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: CNN
November 2, 2005
A coin collector paid a record $8.5 million for a set of rare coins said to have been a gift from former President Andrew Jackson to the King of Siam.Steven L. Contursi, president of Rare Coin Wholesalers, bought the set of 19th century gold, silver and copper coins from an anonymous owner described only as "a West Coast business executive," according to Donn Pearlman, the buyer's publicist.
"It's the largest single transaction for a single item e
Source: History Today
November 2, 2005
The US Army complained to the British Government in the Second World War regarding the dangers posed to their GIs by London’s prostitutes. Scotland Yard files covering the period from 1942-43 just released by The National Archives in Kew reveal concerns on both sides of the Atlantic over the levels of venereal disease contracted by American soldiers.Girls named the ‘Piccadilly Commandos’ who frequented clubs such as Woolly Lamb and the Clipper Club and plied their trade arou
Source: NYT
October 31, 2005
"In what was an almost everyday occurrence at the time, my great-great-grandmothers on both sides gave birth to children fathered by white slave masters. I've known all this for a long time, and was not surprised by the results of a genetic screening performed by DNAPrint Genomics, a company that traces ancestral origins to far-flung parts of the globe. A little more than half of my genetic material came from sub-Saharan Africa - common for people who regard themselves as black - with sligh
Source: Editor & Publisher
October 28, 2005
Watergate legend Carl Bernstein warns that comparisons to the case that made him famous more than 30 years ago must be viewed carefully.
Still, the former Washington Post reporter who shared a Pulitzer Prize for helping to expose the Nixon administration's wrongdoing says some parallels can be drawn between the two investigations, particularly the way both helped uncover extended dishonesty in the White House.
"We are obviously watching and the press is beginning t
Source: Romanesko
November 1, 2005
"I must answer the bloggers, the babblers and blabbers, and the true believers who have called me everything from 'feminazi' to an 'elitist liberal' to an 'idiot,'" writes Mary Mapes. "If I was an idiot, it was for believing in a free press that is able to do its job without fear or favor. ...I didn't know that the attack on our story was going to be as effective as a brilliantly run national political campaign, because that is what it was: a political campaign."
Source: Inside Higher Ed
November 1, 2005
Thomas A. Matrka has his master’s degree in engineering from Ohio University and a good job in the private sector as a mechanical engineer. So why is he still spending so much time and energy trying to prove that as many as 30 master’s theses in the university’s engineering college contain unoriginal work?
“They’re compromising the value of the degree of honest students by not distinguishing between the plagiarism and the honest works,” says Matrka. He has spent lunch hours poring o
Source: LAT
October 30, 2005
A long-delayed apology from one of the accusers in the notorious McMartin Pre-School molestation case.My mother divorced my father when I was 2 and she met my stepfather, who was a police officer in Manhattan Beach. They had five children after me. In addition, my stepfather has three older children. In the combined family, I'm the only one of the nine children he didn't father. I always remember wanting him to love me. I was always trying excessively hard to please him. I w
Source: Ottawa Citizen
October 29, 2005
Walking through a mock-up of a First World War trench delighted them. Inspecting antique artillery pieces fascinated them. And a massive diorama of the Passchendaele battlefield, where a body lays drowned in mud and blood, thrilled them. But it was a loop of silent movie clips, replayed over and over on a tiny video screen, that brought them up short.
Twenty young teens, the Grade 10 students from Manotick's St. Mark High School we've challenged to reconnect with their own and Cana
Source: LAT
October 29, 2005
At first his responses were cautious, even cryptic. The plot of his new movie, "Apocalypto"? "It doesn't bode well to say too much about what you're doing," Mel Gibson replied. OK, what's up with that beard? "The beard? What beard?" Gibson said, feigning obliviousness to the fuzzy white growth south of his chin.
But as he relaxed -- and the mob of assembled reporters and photographers got their high spirits under control -- Gibson slowly began to fill i
Source: Ottawa Citizen
November 1, 2005
The National Security Agency has been blocking the release of an article by one of its historians that says intelligence officers falsified documents about a disputed attack that was used to escalate the Vietnam War, a researcher says. Matthew Aid, who asked for the article under the Freedom of Information Act last year, said it appears officers at the NSA made honest mistakes in translating interceptions involving the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident. That was a reported North Vietnamese attack on
Source: THE DAILY TELEGRAPH (LONDON)
November 1, 2005
Nazi veterans were protected from prosecution for war crimes by the former East German secret police, the Stasi, a historian claims in a new book.The Stasi put former high-and middle-ranking Nazis to work as spies, Henry Leide said, quoting secret Stasi files as yet unseen by the public.
