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: AP
Jul 25, 2008
Thomas Nast's political caricatures in the early 1870s so bedeviled New York City's corrupt Boss Tweed that he once bellowed: "Stop them damn pictures! I don't care what the papers write about me. My constituents can't read. But, damn it, they can see pictures."
Not only can most of us read these days, almost everyone has a TV set. And our late-night comedians provide the exaggerated portraits — fair or not — of our political leaders.
Jimmy Carter? Inept bean
Source: New Yorker
Jul 25, 2008
On the morning of April 15th, a short video entitled “2008 China Stand Up!”
appeared on Sina, a Chinese Web site. The video’s origin was a mystery:
unlike the usual YouTube-style clips, it had no host, no narrator, and no
signature except the initials “CTGZ.”
It was a homespun documentary, and it opened with a Technicolor portrait
of Chairman Mao, sunbeams radiating from his head. Out of silence came an
orchestral piece, thundering with drums, as a black screen flashed, in
both Chines
Source: Canada.com
Jul 24, 2008
Indulgences, which give Catholics time off Purgatory for good behaviour, are making a comeback under Pope Benedict XVI.
In the past year, the Vatican has granted them for World Youth Day, the 150th anniversary of the Virgin Mary's apparition at Lourdes and, most recently, the 2,000th anniversary of St. Paul's birth.
The renewed enthusiasm for the controversial practice is being felt here. Ottawa's archbishop, Terrence Prendergast, is encouraging area Catholics to celebr
Source: US News & World Report
Jul 24, 2008
After years of spirited debate over how and when people first reached the
Americas, scientists finally seem poised to reach agreement. The emerging
consensus: In contrast to what was long held as conventional wisdom, it
now seems likely that the first Americans did not wait for ice sheets
covering Canada to melt some 13,000 years ago, which would have allowed
them to traipse south over solid ground. Instead, early nomads might well
have traveled by boat or at least along the coast from Sib
Source: The Times (UK)
Jul 24, 2008
Bletchley Park, the codebreaking centre that helped to win the Second World War and launch the modern computer, is in danger of irreparable decay unless the Government steps in to save it, some of the country’s leading computer scientists caution today.
In a letter to The Times, 97 senior experts, mostly professors and heads of department, say that “the ravages of age and a lack of investment” have left the historic site under threat.
One of the unheated wooden huts w
Source: International Herald Tribune
Jul 24, 2008
It may sound like the escapist indulgence of a well-fed man fleeing
the misery around him. But when Jawdat Khoudary opens the first ever
museum of archaeology in Gaza this month, it will be an act of Palestinian
patriotism, showing how this increasingly poor and isolated coastal strip
ruled by the Islamists of Hamas was once a thriving multicultural
crossroad.
The exhibit is housed in a stunning hall made up partly of the saved
stones of old houses, discarded wood ties of a former r
Source: Yahoo
Jul 24, 2008
Australia's greatest ancient
Aboriginal rock art is at risk of being damaged or destroyed because it
sits at the epicentre of the country's resources boom, experts say.
The etchings of men and animals on the rocks of the Burrup Peninsula, some
of which are believed to be up to 30,000 years old, lie in Western
Australia's remote and mineral-laden Pilbara region.
Images carved onto the red rocks scattering the landscape include
kangaroos, lizards and emu tracks as well as the ex
Source: AP
Jul 24, 2008
President Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine said Thursday that he believed that a former friend had been involved in his near-fatal poisoning four years ago.
At a news conference, Yushchenko openly placed his suspicions on the former friend, David Zhvania, a member of a pro-presidential parliamentary faction who is the godfather of one of Yushchenko's children. It was a sharp departure from the past, when he refused to identify who he thought was responsible for the poisoning.
Source: WaPo
Jul 24, 2008
Juanita Patience Moss was shocked to learn that her great-grandfather would not be included among the 200,000 black soldiers honored at the African American Civil War Memorial.
The memorial, at 10th and U streets NW, would name only the soldiers and seamen who served with the U. S. Colored Troops.
So, 10 years ago, when Moss attended a discussion hosted by the African American Civil War Memorial Freedom Foundation, she asked several historians whether any records of bla
Source: Reuters
Jul 24, 2008
Almost 100 top computer scientists called on Thursday for action to be taken to save Bletchley Park, the code-breaking centre that played a crucial role decrypting German messages during World War Two.
The scientists say Bletchley, a country house 25 miles north of London, is falling into disrepair and will decay further unless it received much needed investment. They want it properly funded and turned into a National Museum of Computing.
