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: NYT
Dec 20, 2010
SAN FRANCISCO — During the heady early days of the gay rights movement, there was no place in the nation with more righteous energy than 575 Castro Street.
A small, unremarkable storefront, 575 Castro was home to Castro Camera, owned by Harvey Milk, the trailblazing activist who in 1977 became the first openly gay man elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. He ran that campaign — and others for gay and lesbian rights — from the shop and his apartment upstairs.
Source: Guardian (UK)
Dec 19, 2010
It was etched in the blood of a dictator in a ghoulish bid for piety. Over the course of two painstaking years in the late 1990s, Saddam Hussein had sat regularly with a nurse and an Islamic calligrapher; the former drawing 27 litres of his blood and the latter using it as a macabre ink to transcribe a Qur'an. But since the fall of Baghdad, almost eight years ago, it has stayed largely out of sight - locked away behind three vaulted doors. It is the one part of the ousted tyrant's legacy that Ir
Source: LA Times
Dec 19, 2010
Reporting from Albuquerque —
Nearly 130 years after the death of Henry McCarty, alias William Bonney, but better known as Billy the Kid, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson will take some of the final hours of his administration to decide whether to pardon the baby-faced gunslinger.
Richardson will review evidence that in 1881, one of his predecessors promised to pardon Bonney for killing a sheriff in return for his testimony in a murder case. The record suggests that New Mexico
Source: LA Times
Dec 19, 2010
Reporting from Newport News, Va. —
When archaeologists and Navy divers recovered the warship Monitor's steam engine from the Atlantic in 2001, the pioneering Civil War propulsion unit was enshrouded in a thick layer of marine concretion.
Sand, mud and corrosion combined with minerals in the deep waters off Cape Hatteras, N.C., to cloak every feature of Swedish American inventor John Ericsson's ingenious machine, and they continued to envelop the 30-ton artifact after nine yea
Source: NYT
Dec 19, 2010
The same people driving the lawsuits that seek to dismantle the Obama administration’s health care overhaul have set their sights on an even bigger target: a constitutional amendment that would allow a vote of the states to overturn any act of Congress....
Tea Party groups and candidates have pushed for a repeal of the 17th Amendment, which took the power to elect United States senators out of the hands of state legislatures. And potential presidential candidates like Mitt Romney an
Source: NYT
Dec 19, 2010
When it comes to the future of the Obama administration’s health care plan, the judicial math can seem simple.
So far in three lawsuits against the plan, two federal judges appointed by Democrats have upheld the law; one Republican-appointed judge has declared an important part of it unconstitutional. Use party as your measure, send the cases up the appeals ladder, and you quickly get to a 5-4 decision at the Supreme Court: the justices appointed by Republican presidents will vote t
Source: The Boston Globe
Dec 18, 2010
The ever-shifting sands of Cape Cod have parted to reveal a new mystery: a 50-foot-long shipwreck unearthed by erosion in shallow waters just off North Beach Island in Chatham, town and state officials said.
The wreck was spotted Nov. 29 by an airplane pilot as he and an aerial photographer flew along the coast.
At low tide, the wreckage, which appears to be made of wood, sits in 8 to 10 feet of water, but it cannot be seen from the beach, officials said. The vessel, wh
Source: Fox News
Dec 18, 2010
Break out the flashlights. When a full lunar eclipse takes place on the shortest day of the year, the planet may just get awfully dark.
The upcoming Dec. 21 full moon -- besides distinguishing itself from the others in 2010 by undergoing a total eclipse -- will also take place on the same date as the solstice (the winter solstice if you live north of the equator, and the summer solstice if you live to the south).
Winter solstice is the shortest day of the year in the
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Dec 18, 2010
A multi-millionaire who was accused of spiriting away three Nazi-era gold bars as part of an attempt to conceal assets from his ex-wife was ordered to hand her a £2.4million divorce settlement yesterday.
Businessman Peter Brandon, 67, had claimed the ruling would leave him ‘impoverished’ because his total wealth stood at £2million, while his ex-wife Christina continues to live in the £2million marital mansion.
But the Court of Appeal yesterday backed the award made by M
Source: NYT
Dec 18, 2010
LONDON — It was the worst of times in the siege of Sarajevo. No venture outside the Holiday Inn, which had become a media fastness in a city under siege, was safe from the daily staccato of sniper fire, mortars and artillery shells. And there at my door, in the first winter of the war, was Richard C. Holbrooke, asking if he could borrow space on my floor for him and his sleeping bag....
