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: Student Press Law Center
August 13, 2007
A federal district court on Friday dismissed a lawsuit filed by three high school students who were punished for wearing Confederate symbols to school.
Farmington High School student Bryce Archambo wore a hat in September with a picture of the Confederate flag and the words "C.S.A., Rebel Pride, 1861." School officials made him take off the hat, but Archambo returned the next day wearing a T-shirt and belt buckle with a Confederate flag image and the words "Dixie Clas
Source: http://www.eveningecho.ie
August 13, 2007
Germany’s highest court today banned a far-right rally marking this week’s anniversary of the death of Adolf Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess.
The Karlsruhe-based court upheld the local authorities’ decision to ban the demonstration and rejected an emergency appeal by Juergen Rieger, a member of the right-wing NPD party who had requested permission for a rally in the southern town of Wunsiedel where Hess was buried 20 years ago.
Hess hanged himself at age 93 in Spandau Pris
Source: AFP
August 14, 2007
HEINZ Barth, a Nazi war criminal convicted for atrocities including the massacre of 642 people in the French village of Ourador, has died, his pastor said overnight.
"He is dead. He was 86 years old,'' said Heinz-Dieter Schmiedkte, the pastor at Gransee, near Berlin, where Barth lived.
"The burial will be in September and I have already declared myself ready to preside over it, as everyone has the right to a burial.''
Barth, a former SS lieutenant
Source: Telegraph (UK)
August 11, 2007
Banzai Nippon! Achtung Spitfeuer! Gott In Himmel! Teufel! Schweinehund!
If these were the first foreign phrases you ever encountered, the chances are that you're a bloke aged between 30 and 50, and that you grew up reading War Picture Library, Battle, Victor and Commando comics.
Well, those days are over - in publishing at least, where books about the Second World War, fiction and non-fiction, look set to be one of the hottest phenomena of the next decade.
Source: AP
August 15, 2007
A replica of a Viking ship believed to have been built in 1042 sailed triumphantly into Dublin after retracing the 1,000-mile path of the fleets of Norsemen who invaded Ireland more than a millennium ago. Over six weeks, the 100-foot ship, which carried some decidedly un-Viking-like equipment — global positioning systems, radar, radio, satellite weather forecasts and life jackets — crossed the waters of northern Europe from Scandinavia, around Scotland and into the Irish Sea.
Source: Nathanael D. Robinson at HNN blog, Cliopatria
August 14, 2007
Can we call it a trend now: German cities removing post-war construction to restore pre-war architecture? First, there was the recreation ofDresden’sFrauenkirche. Next, the demolition of the East
Source: AP
August 14, 2007
A man charged with dragging the Holocaust scholar Elie Wiesel from a hotel elevator in San Francisco apologized to him in court. The defendant, Eric Hunt, 22, has pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted kidnapping, false imprisonment, battery, stalking, elder abuse and hate crimes after the February incident. “Mr. Wiesel, I’m sorry for scaring you and I’m sorry you experienced the Holocaust,” Mr. Hunt said. “My grandfather fought the Nazis, and I’m sorry about what happened.”
Source: NYT
August 14, 2007
Joe O’Donnell, who took some of the first disturbing pictures after the nuclear bombing of Japan and also captured lastingly famous scenes as a longtime White House photographer, died last Thursday in Nashville, where he made his home. He was 85....
As a presidential photographer, Mr. O’Donnell caught images of Harry S. Truman and Gen. Douglas MacArthur shaking hands at their meeting on Wake Island during the Korean War; Vice President Richard M. Nixon in his “kitchen debate” with t
Source: Time
August 13, 2007
SDS is back, and it has a whole new set of rules. Students for a Democratic
Society was once a successful New Left organization in the 1960s until it turned
radical. During a 1968 strike at Columbia University, bands of SDSers took the
Dean of Students hostage, and another faction later developed into the
Weathermen, a militant underground group best remembered for their penchant for
bombs.
Now a new group using the SDS name has emerged, one with a penchant for
participatory demo
Source: International Herald Tribune
August 14, 2007
Quietly, with barely a whisper of protest, which is rare in this country, a great upheaval is under way inside Indian high school classrooms.
For perhaps the first time since India gained its independence 60 years ago Wednesday, politics is part of the teaching of political science, part of a broader revision of school curriculum with potentially long-lasting implications for how Indian children grasp the workings of their own democracy.
