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
Sep 23, 2007
Ultimately, rising seas will likely swamp the first American settlement in Jamestown, Va., as well as the Florida launch pad that sent the first American into orbit, many climate scientists are predicting.
In about a century, some of the places that make America what it is may be slowly erased.
Global warming - through a combination of melting glaciers, disappearing ice sheets and warmer waters expanding - is expected to cause oceans to rise by one meter, or about 39 in
Source: NYT
Sep 23, 2007
In his 18 years on the federal bench, Judge Michael B. Mukasey issued more than 1,500 decisions concerning matters as cataclysmic as the Holocaust and as mundane as milk, beer and cigarettes....
His decisions almost always start with an exceptionally detailed account of the facts, often coupled with a keen awareness of how hard it is to know anything for sure.
His writing benefited from a stint at United Press International, the news agency. “It was good practice in wri
Source: Washington Times
Sep 22, 2007
A plane carrying about 120 World War II veterans is scheduled to land at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport this morning, bringing a group of heroes from the past to visit a memorial honoring their legacy.
For most of the veterans, today will be the first time they have toured the 56-column, three-year-old World War II Memorial on the Mall.
And with World War II veterans — who once numbered 16 million — dying at a rate of at least 1,200 each day, organizers say t
Source: AP
Sep 22, 2007
The Museum of the Confederacy, which has been considering spreading the bulk of the world's largest collection of Civil War artifacts among three new locations, has proposed that one branch be sited at Fort Monroe after the Army departs in 2011.
Museum president and CEO S. Waite Rawls III presented the museum's proposal to the Fort Monroe Federal Area Development Authority this week. The authority is charged with designing the future of the Hampton, Va., fort after the Army leaves a
Source: WaPo
Sep 22, 2007
Latinos came home from World War II to a different struggle. A Medal of Honor for bravery didn't guarantee service in certain restaurants. A soldier's body in a coffin and an American flag for his widow didn't merit admission to some funeral homes.
Fast-forward to 2007. One of the nation's premier documentarians is ready to unveil his opus on World War II. It's mainly the stories of non-Hispanic whites, but Ken Burns made sure to include the experience of African Americans and Japan
Source: Daily Record
Sep 21, 2007
[I]n Scotland, where the Holocaust is not on the national curriculum, many teenagers have never heard of Auschwitz, never mind of the cold, calculating extermination of men, women and children which took place there.
And many believe this murder on a terrible scale could easily happen again unless the lessons from Auschwitz are finally learned.
Which is why the Holocaust Education Trust decided to take a group of Scottish school pupils to the concentration camp.
Source: Times (UK)
Sep 21, 2007
By the beginning of the 21st century the Dixification of America was more or less complete. Bill Clinton, from Arkansas, had handed over the presidency to George Bush, a Texan. Congressional Republicans were led predominantly by Southerners. The governing agenda was low taxes, the revival of conservative moral standards and a hardened foreign policy.
But now consider this. Just six years later, Dixie is in eclipse. With the Democratic victory in the mid-terms last year the leadershi
Source: Yahoo
Sep 21, 2007
In a provocative article, an Italian medical professor argues that Pope John Paul II didn't just simply slip away as his weakness and illness overtook him in April 2005. Intensive care specialist Dr. Lina Pavanelli has concluded that the ailing Pope's April 2 death was caused by what the Catholic Church itself would consider euthanasia. She bases this conclusion on her medical expertise and her own observations of the ailing pontiff on television, as well as press reports and a subsequent book b
Source: http://www.ireland.com
Sep 21, 2007
Campaigners battling the development of the M3 motorway near the historic Hill of Tara will take their protest to the US this weekend.
Poets, musicians, historians and archaeologists will join the Save Tara group outside the Consulate General of Ireland in New York tomorrow. At the same time, protests will be held in Chicago, Los Angeles and Dublin.
Source: NYT
Sep 21, 2007
In the continuing debate over the origin of the extinct “little people” of Indonesia, a team of scientists says it has found evidence in three wrist bones that these people were members of a distinct species rather than humans with a physical disorder.
The researchers describe the new findings in a report being published today in the journal Science. Critics disputed the interpretation, saying this was not clear evidence for the existence of a separate species, known as Homo floresi
Source: NYT
Sep 21, 2007
That first tower toppled at 9:59 a.m., a billion pounds of steel and concrete and bodies raining down. Smoke billowed like thunderheads, and New York’s mayor seemed to disappear into death’s maw.
