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: CBS News
September 16, 2010
The late Sen. Ted Kennedy, champion of the recent health plan legislation, actually delayed comprehensive coverage for Americans for decades, says former President Jimmy Carter. It was Kennedy's actions to kill Carter's own health care bill that made Americans wait more than 30 years for meaningful coverage, says Carter in an interview with "60 Minutes" correspondent Lesley Stahl.
The interview will be broadcast on Sunday, Sept. 19, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
"T
Source: The Washington Post
September 17, 2010
William H. Goetzmann, 80, who turned his Yale doctoral thesis into a Pulitzer Prize-winning book that revolutionized the way historians viewed American exploration of the Western territories, died of congestive heart failure Sept. 7 at his home in Austin.
A history professor at the University of Texas for more than 40 years, Dr. Goetzmann said legends about six-shootin' outlaws, pan-handlin' prospectors and eagle-feathered Indian chieftains helped forge the West into America's &quo
Source: BBC
September 16, 2010
A former Guatemalan soldier has been sentenced to 10 years in prison in the United States for concealing his part in a massacre during Guatemala's civil war when he applied for US citizenship.
Gilberto Jordan failed to reveal his participation in the 1982 killings of at least 162 villagers at Dos Erres.
Jordan admitted throwing a baby down a well during a raid on the village by his elite military unit.
Campaigners in Guatemala want him sent home for trial
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 17, 2010
The country house from where RAF chiefs commanded “The Few” during the Second World War is to be converted into a Battle of Britain museum, after a five-year campaign.
Bentley Priory in Stanmore, north west London, will become a permanent memorial to Fighter Command’s crucial role in protecting Britain from Luftwaffe raids.
Under Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding, the mansion house acted as the RAF nerve centre during the air onslaught of 1940.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 17, 2010
Turkish prosecutors have opened an investigation into former general and president Kenan Evren, former navy commander Nejat Tumer and former air force chief Tahsin Sahinkaya over a 1980 coup, Milliyet newspaper has reported.
Rights groups and individuals had filed petitions with prosecutors on Monday, a day after Turks voted to approve reforms that among other things stripped Gen Evren and other coup leaders of immunity.
Sunday's referendum on a constitutional reform p
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 17, 2010
Mark Chapman, John Lennon's killer, has said that he considered trying to murder Elizabeth Taylor, or the US chat show host Johnny Carson, but decided the Beatle would be an easier target.
Chapman, 55, has been in jail since shooting Lennon outside the Dakota apartment building in Manhattan on Dec. 8, 1980 in front of his wife Yoko Ono.
In his latest parole hearing this month the killer, details of which have just emerged, Chapman said he chose to attack Lennon because
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 17, 2010
‘Greatest Briton’ will be tweeting, the former Prime Minister’s estate has announced.
The Estate of Sir Winston Churchill has launched its own iPhone app and is to use social media to bring the former Prime Minister’s “wit and wisdom” to a wider audience, it has been announced. Facebook and Twitter profiles have been set up and will launch on Friday, and an iPhone app will go on sale for £1.19, with all proceeds going to the Churchill Estate....
Source: Fox News
September 17, 2010
Across the country on Friday, institutions of education -- from the largest universities to the tiniest one-room schoolhouses -- are celebrating Constitution Day and Citizenship Day, offering educational programs about the Constitution of the United States on the 223rd anniversary of its signing.
From Columbia University in New York to the University of Arizona; from Montclair State University in New Jersey to the University of California-Berkeley; in public schools from Los Angele
Source: AP
September 17, 2010
North and South Korea agreed Friday to hold reunions of families separated by their war, but conflicting statements from the rivals about the details underscored the difficulty of repairing relations on the peninsula.
The North's official Korean Central News Agency reported that the reunions — popular on both sides of the border — would be held at the North's scenic Diamond Mountain resort between Oct. 21 to 27.
South Korea was more cautious in its statement, saying tha
Source: AP
September 17, 2010
The startling revelation that a revered civil rights photographer also was an FBI informant who tipped investigators about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and others has left his children denying he was a snitch and spurred some movement veterans to try to explain why he might have helped the feds.
This was to be the season when the late civil rights photographer Ernest C. Withers would be honored for his historic work, with his photos displayed at a museum bearing his name.
