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: Guardian
April 20, 2008
As the anniversary of its independence approaches, Israel remains haunted by conflicts of the past and is split along racial, religious, economic and ideological lines. Terrorist attacks are commonplace. But there is also pride mixed with self-criticism, and a yearning for a fresh start on both sides of the Arab-Israeli divide.
Source: New Republic
May 7, 2008
An hour's drive from downtown Phnom Penh sits a campus of modern office
buildings. The architecture is standard office-park fare, but with fantastic
crowns of golden lintels and red tiles--traditional Khmer designs--grafted
atop. (The effect is rather like seeing a businessman wearing a papal crown.)
The offices were originally constructed for the military, and a sign that reads
ROYAL CAMBODIAN ARMED FORCES still hangs on one gate. Elsewhere on the campus, a
large bronze statue of a warrio
Source: AP
April 24, 2008
Human beings may have had a brush with extinction 70,000 years ago, an extensive genetic study suggests.
The human population at that time was reduced to small isolated groups in Africa, apparently because of drought, according to an analysis released Thursday.
The report notes that a separate study by researchers at Stanford University estimated that the number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to expand again in the early Stone Age.
Source: KGO
April 23, 2008
This week San Francisco is marking the anniversary of an event most people have never heard of. It was a time when more than half of the city's black population packed-up, picked-up and left town.
It's a little known chapter of San Francisco history that was commemorated at a ceremony with speeches, songs, a drill team and proclamations noting what few outside this crowd might know.
There was a black exodus from the city 150 years ago.
"What's to under
Source: The Economist
April 24, 2008
No fewer than seven bills that would alter how history is taught are currently before California's legislature. These bills would encourage or force more lessons about Filipino, African and Latin American cultures, American Indians, the "secret war" in Laos, the deportation of Hispanics in the 1930s, the desegregation of Mexican pupils and the Italian contribution to California. All of which would be added to a curriculum that is already a brisk 5,000-year trot from ancient Egypt to co
Source: Chicago Tribune
April 21, 2008
A coffee urn given as a wedding present by Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln has been donated to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.
Beginning Monday, the silver-plate coffee urn will be on display at the museum.
The donation was made by a descendant of the groom, a young lawyer named Christopher Columbus Brown.
Source: WaPo
April 24, 2008
A letter that President Bush personally delivered to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon four years ago has emerged as a significant obstacle to the president's efforts to forge a peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians during his last year in office.
Ehud Olmert, the current Israeli prime minister, said this week that Bush's letter gave the Jewish state permission to expand the West Bank settlements that it hopes to retain in a final peace deal, even though Bush's pea
Source: Baltimore Sun
April 24, 2008
Standing over one of the Colonial, brick sidewalks that help define Annapolis, the archaeologists began digging with trowels and shovels.
The team from the University of Maryland carved a 4-foot-long trench along a sidewalk at Fleet and Cornhill streets - two of the oldest in the historic district. Bagging and tagging artifacts along the way, they scraped through the powdered remains of a red brick sidewalk from 1820 and a black layer of wood chips from 1740.
Then they
Source: National Geographic News
April 23, 2008
An ancient Greek tomb thought to have held the body of Alexander the Great's father is actually that of Alexander's half brother, researchers say.
This may mean that some of the artifacts found in the tomb—including a helmet, shield, and silver "crown"—originally belonged to Alexander the Great himself. Alexander's half brother is thought to have claimed these royal trappings after Alexander's death.
Source: Dallas Morning News
April 23, 2008
A federal judge has dismissed a case by current and former Burleson High School students who were forbidden from carrying purses bearing the Confederate battle flag on campus.
The ruling released Tuesday by Judge David C. Godbey ends the more than year-long lawsuit about the place of Confederate symbols in public life. School district officials said the symbols could be disruptive because of the racial overtones. The defendants and the Southern Legal Resource Center, which represent
Source: Reuters
April 24, 2008
The exhumed body of Padre Pio, a saint considered a miracle worker by his devotees, attracted thousands of pilgrims on Thursday when it went on display 40 years after his death.