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani was two blocks from the south tower, in an office on Barclay Street, trying to get the vice president on the phone, when his world went dark with smoke. Back at City Hall, Deputy Mayor Rudy Washington waited and wondered and dialed the governor.
“We re
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 21, 2007
Children in Venezuela are to be taught that Christopher Columbus was not a hero but the importer of colonialism and disease, as part of radical education reforms proposed by the government of Hugo Chavez.
Under the proposals students will start learning Marxist ideology at 11 years of age, plus history showing the evils of colonialism and capitalism.
The aim of the Bolivarian Educative System will be "the construction of a new socialist Venezuelan conscience and th
Source: Press Release-- Arlington Heritage Alliance
Sep 21, 2007
Preservationists in northern Virginia are organizing to protest a plan to replace the marble-cracked Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. The Arlington Heritage Alliance insists the old monument can be saved.In an email to HNN the group argues:
It's hard to believe, but officials at Arlington National Cemetery plan to
replace the original Tomb of the Unknown Soldier with a new replica solely
because of easily reparable cosmetic imperfections. This 1932 monument
Source: AP
Sep 21, 2007
JENA, La. (AP) - It had many of the signs of the early civil rights protests—militant slogans, upraised clenched fists and multitudes of police—but none of the hate and fear-drenched campaigns in Selma, Little Rock and Montgomery.
Thousands of protesters descended on this tiny central Louisiana town Thursday, rallying against what they see as a double standard of justice for blacks and whites.
But unlike the protests that became landmarks for civil rights when fire hoses and
Source: BBC
Sep 21, 2007
A new book for travellers to China plans to make no mention of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Should travel guides tell the whole history of a place, or bow to local sensitivities?
Hotels are a must. So are tips on the local cuisine. A few key phrases. Some maps. A list of the best tourist sites and their opening hours. Perhaps some cultural do and don'ts.
All are key ingredients of a typical guide book. And yet many also feel the need to offer something more - a ground
Source: NYT
Sep 21, 2007
They were Vicente and Jorge, two cowboys turned presidents, and they held their first summit meeting together at a ranch.
But Vicente Fox, who finished his term as Mexico’s president last year, pokes fun at the cowboy credentials of President Bush in a new autobiography, recalling the time Mr. Bush turned down an offer to ride Mr. Fox’s beloved horse, Dos de Julio.
“He demurred, backing away from the big palomino,” Mr. Fox wrote in “Revolution of Hope,” which is due out
Source: http://www.ttc.org
Sep 20, 2007
A US military team searching for the remains of American soldiers from World War II has discovered the wreckage of two B-17 bombers and a P-47 fighter plane off the coast of Corsica.
The 13-man team led by Captain George Mitroka conducted seven days of marine searches near the French Mediterranean island, equipped with sonars, radars, cameras and video equipment.
Source: AFP
Sep 20, 2007
Czechs got the chance to examine the world's biggest medieval manuscript, the "Codex Gigas" or "Devil's Bible," for the first time in almost 359 years on Thursday when the precious work went on show as part of a four-month-long exhibition.
The 13th century masterpiece, considered at the time as the eighth wonder of the world, was carried off as booty by Swedish troops from Prague during the Thirty Years' War but has returned at the end of painstaking negotiation
Source: MSNBC
Sep 20, 2007
A slow, lethal combination of external pressures including warfare, rather than a lack of natural resources, led to the demise of the Cherokee Indians, two new studies suggest.
The date of the Cherokee society's collapse is often cited as 1785, when several tribes signed the Treaty of Hopewell and came under the jurisdiction of the new United States of America. Resource scarcity was the major factor in the dissolution, many historians have thought, based on an eyewitness narrative o
Source: http://www.cwnews.com
Sep 20, 2007
A spokesman for the Polish bishops' conference, Father Jozef Kloch, has announced that a Church commission on clergy collaboration with the former Communist secret police will complete its work in November.
The Church investigative commission will not produce a list of bishops who collaborated with the Communist regime, because the documentation available for study proved to be incomplete.
In June, the head of the investigating panel, Bishop Slawoj Leszek Glodz, reveale
