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: Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison
October 5, 2005
Humans have cultivated potatoes for millennia, but there has been great controversy about the ubiquitous vegetable's origins. This week, writing in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, a team led by a USDA potato taxonomist stationed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has for the first time demonstrated a single origin in southern Peru for the cultivated potato.The scientists analyzed DNA markers in 261 wild and 98 cultivated potato varieties to assess
Source: LA Times
October 1, 2005
The illicit trade in art and antiquities has often been compared to trafficking in drugs or guns. Both trades are international in scope, require a sophisticated smuggling operation and are driven by demand in wealthy nations. But the analogy ends there.
Art enriches society. Furthermore, the vast majority of U.S. and European museums are respectable institutions run by conscientious professionals who do their best to act responsibly under what are often challenging circumstances. B
Source: NYT
October 5, 2005
By 1979, Harriet E. Miers, then in her mid-30's, had accomplished what some people take a lifetime to achieve. She was a partner at Locke Purnell Boren Laney & Neely, one of the most prestigious law firms in the South, with an office on the 35th floor of the Republic National Bank Tower in downtown Dallas.
But she still felt something was missing in her life, and it was after a series of long discussions - rambling conversations about family and religion and other matters that t
Source: NYT
October 5, 2005
For eight decades he has been lying in state on public display, a cadaver in a succession of dark suits, encased in a glass box beside a walkway in the basement of his granite mausoleum. Many who revere him say he is at peace, the leader in repose beneath the lights. Others think he just looks macabre.
Now the inevitable question has returned. Should his body be moved? Revisiting a proposal that thwarted Boris N. Yeltsin, who faced down tanks but in his time as president could not p
Source: NYT
October 4, 2005
Daban, China: These are the final days of steam on the Jitong railway, a 567-mile line in the province of Inner Mongolia that rail experts say is the last mainline steam-powered railroad anywhere in the world. Sometime in October, perhaps just as the first snows fall, the last of these coal-fired behemoths will pull out of the yard for a final run, to be replaced by a shiny new diesel."These trains are the best," said Gao Hongbo, 35, as he escorted a visitor into t
Source: Wa Po
October 5, 2005
ST. GEORGE, Utah -- The Rebels Monument, a bronze statue of a mounted Confederate soldier grasping a tattered flag while assisting a wounded comrade, sits on the campus of Dixie State College in this southwestern Utah town. An American flag and a Utah flag fly high over the monument, but a third flagpole is empty. It once bore the flag of the Confederate States of America, the former school flag of Dixie State.In this region, known as Utah's Dixie, the monument i
Source: AP
October 4, 2005
Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov on Tuesday warned the Kremlin against making plans to bury the embalmed body of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin, denouncing such intention as "irresponsible and provocative." In what appeared to be the Kremlin's attempt to gauge public reaction to the divisive issue, Georgy Poltavchenko, a regional envoy of President Vladimir Putin, said last week that Lenin's body should be buried in a cemetery along with the remains of other Bolshevik dignitaries
Source: OregonLive.com
October 4, 2005
WARRENTON, Ore. (AP) — A 50-year-old replica of the fort where the Lewis and Clark expedition spent the soggy winter of 1805-1806 was destroyed by fire, authorities said Tuesday. Volunteer firefighters worked for hours to try to save Fort Clatsop at the Lewis and Clark National Historic Park after the fire broke out Monday night, park superintendent Chip Jenkins said. But "half of the fort was burned up, and the other half is essentially a loss," he said.The fire h
Source: NYT
October 4, 2005
Abortion rights activists were prepared for a climactic struggle over the successor to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a critical swing vote on the constitutional right to abortion. But the choice of Harriet E. Miers presented them with a very different challenge - not a clear-cut opponent of abortion, but someone with very little record on the issue at all. Most of their attention was focused Monday on what public record existed on the issue: Ms. Miers's leadership, as president of the State Bar o
Source: NYT
October 4, 2005
The parallels to the woman she would replace are apparent. Both were born in Texas. Both graduated at the top of their law school class, and yet had trouble finding jobs. Both served in elective office, Justice O'Connor in the Arizona State Senate and Ms. Miers a single two-year term on the Dallas City Council, but neither had been a federal judge. Both have now made history - beyond their wildest early dreams.
