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: Fox News
Sep 26, 2007
The Navy will spend as much as $600,000 to modify a 40-year-old barracks complex that resembles a swastika from the air, a gaffe that went largely unnoticed before satellite images became easily accessible on the Internet.
The Navy said officials noted the buildings' shape after the groundbreaking in 1967 but decided against changing it at the time because it wasn't obvious from the ground. Aerial photos made available on Google Earth in recent years have since revealed the buildin
Source: Slate (embedded links in original)
Sep 26, 2007
President Richard Nixon and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover surely collapsed from gossip hangovers after concluding a seven-minute-long telephone call on July 1, 1971.
An audio clip and transcript of the conversation was posted to the Web this week by the Presidential Recordings Program at the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs. According to the program's Ken Hughes, the National Archives made this conversation available to the public in October 1999, but Hughes believe
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Sep 26, 2007
A man's role in World War II was clear - if he was able-bodied, he went off to fight. The iconic image of women in World War II is Rosie the Riveter, a made-up character in a poster promoting the need for women to step into manufacturing jobs vacated by men. But there also were women in the armed forces and others who tended to the home fires. Like men, many of them never forgot "The War," as a few tell filmmaker Ken Burns in his new seven-part PBS series that began Sunday on PBS....
Source: NYT
Sep 26, 2007
The Congressional conference committee, vaguely familiar to generations of Americans from their battered civics texts, is in danger of losing its prominent role in how a bill becomes law.
Once the penultimate stage in the life of any bill as a forum for House and Senate members to work out their differences, the conference committee has fallen on hard times, shoved aside in the last five years by partisanship and legislative expediency. As a result, there is often no public scrutiny
Source: http://www.bradenton.com
Sep 25, 2007
At one point this year, Manatee County officials were considering a purchase of Pillsbury Temple Mound to ensure the site's preservation.
Now they're trying to save the site, by just agreeing to trim the lawn at the ancient burial ground.
Conservation Lands Management Department Director Charlie Hunsicker in recent months has worked to protect the 1-acre site northwest of Bradenton from development.
Hunsicker's department had designs on purchasing and preserving
Source: http://en.naukawpolsce.pl
Sep 25, 2007
Thousands of years ago, Egyptians knew many complicated methods of producing dyes. They used them to create many magnificent frescoes, which cover the walls of temples, royal palaces and tombs. Time and atmospheric factors have caused the paintings to lose their initial colours. The chemical reactions have modified the chemical content of the pigment. Thus, the colours we see today, are very distant from the pieces created by their ancient painters.
This is why scientists, with the
Source: NYT
Sep 25, 2007
With Fear and Wonder in Its Wake, Sputnik Lifted Us Into the Future
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
Sputnik changed everything - history, geopolitics, the scientific world. A reflection on the triumphs and disappointments of the space age.New Horizons Beckon, Inspiring Vision if Not Certainty
By JO
Source: NYT
Sep 25, 2007
Before Iran’s president took the stage at Columbia University on Monday, the university’s president, Lee C. Bollinger, sent out an early-morning e-mail message, calling on students and faculty “to live up to the best of Columbia’s traditions.” Yesterday, many critics questioned whether Mr. Bollinger had met that test himself.
On campus and in editorials across the nation, on political blogs and throughout academia, there was a sharp division of opinion about Mr. Bollinger’s pointed
Source: NYT
Sep 25, 2007
Lima, Peru: Both critics and admirers of the former Peruvian strongman Alberto K. Fujimori long argued that he deserved his day in court to explain the political killings, abductions and corruption during his rule. Mr. Fujimori even said so after the Chilean Supreme Court ruled in favor of extraditing him last week, claiming that the court case was part of a “strategy” to return to Peru.
But as Mr. Fujimori settles into a jail cell here before his trial, the prospect of that day co
Source: NBC News
Sep 25, 2007
A penny for your thoughts will have extra meaning in 2009 — the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth and the 100th anniversary of the introduction of the Lincoln penny.
To commemorate the event, the U.S. Mint, at the direction of Congress, will introduce four rotating designs on the 1-cent coin for that year depicting different aspects of Lincoln’s life.
Those designs will replace the engraving of the Lincoln Memorial on the “tails” side of the coin. The famous
Source: http://www.wilsoncountynews.com (Texas)
Sep 25, 2007
FREDERICKSBURG— Jonathan Parshall, naval historian and co-author of the award-winning Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway, has confirmed a stunning moment in history.
