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: boston.com
October 2, 2009
The mural graced the old Verizon building in the Financial District for more than a half-century, a towering illustration that paid homage to the men and women who toiled as telephone operators, connecting distant relatives and dear, old friends.
But Verizon sold the building last year and quietly took the mural down over the summer as part of the sales agreement. The removal has triggered a storm of protest among local preservationists, who worry about the loss of a significant pie
Source: Dallas Business Journal
October 1, 2009
Belo Corp. said Thursday it will be preserving its television broadcasting history by donating its archives to Southern Methodist University’s DeGolyer Library.
Dallas-based Belo Corp. (NYSE: BLC) said the archives also will receive documents and materials from The Dallas Morning News and its parent company, A.H. Belo Corp., which was spun off from Belo Corp. to establish two separate entities in 2008.
“Since 1985, Belo Corp. has invested in updating its archival collec
Source: NYT
October 1, 2009
BEIJING — China’s leaders marked their nation’s 60th anniversary on Thursday with a precision display of military bravado that included, improbably, a female militia unit toting submachine guns and attired in red miniskirts and white jackboots, and a fleet of floats with representations of a giant fish and Mount Everest.
The celebration of the founding of the People’s Republic of China was immense, powerful and flawless, down to the crystalline skies that, just a day earlier, had be
Source: NYT
October 1, 2009
CHANGCHUN, China — Unlike in other cities taken by the People’s Liberation Army during China’s civil war, there were no crowds to greet the victors as they made their triumphant march through the streets of this industrial city in the heart of Manchuria.
Even if relieved to learn that hostilities with Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Army had come to an end, most residents — the ones who had not died during the five-month siege — were simply too weak to go outdoors. “We were just lying
Source: New York Post
October 2, 2009
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. — A federal judge says the defense may not introduce any specific mention of the 9/11 terrorist attack during the corruption trial of former New York City police Commissioner Bernard Kerik.
Kerik received heavy publicity, much of it glowing, for his actions as commissioner after the attack that brought down the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.
Judge Stephen Robinson said Tuesday the attack had no relevance to the case. Kerik’s accused of acceptin
Source: OpEdNews.com
September 30, 2009
New York City -- Court Justice Edward Lehner has begun consideration of NYC CAN's motion to reject Referee's Louis Crespo's recommendation that the NYC CAN 9/11 petition not be submitted to the voters on November 3. The petition would ask whether or not there should be an independent New York City investigation into 9/11.
Responding to a motion brought by NYC CAN attorney Dennis McMahon, a hearing was held Tuesday September 29 at the New York State Supreme Court, and concluded with
Source: Truthout
September 30, 2009
Jelawur, Afghanistan - The men of Bravo Company have a bitter description for the irrigated swath of land along the Arghandab River where 10 members of their battalion have been killed and 30 have been wounded since the beginning of August.
"Like Vietnam without the napalm," said Spc. Nicholas Gojekian, 21, of Katy, Texas.
A prime agricultural area of vineyards and pomegranate orchards, the 18-miles of valley that the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regim
Source: Time
October 1, 2009
Figuring out the story of human origins is like assembling a huge, complicated jigsaw puzzle that has lost most of its pieces. Many will never be found, and those that do turn up are sometimes hard to place. Every so often, though, fossil hunters stumble upon a discovery that fills in a big chunk of the puzzle all at once — and simultaneously reshapes the very picture they thought they were building.
The path of just such a discovery began in November 1994 with the unearthing of two
Source: philly.com
October 1, 2009
Nearly 25 years after G. Douglas Jones watched a historic case unfold as a law student, the former federal prosecutor found himself in the same third-floor courtroom.
He was no longer a lawyer in training seeking tips on how to try a case. He was the lead prosecutor, and the case was a historic sequel to the one he had watched from a balcony seat decades earlier.
The case of the 1963 bombing deaths of four young girls in a Birmingham, Ala., church yielded a conviction i
Source: TwinCities.com
September 24, 2009
Brett Potas is so angry the University of North Dakota may drop its Fighting Sioux nickname that he canceled his season hockey tickets and says he won't give his alma mater another dime...
... Lucy Ganje, an art professor who led protests against the name, said the school should not only drop its nickname and Indian head logo, but also apologize to Sioux tribes and the school's American Indian students.
