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: LAT
Sep 25, 2005
NO MATTER WHAT ALL the politicians and activists want, African Americans and impoverished white Cajuns will not be first in line to rebuild the Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast and New Orleans. Latino immigrants, many of them undocumented, will. And when they're done, they're going to stay, making New Orleans look like Los Angeles. It's the federal government that will have made the transformation possible, further exposing the hollowness of the immigration debate.President
Source: NYT
Sep 25, 2005
In fall 2001, not long after hundreds of makeshift hospital beds had been set up at Chelsea Piers to receive injured survivors from the World Trade Center - beds that were never used - Tom A. Bernstein, president of Chelsea Piers, envisioned reclaiming ground zero with the power of an idea.
The idea was freedom, embodied in an institution that would transmit its value to future generations. To build it, Mr. Bernstein said in 2004 he expected "years of intense labor, contentious
Source: David McNeill, Tokyo-based journalist,, writing for Japan Focus
Sep 24, 2005
Nagase Takashi tortured British POWs during the building of the Thai-Burma railway. He has spent his life since trying to make amends and wants the railway declared a UN World Heritage Site before he dies. Nagase Takashi still breaks down when he remembers the young British man he helped torture. “I couldn’t bear his pain,” he says, choking back tears. “He was crying Mother! Mother! And I thought: what she would feel if she could see her son like this. I still dream ab
Source: NYT
Sep 24, 2005
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and now, it appears, Hurricane Rita, New Orleans is about to face many of the same problems that plagued Galveston after its natural disaster. Swatches of the city now lie in a toxic stew; they won't be habitable again for years - if ever. Businesses are shuttered. Thousands of people who have fled aren't coming back. In Baton Rouge, companies and refugees who had been in New Orleans a month ago are buying office space and housing stock, relocating on the f
Source: Guardian
Sep 24, 2005
Pope Benedict XVI was elected with 84 votes and Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina was second with 26 after four rounds of voting during April's conclave, according to a cardinal's unauthorized diary that was published Friday.
The anonymous diary appeared in the respected Italian political magazine Limes. The magazine said it obtained the diary from a ``trustworthy'' source it had known for years. In the first round of voting, Benedict, the
Source: Guardian
Sep 24, 2005
A concentration camp survivor who joined the U.S. Army out of gratitude, fought in Korea and spent 2 years in a Chinese prisoner of war camp was awarded a Medal of Honor on Friday, 55 years after his heroism.
President Bush gave the nation's highest military honor to Hungarian-born Tibor Rubin, 76, in the White House East Room. The medal recognizes him for overcoming dangers as an infantryman, trying to save fellow soldiers in battle and as a prisoner of war, even as he faced preju
Source: NYT
Sep 24, 2005
A federal judge refused to issue an arrest warrant against former President Luis Echeverría in connection with a massacre of student protesters in 1968. On Monday, a prosecutor filed charges of genocide against Mr. Echeverría for the massacre, in which soldiers fired on student protesters, killing dozens, but the judge said there was insufficient evidence for the charge.
Source: NYT
Sep 24, 2005
After a Turkish court's decision to cancel an academic conference on the killing of hundreds of thousands of Armenians during World War I, the conference's organizers said Friday that the event would go ahead at a new location on Saturday. The organizers were encouraged by a wave of support from the European Union and senior Turkish government officials. A court on Thursday blocked Bogazici University in Istanbul from holding the event, a debate and symposium on the killing
Source: BBC
Sep 23, 2005
Scientists are to present new evidence that the tiny human species dubbed "The Hobbit" may not be what it seems. The researchers say their findings strongly support an idea that the 1m- (3ft-) tall female skeleton from Indonesia is a diseased modern human. The Hobbit's discoverers are adamant it is an entirely separate human species, which evolved a small size in isolation on its remote island home of Flores.
