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: LAT
July 20, 2007
AMID ALL THE frenetic early maneuvering in the 2008 GOP presidential race, Republicans may be missing the elephant in the room: namely that the head of the herd is bleeding to death on the carpet.
That would be President Bush, whose approval rating scraped new lows last week. Bush won't be on the ballot in 2008, of course, but throughout American history, outgoing presidents have cast a long shadow over the campaign to succeed them. And when a departing president has been as unpopul
Source: Boston Globe
July 20, 2007
More than 60 years after a group of German officers tried to assassinate Adolf Hitler, international recognition that has eluded them for years may soon be on its way -- despite resistance from within Germany.
As the country marks the anniversary of the July 20, 1944 plot, historians say a new film starring Tom Cruise about the doomed attempt to blow up Hitler would bring the subject to a global audience. But it may trivialize the story too, they warn.The film's
Source: Leonard Garment, in a letter to the editor of the NYT
July 20, 2007
To the Editor:
Re “National Archives Release 11 Hours of Nixon Tapes” (news article, July 12):
Richard M. Nixon’s tape-recorded description of me, in a 1972 conversation with Charles Colson, as “house Jew” for Nixon’s second term was a characteristic piece of cynical Nixonian shorthand.
From the beginning of my service in the Nixon administration in 1969 I was a partisan of Jewish issues, particularly those involving the security of Israel.
As
Source: BBC
July 20, 2007
The most important Viking treasure find in Britain for 150 years has been unearthed by a father and son while metal detecting in Yorkshire.Metal detectorists David and Andrew Whelan, who uncovered the treasures, said the find was a "thing of dreams". The pair, from Leeds, said the hoard was worth about £750,000 as a conservative estimate.
The ancient objects come from as far afield as Afghanistan in the East and Ireland in the West, as well as what is
Source: AP
July 20, 2007
President Bush will undergo a routine colonoscopy Saturday and temporarily hand presidential powers over to Vice President Dick Cheney, the White House said.
Press secretary Tony Snow told reporters Friday that Bush will have the procedure done at his Camp David, Md., mountaintop retreat....Because the president will be under the effects of anesthesia, he has elected to implement Section 3 of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution, making Cheney acting president
Source: AP
July 19, 2007
ROME - Archaeologists said Thursday they have partly
dug up a second-century bath complex believed to be
part of the vast, luxurious residence of a wealthy
Roman.
The two-story complex, which extends for at least 5
acres, includes exceptionally well-preserved decorated
hot rooms, vaults, changing rooms, marble latrines and
an underground room where slaves lit the fire to warm
the baths.
Statues and water cascades decorat
Source: NYT
July 19, 2007
PRESTONSBURG, Ky., Former Senator John Edwards wrapped up his three-day poverty tour Wednesday in this village deep in Appalachia, and suggested that the “two Americas” theme of his Democratic presidential campaign was an appeal for help not just for the poor, but also for all working Americans bypassed by the nation’s prosperity.
The location was strategic. The last presidential hopeful to visit this town was Robert F. Kennedy, at the end of a 200-mile antipoverty tour of eastern K
Source: Ottawa Citizen
July 19, 2007
The Royal Canadian Mint's design for a new $20 silver coin -- which went on sale yesterday for collectors around the world -- has inadvertently evoked one of the darkest moments in the history of polar exploration and raised concerns with the country's main Inuit organization....
One side of the coin carries the current portrait of Queen Elizabeth. The other depicts 16th-century English explorer Martin Frobisher and a compass rose from his era, along with images of the ship he saile
Source: LAT
July 19, 2007
Conservationist Marjory Stoneman Douglas once famously grumbled that Lake Okeechobee, the liquid heart of her beloved Everglades, had been poisoned by man's careless disposal of "pesticides, fertilizer, dead cats and old boots."
She didn't know about the 1920s steamship, rusty anchors, tractor tires, fishing-boat motors, settlers' stovepipes, Native American tools and jewelry, and the bones of man and beast dating back thousands of years. All were hauled from the lake bott
Source: Independent (UK)
July 19, 2007
Tony Blair arrived in Lisbon last night to begin a second career in which he must know that success may prove even more difficult than being the first British Labour prime minister to win three elections in a row.