The two views illustrate the passionately fought debate over the ni
Source: National Parks Traveler
October 1, 2009
Despite years' old concerns that terrorists might strike at iconic units of the National Park System, the National Park Service's approach to security is haphazard, inefficient, and ineffective, according to a Government Accountablity Office report.
The nearly 50-page report, requested near the end of the Bush administration by members of the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Homeland Security and presented to the committee late this past August, paints a sordid picture of
Source: Daily News
September 30, 2009
In a previous version of this story, the Daily news incorrectly identified the location of Patara. It was corrected on Oct. 1, 2009.
The Turkish government has allocated a budget to restore an ancient lighthouse, believed to be the world's oldest.
Culture and Tourism Minister Ertuğrul Günay said Wednesday that his ministry would grant 800,000 Turkish Liras for the restoration of Nero's Lighthouse, discovered four years ago in the ancient city of Patara, locate
Source: BBC
September 30, 2009
Ex-Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori has been sentenced to six years in jail for corruption by a court in Lima.
Fujimori, who is already serving prison sentences for crimes including ordering killings by security forces, was in court for a fourth and final trial.
The charges relate to a scandal which brought down his government in 2000.
During the trial, Fujimori, 71, admitted that he had illegally tapped the phones of journalists, businessmen and opposit
Source: The Wall Street Journal
October 2, 2009
BEIJING -- When Qiu Zhijie organized a show of fellow young artists in the basement of a suburban Beijing apartment complex a decade ago, police burst in and closed it after just one day. Contemporary art was taboo, and Mr. Qiu was especially provocative, with installations that mocked China's rising consumerism.
Today, Mr. Qiu is as active as ever. His current project looks at the costs of China's 60 years of communism by contrasting the official, heroic history of a giant bridge o
Source: Yahoo News
September 30, 2009
OKLAHOMA CITY – The FBI says it did not edit videotapes of the aftermath of the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building before turning them over to an attorney who is conducting an unofficial inquiry into the bombing.
The FBI turned over more than two dozen tapes taken from security cameras on buildings and other locations around the federal building to Salt Lake City attorney Jesse Trentadue, who obtained them through the federal Freedom of Information Act. Trentadue sai
Source: NYT
September 30, 2009
BEIJING — As nearly 190,000 dancers, politicians, soldiers and fighter pilots prepared for the highly synchronized extravaganza marking the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China on Thursday, perhaps no one was feeling more performance anxiety than Guo Hu, Beijing’s chief weatherman.
While meteorologists in much of the world are simply charged with forecasting rain or shine, Mr. Guo and his colleagues at the Beijing Municipal Meteorological Station were also responsible
Source: NYT
September 30, 2009
BEIJING — Xie Jun, 23, is a modern Chinese patriot. On Thursday, when thousands of soldiers and rows of tanks and caissons move in perfect order past Tiananmen Square to commemorate 60 years of Communist Party rule, his heart will skip a beat and a lump will rise in his throat.
“I’ve learned from textbooks the history of China — how we were invaded in the past by foreigners,” he said this week as he sold bananas and persimmons from a fruit cart in a leafy downtown neighborhood. “How
Source: Time
September 22, 2009
Journalists often stand accused of neglecting good news in favor of bad. And on Monday evening, some of the most eminent names in British journalism seemed frankly perplexed at how to handle a piece of good news: namely, that their employer, the Observer, had been saved from the chop. They had called a meeting in London to plot a campaign to rescue the world's oldest Sunday newspaper. Despite news of the paper's reprieve, they assembled anyway. As the room filled to capacity and then filled beyo
Source: Newsletter of the New York American Revolution Roundtable
September 27, 2009
The news from this enterprise is nothing less than revolutionary. After nine years of trying to build the Center in Valley Forge, first on a site inside the national park, then on land they purchased for seven million dollars on the north side of the Schuylkill River, the new ARC president, Bruce Cole, and his board decided there was no hope of a solution to their differences with the officials of Valley Forge National Park. Cole announced they were moving to Philadelphia to build the Center on
Source: Slatest
October 1, 2009
Just days after its title was announced and almost two months before it will be released, Sarah Palin's memoir is already selling strong. Going Rogue: An American Life is now No. 1 at Amazon's and Barnes & Noble's online lists, topping even Dan Brown's blockbuster thriller The Lost Symbol. At Amazon, people who bought Going Rogue also appeared likely to have bought books by conservative pundits Michelle Malkin and Glenn Beck or by Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, giving Talking Points Memo the da
