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: San Francisco Examiner
Nov 6, 2006
The latest piece of public art on San Francisco Port land will likely stand 7 feet high and span 30 feet, honoring the Bay Area Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.
The San Francisco Port Commission is expected to vote Nov. 14 on whether to allow the artwork’s installation near the east wall of the Vaillancourt Fountain at Justin Herman Plaza. It would be only the third monument to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the United States.
The Abraham Lincoln Brigade was par
Source: AP
Nov 6, 2006
MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) - Daniel Ortega appeared headed back to the presidency 16 years after a U.S.-backed rebellion helped oust the former Marxist revolutionary, as partial results and the country's top electoral watchdog indicated he had easily defeated four opponents.
The Sandinista leader's victory in Sunday's election, if confirmed by final results, would expand the club of leftist Latin rulers led by Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, who has tried to help his Nicaraguan ally by shippi
Source: WaPo
Nov 6, 2006
In June 1604, fur traders led by Samuel de Champlain and Pierre Dugua found a site they thought would be ideal for the first settlement in New France. The tiny island in the middle of the St. Croix River, now part of Maine's Acadia National Park, had high bluffs and a clear view downriver to watch for their English rivals.
But winter that year came early and hard, and St. Croix Island proved to be a prison. The men were stuck, trapped by dangerous ice floes moving on the tremendous
Source: http://www.jp.dk/english
Nov 6, 2006
Archaeologists from Vejle Museum think they may have found a third 'Jellinge stone' - a large rock with carved runes and considered the first examples of written language in Denmark.
The researchers have found seven stones in all, which they believe date from the 10th century. Jellinge stones tell of the founding of Denmark and of Christianity's arrival in the country.
Even if the stones do not yield a true Jellinge stone, the find is still significant.
Source: Times Online (UK)
Nov 6, 2006
AT THE height of the Indian Mutiny in 1857, Brigadier General John Nicholson stormed into the officers’ mess several hours late for dinner.
“I am sorry, gentlemen,” he said. “I have been hanging your cooks.” The entrance was typical of the Irishman who crushed the Mutiny, earning a reputation as one of the most brilliant but brutal figures of the British Raj.
Hailed at the time as the “Hero of Delhi”, he was more recently described as an “imperial psychopath” by the a
Source: NYT
Nov 6, 2006
amuel H. Bowers Jr., the imperial wizard of a Ku Klux Klan faction who was found guilty in 1998 in the firebombing murder of a Mississippi shopkeeper 32 years earlier, died yesterday in a prison hospital in Parchman, Miss.
He was 82. The cause was a heart attack, according to Tara Booth, the spokeswoman for the Mississippi Department of Corrections.
Mr. Bowers had been ill and in the Mississippi State Penitentiary Hospital in Parchman, in the Mississippi Delta, for some
Source: Reuters
Nov 6, 2006
Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's art foundation has temporarily been stopped by a U.S. judge from selling a Picasso painting worth up to $60 million after a German man claimed he owned the piece.
The painting from Picasso's Blue Period, "Portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto," is due to be sold at Christie's in New York on Wednesday and the auction house has valued the piece at between $40 million and $60 million.
But Julius Schoeps has sued Lloyd Webber's foundat
Source: Reuters
Nov 6, 2006
A bill for Monsieur Lawrence sits in a display cabinet at Aleppo's Hotel Baron, where the guest list reads like a Who's Who of the 20th century. The 1914 bill belonged to Lawrence of Arabia and despite the rumors, the enigmatic British intelligence officer did pay it, hotel owner Armen Mazloumian insists. "I don't know where the story that he didn't came from. One journalist must have written this and others copied without bothering to check," the Armenian manager said over a beer
Source: Chicago Sun-Times
Nov 6, 2006
A paper trail documents their lives as human property, from their passage across the Atlantic to their sale as slaves for sugar plantations. Now a newly discovered burial ground promises to shed light on the lives and deaths of Africans in the Caribbean.Researchers from Denmark and the U.S. Virgin Islands want to unearth up to 50 skeletons next year, hoping to learn about their diet, illnesses and causes of death.
Descendants of slaves could discover ancestors t
Source: CanWest News Service
Nov 6, 2006
The Canadian government had detailed lists of political activists and subversives it planned to arrest in the aftermath of a nuclear war or other national emergency, keeping such plans on the books until at least the early 1980s, according to new records obtained by an Ottawa historian.Anywhere from 700 to 2,500 people, including babies, would have been held in internment camps before being shipped off to more permanent detention facilities.
