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: Times (UK)
Sep 19, 2005
By far the most important of the KGB's contacts in South America was Salvador Allende Gossens (codenamed Leader by the KGB), whose election as President of Chile in 1970 was hailed as “a revolutionary blow to the imperialist system in Latin America”.
Allende was the first Marxist anywhere in the world to win power through the ballot box. He was unlike any stereotype of a Marxist leader. During his visits to Havana in the 1960s, he had been privately mocked by Castro's entourage for
Source: NYT
Sep 19, 2005
So went the opening day of jury selection in the criminal corruption trial of George Ryan, the former governor of Illinois who became an international star for his challenge of capital punishment even as scandal eroded his popularity at home to cause him to leave office after a single term.
Mr. Ryan, 71, faces 22 counts of racketeering, mail and tax fraud and lying to federal agents. The charges could add up to 95 years in prison for a man whose legacy as he left office in 2003 was
Source: NYT
Sep 19, 2005
An American student in Saudi Arabia who is charged with plotting to assassinate President Bush told Saudi interrogators that "I came up with the idea on my own" because he wanted to be "the brain, the planner" for a terrorist operation, American prosecutors said in a court filing made public on Monday.
The Justice Department said the student, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, 24, "represents one of the most dangerous terrorist threats that America faces in the perilous wo
Source: AP
Sep 19, 2005
Swiss authorities brought a third charge against a Turkish politician for allegedly breaking Switzerland's racial discrimination laws by denying that the killings of Armenians around the time of World War I was a genocide, police said Monday.
Dogu Perincek, the leader of the Turkey's Workers' Party, made the remarks Sunday in a speech in central Switzerland, Bern cantonal (state) police said in a statement. He already had been charged twice by Swiss authorities for two previous, sim
Source: Inside Costa Rica
Sep 19, 2005
Nineteen years after the Cuban missile crisis nearly sparked a nuclear war, Fidel Castro asked the Soviet Union to redeploy atomic weapons to his island, says a new book based on reports by Moscow's KGB intelligence agency.
The book, based on documents revealed by KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin when he defected in 1992, makes other bombshell allegations as it tracks KGB operations around the Third World in the 1960s and '70s: - The KGB documents record actual an
Source: WP
Sep 19, 2005
Concerns about general education have been part of the continuing debate over No Child Left Behind. The time devoted to reading and math has increased. And in many places, the increase has brought results. Between 2002 and 2004, Keister Elementary's passing rate went from 81 to 92 percent on the state English test and from 86 to 90 percent on the math test. But critics of the federal law say children need a more complete education.The Washington-based Center on Education Pol
Source: Time Magazine
Sep 19, 2005
Five men met in an automobile in a Baghdad park a few weeks after the fall of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime in April 2003, according to U.S.
intelligence sources. One of the five was Saddam. The other four were among his closest advisers. The agenda: how to fight back against the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. A representative of Saddam's former No. 2, Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, was there. But the most intriguing man in the car may have been a retired general named Muhammad Yunis al-Ahmed, who had
Source: NOLA.com
Sep 19, 2005
When Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans, a group of highly trained professionals knew exactly what to do: Find and preserve Louis Armstrong's trumpet, John James Audubon's bird prints, a drum from the Battle of New Orleans and city records dating back to 1769. To a large extent, they succeeded. These and other irreplaceable ingredients of the city's history, along with Napoleon Bonaparte's death mask, early Carnival costumes and the paintings of acclaimed primitive artist Clementine Hunt
Source: The Daily Missippian
Sep 19, 2005
With the winding down of rescue missions, Mississippi government agencies are now turning their focus to the economic restructuring of the coast, including the restoration of some of Mississippi’s oldest buildings. The wake of destruction left by Katrina affects both the state’s economic future and its efforts to preserve historic landmarks. State and federal agencies, as well as countless volunteers, are meeting to assess damages to historical buildings and coastal businesses.
Source: US Newswire
Sep 19, 2005
Joe Adams, Ray Charles' long-time friend and manager, will present the Smithsonian museum with a braille keyboard, sunglasses, chess set, costumes and other memorabilia reflecting the storied career of musician Ray Charles. These objects tell the story of Charles' music career and will enhance the museum's collection of objects illustrating how people contend with their disabilities.