Padre Pio is one of the Catholic Church's most popular saints and during his lifetime the Italian monk was said to have had the stigmata, the bleeding wounds of Jesus' crucifixion on his hands and feet.
Source: International Herald Tribune
April 18, 2008
Western politicians who take the longer view sometimes wonder why they get it so wrong with the "Islamic world." They might learn a thing or two by glancing at what happens on the auction scene.
The round of sales that began at Christie's King Street on April 8, went on at Sotheby's April 9 and ended at Christie's South Kensington two days later were enlightening on that score, if not quite as much about the works of art. These belonged to five or six cultures more differe
Source: International Herald Tribune
April 22, 2008
OUESSANT, France: From this farthest edge of France, where the rain comes horizontally off the ocean, there is nothing on the horizon except waves and lighthouses, marking the lines between land and sea, sea and sky.
Built as a technical aid to sailors, their architects often unknown, France's lighthouses have increasingly become a symbol of the nature of the country, of its "patrimoine," or patrimony - a word that in France carries a spiritual quality of patriotism and na
Source: AP
April 24, 2008
State highway officials contacted the Rev. Spencer E. Jackson a few weeks ago with astonishing news: They had found the remnants of a homestead that belonged to his great-great-grandmother, a freed slave.
Less than two miles from his church was a remarkably preserved site, full of artifacts that provide clues to 19th-century black life. Eyeglasses, fragments of dolls and an 1860 Abraham Lincoln campaign medallion are among the discoveries that help tell the story of Melinda Jackson,
Source: AP
April 24, 2008
The Smithsonian yesterday began a push to raise corporate funds for a new museum dedicated to black history, announcing a $5 million gift from Boeing Co.
The National Museum of African American History and Culture is scheduled to open in 2015 on the Mall near the Washington Monument. It will be the Smithsonian's 19th museum.
"This is a museum for all of us. ... This is all our history," said Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, a Boeing vice president and the granddaughter
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 24, 2008
Almost two hundred years after the Allied armies secured the final defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte, French soldiers have returned to the scene of the Battle of Waterloo to learn from the mistakes of their 19th-century predecessors.
A total of 38 senior officers were ordered to spend a day analysing the errors which put a final end to Napoleon’s rule as Emperor and drew to a close 23 years of war.
Brigadier-General Vincent Desportes ordered strategists from France’s Armed F
Source: AP
April 23, 2008
Envoys from the U.S. and several nations walked out of a U.N. Security Council meeting Wednesday after Libya compared the situation in Gaza to Nazi concentration camps, council diplomats said.
The walkout was a rare protest by diplomats on the U.N.'s most powerful body against one of their own members. Libya is the only Arab representative on the council.
Council members held a closed meeting to discuss the possibility of issuing a press statement following a briefing o
Source: http://www.witntv.com
April 23, 2008
A team from East Carolina University is working to authenticate a possible Wright Brothers' artifact found in Kitty Hawk.
A crate that was shipped to "W. Wright, Elizabeth City, North Carolina” at the turn of the century looks like it became the tabletop for the Wright Brothers' kitchen table. That crate resurfaced in March in Kitty Hawk.
Dr. Larry Tise of ECU is a leading Wright Brothers authority. Tise and some of his students from ECU are working to confirm the
Source: http://www.nwanews.com
April 23, 2008
The exhumation of Parley Parker Pratt ended Tuesday when archaeologists couldn’t find the Mormon church leader’s remains.
Robert J. Grow, Pratt’s greatgreat-great-grandson, said there were no signs of Pratt, and the digging ended around 4 p.m....
Pratt was an original member of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and his dying wish was to be buried in Utah.
Source: http://sundaygazettemail.com
April 23, 2008
An archeologist on Tuesday criticized Putnam County commissioners for their efforts to return the skeletal remains of about 600 American Indians to West Virginia, saying they had left the scientific community in the dark.
"We have been cut out of the process entirely," said Bob Maslowski, president of the Council for West Virginia Archaeology.
Last month, commissioners received legal control of the skeletal remains, which had been stored at Ohio State Universi
