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)
Jul 20, 2008
Germany's bitter insecurities about its post-war militarism have been highlighted at a controversial torch-lit ceremony to swear in new soldiers in front of the Reichstag building in Berlin.
The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, made an eleventh hour decision to attend the ceremony, in which 500 new troops were inducted. But her decision was only made after heavy pressure from the German armed forces, which complained of a "shameful lack of interest" from politicians sensi
Source: WaPo
Jul 20, 2008
It could be seen as the sincerest form of flattery: Ask some activists on the left the kind of Supreme Court justice they would like to see a President Obama appoint, and the name you hear most is the same justice they most often denounce.
They want their own Antonin Scalia. Or rather, an anti-Scalia, an individual who can easily articulate a liberal interpretation of the Constitution, offer a quick sound bite and be prepared to mix it up with conservative activists beyond the marbl
Source: AP
Jul 20, 2008
The four dozen men in loincloths stopped repeatedly to toss the new boat into the air as they carried it through their village to shore.
Then they launched it ceremoniously into the Pacific Ocean. It was the first launch of a Tao fishing boat in seven years.
For decades the Tao aborigines of Taiwan's Orchid Island have used colorful canoe-like boats to net flying fish in the warm waters of the Pacific. But now more and more Tao men are migrating to Taiwan's cities to lo
Source: Politico.com
Jul 20, 2008
In the end, Barack Obama's campaign said “nein” to a speech beside the fabled Brandenburg Gate. Going ahead in the face of opposition from German leaders would have fed the “hubris” narrative.
So after two weeks of public debate, the campaign announced Sunday morning: “On Thursday, July 24, 2008, Sen. Barack Obama will visit Berlin, Germany. Obama will give a major speech on the historic U.S.-German partnership, and the need to strengthen transatlantic relations to meet 21st-century
Source: AP
Jul 20, 2008
Some pre-negotiation jabbing turned into a potentially damaging diplomatic incident Saturday when Brazil's foreign minister said rich countries' deception in trade talks reminded him of tactics used by Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels.
His comments drew a sharp rebuke from the United States, whose chief trade negotiator, Susan Schwab, is the daughter of Jewish Holocaust survivors. Her spokesman described the reference to Goebbels as "incredibly wrong."
Th
Source: LAT
Jul 20, 2008
ANGKOR, CAMBODIA -- The ancient sandstone temples of Angkor have stood up to endless assaults down the centuries, from medieval raiders armed with clubs and spears to genocidal looters laying land mines.
These days, the onslaught begins in the early morning darkness, when invading columns of buses, taxis and sputtering tuk-tuks converge on a dirt parking lot across from Angkor Wat's broad moat.
They disgorge hundreds of camera-wielding tourists, who march throu
Source: Chicago Tribune
Jul 20, 2008
Architects are optimists by nature, as Chicago architect Peter Landon demonstrated last week as he took me on a flashlight-guided tour of an abandoned, derelict Chicago Housing Authority building near the fashionable Taylor Street restaurant strip. Paint was peeling off the walls. Thieves had stripped bathtubs of their hardware. Steel stairs were covered with rust.
Landon thinks the 70-year-old, three-story building, empty since 2002, would make a terrific site for a national public
Source: NYT
Jul 20, 2008
The black-and-white photographs are ordinary enough: Czar Nicholas II, his wife and their five children relax in the countryside. His wife, Alexandra, mingles with patients in a hospital. Their son, Crown Prince Aleksei, poses in a traditional Russian sailor suit.
But to many of the Russians who visited the new “Crown of the Czar” exhibition in Moscow last week, these pictures of the royal family were breathtaking. Older people who grew up versed in the canon of Marx and Lenin seeme
Source: Charlotte Observer/AP
Jul 19, 2008
Morris Island, made famous by the charge of the black 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment and once considered one of the nation's most endangered Civil War battlegrounds, has been protected from development.
The City of Charleston, working with the Trust for Public Land, purchased the property last month from developer Bobby Ginn in a $3 million deal. Now the city is working with the public on how to interpret and provide public access to the 800-acre island on Charleston Harbor.
Source: BBC
Jul 19, 2008
With the pressure of ruling and the stress of succession, perhaps it is no wonder that so many of Britain's kings and queens have made a mess of their reign.
On Tuesday, Today spoke to historians taking part in a debate organised by English Heritage, which seeks to answer the question of which British monarch should be considered the biggest failure.
