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: NYT
August 28, 2009
BOSTON — The telephone rang early Wednesday morning in the hushed rectory of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica, the old Catholic church on Mission Hill. Phones are always ringing in old churches in working-class neighborhoods, but this caller, a priest, had a singular request.
He said that the Kennedy family — that would be the Kennedys of Hyannis Port, Washington, the world — wondered whether the funeral Mass for Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who had died just hours earlier, could
Source: chron.com (Houston Chronicle)
August 29, 2009
Their story is rarely told, but Albanian Muslims took in fleeing Jews during World War II, saving thousands of lives.
When no other European country dared to withstand the wrath of Nazi Germany, it was the Muslims of Albania who saved a large number of Jewish people from extermination.
Albania, a Muslim majority country in Europe, opened its borders during World War II and took in thousands of Jews fleeing from different countries. They were treated like honored guests,
Source: BBC
August 28, 2009
Interactive technology has brought the Mona Lisa to life - and Leonardo da Vinci's enigmatic 16th Century portrait now speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese.
A digital version of the work is the star attraction in a new exhibition of classic artworks recreated in multimedia form in Beijing.
Exhibition organiser Wang Hui spent two years preparing the collection.
He says it is the first time 3D, holographic and voice recognition technologies have been fused like t
Source: BBC
August 29, 2009
President Barack Obama has paid tribute to his "friend and mentor", Edward Kennedy, at the senator's funeral Mass in Boston.
Mr Obama said Senator Kennedy was the "greatest legislator of our time" and a "champion for those who had none".
The president pointed to some of the tragedies that had befallen the Kennedy family, saying: "It is a string of events that would have broken a lesser man... but that was not Ted Kennedy."
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 29, 2009
Abdel Baset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, has backed calls for a public inquiry into the atrocity.
Megrahi, 57, said it was "unfair" to the victims' families not to have an inquiry into the bombing.
But he is determined to clear his name and was scathing of the Scottish legal system.
Source: Foxnews
August 29, 2009
An internal CIA report released this week said Khalid Sheik Mohammed became "one of the U.S. government's key sources on Al Qaeda" -- a breakthrough that intelligence officials reportedly say came after he was subjected to waterboarding by the CIA.
The inspector general's report, released this week, says Mohammed wasn't much help before he was waterboarded but went on to become "one of the U.S. government's key sources on Al Qaeda." Such revelations have fueled
Source: Times Online (UK)
August 29, 2009
Presidents and members of America’s most famous family paid final tribute Saturday to Edward M Kennedy, mourning the loss of a senator who was a political force for over 47 years in Congress and of the man who carried the Kennedy clan through tragedy and triumph.
President Barack Obama was delivering the eulogy to cap a two-hour Roman Catholic funeral Mass for Kennedy. The service drew to Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica three of the four living former presidents, dozens of Kenn
Source: Pew Research Center
August 12, 2009
Forty years after the Woodstock music festival glorified and exacerbated the generational fractures in American life, the public today says there are big differences between younger and older adults in their values, use of technology, work ethic, and respect and tolerance for others.
But this modern generation gap is a much more subdued affair than the one that raged in the 1960s, for relatively few Americans of any age see it as a source of conflict -- either in society at large or
Source: WaPo
August 28, 2009
George LeMieux, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist's selection to succeed retired Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), will become the fifth senator this year to take his seat through appointment. A possible sixth appointee is waiting in the wings if Massachusetts leaders change that state's law and allow the governor to make an interim appointment to fill the Senate vacancy left by Edward M. Kennedy's death Tuesday.
In recent times, that's an unusually large number of unelected senators to be holdi
Source: BBC
August 27, 2009
Australian palaeontologists say they have discovered a new species of dinosaur on a sheep farm in the northern state of Queensland.
The fossil remains of the large plant-eating sauropod, nicknamed Zac, are about 97 million years old.
They were found near the town of Eromanga, in a fossil-rich area that was once covered by a vast inland sea.
Palaeontologists say the find confirms Australia's importance as a centre for dinosaur discovery.
