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: Reuters
March 9, 2008
Australian archaeologists believe they have found the grave of the country's legendary outlaw, Ned Kelly, on the site of an abandoned prison.
Kelly, immortalized for using home-made armor in a final shoot-out with police, became a folk hero of Australia's colonial past with his gang's daring bank robberies and escapes.
The son of an Irish convict, Kelly was hanged for his crimes in 1880 and buried in a mass grave at a prison in the southern city of Melbourne in Victoria
Source: Seattle Times
March 9, 2008
"This first leg has gone on for almost 30 years," said Carver Gayton, director of the museum. "We will not end our journey until we can ensure we have an African American museum at this site in perpetuity."
It was a star-studded event, featuring Mayor Greg Nickels, King County Executive Ron Sims, Gov. Christine Gregoire, U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell and U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott. They were the first to tour the museum when the doors opened.
Nickels said it
Source: AP
March 9, 2008
Workers have begun moving a staircase that served as an escape route for countless survivors of the attack on the World Trade Center.
The stairway survived Sept. 11 and remains the only aboveground remnant of the trade center complex. Its 37 stairs once connected the outdoor plaza outside the twin towers to the street below.
An American flag was placed on the staircase Sunday before it was hoisted onto a flatbed truck by a crane.
After years of debate over
Source: NYT
March 9, 2008
They came to New York as “displaced persons” in the early 1950s, Jewish refugees who had survived the Holocaust. Today, in film and story, such survivors are treated with a kind of awe, and their arrival in America is considered a happy ending. But a very different picture, with an oddly contemporary twist, emerges from the yellowing pages of social service records now being rescued from oblivion at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan.
The files, from a major Jewish resettlem
Source: NYT
March 9, 2008
Long after the death of the chief players, a new book challenges some assumptions and offers new theories about Watergate, asserting for instance that President Richard M. Nixon and his aides learned about a spy in their midst from a highly unlikely source.
The book is by L. Patrick Gray III, who was acting director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from J. Edgar Hoover’s death in May 1972 until April 1973, when he quit after it became clear that he had been manipulated by the
Source: WaPo
March 9, 2008
In the first insider account of Pentagon decision-making on Iraq, one of the key architects of the war blasts former secretary of state Colin Powell, the CIA, retired Gen. Tommy R. Franks and former Iraq occupation chief L. Paul Bremer for mishandling the run-up to the invasion and the subsequent occupation of the country.
Douglas J. Feith, in a massive score-settling work, portrays an intelligence community and a State Department that repeatedly undermined plans he developed as und
Source: Minneapolis Star Tribune
March 8, 2008
Six decades later, the legacy of World War II and the Holocaust continue to shape life among Jews living in Germany.
By the time the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the Jewish population stood at scarcely 23,000, generally survivors of the war era and their offspring.
But in a turnaround few would have thought possible, Germany today boasts the fastest-growing Jewish population in Europe....
Between 1991 and 2005 an estimated 220,000 Jews from the former Sov
Source: AP
March 8, 2008
A sixth-century copper factory, medieval kitchens still stocked with pots and pans, and remains of Renaissance palaces are among the finds unveiled Friday by archaeologists digging up Rome in preparation for a new subway line. Archaeologists have been probing the depths of the Eternal City at 38 digs, many of which are near famous monuments or on key thoroughfares.
Source: AP
March 8, 2008
Britain's Royal Navy floated a wreath Saturday over the recently discovered wreck of a World War II destroyer that went down with 110 men on board in a battle with Nazi forces.
The HMS Hunter was discovered this month by a Norwegian minehunter participating in exercises with British, Dutch and other NATO warships off the Norwegian coast, Britain's Defense Ministry said.
The 2,100-ton destroyer went down on April 10, 1940, as the Royal Navy tried to keep German forces fr
Source: AP
March 8, 2008
Sculptor Stephen Spears is turning history into bronze with the first monument to the Navy's D-Day heroes at Normandy and a statue of a World War I doughboy at the site of a landmark American victory in Cantigny, France.
