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: WSJ
October 12, 2009
U.S. President Barack Obama waves as he arrives at the 13th Annual National Dinner of the Human Right Campaign. Mr. Obama's comments could spark criticism from conservatives and some supporters who say the administration must set different priorities.
WASHINGTON -- Congress could be receptive to President Barack Obama's pledge to end a 16-year-old policy banning gay people from serving openly in the military, a top Democratic lawmaker said. The Pentagon also signaled openness to a c
Source: WSJ
October 10, 2009
Arrivederci, Columbus Day.
The tradition of honoring Christopher Columbus for sailing the ocean blue in 1492 is facing rougher seas than the Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria.
Philadelphia's annual Columbus Day parade has been canceled. Brown University this year renamed the holiday "Fall Weekend" following a campaign by a Native American student group opposed to celebrating an explorer who helped enslave some of the people he "discovered."
An
Source: The Washington Post
October 9, 2009
Nearly 70 years ago, the federal government began issuing hundreds of billions of dollars in savings bonds to finance the greatest war effort in the nation's history, with no less than President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who summoned patriotic Americans to "one great partnership," buying the very first.
But the bonds came with a catch: They wouldn't be paid off for 40 years, an unusually long time. As the decades passed after World War II, $16.7 billion worth of bond certific
Source: Yahoo News
October 11, 2009
ANKARA, Turkey – One day after Turkey signed a deal the U.S. helped salvage to end a century of enmity with Armenia, Turkey's leader set a tough condition for normalizing ties on Sunday: Armenia must withdraw from the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The statement appeared to be an effort by Turkey to appease its close ally Azerbaijan, which said the new agreement will aggravate the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Nagorno-Karabakh is an Armenian-occupied enclave in Azerbaijan.
Source: AP
September 10, 2009
Services for an unknown Civil War soldier were held Saturday in a Tennessee church that served as a barracks and hospital during the conflict.
The coffin draped in Confederate and Union flags was transported Saturday from St. Paul's Episcopal Church to the Historic Rest Haven Cemetery in a horse-drawn carriage and accompanied by Civil War re-enactors.
Officials don't know which side the soldier fought on when was among the nearly 2,000 killed in the 1864 Battle of Frank
Source: AFP
October 9, 2009
Around 3,000 Russians held an angry protest Saturday against a controversial plan by state-run energy giant Gazprom to build a huge skyscraper in the country's former imperial capital.
Demonstrators held signs saying "Gazprom go home" and "History is worth more than money" at the rally in central Saint Petersburg, one of the largest protests in the city in recent years, an AFP correspondent witnessed.
Prominent local historian Lev Lurye slammed the G
Source: BBC
October 9, 2009
A service to commemorate the life of the longest surviving soldier of World War I has taken place in Cornwall.
Harry Patch, who died in Somerset in July at the age of 111, served in the trenches in Ypres in 1917 as part of the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry.
The ex-machine-gunner, who was wounded by a German shell, bequeathed his medals to the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry Regimental Museum in Bodmin.
The service was held at St Petroc's church in B
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 9, 2009
Cuba's Fidel Castro is the latest world leader to opine on the controversial award of the Nobel peace prize to President Barack Obama.
But the endorsement of the veteran communist revolutionary may be the last thing Mr Obama wanted, as his words will only strengthen conservative complaints that the prize was an anti-American gesture.
The former dictator, who handed power to his brother Raul last year after falling seriously ill, made clear that he believed the award wa
Source: BBC
October 10, 2009
The deal was signed by the two foreign ministers after last-minute problems delayed the ceremony in Switzerland.
Under the agreement, Turkey and Armenia are to resume diplomatic ties and re-open their shared border.
The accord has been met by protests in Armenia, where many people say it does not fully address the 1915 killing of hundreds of thousands of Armenians.
Armenia wants Turkey to recognise the killings as an act of genocide, but successive Turki
Source: Bloomberg.com
October 8, 2009
Iran will sever all ties with the British Museum unless an ancient artifact, the Cyrus Cylinder, is loaned to the National Museum of Iran, state-run Press TV reported on its Web site.