Leide, who is on the committee responsible for the Stasi archives, traced the careers of 35 of Hitler's close followers and discovered that they had found unlikely refuge in the
Source: Hobart Mercury (Australia)
October 29, 2005
Two historians are suing the publishers of Dan Brown's bestselling religious thriller The Da Vinci Code in a case that lawyers say will start in February.
Richard Leigh and Michael Baigent are suing Random House for lifting "the whole architecture" of the research that went into their 1982 non-fiction book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.Lawyers on both sides of the case met yesterday but would not comment on how the trial might affect sales of the n
Source: BBC News
October 31, 2005
A loyalist paramilitary group, the Loyalist Volunteer Force, says it is to stand down in response to the IRA move to decommission arms in September. Kevin Connolly examines the background and implications.
The short but turbulent history of the Loyalist Volunteer Force mixed bouts of savage blood-letting with bizarre and unpredictable political gestures. The organisation was created when a faction of the UVF in Portadown rejected the decision of the
Source: Buffalo News (New York)
October 29, 2005
It sank during a summer storm in Lake Erie off this Chautauqua County harbor on July 29, 1930, with 21 aboard. The boat took 15 lives with it; just six survived. It was front page news.
After resting undisturbed on the lake bottom for 75 years, the steamboat George J. Whelan came to life Thursday for nine divers, who were clearly excited about their opportunity.
"You can dive a whole lifetime and never be the first one on [a wreck]," said Wayne Rush, who drove
Source: The Boston Globe
October 29, 2005
Many South Africans, and especially the nation's young people, know only the outlines of Nelson Mandela's life his early years resisting South Africa's white-minority government, his 27 years in Robben Island prison, and the remarkable freedom he won for himself, and then for his country.
But that could soon change because of comic books.
One million copies of the first of a series of nine comic books on Mandela's life will be distributed Monday in newspapers and to sec
Source: BBC News
November 1, 2005
Portugal has marked 250 years since a devastating earthquake and tsunami that killed thousands of people. Church bells rang for 15 minutes as the country's capital, Lisbon, reflected on the 1755 quake that flattened the city. Up to one-third of Lisbon's 275,000 inhabitants died in the disaster, with thousands more dead in Morocco, Spain and even Italy. Plans for elaborate commemorations were toned down after the Indian Ocean quake in 2004, which killed over 200,0
Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
October 30, 2005
From the 1840s to the late 1870s, hundreds of rural breweries dotted the landscape of Wisconsin, turning out a potent, dark, German-style lager that was a staple of the local saloons catering to the growing population of German immigrants.
These once-thriving breweries, operated by hard-working farmers who grew barley and hops in the summertime and spent winters tending the open fires under their brew kettles, now are almost forgotten.
But all that could change if a pla
Source: AP
November 1, 2005
More than two centuries of Protestant domination on the Supreme Court will end if Samuel Alito is confirmed as its next justice. For the first time in the nation's history, five Roman Catholics -- a majority -- would be on the high court.Yet news that the son of an Italian immigrant father, someone who grew up in a suburban New Jersey parish where he served as a lector and later married, doesn't carry quite the power it might have in the days when Kennedys ran fo
Source: NYT
November 1, 2005
The 1991 abortion case on which the confirmation of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court may hinge arrived at his Philadelphia-based federal appeals court at a moment of great ferment in the development of abortion law.
The Supreme Court's 7-to-2 majority for abortion rights, as expressed in the 1973 Roe v. Wade opinion, had eroded to the vanishing point. The center of gravity was held by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, whose position was difficult to parse and appeared to b
Source: NYT
November 1, 2005
Throughout his life - ever since he resolved his high school indecision between his dream of a career in baseball or a life in law - the self-effacing Judge Alito, President Bush's new choice for the Supreme Court, has made his mark with quiet dedication rather than showy display. He has cloaked his formidable intellect in modesty, an attribute both surprising and endearing to colleagues in high-octane legal circles.
While Judge Alito, 55, has built a reputation for decency, he has
