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: CNN
September 20, 2009
An international rocker is creating a rare opportunity to sing about change on the Communist island of Cuba.
Colombian singer Juanes -- a 17-time Latin Grammy winner -- has brought 15 international artists to Havana. He hopes to thaw U.S.-Cuba relations by staging a "Peace without Borders" concert.
But the reaction in Miami, Florida, home to both Juanes and a large Cuban exile community, has not been entirely peaceful.
Juanes has received death th
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 19, 2009
Historic cathedrals will struggle to carry out vital repair work when English Heritage withdraws a £3 million-a-year conservation grant.
An alarming number of cathedrals are crumbling, with masonry falling from the walls, water leaking through roofs, and pillars being held together with duct tape, church authorities have warned. The Sunday Telegraph revealed last week that parts of Canterbury cathedral have been fenced off as unsafe.
Simon Thurley, the chief executive
Source: Fox News
September 19, 2009
House Republican leader John Boehner says nationwide protests known as "tea parties" are the result of pushback against Democrats' spending.
Speaking to the Values Voter Summit, an annual gathering of the religious conservatives in Washington, Boehner blasted the Democrats for "bankrupting" the country. He said people are demonstrating and attending town hall meetings because "we're in the midst of a political rebellion in America."
Boehne
Source: AP
September 19, 2009
The buyer of a scenic property in northern Wisconsin will get more than just its bar and restaurant — they'll have the former hideout of Chicago mobster Al Capone.
The 407-acre wooded site, complete with guard towers and a stone house with 18-inch-thick walls, will soon go on the auction block at a starting bid of $2.6 million.
The bank that foreclosed on the land near Couderay, about 140 miles northeast of Minneapolis, said Capone owned it in the late 1920s and early 1
Source: Fox News
September 18, 2009
Republicans are rejecting comparisons made by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who came near to tears Thursday when she compared anti-government rhetoric over President Obama's health care proposals to tumultuous 1970s San Francisco.
Republicans are rejecting comparisons made by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who came near to tears Thursday when she compared anti-government rhetoric over President Obama's health care proposals to tumultuous 1970s San Francisco.
Pelosi, though
Source: NYT
September 17, 2009
Like many veterans, Max Fuchs did not talk much about what he did in the war. His children knew he landed at Omaha Beach. Sometimes, they were allowed to feel the shrapnel still lodged in his chest.
And once, he had told them, he sang as the cantor in a Jewish prayer service on the battlefield.
On Oct. 29, 1944, at the edge of a fierce fight for control of the city of Aachen, Germany, a correspondent for NBC radio introduced the modest Sabbath service like this:
Source: Epoch Times
September 17, 2009
New findings indicate that farming in the Yangtze Basin existed as early as 4,000 years ago. Excavation in the Xiezi Area of Hubei Province yielded a total of 402 cultural relics, including carbonized rice.
Stone tools, pottery, bronze, jade and porcelain were unearthed, as well as a number of spinning wheels, drop spindles made of clay and other textile tools. There were also stone mounds and smelting relics such as slag. A variety of grains and seeds were found, and experts bel
Source: Irish Times, Tara Watch
September 17, 2009
The controversial M3 motorway in Co Meath (Ireland), which has been the subject of several years of protests, is now almost 90 per cent complete, the National Roads Authority (NRA) has said. At almost 60km
of main motorway and a further 40km of link roads and interchanges,the it is one of the longest motorways under construction in Europe.
The M3 is not scheduled to open until July 2010. Work could still finish ahead of this scheduled date, but not before mid-spring next ye
Source: The Hindu
September 14, 2009
KOCHI: Archaeological findings dating back about 3,000 years discovered in the Kalady area are in peril. The Neolithic relics have ended up in private custody, prompting the State Archaeology Department to initiate a move to recover them. An archaeology enthusiast K.A. Ali had recovered 43 stone axes (Neolithic Celts) and a grinding stone from a tributary of the Periyar.
Two teachers of a private college in the region reportedly took possession of the major portion of the finds, whi
Source: Times Online
September 19, 2009
Archaeologists working in Orkney have pieced together the most complete picture to date of life in Neolithic Britain. Excavation of a settlement on the island of Westray points to a people that farmed and fished together and probably had their own village hall.
Archaeologists believe that the Links of Noltland settlement could become as significant as Skara Brae, the Unesco World Heritage Site on Orkney’s mainland.