He had come to experience for himself Europe’s first war since the 1940s — and to prepare for a r
Source: NYT
Dec 18, 2010
...The founding fathers originally required Congress to convene on the first Monday in December — a mandate that automatically created a lame-duck session. And because Congressional terms did not expire until March, lame-duck sessions had the potential to run for three months. The 20th Amendment, ratified in 1933, dramatically shortened — but did not eliminate — the sessions by moving the swearing-in date for lawmakers to Jan. 3.
John Copeland Nagle, a law professor at the Universit
Source: AP
Dec 17, 2010
The three bone fragments turned up on a deserted South Pacific island that lay along the course Amelia Earhart was following when she vanished. Nearby were several tantalizing artifacts: some old makeup, some glass bottles and shells that had been cut open.
Now scientists at the University of Oklahoma hope to extract DNA from the tiny bone chips in tests that could prove Earhart died as a castaway after failing in her 1937 quest to become the first woman to fly around the world
Source: BBC News
Dec 17, 2010
Veteran US broadcaster Larry King has presented the final edition of his long-running CNN talk show after 25 years with the cable news channel.
The 77-year-old fought back tears as he told his audience: "Thank you, and instead of Goodbye, how about So Long?"
President Barack Obama paid tribute to the star in a taped message, in which he said his show had "opened our eyes to the world beyond our living rooms".
Larry King Live has ended af
Source: AP
Dec 17, 2010
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – West Virginia's southern coalfields, known to many outsiders for recent mining disasters, are also rich with American labor history and tales of bravery that Doug Estepp believes will rivet the tourists he plans to take there next summer.
Estepp, a Mingo County native, has launched a company that could be the first to share the rugged region's history with tourists. Coal Country Tours LLC is planning at least two tours for the summer of 2011, including a three-da
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 17, 2010
The 11am Eucharist at St Philip's, Cosham, tomorrow will be celebrated under a starry sky. That is because the altar stands beneath a canopy spangled with stars on a dark blue background, against which four angels shine in gold....
Cosham is a very English suburb of Portsmouth and its architect was Sir Ninian Comper, who died 50 years ago next Wednesday. He is counted one of the greatest architects of the 20th century by some, though others see him mainly as a church furnisher, perh
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Dec 17, 2010
Worshippers at a 12th century village church have launched a bitter battle to oust their vicar.
Some members of the congregation at St Nicholas Church in Tillingham, Essex, are 'at war' with vicar Lorna Smith, claiming that her modernisation plans will be the 'ruination' of the historic church.
A petition has been started calling for the Reverend Lorna Smith to quit her post as vicar after she pushed ahead with proposals to rip the pews and replace them with informal pl
Source: The Nation
Dec 16, 2010
"The suffering of southerners was created in colonial times," says Peter Lam, a retired teacher in his 70s from Malakal, a trading town in Sudan where north meets south on the banks of the Nile River. As Sudan's second independence approaches, we are discussing the first, and what has gone wrong.
Lam tells me that Britain's colonial neglect of the south meant that when it came to negotiations for independence, southern "native chiefs" were conned by the sophistic
Source: PhysOrg
Dec 16, 2010
The largest surviving family-owned library of medieval manuscripts in Britain can now be enjoyed by everyone thanks to the publication of a new book telling its fascinating story.
The Wollaton Medieval Manuscripts… Texts, Owners and Readers is the culmination of a major research project at The University of Nottingham into this nationally important regional collection.
The large, beautifully illustrated hardback volume tells the story of Nottinghamshire’s landowning
Source: NYT
Dec 16, 2010
Richard M. Nixon has long been the Freddy Krueger of American political life. You know in your bones that he is destined to keep returning....
Nixon’s hard-wired anti-Semitism is an old story. What has caused many heads to swivel is a recording of Henry A. Kissinger, his national security adviser. Mr. Kissinger is heard telling Nixon in 1973 that helping Soviet Jews emigrate and thus escape oppression by a totalitarian regime — a huge issue at the time — was “not an objective of Ame
Source: NYT
Dec 16, 2010
WASHINGTON — At a dinner for Iowa Democrats back in November 2007, Senator Barack Obama lobbed a less than subtle insult in the direction of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, seated just a few feet away. “Triangulating and poll-driven positions because we’re worried about what Mitt or Rudy might say about us,” Mr. Obama said, referring to two of their Republican rivals, “just won’t do.”
Now the tax deal approved by the House late Thursday has given rise to an emotional debate among De
