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: AP
April 25, 2008
In a dimly lit back room on the second level of the University of Michigan library's book-shelving department, Courtney Mitchel helped a giant desktop machine digest a rare, centuries-old Bible.
Mitchel is among hundreds of librarians from Minnesota to England making digital versions of the most fragile of the books to be included in Google Inc.'s Book Search, a portal that will eventually lead users to all the estimated 50 million to 100 million books in the world.
Th
Source: Dallas Morning News
April 27, 2008
For its 1999 graduation address, Southern Methodist University tapped a Texas governor riding bipartisan goodwill to record popularity.
"His growing national stature will enable our students to be a part of history in the making," school President R. Gerald Turner said.
Two terms of rough-hewn history later, SMU's recent agreement to house the George W. Bush Presidential Library and policy institute has thrust the school into a national spotlight not seen sinc
Source: International Herald Tribune
May 1, 2008
In early April, when North Korea called President Lee Myung Bak of South Korea an "impostor," a "traitor" and an "American running dog," the barrage sounded all too familiar to Jin Yong Seon. Jin has a museum filled with such verbiage.
In his Remembrance Museum in this former mining town 140 kilometers, or about 90 miles, east of Seoul, Jin is exhibiting 700 samples of what he calls "paper bombs" - the leaflets North and South Korea fired at e
Source: BBC
April 28, 2008
Archaeologists are hoping to unearth evidence of what they believe to have been one of Bronze Age Britain's largest axe-making "factories".
Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust (CPAT) said the axes, made from a distinctive type rock - known as picrite - had been found throughout the country.
A three-week survey at the 4,000-year-old site will start soon in Hyssington, near Welshpool, Powys.
Source: Discovery News
April 25, 2008
Many of Egypt's most famous monuments, such as the Sphinx and Cheops, contain hundreds of thousands of marine fossils, most of which are fully intact and preserved in the walls of the structures, according to a new study.
The study's authors suggest that the stones that make up the examined monuments at Giza plateau, Fayum and Abydos must have been carved out of natural stone since they reveal what chunks of the sea floor must have looked like over 4,000 years ago, when the building
Source: http://www.gazette.net
April 30, 2008
More than 100,000 Civil War-era artifacts were recently unearthed from a small, wooded stretch of land in Silver Spring that is slated to be paved over and made part of the Intercounty Connector.
Archaeologists called the former home of Melinda Jackson one of the best-preserved archaeology sites ever found in Maryland. Jackson, a black woman born into slavery in 1828 who gained her freedom and raised a family, has descendants still living in the area.
Source: http://www.winchesterstar.com
April 30, 2008
Virginia was central to the Civil War, and a state commission plans to make the commonwealth central to a multi-year commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the War Between the States.
"It’s a commemoration, not a celebration," said Speaker of the House of Delegates William J. Howell Jr., R-Fredericksburg, who chairs the Virginia Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War Commission.
The commission was set up two years ago to plan how the state’s role in the
Source: http://www.examiner.com
May 30, 2008
Legislation to create an Abraham Lincoln National Heritage Area that would be spread out over the many Illinois counties where he spent his pre-White House years is awaiting President Bush's signature.
The House approved the measure this week after it passed the Senate as part of a bill involving public lands from coast to coast.
The provision was co-sponsored by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, and Rep. Ray LaHood, the Peoria Republican whose congressional district includ
Source: Independent (UK)
May 1, 2008
A senior Iraqi official has accused the West of not doing enough to stop the thriving trade in antiquities smuggled out of the country's depleted archeological sites and sold in auction houses across Britain, America and Europe.
Dr Bahaa Mayah, a special adviser to Iraq's Minister of Tourism and Antiquities, called for an immediate global ban on the sale of at least 100,000 artefacts that have been stolen since the invasion.
Speaking at the British Museum, he said it wa
Source: AP
April 30, 2008
BAD AROLSEN, Germany - A vast archive of concentration camp logs detailing Nazi horrors and other German wartime documents formally opened to visitors Wednesday, more than six decades after it was founded to provide information about the victims of the Holocaust.
"We are turning over a new leaf in the history of the ITS," Reto Meister, director of the International Tracing Service of the Red Cross, said at a ceremony. "This opening will contribute to keeping alive the
Source: JTA
April 30, 2008
Hitler's "Mein Kampf" should be released in Germany, says a German Jewish leader.
