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 Root (edited by Henry Louis Gates)
April 2, 2009
In tracing the arc of black history and politics, it is easy to draw
the link between Dr. King and Barack Obama. But the black power
movement deserves equal credit for reshaping the face of American
politics.
April 4, 2008—The 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968
slaying in Memphis—provoked endless conversations about the way
forward for black politics and whether it was King who truly prepared
the nation to elect Barack Obama as the first black president. This
year, t
Source: Salon
April 2, 2009
In the months since Barack Obama replaced George W. Bush as president of the United States, the global financial crisis has overshadowed most other ideas about the new White House. But for veterans of the American civil rights movement, discussions of economics have become part of a previous conversation about what it means for the world's wealthiest nation to have elected its first black leader. During the week of Obama's inauguration ceremony, photographer Lauren Hermele met with several vete
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
April 2, 2009
The trial in Ward Churchill's wrongful-dismissal lawsuit against the University of Colorado drew to a close on Wednesday with the embattled professor’s lawyer telling jurors that nothing less than the fate of the Constitution rested in their hands.
“The United States of America wants to know what you are going to do with the freedom we have in this country,” the lawyer, David Lane, said in his closing argument in a packed Denver courtroom. Placing a pitcher on a stack of books writt
Source: WSFA 12 (Montgomery)
April 1, 2009
The discovery of numerous bodies Tuesday by construction workers at a city lot in downtown Montgomery is drawing national attention. In all, officials say they've recovered remains of 11 humans, including at least eight skulls.
Montgomery Police spokesman Major Huey Thornton said it's believed the bodies are from a mass grave of victims who died of a Yellow fever outbreak sometime in the early 1800's.
A structure built on the burial mound in the 1940's was recently torn
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald
April 2, 2009
A list of 191 Australian soldiers who are believed to have died in the Battle of Fromelles in 1916 has been published by the Defence Force.
The group area mong 400 Australian and British soldiers who are believed to still lie at Pheasant Wood in Fromelles, France, after fighting in the first battle fought by Australians at the western front in the First World War. An excavation last May confirmed the group burial.
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
April 2, 2009
The Army Corps of Engineers has agreed with archaeologists for the SugarHouse casino that the project's 22-acre Philadelphia site along the Delaware River does not hold remnants of a British fort from the Revolutionary War or an 18th-century men's social club.
In a letter Monday to the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, the chief of the corps' regulatory branch in Philadelphia, Frank Cianfrani, said the developer had made "a reasonable and good faith effort" to
Source: AFP
April 1, 2009
Iraq will reopen ancient Ur, the Biblical birthplace of Abraham, to the public after the US military hands back the archaeological site next month, the government said on Wednesday.
The ancient site, which lies next to the US air base of Talila outside the southern city of Nasiriyah, has been closed to the public since the US-led invasion of 2003.
The ancient city, which dates back to 6000 BC, lies on a former course of the Euphrates, one of the two great rivers of Iraq
Source: NYT
April 1, 2009
... President Obama signed legislation establishing a national park in, of all places, Paterson, N.J., a faded industrial town that is one of the poorest in the nation.
This was no small triumph for Paterson; for its congressman and former mayor, Bill Pascrell Jr.; and for one Leonard Zax, a Paterson native and lawyer who a few years back took on the role of designated pain in the butt to push this thing forward.
Reporters deal with people like him all the time, many o
Source: Chicoer (California)
March 31, 2009
Human remains of an American Indian man dating back thousands of years were discovered early Monday afternoon at an excavation site on the Sacramento River north of Hamilton City.
Lt. Rich Warren of Glenn County Sheriff's Office said in a phone interview late Monday that the bones were discovered around 1:30 p.m. by an archaeologist from Far Western Anthropological Research Group, out of Davis.
The researchers were doing a test dig on the west bank of the river. Digging sto
Source: BBC
April 2, 2009
The dig began in the midst of a dust storm.
Under armed guard, a team of excavators opened up a disused well shaft behind an abandoned roadside restaurant in south-eastern Turkey.
They were searching for the remains of hundreds of civilians who disappeared at the height of the Kurdish separatist conflict in this region in the 1990s.
Many were last seen with members of Turkey's security forces.
