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: MosNews
October 18, 2005
The head of the international foundation Democracy and architect of perestroika Alexander Yakovlev died on Tuesday in Moscow after a long illness. He was 81 years old. Yakovlev joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the 1940s. In 1987, he became a member of the Politburo (the party’s executive organ). He was among the reformers in the Soviet leadership and the ideologists behind perestroika, as well as being one of Mikhail Gorbachev’s senior advisors.After the con
Source: Inside Higher Ed
October 17, 2005
President of Saint Louis U. used material for his opening homily from one last year by president of U. of San Francisco.
Some students at St. Louis University want to know if the school policy on plagiarism applies to homilies given by the president, the Rev. Lawrence H. Biondi.
The student newspaper and The St. Louis Post-Dispatch have reported that Father Biondi took substantial portions of his homily last month to open the academic year from the homily given by the R
Source: NYT
October 17, 2005
In the prelude to the war and in the early days of the occupation, Mr. Bush and top members of his national security team compared the effort to remake Iraq to the American occupations of Japan and Germany. As the insurgency grew - a feature missing from those two successful occupations - they dropped that comparison. Richard Armitage, the deputy secretary of state under Colin L. Powell, argued in an interview recently published by an Australian magazine, The Diplomat, that it was a flawed way o
Source: NYT
October 16, 2005
A late 17th-century Virgin has been revealed by Aleksei Khetagurov, chief of icon restoration for the State Historical Museum in Moscow.
She had arrived in his studio as a small, blackened board, slightly warped as many Russian Orthodox icons are, hidden behind her forbidding veil of spoiled dark patina.
"At first I had no idea what was there," said Mr. Khetagurov. He showed a photograph of the icon as it had come to him, dark and murky as though the Virgin
Source: US News & World Report
October 24, 2005
US News features a long article about Nelson's victory over the French and the Spanish at Trafalgar.
"As always, leading by personal example, the one-armed commander, looking weathered and worn beyond his 47 years, stood with his fellow officers on the quarterdeck of the 102-gun Victory as he strained with his one remaining eye to sight Villeneuve's flagship. The British admiral had split his fleet into two divisions, and the 12 battleships and accompanying frigates in Nelson'
Source: BBC
October 17, 2005
One of the biggest names in computing, Bill Gates, is giving millions to preserve a history of the digital age.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has pledged $15m (£8.54m) to the Computer History Museum in California.
The gift is museum's largest and will be used to create an interactive exhibit, tracing the computing revolution and its impact.The museum was established in 1996 and moved to its current site in Mountain View in California in 20
Source: NYT
October 17, 2005
rime Minister Junichiro Koizumi prayed at the Yasukuni Shrine on Monday morning, fulfilling a promise to make annual visits to a war memorial considered a symbol of unrepentant Japanese militarism in Asia.The visit was likely to further strain Japan's relations with China and South Korea, whose leaders have been demanding that Mr. Koizumi stop his visits. The Japanese prime minister argues they merely pay homage to this country's fallen soldiers.
As an indicati
Source: Japan Today
October 17, 2005
Taiwan's Foreign Ministry on Monday called on Japan to face up to history following Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visit to the war-linked Yasukuni Shrine despite fierce protests from neighboring countries.
"Taiwan and Japan have enjoyed amicable relations. We still hope that Japan can squarely face its World War II history and to look into the future with proactive thinking," ministry spokesman Michel Lu said.
Source: Balt Sun
October 17, 2005
Zanzibar historic site, Stone Town, where slaves were sold, is falling victim to neglect. "We are in a race against time," said Mwalim A. Mwalim, director of the government conservation authority. "Now it's almost too late." Of Stone Town's nearly 2,000 buildings, "the majority are in poor to ruinous condition." Five years ago, Stone Town received a boost when the United Nations awarded it World Heritage status, recognizing it as a historically
Source: Boston Globe
October 16, 2005
The Rhode Island Historical Society has come across a rare, and lucky, find: a document written by the state's founder, Roger Williams. The first edition of the 1644 writings, "The Bloudy Tenent," were found by a librarian in August, but only recently verified as authentic. The work was found tucked inside some other historical writings on a shelf with rare books.There are only five other known first editions of the tract, including two of them at Brown
Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch
October 16, 2005
A stroll through the Maryland State House might give a visitor the impression that the state's government skipped the 19th century. The building's rich 18th-century history, when it was the capitol of the fledgling American nation, is on display in the Old Senate Chamber. Exhibits in three adjoining rooms give a glimpse of what life was like when the Continental Congress was in town in the late 1700s. And modern government is on display in the "new" Senate and House of Delegates chambe
Source: BBC
October 15, 2005
Nurses and service people have paid tribute to World War I heroine Edith Cavell at Norwich Cathedral.
