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: Daily Mail
April 2, 2008
An extraordinary insight into the private life of one of Hitler's most feared henchmen has come to light after more than 60 years hidden in a British home.
Viktor Lutze was a key figure in the Nazi leader's rise to power and served as chief of staff of the reviled SA - more commonly known as the brownshirts.
Yet intimate pictures seized from his house by Allied forces cast him in the unlikely role of a family man who enjoyed day trips and games of table-tennis.
A
Source: International Herald Tribune
April 9, 2008
Here's an arresting allegation: More slaves are now imported (though the current word for this is trafficked) into the United States annually than were imported in an average year during the American colonial era.
That is one of the talking points used lately by the author of an arresting new book on global slavery, "A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery," by E. Benjamin Skinner.
In fact, of course, at the height of the legal slave trade i
Source: AP
April 8, 2008
Talk about a civics lesson: A high-school senior has raised questions about political bias in a popular textbook on U.S. government, and legal scholars and top scientists say the teen's criticism is well-founded.
They say "American Government" by conservatives James Wilson and John Dilulio presents a skewed view of topics from global warming to separation of church and state. The publisher now says it will review the book, as will the College Board, which oversees college-
Source: Independent (UK)
April 9, 2008
Oliver Stone's new film,W, portrays George Bush as a foul-mouthed, dried-out drunk with a baseball obsession and a difficult relationship with his father.
Filming is expected to begin any day in Louisiana. The movie should be in cinemas before Mr Bush leaves office next January.
Stone says the film won't be an anti-Bush polemic. Rather, as he told Daily Variety, it will be "a fair, true portrait of the man that asks the question: how did Bush go from being an alcoh
Source: Deutsche Welle
August 4, 2008
The Catholic Church has issued a list of 5,900 people who were forced by the Nazis to work as gardeners, grave-diggers and hospital orderlies at Catholic facilities in Germany during World War II.
The German church has already paid 1.5 million euros ($2.4 million) in compensation to 587 survivors since their ordeal was made public several years ago.
During the Nazi era, huge numbers of Eastern Europeans were forced to do factory or farm work at low pay, replacing millions of
Source: Press Release--Library of Congress
March 27, 2008
The Library of Congress–the largest library in the world and the oldest U.S. federal cultural institution–on Saturday, April 12, debuts an immersive, new "Library of Congress Experience," offering visitors unique historical and cultural treasures brought to life through cutting-edge interactive technology and a companion Web site.
The experience comprises a series of new ongoing exhibitions, dozens of interactive kiosks, an inspiring multimedia "overture" on the collec
Source: Newsweek
April 14, 2008
Conventional wisdom says that the longer the Democrats fight over their party's presidential nominee, the greater the chance of a GOP victory in the fall. But an analysis of the races since 1968 shows that in many contests, at least one of the nominations wasn't decided until June; one was fought until August. So is the CW right? Check out our examination of electoral history for the answer. Hint: Bill Clinton's 1992 experience was an anomaly.
Source: Evan Thomas & Pat Wingert in Newsweek
April 14, 2008
It's a good bet that whoever wins in November will be greener than George W. Bush. The next president is likely to launch the nation on the path toward reducing dangerous CO2 emissions. But any legislation emerging from Congress will probably be no more than a directional signal, a declaration of intent or a down payment—a start, but at best a modest beginning. To go further, to truly tackle the greenhouse effect, will require the one thing from voters that few politicians dare to ask for and fe
Source: http://www.politico.com
April 8, 2008
At Politico, we love politics for some of the same reasons people love sports: the endless human drama.
Unlike a lot of people, of course, we don’t have the freedom — or, truth be told, the desire — to root for one side or the other to win. But we do have a clear preference for great characters and for watching how they react during moments of high pressure.
It was in this spirit that we sat down to ponder the 50 greatest political moments of the past 50 years.
Source: AP
April 8, 2008
Working in secret, federal archaeologists have dug up the remains of dozens of soldiers and children near a Civil War-era fort after an informant tipped them off about widespread grave-looting.
The exhumations, conducted from August to October, removed 67 skeletons from the parched desert soil around Fort Craig — 39 men, two women and 26 infants and children, according to two federal archaeologists who helped with the dig.
