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
Oct 25, 2007
ON THE CUMBERLAND RIVER, Tenn. — Looking out over the Delta Queen’s wooden paddle wheel kicking up frothy trails of white water, Don Mauger could scarcely contain his disappointment.
When Mr. Mauger and his wife, Dixie, reserved their spots for this seven-day trip on the country’s last original paddle-wheeled, steam-driven, overnight passenger boat, they received a depressing letter with their tickets.
It said that 2008 would be the last year for the Delta Queen, an 81-
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE)
Oct 25, 2007
Sometimes it can take a half-century to realize you’ve made a mistake. Homer Jacobson, a professor emeritus of chemistry at the City University of New York’s Brooklyn College, learned that lesson when he decided to Google himself and found that incorrect statements he made in 1955 had come back to haunt him.
To make amends, Mr. Jacobson retracted two statements from an article published in American Scientist magazine more than five decades ago. In a letter in the magazine’s November
Source: BBC
Oct 24, 2007
One of Northern Ireland's Olympic heros could be honoured almost a century after his gold medal victory.
The 100-year anniversary of Kennedy Kane McArthur's marathon triumph coincides with the 2012 London games.
North Antrim assembly member Mervyn Storey has called for official recognition of the Dervock-born runner's achievements.
Mr Storey raised the issue with Sports Minister Edwin Poots during a recent assembly meeting.
Source: American Heritage
Oct 24, 2007
Edwin S. Grosvenor has purchased American Heritage from Forbes Inc. and will resume publication with the December issue. Grosvenor’s company, American Heritage Media, also plans to resume publishing Invention & Technology early next year. All subscriptions will be resumed where they left off, and Americanheritage.com will continue as usual. Further details about American Heritage Media’s plans will be announced soon.
HNN Editor: From the NYT:
Edwin S. Grosvenor, the great-great-gran
Source: International Herald Tribune
Oct 24, 2007
Spain is stirring the ghosts of its past with a proposed law that will declare illegitimate Franco's military courts, expand reparations to victims of the civil war and increase funding for exhuming mass graves.
For people like Marcos Ana, a renowned poet who was the longest-serving political prisoner of the Franco era, the law does not go far enough.
Ana, 87, does not remember everything about his 23 years in jail during Francisco Franco's dictatorship.
B
Source: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk
Oct 24, 2007
President George Bush will have spent more than $1 trillion on military adventures by the time he leaves office at the end of next year, more than the entire amount spent on the Korean and Vietnam wars combined.
Source: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk
Oct 24, 2007
Thousands of protesters took to the streets of Budapest yesterday, the anniversary of Hungary's uprising against Soviet domination, and authorities were braced for a second night of violence after 19 people were injured in clashes between police and nationalist gangs the previous evening.
Yesterday's march, on a national holiday to recall the doomed 1956 revolt against Moscow, took place as council workers were still clearing up after a night that left parts of the city strewn with
Source: BBC
Oct 24, 2007
Two former Tory HQs are in the running to house an EU "super embassy" in London, but finding somewhere to fly the flag is proving to be a problem.
Smith Square and Victoria Street are among options being considered for a joint office for two sets of EU staff.
But if they are to fly the EU flag at Victoria Street, they would need to rent the whole block, at £3.2m a year.
Tory MEP Martin Callanan said it would mean £1.3m a year being "squandered"
Source: BBC
Oct 24, 2007
A fashion designer who was recently comparing the looks and styles of the main Argentine presidential candidates described Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner as a "very sexy, very strong and very attractive" woman.
He had not seen such a good-looking woman in Argentina politics since Eva Peron, who died 55 years ago, he said.
The designer's comments, however ungallant to the other two women also running for president, show how Cristina Kirchner, wife of the curren
Source: WaPo
Oct 24, 2007
About one-sixth of the books, monographs and bound periodicals at the Library of Congress weren't where they were supposed to be because of flaws in the systems for shelving and retrieving materials, according to a survey to be made public at a congressional hearing today.
Officials at the library say they believe most of the missing materials are misplaced, not stolen or lost.