Shikha Chhabra, 16, offered an e
Source: http://www.hindustantimes.com
August 14, 2007
A project to preserve the broadest historical record of the independence struggle in India, Pakistan and other South Asian nations has been launched by America's Yale University.
The South Asian Independence Movement (SAIM) project launched on Tuesday to mark the 60th anniversary of the two South Asian neighbours' independence is seeking physical or digital artefacts and memorabilia associated with events or people involved in the freedom movement.
The New Haven, Connec
Source: http://www.scoop.co.nz
August 13, 2007
The history of New Zealand's intelligence agencies and those it has spied on have been laid bare in a book by Auckland-based journalist, author, and historian Graeme Hunt.
Spies And Revolutionaries – A History of New Zealand Subversion details how several prominent New Zealanders, all of whom are dead, spied for the former Soviet Union during the Cold War. Accusations and suspicions are laid bare before files and information that has never before been made public. This book will cle
Source: Arizona Republic
August 12, 2007
The golf-ball-size chunk is among the oldest rocks you will ever see.
At 4.5 billion years old, it's part of a larger rock that spent years swirling in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
An impact with another asteroid tossed the chunk into an orbit that crossed the Earth's path. It eventually fell through the atmosphere and broke up above a Chicago suburb. One lump hit a firehouse near midnight March 26, 2003. Other pieces plowed into homes, with one landing
Source: AP
August 12, 2007
ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. - This city almost erected a billboard outside Jamestown, Va., to congratulate it on its 400th birthday - and remind everyone St. Augustine passed that milestone four decades ago.
It would have said, "Happy birthday to our younger brother," former Mayor George Gardner said.
Jamestown got a lot of attention this past spring celebrating the anniversary of its founding on May 14, 1607, making it the oldest English settlement in the nation. Que
Source: Times (UK)
August 12, 2007
THE last dedicated A-levels in Latin and Greek are to be scrapped from next year, sparking opposition from the country’s leading classicists.
As thousands of A-level candidates wait to get their results this week, it has emerged that the OCR exam board is planning to combine the two subjects along with ancient history and classical civilisation into a single classics A-level, to be taught from 2008. Other boards that set A-levels in England have already combined the subjects or stop
Source: Reuters
August 11, 2007
Central Utah, where six miners were still trapped deep underground on Saturday, has long been rich not just in coal deposits, but also the fortune and despair that come with pulling it from the ground....
The list of accidents stretches back at least to May 1, 1900, when 200 men were killed by an explosion in the Winter Quarters Mine, one of the worst mining accidents in U.S. history.
In 1924, 172 men died in a series of explosions or of carbon monoxide poisoning at a m
Source: AP
August 11, 2007
Would you like your Civil War history seasoned with baseball trivia? Spritzed up with a winery tour? Do you long to dissect the Battle of Antietam with a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian?
Hire a guide.
As the 150th anniversary of the war between the states approaches, starting with John Brown's 1859 prewar raid at Harpers Ferry, W.Va., customized tours for people fascinated by the conflict are multiplying.
As little as $50 buys a two-hour, private guided to
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE)
August 14, 2007
It appears that David M. Walker has been reading his Cullen Murphy. In a startlingly downbeat report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office, Mr. Walker, the office's comptroller general, drew explicit parallels to the fall of the Roman Empire in excoriating the U.S. government for what he considers to be unsustainable policies.
“I’m trying to sound an alarm and issue a wake-up call,” Walker said in an interview with the Financial Times. “As comptroller general I’ve g
Source: National Security Archive
August 14, 2007
A collection of newly-declassified documents published today detail U.S. concern over Pakistan's relationship with the Taliban during the seven-year period leading up to 9-11. This new release comes just days after Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, acknowledged that, "There is no doubt Afghan militants are supported from Pakistan soil." While Musharraf admitted the Taliban were being sheltered in the lawless frontier border regions, the declassified U.S. documents released t
Source: Yale Daily News
August 10, 2007
In what might be its most significant concession to Peru since 1912, Yale will allow the country to see a full inventory of the artifacts it has kept in New Haven since Hiram Bingham III brought them back from Machu Picchu nearly a century ago.
The breakthrough in negotiations, confirmed Friday by Yale officials and announced Thursday during an unrelated press conference in Lima, is not only important in that it could lead to the return of certain artifacts Peru officials have been
