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: Foxnews
April 24, 2009
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., makes the dubious claim that Sept. 11 hijackers entered the United States through Canada -- just days after Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano came under fire for saying the same thing.
Napolitano retracted her claim on Thursday after Canadian officials chided her for the remark, calling it an unfortunate misconception. Napolitano admitted Thursday that she made a mistake -- since the 9/11 Commission concluded that the hijackers entered the U.S
Source: Foxnews
April 24, 2009
Referring to the killings as genocide could upend recent pledges of a closer partnership with Turkey, a vital U.S. ally in a critical region.
President Obama faces a dilemma as he prepares to issue an annual presidential statement Friday on the World War I-era killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks.
Referring to the killings as genocide could upend recent pledges of a closer partnership with Turkey, a vital U.S. ally in a critical region. Steering around the word woul
Source: AP
April 24, 2009
What a British auction house claims are a set of paintings and sketches by a young Adolf Hitler sold at auction Thursday for $143,358.
Among the 15 pictures is a portrait of solitary figure dressed in brown peering into wine-colored waters. The date is 1910, the signature reads "A. Hitler" and scribbled just over the mysterious figure are the letters: "A.H."
Westwood-Brookes acknowledged that the pieces were "hardly Picasso," but — concerns
Source: NYT
April 23, 2009
In the three months since leaving office, Mr. Cheney has upended the old Washington script for former presidents and vice presidents, using a series of interviews — the first just two weeks after leaving office — to kick off one last campaign, not for elective office, but on behalf of his own legacy. In the process, he has become a vocal leader of the opposition to President Obama, rallying conservatives as they search for leadership and heartening Democrats who see him as the ideal political fo
Source: AP
April 23, 2009
Iraq's government has recorded 87,215 of its citizens killed since 2005 in violence ranging from catastrophic bombings to execution-style slayings, according to government statistics obtained by The Associated Press that break open one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war.
Combined with tallies based on hospital sources and media reports since the beginning of the war and an in-depth review of available evidence by The Associated Press, the figures show that more than 110
Source: Inside Higher Ed
April 23, 2009
The University of North Dakota’s athletic teams will continue to be known as the “Fighting Sioux,” for the time being. Tuesday, during an election of tribal officials, members of the Spirit Lake Sioux tribe voted to approve the university’s current nickname. The state’s Board of Higher Education and the National Collegiate Athletic Association reached a settlement in 2007 that mandates that the university must receive the approval of the two major Sioux tribes – Spirit Lake and Standing Rock – b
Source: ALI SOUFAN in an op ed in the NYT
April 22, 2009
One of the most striking parts of the memos is the false premises on which they are based. The first, dated August 2002, grants authorization to use harsh interrogation techniques on a high-ranking terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, on the grounds that previous methods hadn’t been working. The next three memos cite the successes of those methods as a justification for their continued use.
It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. age
Source: NYT
April 23, 2009
The Chinese government denounced Prime Minister Taro Aso of Japan on Thursday for making an offering earlier this week to a war shrine in Tokyo that has been a source of continuing conflict between Chinese and Japanese leaders.
On Tuesday, Mr. Aso made an offering of a potted tree worth about $500 to commemorate a spring festival at the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japanese soldiers who have died during wars in the last 150 years. The honored soldiers include 14 “Class A” war crim
Source: Politico.com
April 23, 2009
Here are seven things the White House wants reporters to write:
Obama is a promise-keeper.
The White House is pushing back against what it realizes is a dangerous perception that Obama may be trying to do too much, too fast — and cynically exploiting the economic crisis to push through unrelated agenda items. Aides are urging reporters to reread his campaign speeches, dating back to 2006, to see that Obama was upfront with voters on his big ambitions. They are basical
Source: Politico (Mike Allen)
April 23, 2009
Presidents typically have strong approval ratings after their opening months (see Bush, George W.). But a little digging in the files shows President Obama IS UNIQUE AMONG RECENT PRESIDENTS for trigging a soaring 'right track' number (people who tell pollsters they feel good about the direction of the country) and sinking 'wrong track' number. From January to April, 'right track' was up 23 points under Obama, 2 points under President George W. Bush, down 4 points under President Clinton and down
Source: http://www.ynetnews.com
April 21, 2009
A member of Iran's official delegation to the UN's anti-racism conference verbally assaulted Shoah survivor and Nobel Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel in Geneva, referring to him as a "Zionazi."