His three bronze figures of a Navy captain and two sailors will be installed on a bluff overlooking Utah Beach to remember the naval service's role in World War II's pivotal amphibious invasion, adding a new visual element to the landscape at the historic site.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 8, 2008
Britain's ancient laws of treason are out of date and should be overhauled, a senior government adviser will tell the Prime Minister this week.
Lord Goldsmith, the former attorney general, will use the findings of his review of citizenship and constitutional reform to call for a modernisation of laws dating back to 1351, The Sunday Telegraph has learned.
When he reports to Gordon Brown on Tuesday he will argue that treason laws, which include the offence of sleeping wit
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 3, 2008
Hillary Clinton had no direct role in bringing peace to Northern Ireland and is a "wee bit silly" for exaggerating the part she played, according to Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and former First Minister of the province.
"I don’t know there was much she did apart from accompanying Bill [Clinton] going around," he said. Her recent statements about being deeply involved were merely "the sort of thing people put in their canvassing
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 8, 2008
An ancient Roman Catholic order tried yesterday to dispel the conspiracy theories surrounding it as it buried its Grand Master.
Princess Michael of Kent, a member of The Sovereign Order of the Knights of Malta, was present in Rome for the state funeral of Fra Andrew Bertie, 78, the Briton who headed the knights until his death earlier this month. Giorgio Napolitano, the Italian president, also attended the ceremony at the organisation's headquarters on the Aventine Hill.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 8, 2008
A Holocaust survivor thought to have been the only Englishman imprisoned in the Auschwitz death camp has died. He was 97.
Leon Greenman, who was born in London, was living in Rotterdam in Holland with his Dutch wife and young son when the family were rounded up by the Nazis in 1943.
Greenman was one of 700 Dutch Jews moved to the notorious concentration camp in 1943 but of the group just he and one other man survived.
After learning his wife and son had be
Source: BBC
March 7, 2008
The man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing has failed in his latest attempt to persuade judges that secret documents should be handed over.
Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi claims the documents could assist his appeal over the 1988 massacre.
The documents were issued by a foreign government to prosecutors before Megrahi's trial but have never been seen by the defence.
Further attempts are likely to be made for the documents to be released.
Appe
Source: NYT
March 8, 2008
When the news emerged this week that Margaret Seltzer had fabricated her gang memoir, “Love and Consequences,” under the pseudonym Margaret B. Jones, many in the publishing industry and beyond thought: Here we go again.
The most immediate examples that came to mind were, of course, James Frey, the author of the best-selling “Million Little Pieces,” in which he embellished details of his experiences as a drug addict, and J T LeRoy, the novelist thought to be a young West Virginia mal
Source: LAT
March 7, 2008
Given the fascinating twists and turns of the current election season just in the last year, only a foreign exchange student just off the plane would hazard a prediction about this Nov. 4's presidential balloting.
But one thing is certain -- well, more than likely: This will be the first-ever presidential election in the nation's history pitting two sitting U.S. senators against each other.
Americans haven't been very receptive to legislators from that body becoming the
Source: NYT
March 6, 2008
Stories about Downing’s [Oyster House] — and many other locales and people significant to black history in New York City — have rarely been classroom staples for schoolchildren. But these sagas, presented in text, historical images and interactive maps, are the focus of a new Web site officially unveiled on Wednesday with an acronym, MAAP, that stands for “Mapping the African American Past.”
The Web site, presented by Columbia University at htt
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
March 7, 2008
In a legal brief filed in federal court this week, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) stated that by the end of March it would be releasing approximately 10,000 pages of Senator Hillary Clinton’s (D-NY) daily schedule records from her time as first lady. However, the Archives told the court it would be one to two years before it could begin processing the approximately 20,00
Source: Vanity Fair
April 1, 2008
In recent months, President Bush has repeatedly stated that the last great ambition of his presidency is to broker a deal that would create a viable Palestinian state and bring peace to the Holy Land. “People say, ‘Do you think it’s possible, during your presidency?’ ” he told an audience in Jerusalem on January 9. “And the answer is: I’m very hopeful.”
The next day, in the West Bank capital of Ramallah, Bush acknowledged that there was a rather large obstacle standing in
