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: McClatchy
October 13, 2009
With his visit to Denmark to pitch Chicago as the site for the 2016 summer Olympics, President Barack Obama has now visited more countries in his first year in office than any other president did.
His one-day trek last week to Denmark -- which failed to convince the International Olympic Committee to award the games to his hometown -- made it the 16th country Obama has visited since taking office on Jan. 20.
That pushed him into the top spot as the country's top globetr
Source: BBC
October 13, 2009
A second set of trenches dug for training purposes during World War I has been investigated by experts in an area that saw intensive use in wartime.
The line of three trenches lies about two miles from where other remains were found to have survived in a field in Ross-shire last year.
The Royal Commission on Ancient and Historic Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS) have investigated the site.
The farmer has never ploughed the field preserving the system for dec
Source: BBC
October 13, 2009
Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has lost his appeal that war crimes charges against him be dropped.
He had appealed against a court ruling made in July that a trial would still be held despite his claim of immunity.
However, he was successful in appealing against the start date of his trial International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at the Hague.
It was due to start on 21 October but has been postponed for five days as Mr
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 13, 2009
The Akuntsu, an ancient Amazonian tribe, has just five members left living in Brazil.
The eldest member of the tribe, Ururu, who was considered the matriarch of the last six survivors, died earlier this month.
Her death has drawn attention to the plight of the tribe, whose members are all aged between 25 and 50. The onslaught of road-building, agriculture and logging have over the decades eroded their way of life and threatened their v
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 13, 2009
Dachau has become the first former site of a Nazi death camp to twin with an Israeli town in a controversial peace project that has angered Holocaust survivors.
While 22 other German towns are twinned with Israeli locations in friendship-building pacts, until now the pairings had not included a site of a former concentration camp.
Peter Bürgel, the mayor of the German town, spent two years searching for an Israeli location willing to partner with Dachau, near Munich, w
Source: Artdaily.org
October 13, 2009
Iran accused the British Museum on Monday of breaking a promise to lend it an artifact relating to Cyrus of Persia's conquest of Babylon in the 6th century BC.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi warned of wider harm to archaeological cooperation between London and Tehran if the British Museum did not allow public display of the so-called Cyrus Cylinder in Iran.
A museum spokeswoman said the intention was still to send the piece to Iran once the "practical
Source: Liverpool Echo (UK)
October 13, 2009
Brighton bomber Patrick Magee remained defiant over his former IRA membership as he visited the House of Commons for the first time.
But the former terrorist told Jo Berry, the daughter of MP Sir Anthony Berry, who was killed in the bombing of the Grand Hotel in 1984, he was sorry for having killed her father.
Magee also said he regretted the loss of life and injuries caused by the Brighton bomb and declared recent sectarian violence in Northern Ireland was not justifie
Source: BBC
October 13, 2009
He had appealed against a court ruling made in July that a trial would still be held despite his claim of immunity.
However, he was successful in appealing against the start date of his trial at the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.
It was due to start on 21 October but has been postponed for five days as Mr Karadzic wanted more time to prepare.
Immunity claim
He is charged with 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humani
Source: BBC
October 13, 2009
Colin Mildinhall was speaking as he and other relatives of those killed in Iraq met officials conducting the inquiry into the war and its aftermath.
He said the UK had been "lied to" by the government over the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
The man heading the probe said he had "an open mind" about its conclusions.
'Accountability'
The first of a series of meetings with relatives of those killed during t
Source: Guardian (UK)
October 13, 2009
The children of Martin Luther King Jr have finally resolved the long-running and bitter battle over their father's estate.
Martin Luther King III, Bernice King and Dexter King have been squabbling in open court in Atlanta for more than a year about the way their father's legacy is managed.
The three are the only surviving children of the civil rights activist, who was assassinated in 1968, and his wife Coretta Scott King, who died in 2006.