The Cylinder, dated about 539-530 B.C. and inscribed in Babylonian cuneiform, has been described as the world’s earliest charter of human rights. The British Museum said after the Press TV report that it would keep its promise to lend the Cylinder, and was watching the Iranian political situation to ma
Source: South Cartolina News
October 7, 2009
American doll-maker Mike Fosella has sparked controversy by unveiling a line of Nazi Action figurines. So far Adolf Hitler and Joseph Mengele, the concentration camp doctor dolls have been produced. Fosella plans further figures of Gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler and propagandist Joseph Goebbels.
Ken Jacobson, director of the American Anti-Defamation League, told the New York Daily News: “The people who are most interested in these things are probably the ones with sinister intention
Source: Time
October 10, 2009
Kim Gallagher has a plan for America's "blue highways," the thousands of miles of dusty, old single-lane heritage routes that wend desolately through the countryside: turn them green. Superseded by high-speed interstates, many of these narrow byways have been long forgotten, along with the faded small towns they connect, says Gallagher, a project manager for the Southwest Michigan Planning Commission. But off-the-beaten-path America can be revived, she says, by transforming little-used
Source: Newark Advocate
October 7, 2009
NEWARK — Following nearly the same route that might have been taken thousands of years ago by American Indians, about 30 people intend to set out Saturday to trek nearly 70 miles from Chillicothe to Newark.
Their journey will take about a week and echo a journey thought to have been repeatedly made by the Hopewell Indians nearly 2,000 years ago.
"The basic idea is pilgrimage," said Richard Shiels, director of the Newark Earthworks Center. "The idea that p
Source: BBC
October 9, 2009
The Louvre museum in Paris will return five ancient fresco fragments to Egypt within weeks, France's government says.
The announcement comes two days after the head of antiquities in Cairo said he would cease all co-operation with the museum until they were sent back.
The Egyptians say the Louvre bought the Pharaonic steles in 2000 even though it knew they had been stolen in the 1980s.
They are believed to be from a 3,200-year-old tomb of the cleric, Teta
Source: Guardian (UK)
October 9, 2009
Even its most ardent defenders would struggle to claim that Coventry is a beautiful city. Despite efforts in recent years to spruce the place up, it is still seen by many as an expanse of gloomy postwar concrete and tarmac.
Which is why, according to poet and writer Jackie Litherland, many people have forgotten the real reason why the Nazis launched their savage attack on the city at the start of the second world war. Litherland caused a flutter among historians todayafter claiming
Source: AP
October 9, 2009
At a memorial service honoring Britons who died during the Iraq war, the Archbishop of Canterbury said Friday it will take time for historians and moralists to decide if the conflict was justified.
Rowan Williams — an outspoken critic of Britain's role in the war — told a congregation at St. Paul's Cathedral that there are lessons to be learned from it. His audience included Queen Elizabeth II, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Iraq President Jalal Talabani, former Prime Minister Tony Bl
Source: Guardian.CO.UK
October 9, 2009
Passage in official history of security services advises closer scrutiny of intelligence data kept by those in power.
The author of MI5's official history has asked the parliamentary intelligence and security committee to investigate the way government departments have succeeded in suppressing embarrassing information.
Christopher Andrew, a Cambridge historian, urged the committee of MPs and peers to act in a hitherto unnoticed passage of his authorised history of MI5,
Source: Washington University in St. Louis
October 9, 2009
An historian of American politics and political institutions at Washington University in St. Louis says that there is a "profound" difference between the awarding of a Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama and ones to Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.
And it has nothing to do with the fact that President Obama is only eight months into his first term as president and Presidents Roosevelt and Wilson were both near the end of their second terms when th
Source: BBC
October 9, 2009
Some of the surviving veterans gathered at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, to receive commemorative badges from Foreign Secretary David Miliband.
Mr Miliband said: "The people of Bletchley Park helped win the war... we must never forget."
Many historians agree the codebreakers' efforts shortened the war by two years.
Source: BBC
October 9, 2009
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has described himself as the most persecuted person "in the entire history of the world".
Mr Berlusconi also said he was "the best prime minister we can find today".
In an impassioned statement, he then mistakenly told reporters he had spent millions of euros on "judges", before correcting himself to say "lawyers".
Correspondents say the Constitutional Court's ruling means th
