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: Science Daily
October 29, 2007
Questions about human migration from Asia to the Americas have perplexed anthropologists for decades, but as scenarios about the peopling of the New World come and go, the big questions have remained. Do the ancestors of Native Americans derive from only a small number of “founders” who trekked to the Americas via the Bering land bridge? How did their migration to the New World proceed? What, if anything, did the climate have to do with their migration? And what took them so long?
A
Source: National Security Archive
October 29, 2007
Washington D.C., October 29, 2007 - The National Security Archive filed a motion on Friday, October 26, seeking expedited discovery against the Executive Office of the President to find out what e-mails are missing from the White House e-mail system or backup tapes.
Archive General Counsel Meredith Fuchs explained, "The pressing need for the information arises out of troubling representations by the EOP and its components about its document preservation obligations and the loca
Source: Inside Higher Ed
October 29, 2007
The president of Iran isn’t the only Holocaust denier to win a platform on an American college campus.
At Michigan State University Friday, Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party who was convicted in 1998 for incitement of racial hatred over material denying the Holocaust, was brought to campus for a speech denouncing Islam. Griffin acknowledges having been a Holocaust denier, but says he no longer is one. His party is on record opposing black-white marriages, believ
Source: Jerusalem Post
October 29, 2007
For the first time, Yad Vashem will inaugurate an exhibition this week on Muslims who saved Jews during the Holocaust.
The exhibition, which opens on Thursday, focuses on more than a dozen of the scores of Muslim Albanians previously recognized as "Righteous Among the Nations" - the Holocaust center's highest honor - for risking their lives to save Jews during World War II.
The exhibit, titled "BESA: A Code of Honor - Muslim Albanians Who Rescued Jews Dur
Source: CNN
October 29, 2007
Former President Gerald Ford suggested to a reporter in 2004 that Vice President Dick Cheney should be dumped from the Republican ticket, according to a new book to be published Tuesday.
Ford preferred former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani because he feared Cheney had become a "liability" to President Bush, according to the book's author.
CNN obtained an advance copy of "Write It When I'm Gone," and interviewed author Thomas DeFrank.
Source: Chicago Tribune
October 28, 2007
Shortly before Rudy Giuliani left the New York mayor's office in 2001, close associates worked out an unprecedented and controversial deal to transfer his mayoral papers from City Hall to a private, tax-exempt foundation, the Rudolph W. Giuliani Center for Urban Affairs.
Billed as a leadership think tank, the center served as a conduit for Giuliani to copy and archive 2,100 boxes of documents from his time as mayor before returning the originals to the city.
That record
Source: Fox News
October 28, 2007
A vacant Manhattan building that played a part in an infamous Gilded Age murder case partially collapsed Saturday night, less than two weeks after city officials expressed concerns about the building's stability....
The building became a salacious footnote in a sensational 1907 trial involving a teenage showgirl, a jealous husband, and renowned architect Stanford White. He designed the original Madison Square Garden, the famous arch at Washington Square Park and several other city
Source: BBC
October 24, 2007
One of Northern Ireland's Olympic heros could be honoured almost a century after his gold medal victory.
The 100-year anniversary of Kennedy Kane McArthur's marathon triumph coincides with the 2012 London games.
North Antrim assembly member Mervyn Storey has called for official recognition of the Dervock-born runner's achievements.
Mr Storey raised the issue with Sports Minister Edwin Poots during a recent assembly meeting.
Source: NYT
October 27, 2007
Guglielmo Olivotto, an Italian prisoner of war, died with a noose around his neck, lynched at a military post on Puget Sound 63 years ago. Samuel Snow, 83, hopes that people will stop blaming him and the 27 other black soldiers convicted of starting the riot that led to Mr. Olivotto’s death. It was one of the largest Army courts-martial of World War II.
This week, a review board issued a ruling that could lead to overturning the convictions of all 28 soldiers, granting honorable dis
Source: NYT
October 28, 2007
Marcos Ana does not remember everything about his 23 years in prison during Franco’s dictatorship.
Marcos Ana was jailed for 23 years during Franco’s rule.
But the 87-year-old poet remembers the electric shocks and brutal whippings that left his body covered in sores; the hunger that compelled him to eat grass sprouting between the stones of the prison patio; his crumpled mother, clinging to the shins of a prison guard, begging mercy for her bloodied and beaten son....