"I really came out of high school believing I wasn't bright enough to be a doctor
Source: NYT
October 4, 2005
In the last 30 years, almost all justices had served on United States Courts of Appeals, presumably because that gave the presidents who appointed them a way to assess how they might decide.
But in the history of the court, drawing on the pool of appeals judges is a relatively recent trend. Of the 109 people who have been on the Supreme Court, 41 had no previous judicial experience, according to the "Guide to the U.S. Supreme Court," published by Congressional Quarterly.
Source: Wa Po
October 3, 2005
National Park Service preservationists, escorted by the equivalent of the agency's SWAT team, spent the past two weeks rolling through checkpoints and wading into moldy and still-wet museums to preserve rapidly disintegrating artifacts that record some of the Gulf Coast's colorful history.
They returned this week to the Washington area and will begin sifting through condition reports on thousands of artifacts recovered after Hurricane Katrina. They saved flintlock muskets and Civil
Source: NYT
October 3, 2005
August Wilson, who chronicled the African-American experience in the 20th century in a series of plays that will stand as a landmark in the history of black culture, of American literature and of Broadway theater, died yesterday at a hospital in Seattle. He was 60 and lived in Seattle.The cause was liver cancer, said his assistant, Dena Levitin. Mr. Wilson's cancer was diagnosed in the summer, and his illness was made public last month.
"Radio Golf,&q
Source: NYT
October 2, 2005
Franzi Groszmann, who was believed to be among the last survivors of the parents who put their London-bound children on trains to escape Nazi persecution, in the famed Kindertransport, died on Sept. 20 in Manhattan. She was 100.
Deborah Oppenheimer, producer of the 2000 movie "Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport," announced the death.Ms. Oppenheimer, whose own mother was a Kindertransport child, said she believed that Mrs. Groszm
Source: NYT
October 3, 2005
There are still single-volume histories of the world being written, which is somewhat reassuring. It means that there is still a conviction that despite the destruction spread across millenniums and despite the battering of historical truths on the shoals of postmodernity, a coherent order can still be made, interpretations formed, a narrative constructed.
But histories of the world for children are another story. Here, judging from textbooks I have seen, every effort is made to ma
Source: Australian
October 3, 2005
MAASTRICHT: The grandsons of World War II leaders Joseph Stalin, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met yesterday for a debate, 60 years after their grandfathers' wartime meeting at the Yalta Conference.
The three grandsons differed sharply about the war and what happened at Yalta, the Ukrainian resort town where the leaders met in February 1945.Yalta divided Europe into what quickly became postwar spheres of influence for Western powers and the com
Source: Rogr Pulvers in Japan Times
October 2, 2005
He would have turned 80 this month. And in our time of ill-lived religious fanatics and retrograde policy planners, we feel his loss all the more.
Lenny Bruce, brilliant U.S. satirist and comedian, pointed his whip and lashed out at America's hypocrites, whether high-toned charlatans of the church or "some of my best friends are Negro" liberals.His heyday was the decade between 1955 and 1965, when several leading stand-up comics turned philosophical an
Source: Yahoo News
October 3, 2005
An organizer of a planned memorial to honor Confederate soldiers who died at an Illinois prison camp says the rebel flag will be displayed at the memorial's dedication, despite opposition."We consider this an honorable flag. This is a soldier's flag," said Ron Casteel, national chief of staff for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, one of the memorial's planners. "There will be no substitute."
Camp Butler, just east of Springfield, was a traini
Source: BBC
October 3, 2005
A World War II bomb caused a busy railway line in East Yorkshire to be closed after it was found on a verge close to the line.
The Beverley to Hull line was shut for four hours following the discovery of the device in Hull on Monday afternoon. British Transport Police said an Army bomb disposal team dealt with the 2ft long device, which was on land in Woodgate Lane.
Police are trying to find out how it got there.
Source: MSNBC
October 3, 2005
The liberal Chief Justice Earl Warren is today regarded as a towering figure in the law. Yet before President Dwight D. Eisenhower named him chief, Warren hadn't spent a day as a judge. In fact, a host of big names on the court got their courtroom start on the highest court in the land. They include the trailblazing John Marshall, Byron White — nominated by President John F. Kennedy — Harlan Fiske Stone, William O. Douglas and Louis Brandeis.In fact, of the 109 justices who