The bones were unearthed during
Source: American Historical Association's Perspectives
Sep 23, 2005
The AHA reports: The doors to graduate study in elite private universities are largely closed to students who received their degrees in public colleges and universities outside of a few with top-tier PhD programs. Receiving an undergraduate degree from an elite school appears to be an important marker of future success in the academic job market.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
Sep 23, 2005
Kate Brown, an assistant professor of history at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County, tells in the Chronicle of Higher Education how she came to visit Chernobyl in June 2004 after reading a blog that turned out to provide a bogus account of life there now. Brown writes: "I had come to the Zone because I had seen a Web site (http://www.kiddofspeed.com/chapter1.html) by a certain elusive "Elena." E
Source: Reuters
Sep 23, 2005
Slovenia said on Friday it would formally ask Italy to return 94 artworks seized before World War II from churches, monasteries and museums in a Slovenian region then ruled by Italy.
"The Slovenian government has decided that it will send to the Italian side a request for the return of all artworks that were taken from the (Slovenian part of) Istria," the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. "The artworks taken from Istria are very val
Source: US Newswire
Sep 23, 2005
A book about America's failure to rescue Jews from the Holocaust helped convince then-Vice President George H. W. Bush to order the U.S. airlift of 900 Ethiopian Jewish refugees to Israel in 1985, a U.S. ambassador has revealed.
John R. Miller, a former Congressman (R-Wash.), who is now the U.S. ambassador for combating human trafficking, revealed the episode for the first time in public, in a statement presented to more than 200 participants in a conference at the Fordham Universit
Source: Newsletter of the National Coalition for History
Sep 23, 2005
Reports to the NCH office suggest that Mississippi appears to be somewhat ahead of Louisiana in access to and recovery of records largely because of the type of damage that occurred. Collections are being evacuated from coastal locations and architects and engineers have been assessing damage to Jefferson Davis’s home, Beauvoir; the good news is that the house appears restorable. There still remain some serious questions about the status of public records in Hancock and Jefferson counties.
Source: Slate
Sep 23, 2005
No Direction Home, Martin Scorsese's documentary about Bob Dylan's early years, is but the latest item in a flood tide of Dylanalia that, in trying to pay due homage to America's most important rock artist, constricts his four-decade career to its first six years.
Something is happening here. To be sure, few Dylanologists would deny that, except for Blood on the Tracks (1975), Dylan created his very best music between 1965 (the year of Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisi
Source: KTHV Littlerock
Sep 23, 2005
Dr. Isaac Cline knew it wasn’t just any storm as he galloped around Galveston on horseback warning people to get out.The U.S. Weather Bureau forecaster had known a bad squall was coming. But it wasn’t until he saw the dropping mercury in his barometer that he realized a monster hurricane was about to hit. His efforts to save lives couldn’t compare to Mother Nature.
On Sept. 8, 1900, 6,000 to 12,000 people died as the Category 4 storm ripped through the affluent port city on the Gulf
Source: Xinhua (China)
Sep 23, 2005
European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union (EU), on Friday slammed a decision by Turkish judges to ban an academic conference on the Armenian genocide.
"We strongly deplore this decision to stop the Turkish people from discussing their history," said a Commission spokeswoman. A ruling by a Turkish court banning a meeting planned for Saturday on the massacre of Armenians in World War One is the second attempt to ban the conference. The
Source: LA Times
Sep 23, 2005
A court Thursday ordered the cancellation of a conference where Turkish academics were expected to challenge the official version of the events surrounding the mass deaths among this nation's Armenians during and after World War I.A court Thursday ordered the cancellation of a conference where Turkish academics were expected to challenge the official version of the events surrounding the mass deaths among this nation's Armenians during and after World War I.
The
Source: National Geographic
Sep 22, 2005
Fueled by the warm late-summer waters of the Gulf of Mexico, Hurricane Rita exploded overnight into the third-most powerful hurricane on record for the Atlantic Basin.
Since the invention of the barometer in the 17th century, a hurricane's lowest barometric pressure reading has become a standardized way for meteorologists to measure a storm's intensity. As of 5 a.m. today the hurricane's strongest winds were blowing at 175 miles an hour (280 kilometers an hour) and the barometric p
Source: Independent (UK)
Sep 22, 2005
Simon Wiesenthal died this week, peacefully in his sleep, at the age of 96. Wiesenthal was one of that generation of European Jewry decimated by the "final solution" of Adolf Hitler in which 11 million people were exterminated, six million of them Jews. And if the horror of such genocide is blunted rather than sharpened by such huge numbers, consider this: Simon Wiesenthal lost 89 members of his family in the Holocaust. Among them were his mother, whom the young architect had watched b