Source: NYT
October 28, 2007
Nothing expresses American ambivalence about government secrecy as vividly as the old Washington craft of redaction, the selective removal of passages from once-secret papers or books by spies. It is the bureaucratic equivalent of lingerie, covering the very parts you most want to see.
In every nook of the national security agencies, redactors labor anonymously. The federal Information Security Oversight Office says 460 million pages of previously classified records have been made p
Source: NYT
October 28, 2007
YOU could put together a pretty decent little law firm drawing on just the leading presidential candidates.
It would have two former prosecutors, one intense and the other folksy, a civil litigator from a tony regional firm, a superstar trial lawyer and that scrappy kid from Harvard who gave up the big money to do civil rights work. (O.K., it would also sound like a pitch for a doomed TV show.)
Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Edwards, Rudolph W. Giuliani, Barack Obama, Mit
Source: AP
October 28, 2007
U.S. and Puerto Rican archaeologists say they have found the best-preserved pre-Columbian site in the Caribbean, which could shed light on virtually every aspect of Indian life in the region, from sacred rituals to eating habits.
The archaeologists believe the site in southern Puerto Rico may have belonged to the Taino or pre-Taino people that inhabited the island before European colonization, although other tribes are a possibility. It contains stones etched with ancient petroglyph
Source: NYT
October 27, 2007
Rome | Princeton University announced on Friday that its art museum had reached an agreement to return eight ancient works to Italy that the Italian government says were looted and illicitly exported.
The pact calls for the Princeton University Art Museum to send back four of the objects immediately and to keep four on loan for the next four years, the university said in a statement. In a partial victory of sorts, Princeton will keep seven other pieces that had been part of negotiat
Source: NYT
October 27, 2007
MILAN — Not 15 months ago, they were staring each other down at a negotiating table, bargaining tensely over who should have title to 13 archaeological artifacts. But on a recent afternoon they seemed the best of colleagues, amicably discussing how museums might cope with demands for the restitution of cultural property....
But the ownership issue is not always clear-cut. And even when museums draw up codes of ethics to help ensure that they won’t abet the plunder of another nation’
Source: AP
October 26, 2007
The theater where Abraham Lincoln was assassinated will be renovated and made part of a six-building complex that includes multimedia educational displays on the legacy of the nation's 16th president, the Ford's Theatre Society said Friday.
A planned education center across the street from the working theater will include new exhibits aimed at providing a deeper look at the events leading up to and following the assassination, as well as a look at 1860s Washington.
The
Source: History Today
October 25, 2007
19th-century newspaper reports ranging from the Battle of Trafalgar to the Jack the Ripper murders are now available online. The British Library has just launched a new site, featuring historic events from 1800 to 1900 and free for those in Further and Higher Education. New imaging techniques have allowed the digitisation of national and regional UK publications, previously only accessible in reading rooms. Reports on the Slavery Abolition Act, the Congress of Vienna and opening of the Suez Cana
Source: American Heritage
October 24, 2007
Edwin S. Grosvenor has purchased American Heritage from Forbes Inc. and will resume publication with the December issue. Grosvenor’s company, American Heritage Media, also plans to resume publishing Invention & Technology early next year. All subscriptions will be resumed where they left off, and Americanheritage.com will continue as usual. Further details about American Heritage Media’s plans will be announced soon.
HNN Editor: From the NYT:
Edwin S. Grosvenor, the great-great-gran
Source: NYT
October 26, 2007
With backing from more than half of the House this summer, proponents of a resolution condemning the Armenian genocide were confident that they would finally prevail in their quest for Congressional recognition.
Adding to their optimism, Speaker Nancy Pelosi was a longtime backer of the resolution, which had been pushed mainly by her fellow Californians, and was committed to bringing it to a House vote.
But supporters of the measure were not prepared for the vehement op
Source: NYT
October 26, 2007
Tony Blair, the former prime minister of Britain, has agreed to sell his memoir for an advance of around $9 million, according to a person with knowledge of the negotiations.
After a four-day auction, the book was bought by two divisions of Random House: Alfred A. Knopf in the United States and Canada, and Hutchinson in Britain. Sonny Mehta, chairman and editor in chief of Knopf, said that Mr. Blair intended to write a “serious and frank book” about his life and, in particular, his