"As a nation, we cannot al
Source: WaPo
Jul 24, 2008
So a bunch of academics decides to revisit one of the defining books of modern American politics, a 1960 tome on the electorate. They spend years comparing interviews with voting-age Americans from 2000 and 2004 to what Americans said during elections in the 1950s. The academics' question: How much has the American voter changed over the past 50 years?
Their conclusion -- that the voter is pretty much the same dismally ill-informed creature he was back then -- continues a decades-lo
Source: NYT
Jul 24, 2008
SHERIDAN, Wyo. — In early 1939, as talk of war in Europe clouded the horizon and hard economic times gripped the nation, a group of business and political leaders in this northern Wyoming city hatched an audacious, if not quite ridiculous, plan to break off huge chunks of Wyoming, South Dakota and Montana and form a new state.
Editors at the Depression-era Federal Writers’ Project, which happened at the time to be combing the country for local color (and for writers as well, for a s
Source: Minneapolis Star Tribune
Jul 23, 2008
The copper box, tarnished green from seeping water, tells the story.
Most everything inside this time capsule, entombed in 1917 in the granite base of a Civil War monument in Stillwater, succumbed to moisture.
"Mucky, basically," is how senior objects conservator Paul Storch of the Minnesota Historical Society described the contents when they arrived in his St. Paul laboratory last summer. "It's fairly common when they use copper boxes that have been sold
Source: AP
Jul 23, 2008
Germany is to introduce a test on German customs and history for
would-be citizens in September after Chancellor Angela Merkel's Cabinet
approved the plan on Wednesday.
The Interior Ministry has presented a catalog of 310 multiple-choice
questions for citizenship applicants. Would-be citizens will be presented
with 33 of the questions, and will be required to answer 17 correctly.
They range from"how many states does Germany have?" through"what is the
name of the current chance
Source: BBC
Jul 23, 2008
A Lincolnshire charity has had what could be a 2,000-year-old dog skeleton
donated to one of its stores.
A note with the bones said they were Roman, excavated from a 1st Century
AD pit at the Lawn in Lincoln in 1986.
Caroline Grosse, from St Barnabas Hospice in Lincoln, said:"I was a bit
shocked as bones are not something you expect to find (donated in a box)."
Nicknamed Caesar, the dog bones will be handed over to The Collection
museum in Lincoln, she said.
Source: BBC
Jul 23, 2008
The service of tens of thousands of women who worked the land to provide food and timber during World War II is due to be formally recognised.
Surviving members of the Women's Land Army and Women's Timber Corps will be presented with badges of honour.
Fifty of the women - who were dubbed Land Girls and Lumber Jills - will go to 10 Downing Street for a ceremony attended by Gordon Brown.
More than 30,000 badge applications have been received to date.
Source: BBC
Jul 23, 2008
It was 25 years ago this week that a minor insurgency in Sri Lanka began to turn into a full-scale civil war.
An attack by Tamil Tiger rebels in the north sparked rioting across the country targeting members of the Tamil minority. The events came to be known as Black July.
More than 70,000 people have died in the conflict. Now the army says victory is finally in sight.
In recent weeks the pace of the advance has quickened, but the Tigers deny they are facin
Source: CNN
Jul 23, 2008
With a flick of the wrist, James Johnson uses an elongated cotton swab along the inside of his 102-year old mother's cheek.
He's taken the first step in his search for answers to an existential question that plagues a majority of black Americans: Where did my ancestors come from?
For the Johnsons -- cousins of the Rand family, who are featured in "CNN Presents: Black in America" -- the answer arrives in the form of a certificate from African Ancestry Inc., a M
Source: Salon
Jul 23, 2008
The last several years have brought a parade of dark revelations about the George W. Bush administration, from the manipulation of intelligence to torture to extrajudicial spying inside the United States. But there are growing indications that these known abuses of power may only be the tip of the iceberg. Now, in the twilight of the Bush presidency, a movement is stirring in Washington for a sweeping new inquiry into White House malfeasance that would be modeled after the famous Church Committe
Source: http://www.typicallyspanish.com
Jul 23, 2008
Work is continuing at the San Rafael Cemetery in Málaga to recover and
catalogue the remains of the people shot by fascist troops and placed in a
series of mass graves at the site.
It’s thought that 4,500 people met their deaths there between the years
1936 and 1951, and so far 2,200 bodies have been recovered and documented
from what is the largest mass grave site in Spain.
