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: Bloomberg News
Nov 13, 2006
Andy Warhol's Jackies, Maos, Marilyns and flowers may be the stars of the New York contemporary-art auctions that start tomorrow and could total $500 million. Collectors said the pop artist's icons have become a refuge from uncertainty as prices rise.
``Warhol is like Microsoft,'' said New York private dealer Alberto Mugrabi, who aims to augment his Warhol holdings this week. ``He is an artist who has overachieved, and he is not going to go away if the market goes up and down.'' M
Source: Reuters
Nov 13, 2006
AIZAWL, India (Reuters) - Dalia Doliani Sela sits in her simple house poring over the Bible and learning Hebrew, dreaming of a life of piety and a family reunion with her children in the Promised Land.
Sela is an Indian by birth, part of a community in the country's remote northeast who says they are one of the "lost tribes of Israel", exiled from their homeland 2,700 years ago.
"I want to be there when my last days come. Because Israel is the land of Sa
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 13, 2006
Britain has issued a formal complaint after Israeli forces caused significant damage to the Commonwealth war cemetery in Gaza City, the last resting place for thousands of troops who died fighting the Ottomans in 1917.
The cemetery is the resting place for 3,686 Commonwealth servicemen, mostly British infantrymen
The British embassy in Tel Aviv wrote to the Israeli government four months ago after six headstones and a perimeter wall were destroyed by an Israeli army bu
Source: Guardian
Nov 13, 2006
In the classrooms of the Murambi school are the horrifying reminders of one of the worst acts of genocide in modern times. It was here in 1994, on a hilltop in southern Rwanda, that 50,000 Tutsis took refuge for two weeks without food and water before being massacred by Hutu militias who used guns, grenades and machetes to carry out the slaughter.
At the request of the survivors and the families of the dead, the bodies of thousands of the victims have been preserved in lime and pla
Source: CBS News
Nov 13, 2006
Lt. Col. Herbert Carter has a lot of memories about two of this country's hardest-fought battles — one against Adolf Hitler, the other against Jim Crow.
Carter made history in World War II as one of the first African-American fighter pilots, CBS News correspondent Richard Schlesinger reports. At age 22 he was an original member of the all-black Tuskegee Airmen, who had to fight for the right to fight for their country.
"We were told that we were lackadaisical. Th
Source: NYT
Nov 13, 2006
CROSSING the Rappahannock is considerably easier for Jim Campi than it was for Ambrose Burnside.
Burnside, the ill-fated Union Army commander in the winter of 1862, endured mud, cold, communications breakdowns and unreliable supply lines — not to mention hostile fire — during his attempt to ford this Northern Virginia river.
Despite the cool drizzly weather of October 2006, Mr. Campi, the policy and communications director for the Civil War Preservation Trust, has no su
Source: Reuters
Nov 13, 2006
U.S. civil rights leaders on Monday dug gold-tipped shovels into a trough of dirt to break ground for the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, the first monument to an African-American on the National Mall.
``As we turn these shovels we are just beginning to turn the dirt, and as we turn this dirt at this ground, let us go back to our communities and turn the dirt there,'' said former King aide Andrew Young, admonishing attendees to continue the slain leader's work against racism, pover
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
Nov 13, 2006
As Director of Central Intelligence from 1991-1993, Robert M. Gates,
the nominee to be the next Secretary of Defense, grappled with
questions of government secrecy more than almost any other agency
head and helped to inaugurate a decade of increasing openness in
intelligence and elsewhere.Though he said the term "CIA openness" was "an oxymoron," Mr. Gates
also expressed the view that the interests of the CIA would best be
served by eliminating unne
Source: AP
Nov 12, 2006
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Nov. 11 -- An absentee ballot was mailed with what may have been a valuable, extremely rare stamp, but the envelope is now in a box that by law cannot be opened before September 2008.
While reviewing absentee ballots Tuesday night, Broward County Commissioner John Rodstrom noticed what looked like a small stamp collection on one envelope. There was no name on the envelope, so the vote contained inside did not count.
At least one of the stamps was from 1
Source: AP
Nov 12, 2006
The message was simple: Write a letter to someone lost in the Korean War. Within a day, responses started pouring in for the latest effort by brothers Hal and Ted Barker to remember the war their father didn't like to discuss. In the three weeks since their plea went out, more than 500 letters and e-mails have arrived -- from daughters who lost their fathers to veterans who lost friends to schoolchildren thanking those who died for their freedom.
