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: The Hill
August 1, 2008
Internet giant Google on Tuesday rebuffed Sen. Joe Lieberman’s (I-Conn.) request to remove Internet video content produced by terrorist organizations, claiming the action would stifle the “free speech” the Google-owned site YouTube encourages.
On its blog, the company said that while it “respects his views,” it disagrees with Lieberman “about the details of our policies.”
“YouTube encourages free speech and defends everyone’s right to express unpopular points of view,” the c
Source: IHT
August 2, 2008
Officials at a small Civil War museum made an intriguing discovery while sifting through storage: A document long treated as a photo reproduction of the terms of Gen. Robert E. Lee's surrender appears, upon closer inspection, to contain actual signatures and date to 1865.
Museum officials believe they have one of the three original documents signed by representatives of the Union and Confederacy in Appomattox Court House, Va., on April 10, 1865, a day after Lee's surrender.
Source: Tampa Bay Online
August 2, 2008
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama opposes offering reparations to the descendants of slaves, putting him at odds with some black groups and leaders.
The man with a serious chance to become the nation's first black president argues that government should instead combat the legacy of slavery by improving schools, health care and the economy for all.
"I have said in the past - and I'll repeat again - that the best reparations we can provide are good schoo
Source: Reuters
August 1, 2008
A drastic cooling of the climate in western Europe happened exactly 12,679 years ago, apparently after a shift to icy winds over the Atlantic, scientists said on Friday, giving a hint of how abruptly the climate can change.
The study, of pollens, minerals and other matter deposited in annual layers at the bottom of Lake Meerfelder Maar in Germany, pinpointed an abrupt change in sediments consistent with a sudden chill over just one year.
"Our data indicate an abrup
Source: BBC
August 2, 2008
Colombia's mass graves are starting to reveal the true horror of more than a decade of paramilitary massacres and murders. But few believe the full truth will ever be known or that the government wants it all revealed.
The front line in the search for truth under the country's controversial peace and justice law, which set out the conditions for paramilitaries to disband, is the exhumation of mass graves across the country.
These are being carried out by the attorney
Source: Telegraph
August 2, 2008
On a brilliant sunny day in 1938, exactly 70 years ago this week, I stood in the school playground, doing nothing in particular, while all around was clamour. I was seven.
This was an historic day, although I didn’t know it. An older boy rushed up and thrust a comic into my hands: “Look at this!”
I studied the comic politely, then handed it back, and he rushed off. The boy had just shown me the first issue of the Beano, published that day. For him, it was a wonderful
Source: Telegraph
August 2, 2008
The regime appears determined to stop any attempt to mark the date, which with four eights - 8.8.88 - is of magical importance in Burma's calendar and of huge significance to protesters who two decades on are still trying to bring down a military government in power under a different dictator.
On 8th August 1988 Burmese soldiers are believed to have shot, suffocated and drowned more than 3,000 protesters after weeks of anti-government demonstrations.
In recent weeks pr
Source: Telegraph
August 1, 2008
Inaki de Juana Chaos was convicted in 1987 of murdering 25 people and sentenced to more than 3000 years in prison.
But restrictions in Spain's penal code at the time of sentencing meant that with "good behaviour" he was eligible for release after a minimum of 18 years.
A political storm is raging over the release with the conservative opposition Popular Party calling it a "national source of shame".
Source: Telegraph
August 1, 2008
The bunker in which East German leaders including Erich Honecker hoped to survive a nuclear war is to open to the public for the first time.
But curious visitors to the long secret underground command centre will have only three months to inspect the site before it is sealed forever.
Bunker 17/5001, located in a forest 25 miles north of Berlin, is a chilling reminder of Cold War tensions that threatened mutually assured destruction in the confrontation between the US
Source: NYT
August 1, 2008
After four years pursuing one former Army scientist on a costly false trail, F.B.I. agents investigating the deadly anthrax letters of 2001 finally zeroed in last year on a different suspect: another Army scientist from the same biodefense research center at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Md.
Over the last 18 months, even as the government battled a lawsuit filed by the first scientist, Steven J. Hatfill, investigators built a case against the second one, Bruce E. Ivins, a highly respe
Source: NYT
August 1, 2008
The dusty documentation of the Anasazi Indians a thousand years ago, from their pit houses and kivas to the observatories from which they charted the heavens, lies thick in the ground near here at Canyons of the Ancients National Monument.
