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: NYT
Nov 4, 2007
TO hear the presidential candidates tell it, this has been a great year for “personal evolution.” Less self-interested parties have considered it the season of the “flip-flop.”
The flip-flop is not a new ingredient in presidential politics. But it is especially pronounced this year, with every major candidate getting into the act in some way....
Their success often depends on the public mood, the moment in history and whether the charges feed into existing doubts about
Source: AP
Nov 4, 2007
Historians are trying to save a lower Manhattan building that is "a rare surviving relic" of New York's 19th-century world trade center but is due to be demolished to make way for a new hotel.
The Greek Revival warehouse is in a neighborhood that was part of "the process that made New York into America's great city," says historian Paul E. Johnson.
The red-brick warehouse on Pearl Street, near the South Street Seaport Historic District, was erected i
Source: International Herald Tribune
Nov 4, 2007
DAKAR, Senegal: In 1890, King Leopold II of Belgium wrote to one of his colonial officials and asked him to set up orphanages in the vast African territory he ruled as his personal fief, the Congo.
The only problem with his plan was that there were no orphans. The concept scarcely existed in Congo or much of the rest of Africa. This is a continent where thousands of ethnic groups and cultures across a vast and diverse landscape nevertheless share basic traditions that dictate that a
Source: AP
Nov 4, 2007
A woman who is credited by historians with convincing Abraham Lincoln to grow whiskers - which helped him be elected as president - will be honored in Kansas this week.
Grace Bedell was 11 when she wrote Lincoln to encourage him to grow a beard because it would make him handsome. She later moved to Delphos, Kansas, in Ottawa County and lived there until she died in 1936.
Last March, a historian found a second letter from Bedell to Lincoln when she was older, asking for
Source: AP
Nov 4, 2007
A few years back, the Leshan Giant Buddha started to weep.
Or so some locals imagined when black streaks appeared on the rose-colored cheeks of the towering 7th-century figure, hewn from sandstone cliffs in the forests of southern China. They worried they had angered the religious icon.
The culprit, it turned out, was the region's growing number of coal-fired power plants. Their smokestacks spew toxic gases into the air, which return to earth as acid rain. Over time, th
Source: AP
Nov 4, 2007
Robin Hood might have a hard time hiding out in the Sherwood Forest of today.
The forest once covered about 100,000 acres, a big chunk of present-day Nottinghamshire County. Today its core is about 450 acres, with patches spread out through the rest of the county.
Experts say urgent action is needed to regenerate the forest and save the rare and endangered ancient oaks at its heart.
Some 15 organizations have joined forces to draw up a rescue plan, hoping t
Source: AP
Nov 4, 2007
The linen wrapped mummy of King Tut was put on public display for the first time on Sunday — 85 years after the 3,000-year-old boy pharaoh's golden enshrined tomb and mummy were discovered in Luxor's famed Valley of the Kings.
Archeologists removed the mummy from his stone sarcophagus in his underground tomb, revealing his shriveled leather-like face and body.
"The golden boy has magic and mystery and therefore every person all over the world will see what Egypt is
Source: AP
Nov 4, 2007
Thousands of Iranians nationwide demonstrated Sunday to celebrate the 28th anniversary of the takeover of the U.S. Embassy by militant students, state television reported.
Demonstrators in the capital, Tehran, including elementary school students, gathered outside the former U.S. Embassy, chanting anti-U.S. and anti-Israeli slogans. They burned the two countries' flags and warned Washington to learn from the hostile incident.
The takeover, which occurred during Iran's 1
Source: 60 Minutes
Nov 4, 2007
Did Saddam Hussein have weapons of mass destruction? No, he did not. We've known that for some time now. So where did the intelligence come from that he was building up his arsenal? Fantastically, the most compelling part came from one obscure Iraqi defector who came in and out of history like a comet. His code name, ironically, was "Curve Ball" and his information became the pillar of the case Colin Powell made to the United Nations before the war. Who is Curve Ball and how did he foo
Source: NYT
Nov 4, 2007
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s political camp struck back on Saturday against rivals who were attacking her as overly secretive, circulating legal arguments from a Clinton ally asserting that the Clintons are not blocking the release of presidential papers about their discussions in the White House in the 1990s.
