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
Nov 11, 2006
BUTLER, Ga. -- A display in a central Georgia community divides the names of 800 local veterans into two lists, marked in large type: "Whites" and "Colored."
The display has been in the lobby of the Taylor County courthouse since 1944, honoring servicemembers who fought in World War II. The two lists are mounted side by side behind glass in two large frames.
John Cole Vodicka, an activist from Americus, is organizing a rally Monday at the courthous
Source: Cleveland Plain Dealer
Nov 11, 2006
The "war to end all wars" didn't.
But the people who lived through World War I, and gave it that designation, perhaps figured that any conflict that killed 15 million soldiers and civilians would leave a lasting impression.
They also created an annual reminder of that war in Armistice Day - marking the truce that ended four years of battle on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918.
Then came World War II and the realization
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Nov 11, 2006
A famed and well-loved literary figure strolls streets and alleys of North Beach in San Francisco. Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 87, has pale blue eyes accented by a fringe of white hair. His tall, slender form is held erect with gentle, patrician dignity. If you didn't know this Beat poet and City Lights bookstore co-founder was a big star of the counterculture, you might think he has a military bearing.
Actually, he does. The crusading publisher of fiery cultural broadsides like Allen G
Source: LAT
Nov 11, 2006
Maurice Floquet, 111, who had been France's oldest living World War I veteran, died Friday at his home in Montauroux in southern France, an association of veterans said.
With Floquet's death, only four French veterans of the Great War are still alive.
Born Dec. 25, 1894, Floquet joined the infantry in September 1914. He fought in France and Belgium and was seriously wounded twice. The first time, in the battle of the Somme in northern France, he was injured during han
Source: Reuters
Nov 11, 2006
It is 4.30 in the afternoon and the trees are"talking"
on a street corner in Hanoi's old quarter.
No one on the crowded pavement appears to be listening to the scratchy,
nasal sounds that are actually coming from loudspeakers, obscured by
trees, which are used for neighborhood announcements in Communist-run
Vietnam.
The loudspeakers are a throwback to the 1960s and 1970s war years when
they delivered news from the front and warned people to take shelter from
American aircraft b
Source: NYT
Nov 11, 2006
For most of the world, the cold war ended when the Berlin Wall came down. Not so in the Caribbean basin.
Here the stubbornness of old cold warriors in Washington and the equal tenacity of leftist governments in Cuba and Venezuela have kept a miniature cold war going. Just as it was 20 years ago, Nicaragua now finds itself smack in the middle of the conflict with the election this week of Daniel Ortega, the former Marxist rebel leader, as president.
Mr. Ortega faces a ba
Source: Dan barry in the NYT
Nov 11, 2006
Once there were elevators gliding up the sides of the towers to reveal a city unfolding; now they are rusted in mid-rise. Once there were stairwells winding within those towers; now they are rotted through. The call for a better tomorrow, for “Peace Through Understanding,” is answered by the flutter and coo of its hidden inhabitants.
Seeing again the New York State Pavilion, the massive space-age remnant of the 1964 World’s Fair that looms just beyond the Grand Central Parkway, seei
Source: AP
Nov 11, 2006
The National Gallery is buying one of the 19th century's best-known American paintings, ''The Gross Clinic'' by Thomas Eakins, for a record $68 million.
The sale price sets a record for a pre-World War II work of art created in the United States, The New York Times reported.
The Smithsonian's National Gallery of Art will share the work with Alice Walton, daughter of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, The Washington Post reported. Alice Walton founded the Crystal Bridges Museu
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 11, 2006
A notebook kept by Sir Winston Churchill's nurse has revealed a regimented routine in his final years which included her looking after his pet budgerigar.
Muriel Thomson looked after Sir Winston as he neared death and, in addition to making sure he had his cigars and whisky to hand, was expected to put the bird 'to bed'.
The former prime minister was an animal lover and it seems that, towards the end of his life, his budgie was seldom far from his side, even accompanyin
Source: AP
Nov 10, 2006
In 1942, the Gestapo circulated posters offering a reward for
the capture of"the woman with a limp. She is the most dangerous
of all Allied spies and we must find and destroy her."
The dangerous woman was Virginia Hall, a Baltimore native working in
France for British intelligence, and the limp was the result of an
artificial leg. Her left leg had been amputated below the knee about a
decade earlier after she stumbled and blasted her foot with a shotgun
while hunting in Turkey.
