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 DAILY TELEGRAPH (LONDON)
October 22, 2005
It was the most striking baroque city in Europe - until Allied bombers flattened it in 1945. Next weekend its restoration will be all but complete. "Try to understand," said Peter, smoothing his ponytail as he sat with his girlfriends on the parapet of Augustus Bridge. "That old town over there" - he gestured with his chin, blowing a pointer of Marlboro smoke south across the River Elbe towards the domes and spires of Dresden's Old Town - "that's for
Source: The Houston Chronicle
October 24, 2005
Four decades ago, after the waters of Hurricane Betsy poured in and killed 81 people, residents rebuilt the [9th] ward's shotgun houses and "doubles," with their distinctive front porches painted pink, purple or tropical blue.
This time, federal officials, academics and others question the wisdom of trying to rebuild once more. They say the ward and other low-lying areas should be returned to their original state as marshland, to act as hurricane buffers protecting a small
Source: NYT
October 24, 2005
You might have thought that the White House had enough on its plate late last month, what with its search for a new Supreme Court nominee, the continuing war in Iraq and the C.I.A. leak investigation. But it found time to add another item to its agenda - stopping The Onion, the satirical newspaper, from using the presidential seal.The newspaper regularly produces a parody of President Bush's weekly radio address on its Web site (
Source: NYT
October 24, 2005
The latest face-off between India and Pakistan in the aftermath of the Oct. 8 earthquake centers on the question of how to deliver aid across the heavily fortified Line of Control that divides Kashmir.
That line is the central source of their dispute of more than a half-century - as well as virtually the epicenter of the quake. Since it struck, the two sides have fired off proposals and counterproposals on how to best assist survivors on each side. Relief has been offered and rejec
Source: NYT
October 24, 2005
On Oct. 22, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon nominated to the Supreme Court a corporate lawyer and former bar association president with no judicial experience. On Dec. 6, his choice, Lewis F. Powell Jr., was confirmed with fanfare by a vote of 89 to 1.
Harriet E. Miers, President Bush's nominee to succeed Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, brings a similar résumé, along with five years in the White House and one year as its counsel. But in just three weeks, her nomination has provoked a
Source: Montgomery Advertiser
October 24, 2005
Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP and president emeritus of the Southern Poverty Law Center, hosted the dedication Sunday of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Civil Rights Memorial Center in Montgomery.
Small plaques bore the faces, names and stories of those killed for those changes, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Emmett Till and Medgar Evers. A 56-seat theater screened "Faces in the Water," a documentary about the civil rights martyrs of the 1950s and 1960
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
October 24, 2005
Historians are drawing some intriguing connections between the contemporary debate over human embryonic stem cell research and California's unsavory, and mostly forgotten, eugenics movement of the last century.
Until Adolf Hitler thoroughly discredited any notion of creating a "master race," some prominent figures in California were enamored with the idea. A key backer of the pseudoscience was Charles W. Goethe, a wealthy conservationist and benefactor of what would become
Source: Independent (London)
October 24, 2005
Punch and Judy are depicted as brutal sadists; the words scrawled on an army lorry by a schoolboy warn the British Prime Minister: "Chamberlain we're coming." Such stirring images are just two of a collection of more than 500 drawings and paintings of Nazi school children's art on show in Munich's Art Pavilion.After lying unseen in the archives of the city's schools for more than 60 years, the pictures have been put on public show.
The exhibition is the first in post-war G
Source: Haaretz
October 22, 2005
A factory in Germany, where the crematoriums for Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps were built, is to be turned into a Holocaust museum, the city of Erfurt said Saturday. The company, Topf und Soehne of Erfurt, also provided a ventilation system for the Auschwitz gas chambers. Topf was mainly a builder of brewery plants with crematoriums as a sideline. It will provide a permanent home for an exhibition that began earlier this year at the Jewish Museum in Berlin.The
Source: NYT
October 22, 2005
It is the season of witches - cute little costumed ones crying "trick or treat" and full-grown adult ones laying claim to Halloween and recounting tales of medieval and early modern persecution.