Stephan Kramer, the secretary general of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, has urged that a
critically annotated edition be issued online of Hitler's diatribe, which has been banned in Germany since 1945.
Kramer told Deutschlandfunk Radio that the Central Council would work on such an annotation, even for an Internet publication, of the volume Hitler wrote in prison
Source: USA Today
April 30, 2008
Nobel Peace Prize winner and international symbol of freedom Nelson Mandela is flagged on U.S. terrorist watch lists and needs special permission to visit the USA. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calls the situation "embarrassing," and some members of Congress vow to fix it.
The requirement applies to former South African leader Mandela and other members of South Africa's governing African National Congress (ANC), the once-banned anti-Apartheid organization. In the 197
Source: Dallas Morning News
May 1, 2008
The Dallas blog Pegasus News is reporting that the "governing body of the United Methodist Church has come out against the George Bush Library being constructed on the campus of Southern Methodist University."
Only problem is it isn't true. Instead of approving a petition against the library, the UMC General Conference on Wednesday voted 844-20 to refer the matter to the South Central Jurisdiction's conference scheduled for July in Dallas.
The jurisdiction's m
Source: Dallas Morning News
May 1, 2008
War and politics were colliding for Lyndon Johnson in March 1968 as he talked tough to a foreign enemy while assuring key backers – people he badly needed for his re-election campaign – that he yearned for peace, tapes released Thursday show.
The embattled president faced a commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam who wanted more troops, a Congress that wouldn't pass his tax bill to pay for the war and political embarrassment after an obscure Minnesota senator almost beat him in the New
Source: http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com
May 1, 2008
About 50 to 75 members and supporters of the sovereignty group Hawaiian Kingdom Government occupied the mauka-ewa corner of the 'Iolani Palace grounds from early this morning but did not try to stop others from going onto the property as they did yesterday.
Group members, including leader Mahealani Kahau, declined to speak to media, saying they were inaccurately and unfairly portrayed regarding their actions yesterday.
The group said its action was not a protest or demo
Source: Bloomberg News
April 29, 2008
Most of us may believe that Robert Mugabe's undermining of democracy is bad news for Zimbabwe's economy.
But if we conclude that China created material prosperity and spawned wildly successful entrepreneurial ventures such as computer maker Lenovo Group Ltd. without constitutional democracy and its appurtenances, then we can't -- at least on purely economic grounds -- argue that Zimbabwe needs them.
Equally useless then would be the heaps of empirical evidence that econ
Source: AP
April 30, 2008
DNA tests carried out by a U.S. laboratory prove that remains exhumed last year belong to two children of Czar Nicholas II, putting to rest questions about what happened to Russia's last royal family, a regional governor said Wednesday.
The bone fragments dug up are those of Crown Prince Alexei and his sister, Maria, whose remains had been missing since the family was murdered in 1918 as Russia descended into civil war, said Eduard Rossel, governor of the Sverdlovsk region.
Source: http://www.mynews.in
April 27, 2008
They feel ignored, 'unwanted by their own country' and kith and kin. "We do not have money even to buy medicines," one of them said. The war veterans, now in their 80s and 90s, said they were not considered for pension as their service period fell short of the requisite 20 years.
To provide a helping hand to them, the Ex-servicemen Welfare Association has established a 'Sainik Ashram' and the war veterans are staying there now, Col (retd) K B P Pillai, who was instrumental
Source: NYT
April 30, 2008
The back story of how a Torah got from the fetid barracks of Auschwitz to the ark of the Central Synagogue at Lexington Avenue and 55th Street is one the pastor of the Lutheran church down the street sums up as simply “miraculous.”
It is the story of a sexton in the synagogue in the Polish city of Oswiecim who buried most of the sacred scroll before the Germans stormed in and later renamed the city Auschwitz. It is the story of Jewish prisoners who sneaked the rest of it — four care
Source: http://globalnation.inquirer.net
April 28, 2008
Filipino World War II veterans would have received $3.2 billion worth of benefits from the United States had it not been for the Rescission Act of 1946, which effectively dashed promises held out as they fought alongside American troops six decades ago.
“According to the Office of US Veterans Affairs in Washington, the US government saved $3.2 billion by passing the Rescission Act in 1946,” Defense Undersecretary for Veterans Affairs Ernesto Carolina told the Philippine Daily Inquir
