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
August 25, 2005
A federal commission voted Thursday to close Walter Reed Army Medical Center -- the crown jewel of U.S. military hospitals -- as part of the Pentagon's sweeping proposal to restructure bases across the country. Located in the heart of the nation's capital, the century-old hospital has treated presidents and foreign leaders as well as veterans and soldiers, including those returning from the Iraq war.
Source: CNN
August 24, 2005
For this year's crop of college freshmen, Starbucks has always been around the corner, "America's Funniest Home Videos" has always been on the air, and men named George Bush have been president for more than half of their lives. Born in 1987, the freshmen attending their first college lectures around the country this term grew up with pay-per-view television and voice mail on their phones, dirty dancing at school proms, and the United States as the only superpower.
Source: CNN
August 23, 2005
Unlike earlier wars, nearly all Arlington National Cemetery gravestones for troops killed in Iraq or Afghanistan are inscribed with the slogan-like operation names the Pentagon selected to promote public support for the conflicts.Families of fallen soldiers and Marines are being told they have the option to have the government-furnished headstones engraved with "Operation Enduring Freedom" or "Operation Iraqi Freedom" at no extra charge, whether the
Source: Chosunilbo
August 25, 2005
Official Chinese government material has come to light confirming the Korean argument that a "Tomun River" designated as the border between China and Korea is not the Tumen River, which forms the current border, but another stream.
China argues the Tomun River mentioned on the Mt. Paekdu Border Stone Monument erected in 1712 to delineate the border between the Korean Chosun (also spelled as Joseon) kingdom and Qing Dynasty China and the Tumen River are one and the same.
Source: Bloomberg
August 25, 2005
Minutes before an executioner sent Lena Baker to her death 60 years ago, she explained again why she had shot a white man, a crime that resulted in her being the only woman ever to die in Georgia's electric chair. ``What I done, I did in self-defense, or I would've been killed myself,'' Baker, a black woman and mother of three, said on March 5, 1945, in her final statement, according to records from the U.S. state. ``Where I was, I could not overcome it.''
Symbolically, Baker has fi
Source: Yahoo News
August 25, 2005
By now it's a familiar and hackneyed war story. A jarring event rouses a dormant people. Diplomacy fails. Conflict erupts. The modern, mechanized nation overpowers the atavistic, feudal regime. The victors send soldiers, consultants, and contractors to free the oppressed, rebuild, secure vital resources and territory, and to put their stamp on the society that will emerge. In the midst of this benevolence, a loosely woven network of terror groups stages dogged acts of sabotage, kidnapping, assas
Source: BBC
August 24, 2005
Sturdy shoes first came into widespread use between 40,000 and 26,000 years ago, according to a US scientist. Humans' small toes became weaker during this time, says physical anthropologist Erik Trinkaus, who has studied scores of early human foot bones. He attributes this anatomical change to the invention of rugged shoes, that reduced our need for strong, flexible toes to grip and balance. While early humans living in cold northern climates may have begun covering up their
Source: WSJ
August 24, 2005
In "Ask Not: The Inauguration of John F. Kennedy and the Speech That Changed America" (2004), Thurston Clarke called Kennedy's plane performance "a charade, but an honorable one" that merely underlined the truth that Kennedy had drafted his own speech. Mr. Clarke acknowledged but largely dismissed other contributions, particularly Mr. Sorensen's. "Sounding the Trumpet" (Ivan R. Dee, 214 pages, $25) covers exactly the same ground and reaches exactly the opposite conc
Source: WSJ
August 24, 2005
An American long-time resident in Paris, Rachel Kaplan founded French Links six years ago to provide customized tours for visitors with singular or specialized tastes. Her Web site even includes a "tour request form," where you can outline your particular needs, whether it be a tour of the sights of the French Revolution and Napoleon or the art of the Renaissance. Touring the Liberation of Paris, it turned out, presented no challenges for her.
For $750 (French Links charges in dollars
Source: Inside Higher Ed
August 24, 2005
Two weeks ago, the National Collegiate Athletic Association declared any use of Native American names and mascots to be “hostile and offensive.” Tuesday, it made the first of what could be multiple exceptions to its new policy on the use of Indian imagery, removing Florida State University from its list of institutions facing restrictions on participation in NCAA championships.
