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: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Oct 18, 2005
A movie about Russia's war in Afghanistan, a topic that was taboo under the Soviet system, is breaking box office records in Russia. Fyodor Bondarchuk's Ninth Company took in more than $9 million US in its first six days, according to the Hollywood Report. It outperformed even Hollywood films in its first weekend, according to Slovo, its Moscow producer. The movie follows the adventures of six teenagers from Siberia who join the army and end up in Afghanistan from 1987 to the end of the war in 1
Source: BBC
Oct 18, 2005
The last Australian veteran to see active service in World War I has died, aged 106.
William Evan Allan joined the Royal Australian Navy in 1914, aged only 14.
He served on a cruiser, HMAS Encounter, until 1918, escorting troop convoys and tracking German warships. He remained in the navy for 34 years.
Source: BBC
Oct 18, 2005
Nearly 200 members of the Japanese parliament have visited a controversial war shrine, a day after Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi went there. The Yasukuni war shrine is seen by Japan's neighbours as a symbol of the country's World War II militarism.
The group, which includes leaders of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, visits the shrine regularly. A meeting between the Chinese and Japanese foreign ministers to discuss a possible summit is now in doub
Source: NYT
Oct 18, 2005
President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, Harriet E. Miers, pledged support in 1989 for a constitutional amendment that would ban abortions except when necessary to save the life of the woman. Ms. Miers expressed her support for such an amendment in an April 1989 survey sent out by Texans United for Life. The disclosure virtually guarantees that Ms. Miers will be questioned heavily on the subject of abortion rights during hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Source: AP
Oct 18, 2005
The FBI is investigating the theft of a ceremonial tomahawk believed to be the weapon used to kill Dr. Marcus Whitman, the 19th century missionary and one of the leaders of Northwest settlement. Whitman and his wife, Narcissa, were killed on Nov. 29, 1847, by Cayuse warriors who blamed the Whitmans for a deadly measles epidemic.
The tomahawk disappeared from a display case during visiting hours at the Whitman Mission National Historic Site in southeastern Washington. The thief used
Source: Detroit News
Oct 18, 2005
The most important strike in American labor history, historians agree, began at the end of 1936. The feisty young United Auto Workers launched the first of a series of sit-down strikes against General Motors at Fisher Body Plant No. 1 in Flint.
The feisty young United Auto Workers launched the first of a series of sit-down strikes against General Motors at Fisher Body Plant No. 1 in Flint. The goals were to earn recognition for the UAW as the bargaining agent for GM workers, and to
Source: MosNews
Oct 18, 2005
The head of the international foundation Democracy and architect of perestroika Alexander Yakovlev died on Tuesday in Moscow after a long illness. He was 81 years old. Yakovlev joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the 1940s. In 1987, he became a member of the Politburo (the party’s executive organ). He was among the reformers in the Soviet leadership and the ideologists behind perestroika, as well as being one of Mikhail Gorbachev’s senior advisors.After the con
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Oct 17, 2005
President of Saint Louis U. used material for his opening homily from one last year by president of U. of San Francisco.
Some students at St. Louis University want to know if the school policy on plagiarism applies to homilies given by the president, the Rev. Lawrence H. Biondi.
The student newspaper and The St. Louis Post-Dispatch have reported that Father Biondi took substantial portions of his homily last month to open the academic year from the homily given by the R
Source: NYT
Oct 17, 2005
In the prelude to the war and in the early days of the occupation, Mr. Bush and top members of his national security team compared the effort to remake Iraq to the American occupations of Japan and Germany. As the insurgency grew - a feature missing from those two successful occupations - they dropped that comparison. Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state under Colin L. Powell, argued in an interview recently published by an Australian magazine, The Diplomat, that it was a flawed way o
Source: BBC
Oct 17, 2005
One of the biggest names in computing, Bill Gates, is giving millions to preserve a history of the digital age.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged $15m (£8.54m) to the Computer History Museum in California.
The gift is museum's largest and will be used to create an interactive exhibit, tracing the computing revolution and its impact.The museum was established in 1996 and moved to its current site in Mountain View in California in 20
Source: NYT
Oct 17, 2005
rime Minister Junichiro Koizumi prayed at the Yasukuni Shrine on Monday morning, fulfilling a promise to make annual visits to a war memorial considered a symbol of unrepentant Japanese militarism in Asia.The visit was likely to further strain Japan's relations with China and South Korea, whose leaders have been demanding that Mr. Koizumi stop his visits. The Japanese prime minister argues they merely pay homage to this country's fallen soldiers.
