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 San Diego Union-Tribune
September 18, 2005
Black historians, such as Karen Huff of La Mesa, are trying to preserve as much as possible.
As chairwoman of the Black Historical Society of San Diego, Huff traveled to New Orleans within days of Hurricane Katrina and stayed for a week, documenting the damage to historic buildings, neighborhoods and communities.
With an assistant, she returned to San Diego with 400 photos that will become part of America's black history. They recorded oral tales of survival in the stor
Source: Times (UK)
September 19, 2005
By far the most important of the KGB's contacts in South America was Salvador Allende Gossens (codenamed Leader by the KGB), whose election as President of Chile in 1970 was hailed as “a revolutionary blow to the imperialist system in Latin America”.
Allende was the first Marxist anywhere in the world to win power through the ballot box. He was unlike any stereotype of a Marxist leader. During his visits to Havana in the 1960s, he had been privately mocked by Castro's entourage for
Source: NYT
September 19, 2005
So went the opening day of jury selection in the criminal corruption trial of George Ryan, the former governor of Illinois who became an international star for his challenge of capital punishment even as scandal eroded his popularity at home to cause him to leave office after a single term.
Mr. Ryan, 71, faces 22 counts of racketeering, mail and tax fraud and lying to federal agents. The charges could add up to 95 years in prison for a man whose legacy as he left office in 2003 was
Source: Washington Times
September 20, 2005
The National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP) announced yesterday that it had picked the Arkansas delta country and the central Kentucky heartland for a pilot rural preservation project to help the states revitalize their countrysides. The two regions will divvy up $745,000 in funds meant to keep these regions strategically down home. "It's the small details, the small places that work to knit a region together. The little country store, the churches, the b
Source: NYT
September 19, 2005
An American student in Saudi Arabia who is charged with plotting to assassinate President Bush told Saudi interrogators that "I came up with the idea on my own" because he wanted to be "the brain, the planner" for a terrorist operation, American prosecutors said in a court filing made public on Monday.
The Justice Department said the student, Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, 24, "represents one of the most dangerous terrorist threats that America faces in the perilous wo
Source: NYT
September 20, 2005
Members of an Argentine indigenous organization are trying to legally block the display of the remains of 500 year old Inca children at the Museum of High Altitude Archaeology in Salta, saying it dishonors their "little brothers and sisters." Rival museum officials in Buenos Aires dismiss the exhibit as morbid. And the explorer who discovered the bodies six years ago worries that a rushed showing could permanently damage them. Their facial features are clear, and t
Source: NYT
September 20, 2005
New Orleans: Behind padlocked gates on Rue Conti in the French Quarter, the ghosts of 306 years were waiting in wax. Poured in layers some four decades ago in Paris, the figures inside the Musée Conti traced this city's cultural gumbo from Sieur de Iberville's rediscovery of the Mississippi River through the corrupt governments of Huey P. Long and Edwin W. Edwards, with stops at Storyville, the haunted house of the evil Madame Lalaurie and a riverboat gambling den. Had they melted? No.
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
September 18, 2005
For years conservatives complained that presidential rankings were dominated by the very liberals who controlled the universities and the news media, and thus Americans were looking at their history, and choosing their heroes, through pink-colored lenses. So The Wall Street Journal and the Federalist Society, no avatars of liberalism, engaged James T. Lindgren of the Northwestern University Law School to conduct his own poll -- one which strived to balance liberals and conservatives and give an
Source: NYT
September 20, 2005
Simon Wiesenthal, the death camp survivor who dedicated the rest of his life to tracking down fugitive Nazi war criminals, died today at his home in Vienna. He was 96. His death was announced by Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. After hairbreadth escapes from death, two suicide attempts and his liberation by American forces in Austria in 1945, Mr. Wiesenthal abandoned his profession as an architectural engineer and took on a n
Source: WP
September 19, 2005
Concerns about general education have been part of the continuing debate over No Child Left Behind. The time devoted to reading and math has increased. And in many places, the increase has brought results. Between 2002 and 2004, Keister Elementary's passing rate went from 81 to 92 percent on the state English test and from 86 to 90 percent on the math test. But critics of the federal law say children need a more complete education.The Washington-based Center on Education Pol
Source: AP
September 19, 2005
Swiss authorities brought a third charge against a Turkish politician for allegedly breaking Switzerland's racial discrimination laws by denying that the killings of Armenians around the time of World War I was a genocide, police said Monday.
