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: AP
November 1, 2009
Thousands of ethnic Albanians braved low temperatures and a cold wind in Kosovo's capital Pristina to welcome former President Bill Clinton on Sunday as he attended the unveiling of an 11-foot statue of himself on a key boulevard that also bears his name.
Clinton is celebrated as a hero by Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority for launching NATO's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999 that stopped the brutal Serb forces' crackdown on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians.
Source: CNN
November 1, 2009
A man faces charges of arson after he allegedly set fire to a section of Memorial Park, which houses the remains of victims of September 11, 2001, attacks, police said Saturday.
Brian Schroeder, 26, who was arrested Saturday, faces charges of criminal mischief, police said.
Memorial Park, a large white tent in east midtown Manhattan, is the temporary resting place for unclaimed and unidentified remains, according to the chief medical examiner's office.
The
Source: Mike Allen's Playbook in Politico
November 1, 2009
From Mike Alllen’s Playbook, exclusive excerpts from “The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory” — $15.09 on Amazon – by DAVID PLOUFFE, campaign manager of Obama for America:
“The remarkable Obama for President campaign, led by a once-in-a-generation candidate, had the audacity to win — and not just to win, but to do so with guts, defying conventional wisdom again and again. We talked to voters like adults and organized a grassroots movemen
Source: Guardian.co.uk
November 1, 2009
It has witnessed some of Iran's most tumultuous events: the fall of the shah, the return of Ayatollah Khomeini and the transformation from pro-western monarchy to revolutionary Islamic republic.
Now Tehran's days as the Iranian capital appear numbered after a powerful state body approved a plan for a new principal city. The idea was proposed by the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and rubber-stamped by the expediency council.
Seismologists have warned t
Source: Truthout
October 30, 2009
Islamabad, Pakistan - After three days of encounters with America-bashing Pakistanis -- who rejected her contention that the U.S. and Pakistan face a common enemy -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday that "we're not getting through."
Prominent women and tribesmen from the North West Frontier Province delivered the same hostile message that she'd heard the two preceding days from students and journalists: Pakistanis aren't ready to endorse American friendship d
Source: Time
October 30, 2009
... Alongside carefully arrayed mortar shells, short-range artillery equipment and a range of rifles is a pile of papers and documents. Among them are plans showing how to assemble an "impact grenade" and a "time delay" grenade. Other pieces of paper, handwritten in Arabic, apparently lay out instructions on how to rig another explosive device. Also among the documents are two European passports that purportedly belong to fugitive al-Qaeda members who are linked to the 9/11 a
Source: The Washington Independent
October 30, 2009
Here’s a somewhat surprising result from the new Fox News poll. Asked which president is “more responsible for the current state of the economy,” only 18 percent say President Obama. Fifty-eight percent say former President George W. Bush. Nine percent blame both of them. Republicans are the only subgroup of voters who blame Obama, and only by a six-point margin of 35 percent to 29 percent.
Source: Fox News
October 30, 2009
Damascus, SYRIA — It is fertile ground that bears unforgettable fruit. It has vineyards. Barbed wire. Bitter history. And an uncertain future.
The Golan Heights was seized by Israel in the 1967 war. Syria and Egypt attacked Israel in 1972 to try to get the Golan back but didn’t succeed. An armistice was eventually signed in 1974 and Israel pulled out of most of the city of Quneitra, the then regional seat of the Golan Heights, but kept the rest under its control. The U.N. monitors
Source: AP
October 31, 2009
Developers unveiled the restoration of a 650-year-old mosque in Cairo's old city, part of an effort to revitalize the impoverished district and boost tourism to the country's treasure trove of Islamic sites.
The three-year, $1.4 million project restored the Aslam al-Silahdar Mosque, built in 1344-1345 by Aslam al-Bahai, an amir or nobleman who rose to the position of "silahdar," or "swordbearer" for Sultan al-Nasir Mohammed, one of the most powerful of Egypt's Ma
Source: AP
October 31, 2009
World War II veterans of a Texas infantry regiment will reunite this weekend with a Japanese-American combat outfit that rescued them from German forces surrounding them.
On Oct. 30, 1944, the all-Japanese-American 442nd Regimental Combat Team broke through the German lines in the Vosges Mountains of northern France and relieved 1st Battalion, 141st Regiment, 36th Infantry Division.