Among the content
Source: Fox News
October 11, 2009
MEXICO CITY — Apolinario Chile Pixtun is tired of being bombarded with frantic questions about the Mayan calendar supposedly "running out" on Dec. 21, 2012. After all, it's not the end of the world.
Or is it?
Definitely not, the Mayan Indian elder insists. "I came back from England last year and, man, they had me fed up with this stuff."
It can only get worse for him. Next month Hollywood's "2012" opens in cinemas, featuring e
Source: NYT
October 7, 2009
Read this rather breathless account of an admission wrested from William Ayers at Reagan National Airport, during an ambush moment by blogger Anne Leary, the “BackyardConservative.”
Indeed, stopped by a relative stranger after attending an education conference in Arlington, Va., Mr. Ayers revealed for the very first time that he did write — page-for-page — “Dreams From My Father,” the best-sellin
Source: BBC News
October 9, 2009
This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.
But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.
And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.
So what on Earth is going on?
Climate chan
Source: CNSNews.com
October 12, 2009
Fort Edward, N.Y. (AP) - Crews dredging a polluted stretch of the upper Hudson River this year battled high water, old logging debris and unexpected levels of PCB contamination that slowed progress.
But as the first phase of one of the most costliest and complex federal Superfund projects wraps up this month, regulators say results are generally positive and show dredging can work. They are already preparing for a far more expansive second phase, which would clean up 40 miles of riv
Source: Crain's Detroit Business
October 11, 2009
With the city facing a financial crisis, Detroit's mayor assembled a volunteer team of business and community leaders, led by a retired Ford Motor Co. executive, to help chart a course through murky fiscal waters.
Mass layoffs were looming, revenue was shrinking, and the city's budget deficit had exceeded $200 million.
After months of study, the crisis team advised the mayor to re-engineer city government: privatize or regionalize some services, cut wages for unionized
Source: Time
October 12, 2009
The march on Washington that gays staged Sunday on the National Mall drew something like 200,000 people — that's a good guess based on conversations with many of the organizers and local authorities, although estimates of Mall crowds are notoriously unreliable. But one number you can take to the bank: the average age of those backstage who wore walkie-talkie headsets and staff badges, the men (and a few women) who were behind much of the organizing effort, wasn't over 30. And that, by far, was t
Source: Haaretz
October 2, 2009
Israel and Germany have agreed recently to establish a joint committee to study how school textbooks in each of the countries portrays the other country.
"It is important that students in Israel learn about modern Germany, until and after reunification, and for us it is an opportunity to present Israel to German students in various aspects, not only the Palestinian conflict," Ilan Mor, former political attache at the Israeli Embassy in Berlin, said.
Mor is one
Source: CNSNews.com
October 12, 2009
In the chaos of an early morning assault on a remote U.S. outpost in eastern Afghanistan, Staff Sgt. Erich Phillips' M4 carbine quit firing as militant forces surrounded the base. The machine gun he grabbed after tossing the rifle aside didn't work either.
When the battle in the small village of Wanat ended, nine U.S. soldiers lay dead and 27 more were wounded. A detailed study of the attack by a military historian found that weapons failed repeatedly at a "critical moment"
Source: WSJ
October 13, 2009
American economists Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson, who study the way economic decisions are made outside markets, were awarded the Nobel Prize in economics Monday.
Ms. Ostrom, who teaches at Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind., is the first woman to win the economics prize, which had been awarded to 62 men since its launch in 1969. The judges cited her analysis of what happens when natural resources are shared commonly.
Mr. Williamson, who teaches at the Unive
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education
October 11, 2009
Kids these days. Just look at them. They've got those headphones in their ears and a gadget in every hand. They speak in tongues and text in code. They wear flip-flops everywhere. Does anyone really understand them?
Only some people do, or so it seems. They are experts who have earned advanced degrees, dissected data, and published books. If the minds of college students are a maze, these specialists sell maps...
... Everyone in higher education has pondered "the M