In a search for historical roots and moral legitimacy, some feminists and many adherents of neopagan or goddess-centered religious movements like Wicca have elaborated a founding mythology in which witches and witch hunts have a central role. Witches, they claim, were folk healers,
Source: WP
October 21, 2005
Steven Spielberg's voluminous archive documenting the lives of Holocaust survivors has merged with the University of Southern California. The Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation officially became part of USC's College of Letters, Arts and Sciences on Thursday after years of negotiations.USC promises to preserve and propagate the archive, which includes 52,000 videotaped life histories, all of them digitized. The university will fund the $5 million annual budget.
Source: WP
October 23, 2005
For more than six decades, glorious military parades and throngs of solemn Soviet citizens passed by the Red Square mausoleum where Vladimir Lenin's mummified corpse lies under glass. Then history passed him by. Now, nearing the 15th anniversary of the death of the Soviet Union, a debate is brewing about whether it's time to bury the body of the man who tried to bury capitalism.The debate isn't new. What's different this time are the intriguing hints that President Vladimir
Source: BBC
October 24, 2005
Two lion skulls unearthed at the Tower of London have been dated to Medieval times, shedding light on the lost institution of the "Royal Menagerie". It also shows the relationship between England's early monarchs and the "king of beasts" was not just a symbolic one. The lions may have been among the first to turn up in Northern Europe since the big cats went extinct in the region at the end of the last Ice Age. The menagerie was a popular tourist attracti
Source: NYT
October 23, 2005
At the heart of the nation's first museum devoted to the history of Arab-Americans is a mosaic-decorated courtyard surrounding a small fountain, evoking the traditional courtyard of Arab lands. A symbol of hospitality, it is also, typically, a feature of one's home, and this museum is, in its way, a declaration that Arab-Americans really are at home, not just in Dearborn (where some 30 percent of the 100,000 residents identify themselves as Arab-Americans) but in the United States itself.
Source: NYT
October 23, 2005
PUBLIC health experts warn that the world might be close to a repeat of the flu pandemic of 1918, which killed millions. But could it instead be close to a reprise of the 1976 pandemic that never happened?
That is the year President Gerald R. Ford announced a crash program to "inoculate every man, woman and child in the United States" against swine flu. But the virus never became a killer, and vaccinations were halted two months after they began after reports that 500 peo
Source: Palestinian Media Watch
October 23, 2005
The Diaspora (Al-Shatat), a Syrian-produced TV series depicting how Jews, as ideology and religious conviction, are trying to subjugate the entire world, is now being broadcast for the third time in recent years on Arabic language Satellite TV. It was first broadcast in 2003 on Al-Manar (Hizbollah TV), in 2004 is was aired on Iranian TV, and now it is being broadcast during the Ramadan on Jordanian TV Al-Mamnou [See below about Al-Mamnou].
The series presents itself as an authentic histor
Source: Hartford Courant
October 22, 2005
Critics called Latin a dead language 30 years ago, irrelevant and elitist. Even the Catholic Church, its strongest champion, no longer found it necessary in worship services. But it's been going strong lately, especially in Connecticut. In 2004, 7,297 high school students were enrolled in Latin programs, a 48 percent increase from 1995.
It's doing well nationally, also. Almost 135,000 students took the National Latin Exam this year. That's 4,000 more than last year, and participatio
Source: BBC
October 22, 2005
All through the heat of summer archaeologists dug and sifted through the dunes on the edge of Gaza City.
Gradually walls, homes, and the outlines of alleyways emerged from the sand.
These were the bones of the ancient Greek city of Antidon. And they were testimony to the extraordinary richness of Gaza's past.
Not only the Greeks passed this way. The Pharaohs of ancient Egypt, the Persians, the Romans, the Crusaders, the Turks, the British
Source: BBC
October 22, 2005
The country estate where it is thought Guy Fawkes plotted to blow up King James I has been bought by the Queen.
The Crown Estate, which manages the Monarch's property interests, has bought Ashby St Ledgers estate in Northamptonshire for close to £10m.
The 2,337 acre estate was the ancestral home of Robert Catesby, the leader of the Gunpowder Plot.
It is 400 years since the 1605 plot to blow up the king whilst he was inside Parliament was foiled.
Source: BBC
October 22, 2005
Belfast man Teddy Dixon spent the first two years of World War II patrolling the streets of his home city as an air raid warden.
However, a letter which arrived from across the Atlantic ordering him to report for duty with the US army, changed his life for ever. Teddy was born in New York but when he was still a child his parents returned to Northern Ireland. Within weeks of his call-up, Teddy was transformed from a young lad on Belfast's Cregagh Road to