Together, the veterans will mark the 65th anniversary of the rescue at a Sunday fundrais
Source: Discovery News
October 19, 2009
Foot and sandal prints said to be 1,700 years old have emerged from one of Israel's largest and finest mosaics.
The markings reveal how ancient artisans could have crafted the mosaic during the Roman period.
Spreading over 180 square meters (215 square yards), the mosaic -- apparently the floor of a lavish Roman villa -- was uncovered 13 years ago at Lod, south of Tel Aviv, only three feet under an asphalt road not far from Ben-Gurion Airport.
Source: AP
October 29, 2009
Swiss historian Jean-Francois Bergier, who led a highly critical probe of Switzerland's conduct during World War II, has died. He was 77.
Bergier received wide renown for leading an international panel in a major study that in 2001 concluded Switzerland "got involved in (Nazi) crimes by abandoning refugees to their persecutors" even though the Swiss government knew by 1942 of the Nazis' "final solution" and that rejected refugees would likely face deportation and
Source: The Washington Post
October 31, 2009
About 900 World War II veterans die on average every day, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. But Blakey, Hoffman, Staler and other veterans who are still kicking and able to travel will be standing on the red carpet at Friday's dedication of a $60 million addition to the World War II museum, which was established in 2000 to tell the story of the American experience in the war that changed the world.
The addition contains three new attractions: the Victory Theater
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 31, 2009
The health of the Lockerbie bomber has "not deteriorated" since his release from prison three months ago – despite doctors' assessments that he would have died by now, a senior source has told The Sunday Telegraph.
The disclosure will reignite the row over the release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds despite his conviction for the murder of 270 people when Pan Am flight 103 exploded in mid-air over Lockerbie in 1988.
Megrahi, who
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 31, 2009
Former US President George H.W. Bush joined Mikhail Gorbachev, the ex- Soviet leader and Helmut Kohl, the former German Chancellor, for the start of celebrations marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The three statesmen, who played key roles in the fall of the Wall, exchanged warm greetings as they met near the site of the Wall.
Age had taken a toll on the three - Mr Kohl was in a wheelchair while Mr Bush, who arrived with his wife Barbara, walk
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 31, 2009
Malta is preparing to launch an investigation into the evidence one of the key trial witnesses who helped convict Abdelbasset al-Megrahi over the Lockerbie bombing.
Government officials want to look at the claims of Tony Gauci, the shopkeeper who identified the Libyan as the man responsible for placing explosives on Pan Am Flight 103.
Mr Gauci ran a clothes shop, in Swieqi, Malta in 1988, and claimed Megrahi purchased an incriminating piece of clothing found among the
Source: NYT
October 30, 2009
Former Vice President Dick Cheney denied in an interview with a special prosecutor investigating the C.I.A. leak case that he had played any role in the disclosure of the identity of Valerie Wilson as an intelligence officer, according to F.B.I. documents released Friday.
Some of the assertions by Mr. Cheney in his interview with the prosecutor on May 8, 2004, appeared to conflict with testimony at the 2007 trial of his chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr., who was convicted of perjur
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education
October 25, 2009
There are institutions that are merely proud of their famous graduates, and then there's Eureka College and Ronald W. Reagan.
The former U.S. president's alma mater, a small liberal-arts college in central Illinois, has a Reagan society, a Reagan museum, and a Reagan Physical Education Center. An annotated map on the college's Web site notes where Mr. Reagan gave his first public speech (the Chapel, 1928) and where he competed on the swim team (Pritchard Hall).
Next mon
Source: Austrian Times
October 31, 2009
Austrian archaeologists have found a Babylonian seal in Egypt that confirms contact between the Babylonians and the Hyksos during the second millennium B.C.
Irene Forstner-Müller, the head of the Austrian Archaeological Institute’s (ÖAI) branch office in Cairo, said today (Thurs) the find had occurred at the site of the ancient town of Avaris near what is today the city of Tell el-Dab’a in the eastern Nile delta.
The Hyksos conquered Egypt and reigned there from 1640 to
Source: Fox News
October 28, 2009
Maybe President Obama will win the Nobel Prize for Literature, too, now that the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts has declared that "Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar."
Rocco Landesman rendered unto Obama that considerable compliment in a little-noticed speech to a group of art philanthropists in Brooklyn, N.Y., last week, praising the president as an "Optimist in Chief" who is developing "the most arts-supportive ad