The
Source: Times Online (UK)
Nov 10, 2006
A DEEPLY moving last letter written by a British soldier executed by the Germans in 1916 has been discovered in an attic in Hastings. It casts fresh light on one of the most tragic episodes of the First World War.
Private David Martin, from Belfast, was one of a handful of soldiers left behind during the British retreat in 1914, and then trapped behind the lines in German-occupied France.
For 18 months, Martin and three other British soldiers were hidden by French pea
Source: BBC
Nov 10, 2006
A retired Swedish gym teacher is the toast of Greece after returning a piece of sculpted marble taken from the Acropolis more than a century ago.
Birgit Wiger-Angner's family held the marble for 110 years, but she decided to return it to Athens after hearing about Greece's Elgin marbles campaign.
The small fragment comes from the Acropolis's Erechtheion temple.
The move has boosted the international campaign to persuade the British Museum to return the E
Source: Independent (UK)
Nov 10, 2006
To casual observers, Timbuktu is a bit like Glastonbury without the mud: an ancient town, renowned for its remoteness, spiritual history, and world-famous music festival.
In future, they could have even more in common. Yesterday, the Somerset market town emerged as a leading contender in the competition to provide Timbuktu with a British twin.
The Cultural Mission of Timbuktu announced that Glastonbury was one of three finalists shortlisted from more than fifty UK town
Source: AP
Nov 10, 2006
Gerald R. Ford is closing in on a record held by Ronald Reagan -- living longer than any other U.S. president. Ford, who turned 93 on July 14, will become the oldest president Sunday by living to 93 years and 121 days.
"The length of one's days matters less than the love of one's family and friends," Ford said in a statement this week from the Rancho Mirage compound he shares with former first lady Betty Ford, 88.
Ford was president from Aug. 9, 1974, when R
Source: AP
Nov 10, 2006
Forensic experts said Friday they found a new mass grave in northeastern Bosnia believed to contain the remains of more than 100 victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre where Serb forces buried some of the almost 8,000 victims.
The grave in Snagovo village, about 30 miles north of Srebrenica, was found after experts received a tip-off from an undisclosed source, said Murat Hurtic, head of Bosnia's Missing Persons Commission.
It is the seventh mass grave Hurtic's team
Source: SOPnewswire
Nov 10, 2006
Engineers are striving to restore full communications with NASA's Mars Global Surveyor on the 10th anniversary of the spacecraft's Nov. 7, 1996, launch.
The orbiter is the oldest of five NASA spacecraft currently active at the red planet. Its original mission was to examine Mars for a full Martian year, roughly two Earth years. Once that period elapsed, considering the string of discoveries, NASA extended the mission repeatedly, most recently on Oct. 1 of this year.
T
Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch
Nov 10, 2006
The new National Museum of the Marine Corps solves a national problem, President Bush told an audience of 15,000 invited guests at Quantico yesterday.
"For too long, the only people who have the direct experience of the Marine Corps are the Marines themselves and the enemy who's made the mistake of taking them on," he said to applause.
Bush noted the $90 million museum off Interstate 95 guides visitors through interactive exhibits and galleries, including one
Source: Reuters
Nov 10, 2006
Looking to the future after their "seismic" loss of power in the U.S. Congress, some Republicans are turning to the past and the glory days of Ronald Reagan's presidency for inspiration.
"We are in the wilderness because we walked away from the limited government principles that minted the Republican Congress," Rep. Mike Pence wrote to colleagues after Democrats seized control of the House of Representatives and the Senate in this week's elections.
T
Source: Times Online (UK)
Nov 10, 2006
ON CHRISTMAS DAY 1914, from a trench in northern France, a British soldier who signed himself “Boy” wrote a letter to his mother: “My Dear Mater, This will be the most memorable Christmas I’ve ever spent . . . just before dinner I had the pleasure of shaking hands with several Germans . . . It all seems so strange.” Boy was merely doing what so many soldiers of the Great War did as a matter of routine: putting his thoughts and observations into words, and committing them to paper. He knew he was
Source: Reuters
Nov 10, 2006
Researchers in Timbuktu are fighting to preserve tens of thousands of ancient texts which they say prove Africa had a written history at least as old as the European Renaissance. Private and public libraries in the fabled Saharan town in Mali have already collected 150,000 brittle manuscripts, some of them from the 13th century, and local historians believe many more lie buried under the sand. The texts were stashed under mud homes and in desert caves by proud Malian families whose s