"It's been a catharsis for a l
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 12, 2006
The German government has called a crisis meeting about how it deals with art sold by or confiscated from Jews under the Nazis after controversy over paintings restored to their original families only to be auctioned for vast sums abroad.
Angela Merkel, the chancellor, has summoned culture ministers and museum directors from Germany's 16 federal states next week to discuss an overhaul of the "restitution" law, which critics say is stripping the country's museums of importa
Source: WaPo
Nov 12, 2006
It was getting toward dusk, the sun headed down on yet another day in the very long life of Frank Woodruff Buckles.
He had come to see the grave of Gen. John J. Pershing, on a hill in Arlington National Cemetery. Buckles once shook the great soldier's hand, chatted with him in Oklahoma City, 1920, after the war. Now he sat in a wheelchair on a small stage near the headstone and waited for the ceremony to begin: Veterans Day again.
He's a few months shy of 106, the young
Source: Independent (UK)
Nov 12, 2006
The Republican performance in this week's midterm elections has led many commentators to describe Bush as the most disastrous leader in US history. But what about the competition? We asked the experts to cast their votes:
George W Bush: chosen by Owen Dudley Edwards
The question "who is the worst US president" is something I have thought long and hard about and the answer is very simple: it is the incumbent president. I had previously thought that Nixon was th
Source: WaPo
Nov 12, 2006
When she wasn't racing to school at St. Leo's in her blue uniform or buying sweets in Mugavero's Confectionery or playing on front stoops up and down the block, Little Nancy sometimes worked the front desk at the family home at 245 Albemarle St., taking down the requests and sad stories of the folks who arrived to seek help from Big Tommy, her dad.
Or maybe she was riding around with her dad and his bullhorn, as he touted his candidacy from a convertible.
The late Thoma
Source: NYT
Nov 12, 2006
THE road map today is mostly virtual — an electronic image on a screen, at home or in the car, provided by Mapquest or a built-in satellite navigation system. Setting out on a long journey, I half expect to see the marker pins of a Google map rearing above the highway like giant hat pins, shadowing the pavement ahead.
Perhaps it is the contrast with digital maps that makes old-fashioned paper road maps seem rich and wonderful again. Those colorful guides once found in every glove co
Source: McClatchy Papers
Nov 11, 2006
KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- As he descends more than 25 feet below the earth’s surface, Gary Pipes steps into a forgotten world.
Remnants of the Cold War era abound, conjuring up a time of nuclear armament, international unrest and frosty relations with the then Soviet Union.
That’s not what Pipes thinks about as he strolls through this missile silo near Pleasant Hill, Mo., however.
He sees a chance to make a few bucks. He’s not exactly sure how that will happe
Source: BBC
Nov 11, 2006
The grave of Russian literary giant Boris Pasternak, author of Dr Zhivago, has been desecrated by vandals.
Wreaths taken from around the cemetery were set alight on top of the writer's gravestone, Russian TV reported.
Pasternak's daughter-in-law, Natalya, said she feared the monument, which features a sculpture of the writer, could be lost forever.
Source: BBC
Nov 11, 2006
Vandals have daubed Nazi swastikas on a war memorial in West Sussex.
Police officers also found anti-Semitic graffiti painted on one home and a shop close to the memorial in Chapel Road, Worthing, on Saturday morning.
A spokesman for Sussex Police said: "This is offensive and racist graffiti. It's fairly large-scale."
The Royal British Legion said it was "dismayed and upset" by the graffiti, which was removed prior to the main service
Source: Times Online (UK)
Nov 11, 2006
EACTLY 88 YEARS ago today, the victorious allied powers were faced with a quandary that has stark parallels with today. Should they put Wilhelm II of Germany on trial or let him rot in Holland? For at the 11th hour on November 11, 1918, as the guns fell silent and the mourners stood still, the former Kaiser was on the move, the imperial train rumbling on between Venlo and Nijmegen, conveying him into Dutch country-house exile.
There was, just as there was with Saddam Hussein, a com
Source: AP
Nov 11, 2006
The remains of a missing Air Force officer whose plane was shot down over North Vietnam in 1965 have been identified, the Pentagon announced.
Col. Charles J. Scharf, of San Diego, was flying his F-4C Phantom after a pair of bombing missions when he was shot by enemy fire.
The Pentagon said Thursday that his remains had been identified after specialists matched the DNA from gummed adhesive on envelopes of letters Scharf sent his wife Patricia to a bone fragment found n
