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: Slate
Aug 15, 2007
The average newspaper should expand by a factor of 50 the amount of space given to corrections if Scott R. Maier's research is any guide.
Maier, an associate professor at the University of Oregon's School of Journalism and Communication, describes in a forthcoming research paper his findings that fewer than 2 percent of factually flawed articles are corrected at dailies.
Maier's study relied on data gathered from 10 metropolitan newspapers: the Boulder Daily Camera, the Charl
Source: NYT
Aug 15, 2007
IMPRUNETA, Italy — It has been said that wars are a way of teaching geography. And maps are caught up in the strife.
“The problems of cartography are the same that exist in diplomatic relations,” said Stefano Strata, a co-director of Nova Rico, a company that has been making custom globes for 50 years in this small town near Florence better known for its terra cotta.
For mapmakers like Nova Rico, geographic disputes are commonplace. For a Turkish customer, Cyprus is sho
Source: AP
Aug 15, 2007
Most folks can correctly name George Washington as the nation's first president. After that, things get tricky.
The U.S. Mint is hoping its new dollar coin series will help refresh some hazy memories about the names of Adams, Jefferson and the rest.
That could be a tall order, however, given the results of a poll the Mint commissioned to find out just how much Americans know about their presidents.
According to the telephone poll conducted by the Gallup Org
Source: NYT
Aug 15, 2007
After enduring a century and a half of change in Lower Manhattan, decrepit and anonymous, the birthplace of The New York Times is now being torn down, brick by brick.
By an odd turn of history, the demolition of The Times’s oldest home occurred just as the company settles into its seventh and newest headquarters, a 52-story tower across Eighth Avenue from the Port Authority Bus Terminal.
Yesterday, a worker armed with an appropriately 19th-century demolition tool — a sl
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Aug 15, 2007
A greater percentage of social scientists today feel that their academic freedom has been threatened than was the case during the McCarthy era.
That finding — from Neil Gross, an assistant professor of sociology at Harvard University — was among a series of pessimistic papers presented at a forum on academic freedom Tuesday at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.
Gross surveyed social science professors last year about whether they had felt that
Source: AP
Aug 15, 2007
A replica of a Viking ship believed to have been built in 1042 sailed triumphantly into Dublin after retracing the 1,000-mile path of the fleets of Norsemen who invaded Ireland more than a millennium ago. Over six weeks, the 100-foot ship, which carried some decidedly un-Viking-like equipment — global positioning systems, radar, radio, satellite weather forecasts and life jackets — crossed the waters of northern Europe from Scandinavia, around Scotland and into the Irish Sea.
Source: Asia Times
Aug 14, 2007
Ho Chi Minh City is set to erect a new 6.3-meter-high bronze-cast statue of Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc, the ascetic who famously immolated himself in the streets of that city (then called Saigon) in protest against the repressive US-propped South Vietnamese government more than four decades ago.
The statue will next month be symbolically placed on the very spot in the city where the monk was depicted in iconic photographs burning himself to death. With its raising, the Communist
Source: Reuters
Aug 14, 2007
For more than eight centuries the "Towers of Victory" -- monuments to Afghanistan's greatest empire -- have survived wars and invasions, but now weather and neglect could cause them to come crashing down.
From its base in the Afghan city of Ghazni, the dynasty of Sultan Mahmoud Ghaznavi extended its rule to stretch from the River Tigris in modern day Iraq to the River Ganges in India.
The two toffee-colored minarets, adorned with terra-cotta tiles were raised
Source: LAT
Aug 14, 2007
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton cites her experience as a compelling reason voters should make her president, but nearly 2 million pages of documents covering her White House years are locked up in a building here, obscuring a large swath of her record as first lady.
Clinton's calendars, appointment logs and memos are stored at her husband's presidential library, in the custody of federal archivists who do not expect them to be released until after the 2008 presidential election.
Source: BBC
Aug 14, 2007
Celebrations are taking place across Pakistan to commemorate the 60th anniversary of independence from the UK and the creation of the country.
President Musharraf marked the anniversary by staunchly defending sovereignty and calling on the nation to unite against terrorism.
Pakistan is celebrating on Tuesday and India marks independence one day later.