Investigators for the congressional library have told lawmakers on a House oversight committe
Source: Times (UK)
Oct 24, 2007
The five periods in the history of Earth that had the highest levels of extinction were all linked to climate change, fossil evidence shows.
The findings support fears that wild-life will be driven to extinction in the next few centuries in numbers to rival the death of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
Higher temperatures found to be associated with four of the mass extinctions were at about the same level that is forecast by climate change scientists for the next 10
Source: http://www.theday.com
Oct 23, 2007
Essex — True to its name, the Turtle moved slowly through the murky waters of the Connecticut River, its rear propeller spinning smoothly on the manual power supplied by sole passenger and operator Roy Manstan.
On the dock above, Fred Frese, the principal builder of the unwieldy-looking contraption, looked on as it moved along, a wide grin on his face.
“It works,” he declared after the little boat turned around and made its way back to its starting point.
F
Source: BBC
Oct 23, 2007
Four locked gates at a city's war memorial are to be thrown open for the first time. Casual visitors to the cenotaph at the Diamond in Londonderry would have found their way firmly barred in the past.
It has often been the target for vandals throwing paint bombs as November's war commemorations begin.
But there are plans to make Derry people aware that of the 756 names on the memorial, nearly half belong to Catholic soldiers who died in World War I.
"P
Source: AP
Oct 23, 2007
France, home to some of the world's great art, is trying a six-month experiment. If museums are free, culture officials wonder, will they attract the kind of people who would usually rather watch television?
Starting Jan. 1, 14 French museums and monuments, most of them low-profile, will open to visitors free of charge for six months, Culture Minister Christine Albanel said Tuesday. Three are in Paris — Guimet, home to Asian art; Cluny, with a collection of medieval treasures; and A
Source: AP
Oct 23, 2007
Romania's president apologized for the deportation of thousands of Roma to Nazi death camps during World War II, the first time a government official has done so publicly.
President Traian Basescu also awarded the Order for Faithful Service to three Roma Holocaust survivors at a ceremony Monday.
"The authorities were merciless. They took the Roma from their homes, from the towns and army and sent them far away, to obtain a pure nation," Basescu said.
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
Oct 23, 2007
The National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) has announced it will open for the first time all of the individual Official Military Personnel Files (OMPFs) of Army, Army Air Corps, Army Air Forces, Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard military personnel who served and were discharged, retired or died while in the service, prior to 1946.
Collectively, these files comprise more than six million records. This is the second step in the progressive opening of the entire paper and microfiche
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
Oct 23, 2007
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the Genealogical Society of Utah (GSU) have announced a five-year partnership agreement to digitize case files of approved pension applications of widows of Civil War Union soldiers from NARA’s holdings.
The partnership will begin with a pilot project to digitize, index, and make available the first 3,150 of the pension files. Upon successful completion of the pilot, GSU, doing business as
Source: NYT
Oct 23, 2007
He was code-named “Carat,” and, for four years during World War II and after, he played the Great Game in the Middle East as an American spy. He died when his Army transport crashed near Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1947 in what a press report called “one of Africa’s loneliest spots.”
In Lebanon, where he had been posted at the embassy, he worked undercover as a State Department cultural attaché. At home, in Massachusetts, he had an infant daughter who was six weeks old and whom he nev
Source: Jerusalem Post
Oct 23, 2007
Unlike Rachel Ya'akov, the sister of slain prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, President Shimon Peres carefully refrained from allowing the name of assassin Yigal Amir to pass his lips while speaking on Tuesday night at the state ceremony at Beit Hanassi marking the 12th anniversary of Rabin's murder.
Instead he referred to him as "the son of iniquity," saying: "He shot Yitzhak in the back and killed him. He shot the nation in the heart and traumatized it."
Source: Christian Science Monitor
Oct 23, 2007
Zamami, Japan - On the eve of the American invasion of this subtropical island 62 years ago, Haruko Miyahira heard her elder brother, Seishu, tell their father about an order from the Japanese military.
"My brother, who was then deputy mayor, told our father that US troops were about to land on the island, and said to him, 'We were ordered from the military to kill ourselves. Let's die together with good grace!'" Ms. Miyahira recalls.
Many older islanders like
