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This page features brief excerpts of news 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.
Highlights
Breaking News
This page features brief excerpts of news 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. Because most of our readers read the NYT we usually do not include the paper's stories in HIGHLIGHTS.
Name of source: http://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk
SOURCE: http://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk (1-2-08)
The road sign was seen during a valuation tour in Fairford by antiques experts Moore Allen & Innocent.
The event, which ran for an hour longer than scheduled, raised £380 for Fairford and Lechlade Carers Support Group.
Name of source: Telegraph (UK)
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (1-3-08)
The Nazi leader believed that traditional black and white photographs best highlighted the sinister nature of his regime, presenting dramatic images which were both powerful and menacing.
Now, however, an altogether more colourful view of the Fuhrer has emerged.
More than 62 years after his death in a Berlin bunker, images from a newly opened Paris archive show him relaxing with children in the Eagle’s Nest, his mountain top chalet in the Alps near Berchtesgaden, Bavaria.
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (1-2-08)
But Martin Phillips, 47, admits that he is still a long way from realising his dream of seeing the aircraft from the Second World War take to the skies again.
"I had a five-year plan, but that is shot - we are looking at another one or two years before it is finished," he said.
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (12-26-07)
According to Sjef de Jong, a Dutch academic, the Charles Dickens character may have been inspired by the real life of Gabriel de Graaf, a 19th century gravedigger who lived in Holland.
De Graaf, a drunken curmudgeon obsessed with money, was said to have disappeared one Christmas Eve, only to emerge years later as a reformed character.
While Dickens never travelled to Holland, he may have heard of de Graaf, who attributed his transformation to visions from dwarves, through his friend Hans Christian Andersen.
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (12-24-07)
Archaeological evidence suggests the first skates were made of animal bones in around 3000 BC to aid travel during the frozen winters in Finland.
Scientists who made the discovery say it means that ice skating is the oldest form of human-powered transport.
Name of source: Deutsche Welle
SOURCE: Deutsche Welle (12-22-07)
It was in Munich that the National Socialist movement gained ground following the trauma of World War I. A young Adolf Hitler staged a failed coup in the conservative Bavarian capital in 1923 and after coming to power in 1933, the Nazi leader chose Munich as the headquarters of his movement.
Aware of the central role it played in the rise of Nazism, the city of Munich has initiated a new documentation center in the Brown House on Munich's Brienner Strasse, which was home to the Nazi party starting in the early 1930s.
Name of source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
SOURCE: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists (1-2-08)
The new law makes several constructive procedural changes in the FOIA to encourage faster agency response times, to enable requesters to track the status of their requests, to expand the basis for fee waivers, and more.
One thing it does not do, however, is alter the criteria for secrecy and disclosure. Whatever records that a government agency was legally entitled to withhold before enactment of the "OPEN Government Act" can still be withheld now that the President has signed it.
Some reporters and editorial writers, perhaps enchanted by the name of the new law, mistakenly assumed that it accomplishes much more than that.
"The law ... restores a presumption of a standard that orders government agencies to release information on request unless there is a finding that disclosure could do harm," according to a January 1 Associated Press account that appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere.
Further, the widely-published AP account continued, "The legislation is aimed at reversing an order by former Attorney General John Ashcroft after the 9/11 attacks in which he instructed agencies to lean against releasing information when there was uncertainty about how doing so would affect national security."
But that is incorrect.
Although the original House version of the OPEN Government Act did include a provision that would have repealed the Ashcroft policy and established a "presumption of openness," that provision was removed from the bill prior to passage.
Thus, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) noted with regret on the House floor on December 18 that the final legislation "does not include a provision which I thought was a key one establishing a presumption that government records should be released to the public unless there is a good reason to keep them secret."
From an opposing perspective, Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA) expressed his approval that "the provision repealing the so-called Ashcroft memorandum was eliminated.... The Ashcroft memorandum established that the administration would defend agency decisions to withhold records under a FOIA exemption if the decision was supported by a sound legal basis, replacing the pre-9/11 Janet Reno standard of always releasing information absent foreseeable harm."
"I think preservation of the Ashcroft policy is the right policy to adopt in the current environment," Rep. Davis said.
Right or not, the Ashcroft FOIA policy remains the policy of the Bush Administration even after enactment of "The OPEN Government Act."
Name of source: NYT
SOURCE: NYT (12-31-07)
As 2007 draws to a close, it seems very likely that there will be fewer than 500 killings in the city (as of Sunday evening, there had been 492) for the first time since reliable records started being kept.
That was 1963.
The body count that year reflected the beginnings of what was to be an alarming rise in the city’s murder rate through 1990. In that year, the city’s worst, there were 2,245 homicides and New York City was known as the murder capital of the nation.
In 1963, “the seeds of decay were clearly in the air,” said Jim Curran, a professor of law and police science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who spent the year as a rookie in the New York Police Department and still recalls people crying on the street when Kennedy was killed. “People became less concerned about the rules, maybe even including the one that says, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’”
SOURCE: NYT (1-1-08)
The sepia-toned black-and-white pictures showed candid moments from a groundbreaking diplomatic mission to the Far East, which William Howard Taft and a large entourage of congressmen, senators, businessmen and others made in 1905 at the behest of President Theodore Roosevelt. Mr. Woods, an amateur photographer and businessman who was a friend of Taft’s from their native Cincinnati, captured the heady atmosphere of the three-month trip with the new hand-held cameras that had just come on the market.
When Mr. Stever came across the pictures in 2004, along with Mr. Woods’s neatly typed captions, he was unaware that they documented a pivotal time in America’s diplomatic past, a moment when the country was beginning to flex its imperialist muscles. But he quickly realized that the images were deteriorating.
Name of source: http://www.wnbc.com
SOURCE: http://www.wnbc.com (1-1-08)
"This is not too much to ask of the state of New Jersey," said Assemblyman William Payne, who sponsors the bill. "All that is being requested of New Jersey is to say three simple words: We are sorry."
Legislators in Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia have issued formal slavery apologies.
Name of source: AP
SOURCE: AP (12-31-07)
The mansion, maintained by the National Park Service, is considered one of the finest examples of Georgian architecture in the country. It's one of just a handful of plantation homes with extant slave quarters. With 25,000 square feet of living space, it was the largest private home in the U.S. when it was completed in 1790.
Hampton sits on 63 acres just outside the Baltimore Beltway, less than a mile from the heart of Towson, a bustling suburb directly north of the city. And yet many area residents don't know the first thing about it.
"You say 'National Park Service' in Baltimore and you immediately think of Fort McHenry," said Rhoda Dorsey, president emeritus of Historic Hampton Inc., a nonprofit that supports the site. "You don't think of anything else."