Their nominees - Edward II, George IV and Mary, Queen of Scots - are certainly contenders for the dubious honour of Britain's w
Source: Hudson Valley Press
Jul 19, 2008
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton announced today that she will testify at a hearing in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, July 30, 2008 in support of the National Women’s Rights History Project Act (S.1816), a bill which she introduced last year that is presently before the Senate Subcommittee on National Parks.
Source: Boston Globe
Jul 19, 2008
Over the past few years, Sen. Edward Kennedy has sat for nearly three dozen interviews to recount personal anecdotes and insights about his storied life and times.
The recorded conversations -- which have never been made public -- are the heart of an ambitious oral history project by the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs. The six-year project has gained even more significance since the 76-year-old senator was diagnosed this spring with brain cancer.
Source: WaPo
Jul 19, 2008
A longtime critic of the Smithsonian Institution introduced legislation in the U.S. Senate this week that would wipe out the national museum complex's exemption from the Freedom of Information Act and the Sunshine Act.
The legislation, co-sponsored by Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the Finance Committee, and Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, would require the Smithsonian to hold meetings in public and make records availabl
Source: HamptonRoads.com
Jul 19, 2008
Barbara Johns didn't live to see the day.
Neither did Oliver W. Hill Sr., Spottswood Robinson III or the Rev. L. Francis Griffin.
But each of those Virginia civil rights pioneers will be posthumously recognized Monday as part of a ceremony honoring the strides they made.
On that day, the Virginia Civil Rights Memorial, bearing their images in bronze, will be unveiled on the grounds of the state Capitol.
The four-sided memorial surrounds a grani
Source: Globe & Mail
Jul 19, 2008
It's a modern-day treasure hunt using ancient
documents and, to some, the prize is much more valuable than gold or
jewels.
Following an 18th-century English map and the journals of British
Commodore John Byron - the man who led the English conquest against the
Acadians - a Quebec archeologist thinks he might have found the village of
La Petite-Rochelle, the last settlement that Cmdre. Byron burned to the
ground."We're pretty confident that we've located the village that the Acad
Source: AP
Jul 19, 2008
Archaeologists will excavate hundreds of fragments of an ancient Egyptian wooden boat entombed in an underground chamber next to Giza's Great Pyramid and try to reassemble the craft, Egyptologists announced Saturday.
The 4,500-year-old vessel is the sister ship of a similar boat removed in pieces from another pit in 1954 and painstakingly reconstructed. Experts believe the boats were meant to ferry the pharaoh who built the Great Pyramid in the afterlife.
Source: Politico.com
Jul 19, 2008
It could have been a coincidence when Barack Obama gave a major policy speech last week at a building named after former President Ronald Reagan. But it comes from the same campaign that until yesterday had pushed to hold a major foreign policy address at the Brandenburg Gate, where Ronald Reagan in 1987 famously demanded of his Soviet counterpart, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
During his bid for the presidency, Obama has repeatedly praised the political gifts of Reagan, the
Source: NYT
Jul 19, 2008
Wolfert Van Couwenhoven visited New Amsterdam in 1625 but apparently was unimpressed. He left town and went home to the Netherlands, only to return five years later and purchase a large tract of land on Long Island. He probably never imagined that his odyssey would be immortalized, but there it is, nearly 400 years later, at the New York Public Library.
The library’s extensive genealogical collection has just been enormously enhanced by the gift of 75,000 volumes, 30,000 manuscripts
Source: AP
Jul 19, 2008
Australians may finally be about to get their first saint.
During a visit to a chapel devoted to Mary MacKillop, who is celebrated
for her work caring for children in rural towns across the country last
century, nuns said Pope Benedict XVI indicated MacKillop was approaching
final judgment on her canonization.
MacKillop was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1995 after the Vatican
determined she miraculously cured a woman suffering from leukemia. But the
Vatican needs confirm
Source: Times (UK)
Jul 19, 2008
A pamphlet warning Britons to leave the Middle East or face death has come to light in a stash of illicit propaganda.
The document does not hail from Basra or Baghdad, nor was it penned by the Islamists of al-Qaeda or the al-Mahdi Army. It was found in Haifa, about 60 years ago, and it was issued by the underground group led by Menachem Begin – the future Prime Minister of Israel and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
The document, which surfaced at an auction house thi
