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: CNN
Aug 31, 2011
Cell phones and pagers, airplane engines, a door from a police squad car, a mother's wallet and credit cards. Those items survived when terrorists flew two planes into the World Trade Center towers in New York City during the September 11 attacks.
The Newseum in Washington, D.C., is expanding its FBI exhibit with a new display of artifacts from 9/11 and other terrorist plots that have never been on display to the public before.
"War on Terror: The FBI's New Focus" will open Friday in plenty of time for the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The Newseum selected 60 pieces of evidence the FBI had in storage for use in terror trials, including huge pieces of an airplane that survived ramming into the World Trade Center towers...
Source: AP
Aug 31, 2011
NEW YORK (AP) — An ABC special with never-before-heard interviews with Jacqueline Kennedy will air Sept. 13....Originally planned for one hour, the special will now fill two hours in prime time and feature Diane Sawyer's interview with the couple's daughter, Caroline Kennedy....
Source: MyFoxDC
Aug 31, 2011
WASHINGTON - The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial hasn't even been dedicated yet and now there is a new controversy about it.At issue? A quotation on the side of the 30-foot granite statue of the slain civil rights leader. It reads, "I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness."The paraphrase comes from a sermon King gave two months before his assassination. In the sermon, he was speculating on how he might be eulogized.The actual quote is: "Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness."Dr. Maya Angelou, who consulted on the memorial, told the Washington Post that taking the quote out of context makes King sound like an "arrogant twit."...
Source: Fox News
Aug 31, 2011
Rare inscriptions on a 2,000-year-old burial box may provide fresh insight to the death of Jesus Christ, researchers said.Called an ossuary, the limestone box could reveal the home of Caiaphas, the high priest involved in the crucifixion of Jesus. The Israel Antiquities Authority, which confiscated the ossuary from looters three years ago, passed it along to Prof. Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University’s Department of Archaeology who led the authentication effort."Beyond any reasonable doubt, the inscription is authentic," Goren said, after conducting a thorough examination of the limestone box, which boasts decorative rosettes in addition to the inscription....
Source: Slate
Aug 31, 2011
Before Monica Lewinsky, Camilla Parker Bowles, or Marilyn Monroe, there was Hagar—the world's first known mistress.*According to the Bible, Hagar was an Egyptian slave sent to the bed of her master, Abraham, by his barren wife, Sarah. When Hagar became pregnant with Ishmael—who would become Abraham's heir—the formerly submissive servant turned haughty and began to treat Abraham's lawful wife with "contempt." Sarah punished Hagar for her attitude and sent the slave packing. (An angel of God eventually persuaded a chastened Hagar to return to the couple.) Several years later, after God restored Sarah's fertility and she gave birth to Isaac, Sarah began, once again, to fiercely resent her husband's concubine. "Cast out this slave woman with her son!" she demanded of Abraham. In an instant, Hagar was banished a second time. Her lesson: Any power she had ever acquired was ephemeral, contingent on factors beyond her ability to please her lover or bear him a healthy son. The mistress's pride was no match for the wife's wrath....
Source: Independent (UK)
Aug 31, 2011
A statue of the late Pope John Paul II, which some critics have claimed resembles the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, is – in true Italian style – about to receive some early cosmetic surgery.The five-metre bronze monument, which rises from one of the flower beds outside Rome's main Termini train station, was unveiled on 18 May, on what would have been the late pope's 91st birthday. Its abstract rendering of John Paul, who was beatified on 1 May, features a heavy-set head on a minimalist, billowing cloak, intended to symbolise the pontiff's willingness to embrace his flock.But the statue's tent-liked form, squashed facial features and bullet-shaped head did not go down well with church or layman. The Vatican's own L'Osservatore Romano newspaper tutted that the head was "excessively spherical". The public has been far blunter, suggesting that the green-tinged figure looked like Mussolini or even a creature from Star Trek. An online poll in La Repubblica newspaper suggested that 86 per cent of the public disliked the statue....