Graeme Wilson, who is leading the excavation of the sit
Source: Truthout
September 18, 2009
Buenos Aires, Argentina - On September 3, 2009, three aging, retired officials from Argentina's army entered a federal courthouse in Rosario, Argentina. The men - Pascual Guerrieri, Jorge Alberto Fariña and Juan Daniel Amelong - have been charged with the kidnapping, forced disappearance and torture of 29 people, and the murder of 17 of them during Argentina's last dictatorship.
The case in Rosario is the latest in a tidal wave of cases to reach a courthouse against the dictato
Source: Digit Journal
September 19, 2009
Seven former heads of the CIA have written to U.S. President Barack Obama to urge him to halt the inquiry in to abuse allegedly suffered by suspected terrorists whilst they were being detained by the agency.
The letter, which has yet to draw a response from the White House, was written in light of the decision last month by Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a prosecutor to investigate claims that officers of the Central Intelligence Agency and contractors working for the agenc
Source: Time
September 17, 2009
As you're reading this, two German ships are heading for the Dutch port of Rotterdam, having set sail from South Korea in late July. Nothing remarkable about that. Except that by Sept. 16, both vessels — the Beluga Fraternity and Beluga Foresight — had passed Novaya Zemlya, the crescent-shaped island off Russia's north coast that to many marks the end of the Northeast Passage. Shunning conventional shipping routes between Asia and Europe in what appears to be the first commercial navigation via
Source: The Salt Lake Tribune
September 19, 2009
What a story a 4-inch bronze cap planted under the pavement of State Route 121 has to tell.
From this spot, the U.S. government drew the boundaries of the 2-million acre Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation, and later sold half the land to white settlers for $1.25 an acre.
So much of the Uintah Basin's bittersweet pioneer history emanated from this point five miles east of the farm village of Neola, and it infused a rededication ceremony here Friday...
... I
Source: ABC News
September 18, 2009
It's a story that will forever change the way you think of the phrase, "Get Out of Jail Free."
During World War II, as the number of British airmen held hostage behind enemy lines escalated, the country's secret service enlisted an unlikely partner in the ongoing war effort: The board game Monopoly.
It was the perfect accomplice.
Included in the items the German army allowed humanitarian groups to distribute in care packages to imprisoned soldiers
Source: Armenia Now
September 17, 2009
In the light of present discussion on Armenian-Turkish relations some Armenian politicians are inclined not to comment on the current stage of relations but instead suggest reviewing history.
Arman Melikyan, former Foreign Minister of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, believes that Armenia should not sign Armenian-Turkish protocols, (which among other things suggest the recognition of the current Armenia-Turkish border) but instead to start negotiations with Turkey over annulling the T
Source: Talking Points Memo (liberal blog)
September 17, 2009
Former Bush administration official Ellen Sauerbrey, who served as Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration, is warning that President Obama's policies point in a very dangerous direction: economic fascism.
The County Times of St. Mary's County, Maryland, reported on an appearance that Sauerbrey -- a former two-time GOP nominee for governor -- put in at a local Republican dinner this past Saturday. The paper reports that Sauerbrey said that President Obama
Source: chron (Houston and Texas News)
September 18, 2009
AUSTIN — Christmas will stay in Texas textbooks, State Board of Education members said Thursday while reviewing early recommendations for new social studies standards.
The board will not approve the new curriculum standards for public schools until next year, but wanted to assure constituents they will not accept a recommendation to yank Christmas.
“We have heard quite significant feedback from parents, from people who are very disturbed that we are not going to continu
Source: The New York Times
September 18, 2009
Touring an archaeological dig site, you generally expect a glimpse of antiquities a little more antediluvian than a television antenna, a seven-inch single, a tailfin and a rotary-dial telephone. But an odd excavation site that recently opened to the public on Governors Island purports to offer just that: artifacts not of the Mesoamerican but of the midcentury variety, about 1954.
That is the year, at least according to Geert Hautekiet, the man in charge of exhibiting the site, that
Source: BBC
September 18, 2009
Events are taking place this week to commemorate the 47 men killed in Scotland's worst mining disaster of the last century.
It is 50 years to the day since an underground fire at Auchengeich Colliery in Lanarkshire.
A total of 41 women were widowed and 76 children lost their fathers as a result of the tragedy.
On Sunday a special remembrance service will be held and a new memorial statue will be unveiled.