Source: NYT
Sep 19, 2005
PATARA, Turkey - Alexander the Great was here, and so was Saint Paul, on his way to Ephesus. Centuries later, the drafters of the American Constitution took the ancient Lycian League, which was based here, as an early example - in fact, it was history's earliest example - of the form of republican government they envisaged as well.The Lycian League was mentioned twice in the Federalist Papers, once by Alexander Hamilton, once by James Madison, so it could safely
Source: BBC
Sep 18, 2005
There has been angry reaction within India's governing Congress party to claims the KGB infiltrated Indira Gandhi's government in the 1970s. A former KBG official says in a new book that the Soviet intelligence agency had an extensive network of contacts in the government.
Congress party spokesmen say the allegations in the book are baseless and not worth commenting on.
Mrs Gandhi led three Congress governments before being assassinated.
Source: NY Daily News
Sep 18, 2005
WITH RESTORATION PLANS rolling for the Grand Concourse, a Bronx museum is taking a detour down the boulevard's memory lane. On Wednesday, the Bronx Museum of the Arts will begin a series of walking tours, workshops and talks about the street's striking architecture and storied past, along with updates on its future."It is gorgeous," said Lloyd Ultan, the Bronx borough historian. "The elegance still comes through. All it needs is a little spruceup."
Source: The San Diego Union-Tribune
Sep 18, 2005
Black historians, such as Karen Huff of La Mesa, are trying to preserve as much as possible.
As chairwoman of the Black Historical Society of San Diego, Huff traveled to New Orleans within days of Hurricane Katrina and stayed for a week, documenting the damage to historic buildings, neighborhoods and communities.
With an assistant, she returned to San Diego with 400 photos that will become part of America's black history. They recorded oral tales of survival in the stor
Source: NYT
Sep 18, 2005
The recent outburst of popular religiosity in the United States is a most dramatic and unforeseen development in American life. As Europe grows more secular, America grows more devout.
In the midst of this religious commotion, the name of the most influential American theologian of the 20th century rarely appears - Reinhold Niebuhr. It may be that most "people of faith" belong to the religious right, and Niebuhr was on secular issues a determined liberal. But left evangeli
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Sep 18, 2005
For years conservatives complained that presidential rankings were dominated by the very liberals who controlled the universities and the news media, and thus Americans were looking at their history, and choosing their heroes, through pink-colored lenses. So The Wall Street Journal and the Federalist Society, no avatars of liberalism, engaged James T. Lindgren of the Northwestern University Law School to conduct his own poll -- one which strived to balance liberals and conservatives and give an
Source: NYT
Sep 18, 2005
At 10 a.m. Monday, at Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyo., the last MX missile will be "deactivated," and a turbulent chapter of history will come to an end. The MX is hardly remembered now; its phase-out began without fanfare four years ago. But in the late 1970's and the '80s - at the height of the United States-Soviet nuclear arms race, amid tensions over the invasion of Afghanistan and the collapse of détente - the MX was the centerpiece of the American military buildup, the ob
Source: Boston Globe
Sep 18, 2005
The federal government's mishandling of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe is only the latest bungling in a national disaster-response system that for years has been fraught with waste and fraud.A South Florida Sun-Sentinel investigation has found that the Federal Emergency Management Agency in five years poured at least $330 million into communities spared the devastating effects of fires, hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes.
In the country's poorest c
Source: Boston Globe
Sep 18, 2005
Hurricane Katrina has taken its place as the worst natural disaster in American history, an immensity underlined by the unprecedented scope of the recovery plan outlined by President Bush in his speech from New Orleans' Jackson Square on Thursday night. But in many ways, so far little discussed in the national media, it can also be understood as a distinctly Southern disaster, bringing to the fore many of the characteristics that historians say have long defined the Deep South.
Source: NYT
Sep 18, 2005
He had the right to remain silent. He knew that everything he said could and would be used against (and for) him. And yet, when Judge John G. Roberts Jr. was asked last week by Senator Arlen Specter, who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee, whether he believed the "right to privacy" existed in the Constitution, Mr. Roberts replied, "Senator, I do." History suggests that if he had not, Judge Roberts would have sunk his chances to become the 17th chief justice of the United St