Source: NYT
Aug 31, 2011
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture won’t open until 2015, but it is already mounting exhibitions. Next up, the museum announced on Tuesday, is an exhibition on Thomas Jefferson and slavery, organized with the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello.The exhibition, which will examine the lives of six slave families at Monticello, will open Jan. 27, 2012, in a gallery at the National Museum of American History. It will include artifacts in the Smithsonian’s collection, including a lapdesk that Jefferson used to write the Declaration of Independence, as well as objects that have been discovered through excavations at Monticello like marbles, tools, a brass shoe buckle and a bone toothbrush.The exhibition will also discuss evidence suggesting that Jefferson fathered children with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 31, 2011
A replica of the Twin Towers destroyed in the September 11 attacks will be built on a square opposite the Eiffel Tower in Paris to mark the tenth anniversary of the atrocity, organisers said on Tuesday.The Eiffel Tower itself will be illuminated by a special light show later the same day, "The French will never forget" group that is hosting a series of events next month said in a statement.US ambassador to Paris Charles Rivkin will inaugurate the replica that will be constructed on Trocadero square, it said, adding that the 25-metre (82-foot) towers will bear the names of the people killed in the attacks....
Source: AP
Aug 30, 2011
WASHINGTON — The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture is planning an exhibit with Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello to explore the third president’s history with slavery....
Source: BBC
Aug 30, 2011
The murder of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991 stunned India - but it was also a personal tragedy for a young girl who had yet to be born.Haritha Murugan's parents were arrested days after the murder and convicted of plotting it. She was born to the couple in prison in January 1992 and has met them once since that time.Nalini, Haritha's mother, will spend the rest of her life in jail - her death sentence was commuted a decade ago after appeals for clemency.But her father, Murugan, is one of three men still on death row for the murder.All the accused in the Rajiv Gandhi case were tried under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act which has long been withdrawn because of its widespread misuse.Under this act, a confession given to officers above a certain rank (deputy superintendent of police) was treated as valid evidence - which is not the case under normal criminal procedure....
Source: BBC
Aug 30, 2011
On this day 123 years ago, Jack the Ripper claimed his first victim. But who was this serial killer? This new e-fit finally puts a face to Carl Feigenbaum, a key suspect from Germany.Jack the Ripper is the world's most famous cold case - the identity of the man who brutally murdered five women in London's East End in autumn 1888 remains a mystery.More than 200 suspects have been named. But to Ripper expert Trevor Marriott, a former murder squad detective, German merchant Carl Feigenbaum is the top suspect.But it's possible these were cut out in the mortuary, rather than by Jack at the scene. The 1832 Anatomy Act made it legal for medical personnel to remove organs for training purposes.This theory is supported by documents on the fourth victim, Catherine Eddowes. The inquest report shows only 14 minutes elapsed from the time the police did their last sweep of the square in which she was killed and her body being discovered.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 30, 2011
Dick Cheney, the former US vice-president, has used his new memoir to heap praise on Tony Blair and insist that the torture of a key al-Qaeda terrorist helped foil a devastating attack in Britain.But he also indirectly rejected British denials that a plot to attack Heathrow Airport in 2003 was foiled thanks to the torture of Abu Zubaydah, an al-Qaeda commander, by US agents.He claims to have said George W. Bush did not see war with Iraq as inevitable but stressed "if he decided to go to war, we would finish the job. We would remove Saddam Hussein".Other evidence suggests the US had in fact decided on military action by this point. Mr Blair's view is said to have "tightened" the following month, when he met Mr Bush at the president's ranch in Texas....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 30, 2011
An 82-year-old Brooklyn grandmother who survived the Holocaust drowned in her flooded holiday cottage when Hurricane Irene hit the Catskills Mountains near New York last weekend.Rozalia Stern-Gluck was on holiday in the popular Fleischmanns resort but was trapped when a nearby creek overflowed on Sunday morning and flooded her cottage with over six feet of water.Her husband escaped but rescuers were unable to answer her screams for help because of the surging flood waters. Her body could only be recovered by police when floodwaters subsided on Monday.Isaac Abraham, a Jewish community leader, said Mrs Stern-Gluck was born in Russia and came to to the US after surviving the Holocaust....