For many Kurdish families, the dig marked the s
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 1, 2009
US experts believe that Mr Obama, whose father was Kenyan, is descended through his Kansan mother's family to some of the earliest settlers in Massachusetts at the time of the Pilgrim Fathers.
Two clear links to England can be found, pointing to the possibility that direct ancestors of the 44th president may still be lying in the medieval churchyards of Stapleford, a village just outside Cambridge, or Sutton in Ashfield, Notts.
Researchers at the New England Historic
Source: NYT
April 1, 2009
Former President Alberto K. Fujimori of Peru defiantly defended himself in court on Wednesday against accusations of human rights abuses, saying that he was innocent of murder and kidnapping charges related to his government’s counterinsurgency tactics during a bloody period of guerrilla attacks in the early 1990s.
Mr. Fujimori took the stand in his own defense at his trial in Lima, Peru, now in its 15th month. He was seeking to convince a three-judge panel that he should not be hel
Source: BBC
April 2, 2009
Arnold Meri, a Soviet war hero put on trial in his native Estonia over his role in Stalin-era deportations, has been buried in Tallinn.
Mr Meri, who suffered from ill-health, died on Friday at the age of 89 while judicial proceedings against him were still in progress.
He denied the charge of "genocide" but admitted playing a part in the deportation of 251 civilians in 1949.
Estonia's contention that genocide took place is not widely accepted.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 2, 2009
Palestinian security in the West Bank detained and then deported to Israel a youth orchestra director who angered local leaders by taking the group to perform before Holocaust survivors in Israel, officials said.
Wafa Younis, head of the "Strings of Freedom" orchestra, said on Wednesday she was visiting the building where her group normally meets in Jenin refugee camp on Monday when armed men in plain clothes took her into custody.
Younis's orchestra performe
Source: AP
April 2, 2009
More than four years after Yasir Arafat died, Arab doctors will meet in Jordan this week to look into lingering suspicions that he was poisoned. Mr. Arafat, who led the Palestinian movement for almost 40 years, fell violently ill in October 2004 at his West Bank compound in Ramallah. He was moved to a French hospital, where he died on Nov. 11, 2004, at the age of 75. At the time, French doctors bound by strict privacy rules were tight-lipped about Mr. Arafat’s condition, and his widow refused an
Source: Guardian (UK)
April 2, 2009
New York City has positively matched another September 11 victim to long-held human remains after retesting DNA.
The city medical examiner's office says 54-year-old Manuel Emilio Mejia has been identified from remains found at the World Trade Centre site in the months after the 2001 terrorist attack.
Mejia was a kitchen worker at Windows on the World, the restaurant on top of the trade centre's north tower.
Nearly 2,800 people are on the city's September 11
Source: BBC
April 2, 2009
The link is to encourage people to show respect to those who died in the communist revolution, it said.
The new web link comes ahead of the annual Qingming Festival when Chinese traditionally honour their ancestors.
Also known as Chingming, or tomb-sweeping Day, this falls on 4 April this year.
The online memorial was initiated by the Central Civilisation Office of the Communist Party of China on 26 March and will remain "live" until 14 April.
Source: WaPo
April 1, 2009
Members of a steamfitters union local said that in 2007, asbestos dust filled the air during renovation of the National Museum of American History because contractors repeatedly failed to take legally required precautions while removing insulation.
A Smithsonian spokeswoman said that as soon as institution safety workers found the problems, they immediately corrected procedures and turned off fans. The museum was closed to the public at the time during a two-year renovation, but Ame
Source: WaPo
April 1, 2009
Justice Department lawyers concluded in an unpublished opinion earlier this year that the historic D.C. voting rights bill pending in Congress is unconstitutional, according to sources briefed on the issue. But Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who supports the measure, ordered up a second opinion from other lawyers in his department and determined that the legislation would pass muster.
A finding that the voting rights bill runs afoul of the Constitution could complicate an upco
Source: Deutsche Welle
March 31, 2009
The construction of a metro underneath the center of the old city is widely blamed for the disaster of March 3 2009 in which two young men died and a huge collection of irreplaceable historical documents was buried under tons of rubble.
Some 200 police officers swooped on the headquarters of Cologne's local transport company, KVB, and on offices of building firms involved in the underground project.
Chief state prosecutor Guenther Feld said Frankfurt, Berlin, Munich, E