The incident was captured on film by Sergio Wider of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. The video features the Iranian official repeatedly screaming at Wiesel, who chose to remain silent and ignore the reprehensible comments.
Source: http://www.thisissomerset.co.uk
April 22, 2009
Mystery surrounds how an unexploded bomb was left secreted in a Cheddar Valley beauty spot for the best part of 70 years.
Bomb disposal experts had to carry out a controlled explosion after keen amateur archaeologists made the shocking discovery of the Second World War mortar bomb last Tuesday.
The group of four from Charterhouse Historic and Environmental Research Team (CHERT), led by archaeologist Steve Tofts, was carrying out surveying work near Cheddar Gorge.
Source: LiveScience
April 22, 2009
A skeleton cast of tiny and controversial Homo floresiensis, nicknamed the Hobbit, went on public display for the first time Tuesday at Stony Brook University on Long Island.
The specimen, discovered in 2003 in Indonesia, is hotly debated among scientists. Some claim it represents a new diminutive hominin species, while others argue it is simply a modern human dwarfed by some medical condition.
All agree the original Hobbit was extremely compact compared to us.
Source: CNN
April 23, 2009
The photograph is a jarring image that shows Nazi Party members, shovels in hand, digging up graves of American soldiers held as slaves by Nazi Germany during World War II.
While the men dig up the site, U.S. soldiers investigating war crimes stand over them. Two crosses with helmets placed atop them -- the sign of a fallen soldier -- are visible. Two Germans are knee deep in mud. Another, with a handlebar mustache, has the look of a defeated man. The bodies of 22 American soldiers
Source: Newsweek
April 21, 2009
It's widely debated how exactly it started, but the roots of the
modern environmental movement trace back to the 1960s. Early in the
decade, Rachel Carson published her nonfiction work"Silent Spring" as
a wake-up call to current and impending environmental concerns.
Several years later, U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson (of Wisconsin), one of
the government's first eco warriors, sought to harvest general
awareness and turn it into a movement. He hit on the idea of an event,
modeled after the a
Source: McClatchy
April 21, 2009
The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist.
Such information would've provided a foundation for one of former President George W. Bush's main arguments for invading Iraq in 2003. In fact, no evidence has ever been found of operati
Source: Press Release
March 30, 2009
“The Quran in its Historical Context,” an international conference addressing the most recent theories, controversies and discoveries in the field of Quranic studies, will be held April 19 to 21 (Sunday to Tuesday) at the University of Notre Dame. The conference is free and open to the public.
The conference, which will provide a unique forum for discussion of the historical circumstances in which the Quran was formed and of its relationship to the Bible, will open with a lecture titled “
Source: AP
April 22, 2009
The global economy is expected to lurch into reverse this year for the first time since World War II with appalling consequences for nations large and small -- trillions of dollars in lost business, millions of people thrust into hunger and homelessness and crime on the rise.
And the pain won't stop this year, the International Monetary Fund declared Wednesday, for what it said was "by far the deepest global recession since the Great Depression." To cushion the blow and he
Source: USA Today
April 23, 2009
Presidents have had mixed results in dealing with hostage situations and other potentially violent incidents abroad. For instance, President Jimmy Carter's failed mission to rescue U.S. hostages from Iran in 1980 badly damaged his reputation as an effective commander in chief and hurt America's image as a military power. President Bill Clinton's embarrassing withdrawal of a shipload of U.S. troops from the coast of Haiti in 1993 after the vessel was threatened by an armed mob gathered at the doc
Source: W & M Press Release
April 16, 2009
Without so much as a map or an "X" to mark the spot, a group of William & Mary students recently uncovered some historical "treasure" that is expected to shed new light on the lives of early 20th-century African-Americans, including Maggie L. Walker, the first woman to found a bank in the United States and a black woman who worked tirelessly to improve the lives of other black women.
The students were exploring the attic of a building in Richmond when they ca