Source: CNN
Aug 30, 2011
For the first time in its history, Arlington National Cemetery may soon have an accurate record of all the people buried there. The project involves the creation of a digital database that now is substantially complete, according to officials with the Graveside Accountability Task Force. Arlington was tarnished last year by the finding of more than 200 graves that had been misidentified or mislabeled, and by the discovery of dozens of discarded headstones apparently being used to shore up a small stream in a remote corner of the cemetery.A previous superintendent, John C. Metzler Jr., was punished for poor management after the discovery of numerous instances of bodies being buried in the wrong place and incorrect headstones on graves.Congress ordered a task force to fully document who's where.Using a combination of high technology and old-fashioned research, the team is commissioned to compile a verified electronic database with no discrepancies among the records. Their work should be ready for an initial review by the end of September....
Source: AP
Aug 30, 2011
ATLANTA (AP) — A presidential panel on Monday disclosed shocking new details of U.S. medical experiments done in Guatemala in the 1940s, including a decision to re-infect a dying woman in a syphilis study.The Guatemala experiments are already considered one of the darker episodes of medical research in U.S. history, but panel members say the new information indicates that the researchers were unusually unethical, even when placed into the historical context of a different era."The researchers put their own medical advancement first and human decency a far second," said Anita Allen, a member of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.From 1946-48, the U.S. Public Health Service and the Pan American Sanitary Bureau worked with several Guatemalan government agencies to do medical research — paid for by the U.S. government — that involved deliberately exposing people to sexually transmitted diseases....
Source: Jewish Daily Forward
Aug 30, 2011
Sometime in the mid-to-late 1640s or early 1650s, a young Jewish man — probably of Spanish-Portuguese descent — seems to have taken what would likely have been a short walk from his home in Amsterdam’s Jewish quarter to Jodenbreestraat (“Jewish Broad Street”) 4, where Rembrandt van Rijn lived. Inside the three-story home, which Rembrandt purchased for the whopping sum of 13,000 guilders in 1639, the young man posed for several studies that he surely must have known were going to become portraits of Jesus.Was the young man so desperate for ducats that he talked himself out of any discomfort about his unusual modeling gig, which his peers surely would have considered sacrilege? Or was the young man one of the many people in 17th century Holland who were dazzled by interfaith dialogue? Was he, perhaps, considering converting to Christianity?Although much is known about 17th century Holland in general, and Rembrandt in particular — much of it thanks to the many lawsuits leveled against the master painter and inventories of his bankruptcies — it is simply conjecture to speculate about the state of mind of Rembrandt’s Jewish model.
Source: Stars & Stripes
Aug 30, 2011
A photo from the U.S. Air Forces in Europe historian's office shows some of the damage from a massive car bomb that exploded Aug. 31, 1981, in the parking lot outside the USAFE headquarters building on Ramstein Air Base, Germany. Twelve U.S. military members and two German civilians were injured. The German terrorist group, the Red Army Faction, later claimed responsibility for the attack. The incident prompted a number of security changes, including pop-up barriers and a permanent security ring around the headquarters, according to information from USAFE....
Source: Indian Country Today
Aug 29, 2011
...Because American Indians lived everywhere in this country, the NPS could tell Native stories at almost every site. After all, it has chosen to tell the stories of settlers at most park units. Unfortunately, the NPS usually leaves out the Native stories in the parks, letting Indians vanish from most park landscapes.
Source: BBC
Aug 29, 2011
Colombia is home to one of the world's longest running internal conflicts.For 47 years, government forces, rebel groups, paramilitaries and drug cartels have battled for control of large parts of the country.Atrocities have been committed by all sides, and tens of thousands of people have simply disappeared.Now, although the conflict continues, the Colombian authorities are beginning the work to find out what happened to those missing, to identify bodies found in mass graves, and to let families know.To date, some 10,000 people have been identified but the process can be painfully slow, and many families may never get an answer....
Source: NYT
Aug 29, 2011
LONDON — Television footage of the only man convicted in the Lockerbie bombing lying in bed, purportedly comatose with advanced prostate cancer at his Tripoli home, has provided a focal point for a question asked with new urgency in places far from Libya: With Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s government in ruins, what reckoning is likely for the terrorist bombings that were once a signature of the former Libyan leader’s war with the Western world?The issues range far beyond the bombing in 1988 that killed 259 people aboard Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, as well as 11 people on the ground, though many questions remain about who, including Colonel Qaddafi himself, may have ordered it.