The nurse helped more than 200 allied soldiers to escape captivity but was shot by the Germans within hours of her trial in Belgium on 12 October 1915.
Source: Wa Po
October 13, 2005
The Smithsonian Institution, accepting a $45 million gift from the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation, announced yesterday that the two museums and other facilities in the Old Patent Office Building would be called the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture.
The Las Vegas-based foundation, now the second largest donor in the Smithsonian's history with a total contribution of $75 million, directed its new multimillion-dollar support to the renovation and exhibitions at
Source: BBC
October 15, 2005
Many Scots are "woefully" ignorant of the Battle of Trafalgar, a survey to mark its 200th anniversary suggests.
Four out of five Scots (83%) cannot name the location of Admiral Lord Nelson's famous naval victory.
One in five Scots did not know who fought in the battle and 3% thought it was between Scotland and England, according to the Woodland Trust.The British under Nelson won a decisive naval battle off southern Spain against the Fren
Source: BBC
October 15, 2005
The Beatles have beaten jazz star Louis Armstrong and TV actress Lucille Ball to be named icons of the century by readers of US magazine Variety. It named the Liverpool band "the sole group who has most shaped the face of modern-day showbusiness". The magazine ranked 100 iconic entertainment figures from the last 100 years, with industry figures drawing up a shortlist that readers voted on.
What a Wonderful World singer Armstrong came seco
Source: BBC
October 15, 2005
Two previously unseen paintings by Leonardo da Vinci have gone on public display for the first time in Italy. One is an alternative version of Da Vinci's famous painting known as Virgin of the Rocks, with the infant Jesus and the infant John the Baptist. The other shows Mary Magdalene, thought to have been completed by Leonardo with the help of one of his pupils about 1515, shortly before his death.Both are being displayed at Ancona's Mole Vanvitelliana museum.
Source: The Independent (London)
October 15, 2005
At least 1,400 people " many of them foreign tourists " were stranded at the Inca citadel of Machu Picchu yesterday after a mudslide blocked the famous railway to the site.The high-altitude line from Cuzcu was covered by more than three metres (9.8 feet) deep on Wednesday. Some 400,000 people visit Peru's most famous tourist attraction every year.
Many of the evacuees, who were being moved out by road last night, are Europeans and Americans, a city off
Source: The Houston Chronicle
October 16, 2005
White Settlement may be on the way out.
Voters in this city just west of Fort Worth will decide Nov. 8 on a proposal to change its name to West Settlement.The "White" part is just not right for today's business world, Mayor James Ouzts said.
"When people see the name, the question of race comes to mind. They ask, 'What is that all about? Why is that name there?' " Ouzts said. "If you start out in a negative spot, it's hard t
Source: Chosunilbo (Seoul)
October 17, 2005
Closely following an uproar over Prof. Kang Jeong-koo's inflammatory remarks calling the Korean War "North Korea's" war of unification, a fellow South Korean academic upped the ante with a column titled "Kim Il-sung, a Great Modern Leader." The incidents rekindled debate about the controversial National Security Law and sparked a political crisis when the justice minister ordered prosecutors not to detain Kang under the decades-old law, prompting the prosecutor general to res
Source: USA Today
October 17, 2005
Taking in the Melancholie exhibit opening Thursday at the Grand Palais in Paris — surrounded by hundreds of glum, gloomy and downright deranged figures depicted in works spanning the entire arc of Western art history — is not exactly an uplifting experience.
But it does offer an unprecedented window into the evolution of that special kind of moodiness which, over time, has been associated with Satanic forces, genius, creativity, insanity and — in the era of Freud — plain old depression.