Bruce Lindsey, a top adviser to former President Bill Clinton, issued a lengthy statement on Friday evening saying that, contrary to some news reports, Mr. Clinton had “n
Source: Daily Mail
Nov 3, 2007
It is unmistakably a blood-red corn poppy in full bloom.
But closer inspection reveals silhouettes of struggling soldiers emerging from its centre.
This striking design has been chosen for a special first-class stamp commemorating the 90th anniversary of the First World War battle of Passchendaele, the Belgian village whose name is synonymous with the carnage and futility of war.
Source: LiveScience
Nov 3, 2007
Who knew the Weasley family trademark—a shock of bright red hair—was tens of thousands of years old?
Fictional wizards and J.K. Rowling aside, researchers Carles Lalueza-Fox of the University of Barcelona, Spain and Holger Rompler of the University of Leipzig in Germany announced last week that Neanderthals, who died out 35,000 years ago, had the same distribution of hair and skin color as modern human European populations. By inference, that means that about 1 percent of Neandertha
Source: Daily Mail
Nov 3, 2007
The perpetrators of some of the worst atrocities of the Second World War remain alive and unpunished in Japan, according to a damning new book.
Painstaking research by British historian Mark Felton reveals that the wartime behaviour of the Japanese Navy was far worse than their counterparts in Hitler's Kriegsmarine.
According to Felton, officers of the Imperial Japanese Navy ordered the deliberately sadistic murders of more than 20,000 Allied seamen and countless civili
Source: Earth Times
Nov 3, 2007
Former Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin is back in fashion in Russia as the Kremlin condones history textbooks that honour the Soviet leader (1878-1953) as renovator of the country. "Children, learn to value Stalin," the Gazeta newspaper recently summed up the message by the textbook's authors. Stalin, the synonym for state-ordered terror and torture, still has his followers, especially among the communists.
However, even non-communists seem to long for someone like Stalin, p
Source: Canada.com
Nov 3, 2007
Tens of thousands of people who assumed they were Canadians have had their citizenship thrown into question by a court ruling on the status of Second World War brides and their children.
Yesterday, the Federal Court of Appeal overturned the decision of a lower court that in 2006 ordered Ottawa to grant immediate citizenship to the British son of a Canadian war veteran.
This latest judgment says brides of veterans, and their children born overseas - who had been granted
Source: NPR
Nov 3, 2007
The surprisingly contentious confirmation process of Michael Mukasey, President Bush's pick for attorney general, has come down to one issue: waterboarding. Mukasey has called waterboarding personally "repugnant," but said he did not know enough about how it has been used to define it as torture.
Source: http://www.thestar.com
Nov 3, 2007
It emerged this week that Karl Marx, the father of communism, suffered from a chronic and excruciating skin disease with known psychological effects that might have had an impact on his political theories.
The 19th-century revolutionary thinker had a condition called hidradenitis suppurativa, in which the sweat glands in his armpits and groin become blocked and inflamed and his skin covered in boils and carbuncles.
Or so argues Sam Shuster, a professor of dermatology at
Source: NYT
Nov 3, 2007
LAKEWOOD, N.J. — Like many strange tales, the story of the antiques dealer, the scholars from Scotland and the contested archive of a Russian conductor begins in the suburbs of New Jersey.
The papers belonged to Serge Jaroff, conductor of the Don Cossack Chorus, a singing group founded by members of the Russian Imperial Army that rose to popularity in the 1930s.
Mr. Jaroff, who died in 1985, lived in a tiny green house in this town near the Jersey Shore. Lisa Myer, a 49
Source: USA Today
Nov 2, 2007
Each day near Petersburg, Ky., 1,500 to 4,000 visitors, including busloads from Christian schools and churches, stand in line for as long as an hour to wander 60,000 square feet of animatronic exhibits presenting the Bible's creation story as fact.
It's been six months since the Creation Museum opened to crowds and protests, and the controversial attraction has proven more popular than even organizers had predicted.
Halfway into its first year, it is on the verge of sur
Source: China View
Nov 2, 2007
A park to commemorate the Chinese soldiers and members of the U.S. "Flying Tigers" air squadron who fought in the Second World War is to be set up in southwest China's Yunnan Province.
The wooded park will cover 167 hectares and boast a peace gate, a friendship monument, a memorial wall and memorials to wartime figures.
The park would be near an abandoned military airport that hosted American planes during WWII, about 20 kilometers from downtown Kunmin
