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: Press Release--National Association of Scholars
July 29, 2008
The National Association of Scholars has announced the opening of its “Argus project,” an initiative that calls for volunteers to help keep watch over American colleges and universities.
The project is named for the creature in Greek mythology whose body was covered with eyes. “Like Argus, who always had his eyes open, the NAS needs to have a steady, open-eyed watch on colleges around the country,” said Ashley Thorne, NAS director of communications. “To do that, we are asking volunt
Source: http://www.santacruzsentinel.com
July 29, 2008
Graduation from Watsonville High School was just a few weeks away in April 1942 when Jiro Sugidono was interned at the Salinas fairgrounds in the midst of anti-Japanese hysteria after Pearl Harbor.
He and his family were living in horse stables when the school principal made the trip to Salinas to hand out diplomas at the detention center. Sugidono, who was born and raised in Watsonville and attended Radcliff, Linscott and E.A. Hall schools, would wait 50 years to participate in a g
Source: WaPo
July 30, 2008
They are the everyday items of daily life, tossed off or abandoned by people long gone to their graves, that 300 years later have become the stuff of history.
A button, a bottle, a toothbrush and 300,000 other ordinary relics from colonial-era plantation life on the banks of the Potomac are now historical artifacts, to be examined, admired and cataloged by those who take stock of bygone days.
The items are coming home to the place where they were discovered more than tw
Source: CNN
July 29, 2008
One of the Marines shown in a famous World War II photograph raising the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima was posthumously awarded a certificate of U.S. citizenship on Tuesday.
Sgt. Michael Strank, who was born in Czechoslovakia and came to the United States when he was 3, derived U.S. citizenship when his father was naturalized in 1935. However, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services recently discovered that Strank never was given citizenship papers.
At a ceremony Tuesday at t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 30, 2008
Religions thrived to protect our ancestors against the ravages of disease, according to a radical new evolutionary theory of the genesis of faith.
Prof Richard Dawkins the atheist and sceptic, has condemned religion as a "virus of the mind" but it seems that people became religious for good reason - actually to avoid infection by viruses and other diseases - according to a study published today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, Biological Sciences.
Dr C
Source: International Herald Tribune
July 29, 2008
As thousands of far-right nationalists gathered here Tuesday to celebrate the man accused of engineering the worst massacre in Europe since World War II, Serbian human rights activists said the emotional outpouring showed that Serbia had yet to come to terms with its past.
"Karadzic is a hero because he defended Serb lives during the terrible wars of the 1990s," said Elena Pavovski, 24, a supporter of the far-right Radical Party. The party bused in supporters from across S
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 29, 2008
The king of Tonga, one of the world's last absolute monarchs, has vowed to end hundreds of years of feudal rule on the eve of a lavish coronation ceremony which will bring his restive South Pacific nation to a standstill.
Source: Times (UK)
July 29, 2008
A court in Bosnia has convicted seven Serbs of genocide for rounding up and executing more than 1,000 Bosnian Muslims in a single day during the Srebrenica massacre.
The Sarajevo court gave the men sentences ranging from 38 to 42 years for their participation in the murders — some of the 8,000 killings in the 1995 massacre for which Radovan Karadzic must answer in The Hague. Four other defendants were acquitted.
Source: Nixon Blog (Click here for picture.)
July 29, 2008
The Nixon Library suffered minor damage as the result of Tuesday’s earthquake, which was centered a few miles from Yorba Linda in the community of Chino Hills. No one was injured. The worst damage was in the White House East Room, where Martha Washington’s portrait and a few chandelier baubles fell to the floor. No structural damage was in evidence on the grounds or in the museum. As the situation was being assessed, Federal officials ordered the Library closed and sent their own and private Fou
Source: NYT
July 30, 2008
The young law professor stood apart in too many ways to count. At a school where economic analysis was all the rage, he taught rights, race and gender. Other junior faculty dreamed of tenured positions; he turned them down. While most colleagues published by the pound, he never completed a single work of legal scholarship.