Or so archaeologists believe. Less than a fifth of the park has been surveyed for artifacts because of limited federal money.
Much more definite is that a giant new project to drill for carbon dioxide is gathering steam on the park’s
Source: The Hill
August 1, 2008
Senior White House aides are planning to record notes from President Bush’s trip to the Middle East in what White House spokeswoman Dana Perino called “just a little bit of a blog.”
Perino announced the creation of “Trip Notes from the Middle East” in a briefing with reporters prior to the president’s departure.
“This is new to us,” Perino said. “We encourage you to log on and to check back often to read some of the updates that the staff will be posting throughout the
Source: WaPo
July 30, 2008
The House yesterday apologized to black Americans, more than 140 years after slavery was abolished, for the "fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow" segregation.
The resolution, which passed on a voice vote late in the day, was sponsored by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), a white Jew who represents a majority-black district in Memphis. Cohen tried unsuccessfully to join the Congressional Black Caucus this year.
"I hop
Source: Kuwait Times
August 2, 2008
Israeli archaeologists in Jerusalem said yesterday they found the imprint of a seal that belonged to an 6th century BC official in the court of the last king of Judah who was mentioned in the Old Testament.
We found the imprint in clay, remarkably well preserved, of a seal with the name of Gedaliah the son of Pashur," Eilat Mazar, who leads the team of archaeologists, said.
Gedaliah is mentioned in the Bible as among the ministers in the court of King Zedekiah who
Source: Telegraph
August 1, 2008
The identity of this creature, which reportedly washed up on a New York beach last month, has captivated the blogosphere and is dividing animal experts.
The beast, dubbed the Montauk Monster after the Long Island resort where it was discovered, has a hairless, leathery body, sharp teeth and what appears to be a beak.
A photo of the animal appeared on the gossip website Gawker earlier this week under the headline “Dead Monster Washes Ashore in Montauk”, and the story h
Source: NYT
August 1, 2008
A major archive in Germany has purchased 15 custom-made scanners to digitize and catalog a huge collection of virtually untapped Holocaust records. The archive at the International Tracing Service in the German town of Bad Arolsen contains testimony from Holocaust survivors as dictated to humanitarian workers in displaced persons camps after World War II. Survivors detailed the horrors they endured in concentration camps and spoke of their plans for the future while workers recorded the testimon
Source: AP
July 31, 2008
A rare astronomy tool that helped medieval scientists tell time will remain in Britain after the British Museum scrambled to come up with the money to buy it.
The brass device, called an astrolabe quadrant, had been sold at auction last year, and the museum was outbid. But money from the National Heritage Memorial fund, The Art Fund and the British Museum Friends helped the museum purchase it recently for 350,000 pounds ($700,000).
"The quadrant will be a very impo
Source: Telegraph
July 31, 2008
Researchers looking into Mr Rudd's family history discovered that his fourth great-grandfather, Thomas Rudd, was transported to Australia in 1801 to serve a seven-year sentence for "unlawfully acquiring a bag of sugar".
However, his crime is eclipsed by that of the prime minister's paternal fifth great-grandmother Mary Wade, a London street urchin who made a pittance by sweeping streets and begging.
In 1788, aged 12, she and an older girl coaxed an eight-yea
Source: Telegraph
August 1, 2008
Dozens of Whitehall lines and calls to large armament contractors were eavesdropped for signs of careless talk following a request from MI5 during World War 2.
But records released under the Freedom of Information Act also offer a portrait of wartime Britain straining under the pressure of the war effort and air raids.
As well as conversations about shipments and plans, the Postal and Telegraph Censorship Department of the Ministry of Information recorded tense conver
Source: Prague Post
July 30, 2008
Archives reveal that the U.S. expected an invasion of Czechoslovakia, but failed to act
Newly opened US State department archives show that in 1968 the Lyndon B. Johnson government was expecting Warsaw Pact forces to invade Czechoslovakia, but chose to do nothing about it, Mladá fronta Dnes wrote on Thursday, citing Vít Pohanka, the Czech Radio correspondent in Washington.
The documents show that, previous to Prague Spring, in 1967, the American government was more in