Kaname Harada of the Imperial Japanese Navy, Dusty Kleiss of the U.S. Navy, and U.S. Navy Cmdr. Harry Ferrier first encountered each other during the historic Battle of Midway during World War II.
The three met for the first time in 65 years at the National Museum of the Pacific War’
Source: LAT
Sep 25, 2007
In honor of trailblazing newsman Ruben Salazar's relentless efforts to chronicle the complexity of race relations in Los Angeles, the U.S. Postal Service in 2008 will issue a commemorative stamp of the former Los Angeles Times reporter and columnist.
"He was a groundbreaker for Latinos in this country, but his work spoke to all Americans," Postmaster Gen. John E. Potter said Monday. "By giving voice to those who didn't have one, Ruben Salazar worked to improve life fo
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 25, 2007
A police investigation has been launched after this giant swastika was cut into a corn field in New Jersey. [Click on SOURCE to view image.]
Each arm of the Nazi symbol is more than 100 metres long, and the entire design covers several acres.
Police say they believe it was cut by hand, probably with a knife or sickle - an effort that would have taken many hours or even days.
The swastika is only visible from the air and it is not clear how long it lay undis
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 25, 2007
Parts of British history need to be rewritten to emphasise the roles played by other races and religions like Muslims, a prominent race relations campaigner has said.
Trevor Philips, the chairman of the new Commission for Equalities and Human Rights, said the history of Britain did not properly reflect the contribution of other cultures.
Rewriting the country’s history would demonstrate to Britons in the 21st century how other groups part from Anglo Saxons shaped the na
Source: Press Release
Sep 25, 2007
Today opponents of the Bush Library and Institute vowed to continue their fight within the 11 million member United Methodist Church to deny approval to Southern Methodist University (SMU) to host the Bush complex.
The South Central Jurisdictional Conference of the United Methodist Church will meet in Dallas from July 15-19, 2008, when it will be asked by SMU to approve the use of university land for the Bush complex, which will include a partisan political institute operated tota
Source: BBC
Sep 25, 2007
When Sarah Johnson died of dropsy in 1819 her doctors turned her gravestone into a ghoulish advert for their services, with full details of her agonising treatment.
Almost two centuries later her sufferings, and the remarkable way in which they were recorded, have come to light as part of a nationwide search for unusual historical epitaphs. The full results of the search are to appear in the BBC's Who Do You Think You Are? magazine.
Mrs Johnson's headstone is the winner
Source: NYT
Sep 25, 2007
It is the document that laid the foundation for fundamental principles of English law. Angry colonists complained long before the Boston Tea Party that King George III had violated it. The men who drafted the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights borrowed from it.
It is Magna Carta, agreed to by King John of England in 1215 and revised and reaffirmed through the 13th century. The tail dangling off the page is a royal seal.
And it is about to go on sale.
Source: Press Release--Northern Arizona University
Sep 24, 2007
What caused the extinction of mammoths and the decline of Stone Age people about 13,000 years ago remains hotly debated. Overhunting by Paleoindians, climate change and disease lead the list of probable causes. But an idea once considered a little out there is now hitting closer to home.
A team of international researchers, including two Northern Arizona University geologists, reports evidence that a comet or low-density object barreling toward Earth exploded in the upper atmosphere
Source: Haaretz
Sep 24, 2007
Jordan will allocate 1.113 million Jordanian Dinars ($1.5 million dollars) to the Jordan Hashemite Fund for the Reconstruction of Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock, King Abdullah II announced yesterday during a meeting of the trustees of the new fund.
The king also instructed a bonus salary to be given to employees of the Waqf, as a gesture of thanks for their commitment and work.
The new fund will be headed by Prince Ghazi, a cousin of the king. At the opening sess
Source: Louisville Courier-Journal
Sep 24, 2007
It was a first in Cheryl Ann Munson's 42 years as an archaeologist. She and her team were excavating at Hovey Lake in Posey County last week when they made a rare find.
Buried about 18 inches down on what had been the floor of a centuries-old house probably made of wood posts, mud plaster and straw was a fully intact bowl -- a "deep-rim plate," in archaeologist-speak -- made of clay mixed with shell.