Source: CNN
September 17, 2010
The president of Rwanda on Thursday denied as "absurd" reports that Tutsis entered the Democratic Republic of Congo over the course of 10 years and massacred Hutu refugees there.
But a draft U.N. report is the latest to allege that the Rwandan military and an allied rebel group massacred ethnic Hutu in neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo between 1993 and 2003.
More than 1 million Rwandans -- most of them Hutu -- fled west to neighboring Congo after th
Source: CNN
September 17, 2010
How would you like to own a baseball signed by six U.S. presidents, Frank Sinatra's cigarette lighter, Mickey Mantle's love letter to his future wife or part of Lady Liberty's nose?
They are among the hundreds of iconic objects from America's past going on the auction block at Guernsey's in New York later this month.
The Statue of Liberty, which has graced the New York harbor for more than 100 years, was starting to deteriorate a few decades ago. The paper-thin tip of
Source: NYT
September 17, 2010
...On [Carl Paladino's] campaign Web site, prominently displayed near the top of the home page, is a notice that says in large white-on-black type, “The last NY governor from Buffalo became president of the United States.” This message is rendered in capital letters, just to make sure you don’t miss it.
The reference is to Grover Cleveland, who indeed was from Buffalo, who indeed became governor and who indeed went on to the White House....
Though Cleveland was a Democr
Source: NYT
September 17, 2010
During the Jewish “Days of Awe,” culminating with Yom Kippur, many Conservative Jews will be turning the pages of a prayer book that no longer regards God as “awesome.”
The word, which has become an all-purpose exclamation that spread from Valley Girls to much of American teenagerdom, has lost its spiritual punch and dignity, say the authors of a new book for the High Holy Days that tries to bring the prayers in tune with contemporary times.
The authors prefer “awe-insp
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 16, 2010
Stalin-era repressions, including the Gulag camp system and the deportation of entire ethnic groups were justified according to a new history textbook published in Russia, which critics claim is anti-Semitic.
"A History of Russia, 1917-2009," written by two Moscow State University academics, Alexander Barsenkov and Alexander Vdovin, attempts to justify forced collectivisation and the mass arrests and executions of the 1930s.
Supporters say the book is filled
Source: Deutsche Press
September 15, 2010
New finds at a well-preserved ancient battlefield in the north of Germany are not only rewriting geo-political history, but also revealing some of the secrets of Rome's military success.
Until only two years ago, northern Germany was believed to have been a no-go area for Roman troops after three legions were wiped out by German tribesmen in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9.
The revelation that two centuries later a Roman force mounted a punitive raid deep inside th
Source: Fox News
September 14, 2010
On Oct. 25, 2007, 22 year-old Army Spc. Salvatore Giunta raced head-on into an enemy ambush to save the lives of two American soldiers during a deadly fire fight in one of the most inhospitable regions of eastern Afghanistan.
Giunta saved the life of one soldier and prevented Sgt. Josh Brennan, who later died of his wounds, from being carried away by Taliban fighters.
Giunta, who has since been promoted to sergeant, got a call two years later from President Obama -- h
Source: AP
September 15, 2010
A Turkish lawmaker demanded Wednesday that the leaders of a 1980 military coup be brought to trial, following approval of constitutional amendments that lifted their immunity.
The prospect of legal action against a cadre of elderly and retired military officers could fuel tension in a nation where a reformist government led by devout Muslims is battling opposition from staunchly secular institutions, including the courts and the military.
It's not clear if such prosecut
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 15, 2010
Plans for a monument to Benazir Bhutto have provoked anger in Pakistan where thousands of people are demanding that its 900m rupee (£7m) cost be used instead to help millions displaced by the country's floods.
Mrs Bhutto, a former prime minister of Pakistan and member of one of the country's most powerful families, was assassinated in a suicide attack in December 2007. Asif Ali Zardari, her husband, is now president, and the 10-acre park and library complex in her name received app
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 16, 2010
Four senior Khmer Rouge leaders have been indicted for their pivotal role in deaths of 1.7 million Cambodians in the "killing fields" during the Maoist regime's four-year reign of terror three decades ago.
The UN-backed genocide tribunal said the aging quartet would face charges including war crimes and crimes against humanity in a trial likely to open by the middle of next year.
The long-awaited trial will put in the dock the regime's chief ideologue known as