Mr Blair will be anointed as Middle East envoy by the international Quartet, the EU, UN, Russia and the US, knowing the history of the region is littered by the failures of his predecessors as international peacemakers.On the one hand Mr Bl
Source: The Globe and Mail (Canada)
July 19, 2007
The Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, still reeling from an assault by Royal Air Force veterans who object to its depiction of their role in the 1945 firebombing of Dresden, has quietly been enduring a barrage from another quarter.
Ever since the museum opened two years ago, the National Association of Japanese Canadians has pressed it to change the way it depicts their community's suffering - and their volunteering, despite that suffering, for active combat.
Source: FrontpageMag.com (Note: The original article includes links to the sources cited in the text.)
July 19, 2007
The bicameral Congressional Human Rights Caucus (CHRC) is scheduled to hold a landmark hearing today regarding the hundreds of thousands of Jews forced to flee their communities in the Arab Muslim nations as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Oriental Jews suffered profound violations of their basic human rights under the Islamic regimes throughout North Africa, the Middle East and the Gulf Region. This persecution—including pogroms and expropriations—caused their subsequent flight despite l
Source: Inside Higher Ed (Click on SOURCE for embedded links.)
July 19, 2007
The University of Colorado Board of Regents will hold a special meeting July 24 to consider a proposal to fire Ward Churchill, the controversial ethnic studies professor who has been found by faculty committees and the president of the university system to have committed research misconduct. On Wednesday, several Web sites that have backed Churchill posted announcements of the meeting that reiterated Churchill’s view that he is being punished for his political views, and that called for students
Source: Time
July 19, 2007
A Timeline of the Peace Process.
Source: Reuters
July 18, 2007
An analysis of thousands of skulls shows modern humans originated from a single point in Africa and finally lays to rest the idea of multiple origins, British scientists said on Wednesday.
Most researchers agree that mankind spread out of Africa starting about 50,000 years ago, quickly establishing Stone Age cultures throughout Europe, Asia and Australia.
But a minority have argued, using skull data, that divergent populations evolved independently in different areas.
Source: Boston Globe
July 18, 2007
After spending more than two decades combing the ocean floor off Cape Cod, examining the wreck of the pirate ship Whydah, underwater explorer Barry Clifford couldn't shake the feeling that he had missed a spot.
About two years ago, relying on a hunch and a map of the seabed drawn in 1982 by John F. Kennedy Jr. and other divers looking for the wreck, Clifford returned to the spot where his dive team had first discovered artifacts from the Whydah in 1984.
A lthough he did
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 18, 2007
A British researcher claims to have located Rommel's elusive sunken treasure just weeks after a team of German divers scouring the Mediterranean failed to find the hoard.
The famed treasure has long been reputed to have been dumped somewhere off the coast of Corsica by fleeing SS men, who planned to recover it after the war.
However, Terry Hodgkinson, who has been researching the missing gold for 15 years, told The Daily Telegraph that he was now "confident" h
Source: AP
July 17, 2007
VENTURA, Calif. - The spot where a pair of outhouses stood 130 years ago is proving to be a treasure trove for archaeologists who braved the lingering smell in the dirt to uncover some 19th Century artifacts — and a mystery.
The one-time site of privies for men and women has been built upon repeatedly. Recently, crews demolished a former school bus barn on the 3.5-acre downtown site in order to build a condominium complex and a parking garage.
But first, archaeologists
Source: Bloomberg News
July 18, 2007
Next to a mass grave in Malaga, Spain, Juliana Sanchez watches an archeologist scrape dirt from a broken skull and wonders if this might be her father.
``I can't leave,'' she says of the site, where investigators found the remains of children and babies among 220 bodies crammed into a pit by fascist dictator Francisco Franco's death squads. ``I'm too anxious to know if some paper, some trace could be found to show that one of them is my father.''
Sanchez, 76, visits the
Source: NYT
July 18, 2007
In a move that some coin collectors fear could eventually make it difficult to pursue their passion, the United States government has imposed import restrictions on ancient coins from Cyprus. It is the first time the United States has limited trade in a broad category of coins as part of an effort to guard the cultural heritage of another country.
The new rules, which were adopted last week and went into effect on Monday, would essentially bar the importation of any ancient coin fr