Source: Telegraph.co.uk
August 28, 2009
Staff feared that the Germans would easily spot the central London building, which was made of gleaming white Portland stone.
The plan was contained in a memo released on Thursday by the BBC from its wartime archives. Other documents detail the corporation’s intention to hand over editorial control to the Government.
In a memo dated September 28, 1939 and headed ‘Broadcasting House: Protection’, house superintendent HL Chilman wrote to his superiors: “If we are going t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 28, 2009
A moon rock given to the Dutch prime minister by Apollo 11 astronauts in 1969 has turned out to be a fake.
Curators at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, where the rock has attracted tens of thousands of visitors each year, discovered that the "lunar rock", valued at £308,000, was in fact petrified wood.
Xandra van Gelder, who oversaw the investigation, said the museum would continue to keep the stone as a curiosity.
The rock was given to Willem Drees, a
Source: Fox News
August 27, 2009
The Kennedy compound in Hyannis, Mass. will be converted into an educational center and museum as a tribute to the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, FOX News learned Thursday.
The compound is also known as the Hyannis Port Historic District, which covers six acres of waterfront property along Nantucket Sound. The property includes the homes of family patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy and two of his sons, Robert and John.
Source: CNSNews.com
August 28, 2009
Mark Lloyd, chief diversity officer at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), claimed that communications policies enacted by Republicans negatively impacted the civil rights of minorities.
Lloyd made the claim in a 1998 essay he wrote while working for the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. He said that two decades of Republican communications policies had eroded the gains made by the civil rights movement in minority ownership in communications.
Lloyd also s
Source: Time
August 28, 2009
There was a poignant footnote to President Obama's historic July 10 meeting with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican. Behind closed doors in the papal library, Obama handed Benedict a letter that Senator Edward Kennedy had asked him to personally deliver to the Pontiff. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs later told reporters that nobody — not even the President — knew the contents of the sealed missive. Obama asked Benedict to pray for Kennedy and called the ailing Senator afterward to fill him in
Source: Truthout
August 27, 2009
Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts - After spending weeks dogging George W. Bush's presidential vacations, anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan is now trying to make life uncomfortable for President Barack Obama.
Sheehan used to pitch a peace camp near Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, becoming a symbol of the anti-war movement after her son Casey died in action in Iraq.
On Thursday, she and a band of anti-war protesters turned up outside the media center used by journalists
Source: NYT
August 27, 2009
BILIN, West Bank — Every Friday for the past four and a half years, several hundred demonstrators — Palestinian villagers, foreign volunteers and Israeli activists — have walked in unison to the Israeli barrier separating this tiny village from the burgeoning settlement of Modiin Illit, part of which is built on the village’s land. One hundred feet away, Israeli soldiers watch and wait.
The protesters chant and shout and, inevitably, a few throw stones. Then just as inevitably, the
Source: Yahoo News
August 28, 2009
ATHENS, Greece – Archaeologists said Friday they have unearthed a lavish burial site at the seat of the ancient Macedonian kings in northern Greece, heightening a 2,300-year-old mystery of murder and political intrigue.
The find in the ruins of Aigai came a few meters (yards) from last year's remarkable discovery of what could be the bones of Alexander the Great's murdered teenage son, according to one expert.
Archaeologists are puzzled because both sets of remains were
Source: The Washington Post
August 28, 2009
Behind each of Edward M. Kennedy's legislative victories was a vast coterie of staffers who became Washington legend. They meticulously packed the senator's black briefcase each evening with tabbed, underlined and dog-eared briefing papers. They helped him hone his floor arguments late into the night over dinner and wine at his home. They took turns walking Splash and Sunny, cleaning up the mess that Kennedy's Portuguese water dogs left on the manicured Capitol grounds.
Suite 317,
Source: BBC
August 28, 2009
North and South Korea have agreed to resume family reunions that were called off by the North two years ago, the two sides have announced in a statement.
The reunions, begun in 2000, were shelved amid worsening relations, but talks on the issue resumed this week.
Red Cross officials from both countries reached agreement after three days of talks at the Mount Kumgang resort in North Korea - where the family reunions are to be held from 26 September to 1 October.
