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: National Parks Traveler Online
Sep 6, 2008
In the classic movie History of the World Part II, actor/writer/producer
Mel Brooks, playing French “Sun King” Louis XIV, looks toward the audience
and remarks: “It’s Good to be the King.” Well, at least where visiting
national parks is concerned, “It’s Good to be the President.”
Consider the special treatment that President George W. Bush received
during his Friday, September 5, afternoon tour of Gettysburg National
Military Park.
You and I will have to wait until the grand
Source: NYT
Sep 6, 2008
The disappearance of Iowa’s iconic barn, a building whose purpose shifted, then faded away, tells the story of how farming itself has changed markedly in the state.
Source: NYT
Sep 6, 2008
Robert Giroux, an editor and publisher who introduced and nurtured some of the major authors of the 20th century and ultimately added his name to one of the nation’s most distinguished publishing houses, died on Friday in Tinton Falls, N.J. He was 94.
He died in his sleep at Seabrook Village, an independent-living center, a niece, Kathleen Mulvehill, said.
If the flamboyant Roger Straus presented the public face of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, presiding over the busines
Source: NYT
Sep 6, 2008
In Britain, judges are wedded to a tradition of elegant attire: scarlet and ermine robes, tippets over the shoulders, black girdles and, of course, the crimped, gray horsehair wig.
In the United States, judges have been less attached to such grand garb. Robes were not even a necessary part of their attire in the decades after the Revolutionary War, though it eventually became the accepted fashion. But even today, New York does not require judges to wear robes, and various judges spu
Source: Deutsche Welle
Sep 6, 2008
An 87-year-old Ukrainian immigrant lost his appeal to keep his US citizenship after a US federal court ruled he had collaborated with Nazis and helped liquidate a Jewish ghetto in Poland.
Ruling in the four-year-old case, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals said that John Ivan Kalymon had lied about his involvement with the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police (UAP) when he emigrated to the US from Germany in 1949, US justice officials said Friday, Sept. 5.
The Troy, Michigan, r
Source: Australian
Sep 5, 2008
THE suspected remains of a World War II airman found dangling in trees in the jungle of Papua New Guinea have turned out to be just a moss-covered branch, the Australian military revealed today.
Hikers on the famed Kokoda Track, site of a brutal 1942 battle between Japanese and Australian troops, reported they had discovered what appeared to be the suspended skeleton of a flyer tangled in parachute cords two weeks ago.
But the Australian Defence Force said it had sent
Source: http://www.mdcoastdispatch.com
Sep 5, 2008
OCEAN CITY – A large section of what is likely a fairly ancient wooden
vessel was discovered in the surf at 43rd Street this week and now awaits
its fate in a town-owned storage facility in West Ocean City as state
historians and maritime archaeologists attempt to date it and perhaps
discover from whence it came.
The roughly 25-foot long, L-shaped artifact was first discovered in the
surf by swimmers in the 43rd Street area on Monday. Ocean City Beach
Patrol staffers tried to remove
Source: BBC
Sep 5, 2008
Jack the Ripper may have killed his first victim 25 years earlier than previously thought, a retired murder detective has claimed in a new book.
It is thought that Jack the Ripper killed and mutilated at least five prostitutes in the East End between August and November 1888.
But Trevor Marriott says he may have struck in 1863 and 1872.
Mr Marriott will be presenting his findings at the Docklands Museum which is hosting an exhibition on the killer.
Source: Politico.com
Sep 5, 2008
The White House released an unusual 700-word statement Friday evening that charges author Bob Woodward with distorting the effectiveness of the Iraq “surge” policy in his new book, “The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008,” set for publication Monday.
The statement is extremely surprising because it was issued by National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley, who shepherded Woodward’s interaction with the West Wing and encouraged top administration officials to grant i
Source: Time
Sep 5, 2008
The Republican Georgia Rep. doesn’t back down from his Thursday quote labeling the Obamas “uppity.”
Says in a statement: “I’ve never heard that term used in a racially derogatory sense. It is important to note that the dictionary definition of ‘uppity’ is ‘affecting an air of inflated self-esteem — snobbish.’”