As an indicati
Source: Japan Today
Oct 17, 2005
Taiwan's Foreign Ministry on Monday called on Japan to face up to history following Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visit to the war-linked Yasukuni Shrine despite fierce protests from neighboring countries.
"Taiwan and Japan have enjoyed amicable relations. We still hope that Japan can squarely face its World War II history and to look into the future with proactive thinking," ministry spokesman Michel Lu said.
Source: Balt Sun
Oct 17, 2005
Zanzibar historic site, Stone Town, where slaves were sold, is falling victim to neglect. "We are in a race against time," said Mwalim A. Mwalim, director of the government conservation authority. "Now it's almost too late." Of Stone Town's nearly 2,000 buildings, "the majority are in poor to ruinous condition." Five years ago, Stone Town received a boost when the United Nations awarded it World Heritage status, recognizing it as a historically
Source: Chosunilbo (Seoul)
Oct 17, 2005
Closely following an uproar over Prof. Kang Jeong-koo's inflammatory remarks calling the Korean War "North Korea's" war of unification, a fellow South Korean academic upped the ante with a column titled "Kim Il-sung, a Great Modern Leader." The incidents rekindled debate about the controversial National Security Law and sparked a political crisis when the justice minister ordered prosecutors not to detain Kang under the decades-old law, prompting the prosecutor general to res
Source: USA Today
Oct 17, 2005
Taking in the Melancholie exhibit opening Thursday at the Grand Palais in Paris — surrounded by hundreds of glum, gloomy and downright deranged figures depicted in works spanning the entire arc of Western art history — is not exactly an uplifting experience.
But it does offer an unprecedented window into the evolution of that special kind of moodiness which, over time, has been associated with Satanic forces, genius, creativity, insanity and — in the era of Freud — plain old depression.
Source: CNews (Canada)
Oct 17, 2005
Three days after the D-Day invasion in June 1944, the British army occupied a Normandy mansion called Chateau d'Audrieu and found a row of 13 Canadian soldiers lying dead along a fence. So began Canada's first war-crimes investigations. They became a drawn-out and unsatisfying process, which would determine that more than 150 Canadians were massacred in Normandy by members of the 12th SS Panzer Division, but which would bring only one man to trial.
Since then, Canada has had a spott
Source: Guardian (UK)
Oct 17, 2005
If you want a reference point for al-Qaida, suggests Faisal Devji, some other movement that channels the same impulses for similar reasons, look no further than environmentalism. Devji, a New York-based historian and author of the new book Landscapes of the Jihad, is unafraid of provocative statements about Islamist terrorism. Another is that al-Qaida and the other groups pursuing the global jihad provide a mirror image of industrial globalisation, so the atrocities they commit are, as one revie
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 17, 2005
An original typescript of the deciphered Zimmerman Telegram, one of the greatest coups mounted by Britain's intelligence services, has been discovered.The document is believed to be the actual telegram shown to the American ambassador in London in 1917 that proved Germany's hostility to the United States and guaranteed President Woodrow Wilson's entry into the First Word War. Historians say no single piece of paper did more to guarantee victory in the Great War for Britain and her allies.
Source: WP
Oct 17, 2005
Lonnie G. Bunch III is settled in an office at L'Enfant Plaza lined with first-edition history books, various hats that he doesn't wear, and special photographs of family, the famous and the unknown. On the job for just 10 weeks, the founding director of the National Museum of African American History and Culture loves looking into history through photographs. Among his personal keepsakes are a couple of tintypes and daguerreotypes from the 1840s and 1850s."Photographs
Source: Newsweek
Oct 17, 2005
After Sandra Day O'Connor resigned from the Supreme Court in July, the White House reached out to an informal network of conservative lawyers and academics to help build support for the next nominee. The group of about three dozen worked smoothly during the confirmation battle over John Roberts, plotting strategy in conference calls with administration officials and penning newspaper op-eds. But last week members of the "brain trust," as one called it, rebelled. In a string of sometime