At a formal institution, Barack Obama was a loose presence, joking with students about their romantic prospects, using first names, referring to case law one mome
Source: National Security Archive
July 29, 2008
Magistrate Judge John M. Facciola of the U.S. District Court today denied a motion by the White House to reconsider his earlier recommendations and reaffirmed his recommendation that the court order the Executive Office of the President (EOP) to search individual workstations used between March 2003 and October 2005 and preserve any e-mails located on those workstations or on portable media used by EOP employees.
In finding that the White House must search and preserve e-mails saved
Source: Nicholas Adell for HNN
July 27, 2008
In his speech last Thursday in Berlin, Barack Obama borrowed tropes and imagery from the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, websites and blogs--and now the New York Times--have noted.
In today's Times editors found no fewer than five parallels from Shakespeare to Lincoln to FDR, to JFK and Ronald Reagan. The editors could have included Tom Paine, too, as we'll see.
###
Shakespeare:"Friends, Romans, Countrymen."
Obama:"I come to Berlin as so many of my c
Source: Wired.com
July 28, 2008
1958: President Eisenhower signs the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The plot had thickened months before.
Beep … beep … beep …
They were steady, almost metronomic, signals coming from a tiny radio beacon orbiting the Earth every 96 minutes aboard an aluminum sphere measuring a mere 22-inches across. In an instant, everything changed.
It was Oct. 4, 1957, when the Soviet news agency Tass announced to a stu
Source: Reuters
July 29, 2008
Hungarian police evacuated thousands of people in central Budapest on Tuesday where experts prepared to defuse a huge World War Two bomb found on a construction site.
The two-tonne bomb is one of the biggest found in the Hungarian capital, which was heavily bombed by the Allies during World War Two. Earlier this month another part of Budapest was evacuated after a half-tonne bomb was discovered.
About 16,000 people live in the area where the latest bomb was found, said
Source: CNN
July 29, 2008
The nonbinding resolution, which is expected to pass, was introduced by Rep. Steve Cohen, a white lawmaker who represents a majority black district in Memphis, Tennessee.
While many states have apologized for slavery, it will be first time a branch of the federal government will apologize for slavery if the resolution passes, an aide to Cohen said.
By passing the resolution, the House would also acknowledge the "injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slave
Source: NPR
July 28, 2008
The relationship between Sudan and China is widely believed to be a marriage anointed in oil: China needs it and Sudan has it, and the two have been in business for years. But the Sudanese say their bond with China runs deeper than any oil well and goes back more than 100 years — to a man who proved the adage "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."
Maj. Gen. Charles Gordon was known as "Chinese" Gordon to his fans — none of whom were even a little Chinese. In the 1
Source: Independent (UK)
July 29, 2008
50 years, 50 giant leaps: How Nasa rocked our world
Today, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration marks its first half-century of exploration and discovery. But missions to the Moon and beyond are only part of the story. Without Nasa's scientists, life on Earth would be very different indeed.
1.The hand-held vacuum cleaner
The cordless miniature vacuum cleaner was born after Black & Decker developed a self-contained portable drill for the Apollo Mo
Source: http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk
July 28, 2008
A NUN who worked with Manchester's poor in the 19th century could become Britain's next saint.
Sister Elizabeth Prout opened schools and gave a lifeline to thousands during the industrial revolution from her city centre base.
Her work, which centred around impoverished female immigrants who rushed to the city to work in the mills, has now put her in line to become the first female British saint for 40 years.
A file of her life, which took 14 years to prepar
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 29, 2008
A former Ku Klux Klan member convicted in the killings of three Mississippi civil rights workers in the 1960s must be freed because the FBI used a Mafia enforcer to torture a key witness for information, his lawyers say.
Edgar Ray Killen, 84, was convicted in 2005 of ordering the Klan killings of the trio 41 years earlier, a crime that was dramatised in the film Mississippi Burning.
His lawyers have appealed against his life sentence for triple manslaughter, citing new eviden
Source: AP
July 28, 2008
The ceremony commemorates the death of the seventh Shiite imam, Moussa
al-Kadhim, who died in 799.
Each year, Shiite worshippers gather at a mosque in the northern Baghdad
neighborhood of Kazimiyah that is believed to sit atop his tomb.
Pilgrims walk to the shrine — some flogging themselves with iron chains or
slicing their foreheads. The bloody ritual was banned during the rule of
Saddam Hussein.
The ceremony is not one of the most important to Shiites, but still draws