Source: History Today
Sep 5, 2008
An ancient monument taken by Mussolini’s Italy in the 1930s has been restored in Ethiopia. The c.4th-century Axum obelisk was returned to Ethiopia in 2005 in three blocks. Weighing over 150 tonnes, it has been reassembled in the northern town, once the centre of a prosperous kingdom. The president and prime minister took part in the ceremony to unveil the restored monument in what is Ethiopia's millennium year in the Coptic tradition. The obelisk was taken in 1937 by the Italian army during thei
Source: BBC
Sep 5, 2008
The United Nations has launched an initiative to have the marshlands of southern Iraq listed as a world heritage site.
The ancient wetlands, believed by some to be the site of the Garden of Eden, were drained and virtually destroyed by Saddam Hussein's government.
But more than half of the area has been restored in a UN project over the past four years.
The Iraqi Environment Minister Narmin Othman welcomed the plans.
She said the marshlands
Source: Times
Sep 5, 2008
An Oscar awarded for the 1942 military documentary Prelude to War, which President Roosevelt described as a film that “every man, woman and child in the world should see”, has been returned to the US Army. The documentary was made by Frank Capra a few weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The film won an Oscar for Best Documentary by the US Army Special Services but the statue, left, disappeared in 1970. It was found after being offered for a Christie’s sale and was returned
Source: Telegraph
Sep 5, 2008
Five men demanded £4.25 million for the safe return of a Leonardo da Vinci painting, a court has heard.
The Madonna With The Yarnwinder was taken from Drumlanrig Castle, near Thornhill, Dumfries and Galloway, in August 2003.
Robert Graham, 56, John Doyle, 59, and Marshall Ronald, 52, all from Lancashire, appeared at the High Court in Glasgow along with Calum Jones, 43, from Kilmacolm, Renfrewshire, and David Boyce, 61, from Airdrie in Lanarkshire.
The me
Source: Telegraph
Sep 5, 2008
A giant tribute to the former Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin made from thousands of trees has been spotted on Google Earth.
The message, which translates as "Lenin is 100", was cut into a forest in a remote region of Siberia. Each letter is around 80 metres high, and the entire message stretches for 600 metres.
It was created by Russian woodcutters in 1970 to mark the centenary of the Communist leader's birth, according to EnglishRussia, the blog which spotted
Source: WaPo
Sep 5, 2008
The book ... says that the U.S. troop "surge" of 2007, in which President Bush sent nearly 30,000 additional U.S. combat forces and support troops to Iraq, was not the primary factor behind the steep drop in violence there during the past 16 months.
Rather, Woodward reports, "groundbreaking" new covert techniques, beginning in 2007, enabled U.S. military and intelligence officials to locate, target and kill insurgent leaders and key individuals in extremist grou
Source: The Forward
Sep 4, 2008
While Barack Obama has struggled to capture Jewish votes, it turns out that one of his wife’s cousins is the country’s most prominent black rabbi.
Michelle Obama, wife of the Democratic presidential nominee, is a first cousin once removed of Rabbi Capers Funnye, spiritual leader of a mostly black synagogue on Chicago’s South Side. Funnye’s mother, Verdelle Robinson Funnye, and Michelle Obama’s paternal grandfather, Frasier Robinson Jr., were brother and sister.
Funnye (
Source: National Parks Traveler Online
Sep 4, 2008
In 1970, Indians led by United Native Americans (UNA) organizers occupied
South Dakota’s Mount Rushmore National Memorial for more than a week and
asserted the right of the Lakota (a Sioux tribe) to reclaim the Black
Hills. On August 29, the 38th anniversary of the occupation’s onset, a
small group of Lakota peacefully gathered at the memorial’s amphitheater
to share cultural experiences and commemorate the historic event.
The historical roots of Native American displeasure with Blac
Source: NYT
Sep 4, 2008
OMORI, Japan — Home to a silver mine whose production peaked nearly four centuries ago and finally closed in 1923, this tiny rural town in western Japan once seemed doomed to suffer the fate of so many former boomtowns. Perhaps one day, after the last of the die-hards had moved away and the town’s abandoned wooden houses had been ground to dust, the surrounding thick forests would have simply swallowed up Omori.
But after intense lobbying by Japan, the Iwami Silver Mine here, which
Source: Telegraph
Sep 4, 2008
Elvis Presley fans have been given the rare opportunity to buy the only authenticated set of his fingerprints in existence, as long as they have £75,000 to spare.
The black ink prints are on a gun permit application for the state of California, completed by the singer in 1970.
The form, signed Elvis A Presley, requests permission to carry a Colt 38 revolver and a Beretta 7.6 automatic.
It contains confirmation of his sex, hair and eye colour, height, weigh
