wapt.com
Sep 9, 2008
JACKSON, Miss. -- Attorneys for reputed Ku Klux Klansman James Ford Seale said on Wednesday that they are filing a motion to have him released from federal prison. On Tuesday, a federal appeals court overturned the 73-year-old's June 2007 conviction for his role in the kidnapping and deaths of two black teenagers in 1964. He was given three life sentences.A three judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeal ruled, in short, that the statute of limitations had run out on that kidnapping case th
Source: AP
Sep 9, 2008
The latest design for the Sept. 11 memorial entrance pavilion has a facade that evokes the World Trade Center's twin towers, and builders still hope the memorial will open by the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks.
The three-story, asymmetrical glass and steel building is the last piece of the 8-acre memorial plaza at ground zero, a redesign of a building first introduced as a much larger museum space three years ago.
Craig Dykers, architect for the Norwegian arc
Source: Telegraph
Sep 9, 2008
Ryszard Siwiec's name may mean little to many Poles since any coverage of his dramatic act was suppressed by the communist authorities.
The Polish accountant and teacher wrote a series of letters and tape recordings expressing his disgust over the crushing of the Prague Spring and the subsequent Warsaw Pact in which Poland was complicit.
Then, on September 12, 1968, he set himself alight in front of 100,000 spectators, political dignitaries and foreign ambassadors dur
Source: CNN
Sep 9, 2008
At 107, Frank Buckles must know that there is not much time for him to honor the memory of his comrades who served the United States during the first World War. He's the last surviving U.S. veteran of what then was called the Great War.
The old soldier comes to Washington on Tuesday hoping to turn a run-down local memorial on the National Mall into something in keeping with other, permanent monuments to Americans who've sacrificed in other wars.
Buckles, who left the Ar
Source: CNN
Sep 9, 2008
Flanked by officials from the NAACP and the Southern Poverty Law Center, FBI Director Robert Mueller last year announced with considerable fanfare a new partnership between his agency and civil rights organizations.
The goal: To bring justice in long-ignored murders from the civil rights era.
The outcome: Not one case has been prosecuted under the FBI's Cold Case Initiative, which actually began two years ago with no fanfare at all.
Source: Fox News
Sep 9, 2008
A 215-year-old Jewish manuscript discovered missing a decade ago will be returned by the German library where it surfaced, an Israeli official said Tuesday.
Israeli Embassy officials are currently arranging the manuscript's transfer from the German National Library in Berlin back to Israel, said Avigdor Levin, the top cultural official at the Tel Aviv municipality.
A 1998 inventory check at the city's Rambam Library revealed that the one-of-a-kind manuscript was missin
Source: WSJ
Sep 9, 2008
WASILLA, Alaska -- Sarah Palin and John Bitney go way back. They were in the same junior-high band class. Mr. Bitney was a key aide in Gov. Palin's 2006 gubernatorial campaign. When she took office, she gave Mr. Bitney a job as her legislative director, and a few months later stood beside him at a news conference and praised his work.
"Whatever you did, you did it right," she told Mr. Bitney and his team.
Seven weeks later she fired Mr. Bitney for what her spo
Source: Telegraph
Sep 9, 2008
Archaeologists have unearthed the mysterious remains of what first appears to be a couple buried together arm in arm more than 1,000 years ago.
The amazing discovery shows the "couple" lying side by side in the grave with one's arm across the other.
But the discovery has left experts with a 1,00
