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
January 23, 2006
A Turkish court dropped criminal charges against best-selling author Orhan Pamuk on Monday, a defense lawyer said, in a move which the European Union described as ``good news'' for freedom of speech in Turkey.The trial had cast a shadow over the Muslim country's drive to join the 25-nation EU bloc after it began membership talks last October.
``The court has decided to drop the case. There will not be a hearing... because there is no need for that,'' lawyer Halu
Source: Duluth News Tribune
January 22, 2006
The proud lineage of Abraham Lincoln has helped researchers at the University of Minnesota identify a genetic origin of ataxia, a disease that robs people of mobility and coordination.The discovery, announced Sunday, means that genetic screening can be used to identify people at risk for at least one form of this neurological disease. Perhaps a gene-specific treatment can be designed as well.
Genetics professor Laura Ranum started the hunt for the responsible ge
Source: electricpolitics.com
January 4, 2006
For several years Lieutenant General William E. Odom (ret.), formerly Director of the NSA (1985-88), has expressed the remarkable view that the US invasion of Iraq is "the greatest strategic mistake" in US history. In a podcast interview recorded on January 4, he elaborated on that proposition, and contended that an extended US debacle in Iraq could trigger the collapse of the current international system.He talks about a loosening of constraints upon rivalri
Source: NYT
January 22, 2006
JENIN, West Bank, Jan. 18 - The candidate's name is Jamal Abu Roub, but everyone here calls him Hitler because, well, that is the name he has answered to quite comfortably since he was a teenager.Mr. Roub, 40, is a leader of the militant Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades in this turbulent corner of the West Bank, and has spent the past five years leading his ragtag band of gunmen in frequent clashes with the Israeli military. Mr. Roub's deeds include hauling a Palestinian
Source: NYT
January 22, 2006
Christopher Cain is finishing a new movie about one of the darkest moments in Mormon history, the Mountain Meadows massacre of 1857, in which 137 pioneers from Arkansas were killed in Utah by a raiding party whose ties to the Mormon church are still in dispute.
Source: BBC News
January 22, 2006
They are known as the "Defenders of the Church" and this weekend the Vatican Swiss Guard celebrated 500 years of service. In that time they have protected 42 successive popes, although more recently the Vatican has been guarded by Italian security forces and plainclothes police. But personal safety of the pope is still the guards' full responsibility.
The guards first arrived in Rome on 22 January 1506. At that time, Helvetian soldiers wer
Source: zaman.com
January 22, 2006
It has been revealed that Turkey informed Italian officials about Mehmet Ali Agca's plan to assassinate Pope II Jean Paul one year before the incident. Turkish Interpol warned member countries by issuing a red bulletin after Agca escaped from prison in 1979 where he was sentenced to life for murdering Abdi Ipekci, editor of the moderate left-wing newspaper Milliyet; however, the countries did not pay much heed to "the red bulletin" at first. After Agca's assa
Source: Boston Globe
January 22, 2006
What color are the stars on our flag? How many representatives are in Congress? Who becomes president if the president and the vice president should die? Who wrote ''The Star-Spangled Banner?" The federal government has decided that these questions -- five of the 100 that could appear on the US citizenship test -- are trivial. They say the exam, which is supposed to gauge how well immigrants understand and embrace US institutions, instead tests only their ability to memorize answers. So the
Source: CNN
January 21, 2006
By 1607, the civilized world knew the earth was not flat. Unfortunately, nobody passed that tidbit of information along to writer-director Terrence Malick. Malick's new film, "The New World" -- only his fourth in 32 years -- is as flat as a flapjack. This ponderous film -- about the settlement of the Jamestown colony by the British and the love story of Capt. John Smith and the Indian princess Pocahontas -- almost totally lacks exposition and offers colorless characters beyond the main
Source: NYT
January 21, 2006
The discussion was supposed to be about Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who were executed in 1953 for espionage and have haunted the artistic imagination ever since. But their conversation, sponsored by Fordham Law School and presented Thursday night at the Park Cafe in the Time Warner Center before an audience of about 200 people, soon moved from the Rosenberg trial to more timely issues. "Do artists worry about getting it right at all?" asked Thane Rosenbaum, a novelist and law professor
Source: NYT
January 21, 2006
During Tuesday's episode of the ABC show, starring Geena Davis as the first female president, the White House tried to resolve an international crisis precipitated when an American military submarine was damaged and stranded off North Korea. President Allen (Ms. Davis) and her husband-adviser (Kyle Secor) consulted with a friend who is an expert on Korea. That character, played by Robert Harper, was named Owen Latimer. In 1950, Owen Lattimore, an Asia expert and professor at
Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch
January 21, 2006
Hugo Duarte's "Hollywood," a song inspired when he was locked in Hollywood Cemetery near the grave of Confederate Gen. George E. Pickett, was about to come full circle. Duarte will sing it today with Pickett, the great-great-great-nephew of the general.Moreover, they'll sing it at the place where it was inspired, Pickett's grave.