The violent partition of 1947 saw 10 million people cross borders in one of history's largest mass migratio
Source: AFP
Aug 14, 2007
HEINZ Barth, a Nazi war criminal convicted for atrocities including the massacre of 642 people in the French village of Ourador, has died, his pastor said overnight.
"He is dead. He was 86 years old,'' said Heinz-Dieter Schmiedkte, the pastor at Gransee, near Berlin, where Barth lived.
"The burial will be in September and I have already declared myself ready to preside over it, as everyone has the right to a burial.''
Barth, a former SS lieutenant
Source: Nathanael D. Robinson at HNN blog, Cliopatria
Aug 14, 2007
Can we call it a trend now: German cities removing post-war construction to restore pre-war architecture? First, there was the recreation ofDresden’sFrauenkirche. Next, the demolition of the East
Source: AP
Aug 14, 2007
A man charged with dragging the Holocaust scholar Elie Wiesel from a hotel elevator in San Francisco apologized to him in court. The defendant, Eric Hunt, 22, has pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted kidnapping, false imprisonment, battery, stalking, elder abuse and hate crimes after the February incident. “Mr. Wiesel, I’m sorry for scaring you and I’m sorry you experienced the Holocaust,” Mr. Hunt said. “My grandfather fought the Nazis, and I’m sorry about what happened.”
Source: NYT
Aug 14, 2007
Joe O’Donnell, who took some of the first disturbing pictures after the nuclear bombing of Japan and also captured lastingly famous scenes as a longtime White House photographer, died last Thursday in Nashville, where he made his home. He was 85....
As a presidential photographer, Mr. O’Donnell caught images of Harry S. Truman and Gen. Douglas MacArthur shaking hands at their meeting on Wake Island during the Korean War; Vice President Richard M. Nixon in his “kitchen debate” with t
Source: International Herald Tribune
Aug 14, 2007
Quietly, with barely a whisper of protest, which is rare in this country, a great upheaval is under way inside Indian high school classrooms.
For perhaps the first time since India gained its independence 60 years ago Wednesday, politics is part of the teaching of political science, part of a broader revision of school curriculum with potentially long-lasting implications for how Indian children grasp the workings of their own democracy.
Shikha Chhabra, 16, offered an e
Source: http://www.hindustantimes.com
Aug 14, 2007
A project to preserve the broadest historical record of the independence struggle in India, Pakistan and other South Asian nations has been launched by America's Yale University.
The South Asian Independence Movement (SAIM) project launched on Tuesday to mark the 60th anniversary of the two South Asian neighbours' independence is seeking physical or digital artefacts and memorabilia associated with events or people involved in the freedom movement.
The New Haven, Connec
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE)
Aug 14, 2007
It appears that David M. Walker has been reading his Cullen Murphy. In a startlingly downbeat report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, Mr. Walker, the office's comptroller general, drew explicit parallels to the fall of the Roman Empire in excoriating the U.S. government for what he considers to be unsustainable policies.
“I’m trying to sound an alarm and issue a wake-up call,” Walker said in an interview with the Financial Times. “As comptroller general I’ve g
Source: National Security Archive
Aug 14, 2007
A collection of newly-declassified documents published today detail U.S. concern over Pakistan's relationship with the Taliban during the seven-year period leading up to 9-11. This new release comes just days after Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, acknowledged that, "There is no doubt Afghan militants are supported from Pakistan soil." While Musharraf admitted the Taliban were being sheltered in the lawless frontier border regions, the declassified U.S. documents released t
Source: LAT
Aug 14, 2007
The ancient Khmer city of Angkor in Cambodia was the largest preindustrial metropolis in the world, with a population near 1 million and an urban sprawl that stretched over an area similar to modern-day Los Angeles, researchers reported Monday.
The city's spread over an area of more than 115 square miles was made possible by a sophisticated technology for managing and harvesting water for use during the dry season -- including diverting a major river through the heart of the city.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 14, 2007
It was an iconic image that captured the wild excitement that greeted the end of the Second World War.
But the spontaneous moment of joy when a US sailor kissed a nurse in Time Square led to a bitter 60-year dispute over the identity of the amorous marine.
Over the years at least ten men have laid claim to be the one who planted the kiss on passing nurse Edith Shain on the VJ-day photo taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt on August 14, 1945 and made famous on the front cover of