Source: Wa Po
August 24, 2005
So Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition, thinks the United States should assassinate Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president. Let's see. What are our options? The 30-year-old Senate reports of the Church committee give us some options. How about a vial of poison, as ordered up for a proposed U.S. assassination in 1960 of Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba. Or perhaps supply some weaponry to a local hit squad, as Washington did for those who bumped off Dominican leader Rafael Tru
Source: CNN
August 23, 2005
Avebury may not be as convenient, famous or spectacular as Stonehenge, and you may never have heard of it. But it also lacks the large crowds, high fences, entrance fees and "don't touch" restrictions of Stonehenge. And it's well worth a visit. It's easy to pass by the quiet village of Avebury -- about 30 miles north of Salisbury. It's small, somewhat plain, located on a rural road, and has a quiet atmosphere.However, don't let that fool you; Avebury co
Source: NYT
August 24, 2005
STRUIS BAY, South Africa -- After years of painstaking research and sophisticated surveys, Jaco Boshoff may be on the verge of a nearly unheard-of discovery: the wreck of a Dutch slave ship that broke apart 239 years ago on this forbidding, windswept coast after a violent revolt by the slaves. On the other hand, he may have discovered a wire fence covered with beach sand.Mr. Boshoff, a 39-year-old marine archaeologist with the government-run Iziko Museums, will n
Source: Christian Science Monitor
August 24, 2005
Since the start of his presidency, George Bush has taken heat for his regular naps, two-hour breaks for exercise, and those long "working vacations" in Texas. Even former Attorney General John Ashcroft once quipped that the White House was committed to working "24/7 — 24 hours a week, seven months a year."
So as the president enters the home stretch of his five-week respite in Crawford, Texas, an old debate is being renewed: What's the proper work-life balance for a preside
Source: Telegraph
August 24, 2005
Tory leadership hopeful David Cameron today likened Islamic "jihadists" pursuing a holy war against the west to the Nazis of the 1930s and communists who built a totalitarian state. He said a strain of Islamist thinking developed during the last century "which, like other totalitarianisms, such as Nazism and Communism, offers its followers a form of redemption through violence".Mr Cameron, in a speech to the Foreign Policy Centre in London, said some Isla
Source: BBC
August 24, 2005
Bollywood film Mangal Pandey: The Rising, about the 1857 mutiny in India, has broken box office records for a Hindi film in India, reports have said. The film, about an Indian rebellion against the colonial British, took £2.8m ($5m) in its first week. The amount is "the highest ever on record" in India, Screen Daily said.
The film, one of the most expensive Hindi movies made, took about £120,000 in its first weekend in the UK.
The film is
Source: ČTK (Czech Republic)
August 24, 2005
President Vaclav Klaus criticised the government for its statement in which it appreciated the merits of German antifascists and apologised for their postwar suffering in Czechoslovakia. The cabinet's step is an erroneous, unnecessary and empty gesture which may harm the Czech Republic, Klaus said. Klaus said that the sensitive historic chapter had been resolved and closed by the Czech-German declaration, agreed on by the Czech and German governments in 1997.
Mo
Source: Armenia Liberty
August 24, 2005
Bob Dole, a former U.S. senator known for his pro-Armenian views, has welcomed the release of a Turkish scholar who was controversially detained in Armenia two months ago, it emerged on Wednesday. “I want to express my sincere gratitude to you and the people of Armenia in the wake of the recent release of Yektan Turkyilmaz, the Duke University graduate student detained since June 17,” Dole said in a letter to President Robert Kocharian, a copy of which was obtained by RFE/RL.
Source: Guardian
August 24, 2005
The award-winning film-maker Laurence Rees has spent the past 15 years tracking down and interviewing former Nazis. As his new TV series begins in the UK, he tells Stephen Bates about the people he met and their inability to truly repent."People always say Hitler fixed you with his eye contact, looked at you just a bit longer than anyone else," says Rees. He should know: the producer of two of the most memorable - and award-laden - documentary series of the past 10
Source: Independent
August 24, 2005
Something amazing is going to happen very soon in the Mediterranean Sea off Cyprus: they are going to uncover the lost island of Atlantis. What's different about the latest attempt is that the man behind it, a 39-year-old Iranian-American called Robert Sarmast, displays no doubts: he is absolutely convinced that he has discovered Atlantis. This month on his website, discoveryofatlantis.com, he published three dimensional images which he claims prove the existence of the acropolis of Atlantis, se