An 11:30 a.m. graveside ceremony, open to the public, will mark Pickett's 181st birthday. In addition to "H
Source: Ottawa Citizen
January 20, 2006
One year from now, the United States of America plans to throw itself a year-long party, dubbed Jamestown 2007: America's 400th Anniversary. But first, it must find a way to tell the story of three very different groups of people who converged on the shores of that small bay in 1607, and carved a nation out of the wilderness.For some, Jamestown symbolized the taming of a new world by brave men and women, but for Virginia Indians, it meant the destruction of 90 pe
Source: NYT
January 21, 2006
Come spring, the Winchester rifle, immortalized as the gun that won the West and rode into the sunset with John Wayne, will be made in Portugal and Japan.The U.S. Repeating Arms Company, which has manufactured rifles and shotguns in New Haven since 1866, is set to shut its doors on March 31. About 200 people will lose their jobs, many having worked for decades on the plant's assembly line.
Workers were told of the decision to close the plant this month aft
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
January 21, 2006
GEORGIA Dennis Blanton, the recently appointed curator of of Fernbank Museum of Natural History, says he is eager to create a permanent exhibit that will give Georgians a better understanding of their regional history, a story that does not begin with the arrival of the English.One historian thinks the paradigm shift could not come at a better time.
"So far, the collective consciousness of Georgians has not extended to include the influen
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
January 19, 2006
An independent alumni group formed by 24 year old Andrew Jones to attack "radicalism" at the University of California at Los Angeles has offered $100 prizes to any student who turns over extensive documentation of cases in which professors show political bias in the classroom.
David Horowitz said that while he objects to professors' injecting their politics into their teaching, Mr. Jones's approach of "baiting people" is wrong. Furthermore, he said, Mr. Jones us
Source: Manan Ahmed at HNN's Cliopatria Blog
January 19, 2006
The enterprising scholars at American University Cairo thought it worthwhile to poll M.E. professors [and sundries] on the "most interesting, informative and readable" books in the field of Modern Middle East Studies. 52 scholars of the M.E. responded and below is the top 21. Orientalism by Edward Said 1978
Source: NYT
January 20, 2006
BERLIN Parliament rejected a last-minute attempt to save what is left of the Palace of the Republic in Berlin, the home of the East German Parliament, and demolition is now expected to begin next month. The fate of the building - a huge steel-and-concrete complex with bronze-colored windows that opened in 1976 and also housed a concert hall - has divided Berliners for more than a decade. After German reunification in 1990, the building was closed, and it was gutted after asb
Source: Chicago Tribune
January 20, 2006
No Child Left Behind was supposed to ensure that unqualified teachers either got the additional training they needed or got out of the classroom.
But new state regulations adopted Thursday allow veteran teachers previously considered unqualified under the law to suddenly become qualified--simply by digging up proof of past seminars attended, trips taken abroad or educational articles published decades ago.The story is much the same across the country, wher
Source: Independent (South Africa)
January 20, 2006
Archaeologists said Friday they have spied what appears to be the roof of another tomb in a 3000-year-old necropolis, the latest discovery about a little-known, hut-dwelling people who preceded the legendary founders of Rome by some three centuries.Archaeologist Alessandro Delfino said the roof is just meters away from a tomb he discovered and dug up on Thursday that appears to date to about 1 000 BC. The location was under Caesar's Forum, which is part of the sprawlin