Cold War historian J
Source: Newsweek
Nov 6, 2006
his week, the 200-year-old neoclassical Baltimore Basilica will reopen its weighty oak doors after a two-year, $32 million face-lift. The restoration of America's first Roman Catholic cathedral is a triumph for preservationists, both for its history and design: it's considered the masterpiece of architect Benjamin Latrobe, best known for his work on the U.S. Capitol. After a dingy decline, the Basilica's lofty interior has been refashioned according to Latrobe's elegantly simple intentions, espe
Source: Boston Globe
Nov 5, 2006
The war in Iraq is as unpopular today as the Vietnam War was at its height -- yet there are no mass demonstrations on America's streets. Can an antiwar movement confined largely to the Internet and the voting booth change the course of a war?ON MARCH 22, 2003, two days after the start of the bombing campaign that began the US-led invasion of Iraq, more than 100,000 people took to the streets of New York City in protest. At a rally there the month before, organize
Source: AP
Nov 5, 2006
CHARLOTTE AMALIE, U.S. Virgin Islands -- A paper trail documents their lives as human property, from their passage across the Atlantic to their sale as slaves for sugar plantations. Now a newly discovered burial ground promises to shed extensive new light on the lives and deaths of Africans in the Caribbean.
Researchers from Denmark and the U.S. Virgin Islands want to unearth up to 50 skeletons next year, hoping to learn about their diet, illnesses and causes of death, and thus bro
Source: AP
Nov 5, 2006
On a hot August afternoon in 1963, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech to a mostly black audience from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
On Nov. 13, a half-mile from Lincoln's iconic statue, a diverse group of celebrities, corporate leaders and ordinary Americans will help turn the first shovels of dirt for a memorial honoring the civil rights leader who was slain 38 years ago. It will be the first monument to an African American on the Nati
Source: AP
Nov 5, 2006
It was mere days after he had grabbed power when Saddam Hussein summoned 400 top Iraqi officials, announcing he had uncovered a plot against the ruling party. The conspirators, he said, were in that very room.
As the 42-year-old coolly puffed on a cigar, the plotters' names were read out. As each was called, secret police led them away, executing 22. To make sure his countrymen got the message, Saddam videotaped the whole thing and sent copies around the country.
The pl
Source: NYT
Nov 5, 2006
“We are losing our culture,” said Devere Dressler, 55, a fifth-generation rancher whose family has sold off all but 150 acres here in the Carson Valley in northern Nevada, home to some of the state’s oldest ranches and some of the newest mansions.
Once, the Dresslers owned 20,000 acres, but economic realities clashed with romantic ideals, and family members have sold most of the land, including large chunks for a housing development called, with a bit of paradox, Gardnerville Rancho
Source: LAT
Nov 5, 2006
One of the most arresting images from the last days of the Vietnam War shows an unruly crowd rushing the door of a plane in Nha Trang, a rural seaside city north of Saigon. The focal point of the photograph is a balding, middle-aged American who is landing a jab to the head of a Vietnamese man desperate to board.
The American is all grim determination; his jaw is clenched as he lunges right, extending his arm like a ramrod into the face of the intruder. Resolute in the crush of bodi
Source: Observer
Nov 5, 2006
Ireland has the highest proportion of private homeowners in the world. However, the Irish are 21st-century serfs because they do not really own the land on which their houses are built.
A new book on who owns the land of this planet has found that it is the state rather than private Irish individuals which has ultimate control over the ground where homes stand.
Who Owns the World [subtitled The Hidden Facts behind Landownership; published November 2 by Mainstream] is t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 5, 2006
The small case lay sealed in an attic for decades. Faded with age, its rusting hinges took some gentle prising before they snapped open and a war-stained envelope marked "Killed in action" spilled out from piles of letters from the trenches.
Ninety years on, as Remembrance Day approaches, those letters paint a vivid picture of the First World War seen through the eyes of one ordinary family who made an extraordinary sacrifice.
Handed down through three generat
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 5, 2006
Special offer: bijou apartments, unique location in Red Army military installation in central Moscow, a stone's throw from the Kremlin and St Basil's Cathedral. Quiet neighbours, including one long-dead Soviet leader.
Part of Red Square, the iconic symbol of the former Soviet Union and home to the mausoleum housing its first leader, is to become a playground for the fabulously rich.
One of the ornate, pre-revolution buildings overlooking the historic square is being transform