They also found scores of empty graves and dete
Source: Oxford Mail
April 6, 2008
Archaeologists now believe a dozen skeletons discovered in a mass grave in the centre of Oxford may have belonged to executed criminals from Saxon times.
A team of three archaeologists have been digging in the quadrangle of St John's College in Blackhall Road, off St Giles, for nearly two weeks since the discovery was made.
The bones of 12 or 13 bodies have gradually been uncovered after a body part was discovered 80cm below ground level by diggers excavating the plot b
Source: http://www.uaf.edu
April 2, 2008
Recent findings by a Russian-American research team suggest that prehistoric cultures were hunting whales at least 3,000 years ago, 1,000 years earlier than was previously known.
University of Alaska Museum of the North archaeology curator Daniel Odess presented the team's findings at the Society for American Archaeology annual meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia last week.
"The importance of whaling in arctic prehistory is clear. Prehistoric settlements were si
Source: BBC
April 8, 2008
A bay in the far north of Scotland is to be searched by archaeologists in the hope of uncovering Viking artefacts.
Items have been found at opposite ends of Dunnet Bay in Caithness, but the links area have not been thoroughly investigated before.
Test pits will be dug and soil samples analysed by a new, community-owned archaeological research centre.
Source: AP
April 6, 2008
It's so much a part of the landscape that metro-east residents often don't even notice it, except when a visiting relative notices: 'Look, there's the mound.'
Rising from what once was an endless grass sea parted by the Mississippi River, Monks Mound isn't even named after the Native American Indians who built it centuries ago, but the Trappist monks who lived there for only five years in the 19th century.
No one knows what the long-vanished people who built the mounds
Source: NYT
April 8, 2008
For five days in late February, Dr. Ware, the director of the Amerind Foundation, an archaeological research center in Dragoon, Ariz., was host to 15 colleagues as they confronted the most vexing and persistent question in Southwestern archaeology: Why, in the late 13th century, did thousands of Anasazi abandon Kayenta, Mesa Verde and the other magnificent settlements of the Colorado Plateau and move south into Arizona and New Mexico?
Scientists once thought the answer lay in impers
Source: AP
April 7, 2008
NEW YORK - The city has identified the remains of four more victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, including one man whose DNA was found beneath a service road that was initially paved over, officials said Monday.
Ronald Keith Milstein's remains were found beneath the road that was built to carry cleanup and construction trucks in and out of the World Trade Center site after the 2001 terrorist attacks, the city medical examiner's office said. Milstein of Queens was 54 when he was killed.
Source: BBC
April 8, 2008
The next UN investigator into Israeli conduct in the occupied territories has stood by comments comparing Israeli actions in Gaza to those of the Nazis.
Speaking to the BBC, Professor Richard Falk said he believed that up to now Israel had been successful in avoiding the criticism that it was due.
Professor Falk is scheduled to take up his post for the UN Human Rights Council later in the year.
But Israel wants his mandate changed to probe Palestinian actions as
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 8, 2008
They are the symbol of today's disaffected youth but a historian has revealed that the hoodie-wearing yob is not just a modern problem.
Professor Robert Bartlett, who is an expert on the Middle Ages, said hooded tops were also the garment of choice for 12th-century juvenile delinquents.
The teenage apprentice boys of London were lawless, violent and the scourge of the capital.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 8, 2008
Relatives of those killed in the Omagh bombing have become the first victims of terrorism to sue the people they blame for the "massacre of the innocents".
Six families who lost loved ones or suffered injury in the worst single atrocity of Northern Ireland's Troubles launched a £14 million civil case against five dissident republicans.
It came almost 10 years after a Real IRA car bomb killed 29 people, including the mother of unborn twins, devastating the mark
Source: CNN
April 7, 2008
A recently disclosed memo gave U.S. interrogators the ability to use harsh methods -- what many call "torture" -- to extract information from terrorist suspects after 9/11. Around the world, critics saw it as another blow to American prestige and moral authority.
The 2003 document also invokes wartime powers to protect interrogators who violate the Geneva Conventions, for example, by the use of waterboarding -- when a prisoner is made to think he is drowning.