Dogu Perincek, the leader of the Turkey's Workers' Party, made the remarks Sunday in a speech in central Switzerland, Bern cantonal (state) police said in a statement. He already had been charged twice by Swiss authorities for two previous, sim
Source: Inside Costa Rica
September 19, 2005
Nineteen years after the Cuban missile crisis nearly sparked a nuclear war, Fidel Castro asked the Soviet Union to redeploy atomic weapons to his island, says a new book based on reports by Moscow's KGB intelligence agency.
The book, based on documents revealed by KGB archivist Vasili Mitrokhin when he defected in 1992, makes other bombshell allegations as it tracks KGB operations around the Third World in the 1960s and '70s: - The KGB documents record actual an
Source: NYT
August 19, 2005
A private commission led by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III is proposing new steps to strengthen state election procedures and recommending that Congress require the political parties to hold four regional presidential primaries in election years rather than allowing states to hold primaries whenever they wish.
The bipartisan panel, called the Commission on Federal Election Reform, said it was responding to flaws in the system exposed b
Source: NYT
August 19, 2005
On May 17, 1999, a week into the hunt, the Makah killed a 30-ton gray whale, striking it with harpoons and then killing it with a gunshot to the back of the head.
That rainy spring day remains etched in the minds of many Makah as a defining moment in their efforts to reach back to their cultural and historical roots. It was their first kill in seven decades, and it was their last since they were stopped by court rulings. They have asked the federal government for permission to resum
Source: NYT
August 19, 2005
The Vatican has published a meticulous account of Pope John Paul II's final days, vividly describing his last hours and providing an official chronology of his death.
According to the report, which runs more than 200 pages, John Paul's final words were, "Let me go to the house of the Father," which he uttered about six hours before dying in his apartment on April 2.
Source: NYT
August 18, 2005
The Lycian League was mentioned twice in the Federalist Papers, once by Alexander Hamilton, once by James Madison, so it could safely be said that it entered into the history of the formation of the United States.
Now, after literally centuries of neglect, teams of Turkish and German archaeologists have been working under the hot sun of this small Mediterranean seacoast town, uncovering some of its treasures.
Source: NYT
September 18, 2005
At 10 a.m. Monday, at Warren Air Force Base in Cheyenne, Wyo., the last MX missile will be "deactivated," and a turbulent chapter of history will come to an end. The MX is hardly remembered now; its phase-out began without fanfare four years ago. But in the late 1970's and the '80s - at the height of the United States-Soviet nuclear arms race, amid tensions over the invasion of Afghanistan and the collapse of détente - the MX was the centerpiece of the American military buildup, the ob
Source: The Australian
September 20, 2005
The Family Court has been talking to men's rights groups in an effort to become more "father-friendly". The court is also making its staff who deal with families undergo training to help them better understand the male perspective in divorce.THE Family Court has been talking to men's rights groups in an effort to become more "father-friendly".
The court is also making its staff who deal with families undergo training to help them better under
Source: NYT
September 16, 2005
Twenty-five months after a blackout darkened cities from New York to Toronto and Detroit, the Energy Department and its Canadian counterpart held their first public technical discussion on the episode Thursday to talk about one factor widely considered to have been behind it: the deregulation of the electric system.
Engineers, government officials and executives said at the meeting that amid its restructuring the industry needed further changes to reduce the frequency of blackouts a
Source: Time Magazine
September 19, 2005
Five men met in an automobile in a Baghdad park a few weeks after the fall of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime in April 2003, according to U.S.
intelligence sources. One of the five was Saddam. The other four were among his closest advisers. The agenda: how to fight back against the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. A representative of Saddam's former No. 2, Izzat Ibrahim al-Duri, was there. But the most intriguing man in the car may have been a retired general named Muhammad Yunis al-Ahmed, who had
