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: AP
June 1, 2007
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) -- Visitors to the new, presidential-style museum honoring evangelist Billy Graham enter and exit the building through crosses as tall as 40 feet high, a design meant to emphasize that the $27-million complex is an extension of the minister's work.
''My hope is there will be thousands of people who come here every year and accept Jesus Christ as their savior,'' said the Rev. Franklin Graham, son and successor to his father, the world's most widely heard preacher
Source: NYT
June 1, 2007
Driven mainly by an extraordinary influx of Hispanics, the nation’s population of minority students has surged to 42 percent of public school enrollment, up from 22 percent three decades ago, according to an annual report issued yesterday by the government.
The report, a statistical survey of the nation’s educational system, portrays sweeping ethnic shifts that have transformed the schools. The changes, with important implications for educators and policy makers, have been most stri
Source: AP
June 1, 2007
Gov. Bob Riley signed a resolution expressing “profound regret” for Alabama’s role in slavery and apologizing for slavery’s wrongs and lingering effects. “Slavery was evil and is a part of American history,” said Mr. Riley, a Republican. “I believe all Alabamians are proud of the tremendous progress we have made and continue to make.” The Democrat-controlled Legislature approved the resolution last week.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 31, 2007
The Spanish government is to take legal action in the US courts to force an exploration company to reveal whether 17 tons of gold and silver coins, worth an estimated £250 million, were recovered from a wreck off the British coast.
Florida-based Odyssey Marine Exploration has refused to say where the treasure was found, but it is widely believed to have come from the British sailing ship Merchant Royal, which sank off the Isles of Scilly in 1641 carrying Spanish cargo.
Source: Miami Herald
May 31, 2007
The lake kept its secret as long as the rain fell.
The remains rested in the soft, black muck for hundreds of years -- buried beneath the water of Lake Okeechobee.
But the drought tore open the ancient grave, and a local man happened upon it. The bodies have been discovered.
But the mystery is just beginning.
''It's a mixed blessing,'' State Archaeologist Ryan Wheeler said. ``The lower lake levels give us a chance to learn . . . but the site wa
Source: Herald Sun (Australia)
May 30, 2007
WOULD-be citizens will have to answer questions about Australia's convict past, Federation, and the nation's wartime exploits.
The Herald Sun has obtained a list of the subjects covered in a new citizenship study guide, The Australian Way of Life.
Every question on the Government's new citizenship test will be drawn from the book.
An Australian history section will look at early settlement of the country, convicts, Aboriginal habitation, Federation and Aus
Source: Buffalo News
May 29, 2007
Harriet Tubman looms large in the story of the Underground Railroad, and New York Power Authority money is likely to make her even more visible in Niagara River communities.
But it might not be in a way Tubman would have recognized.
The state so far has snubbed a proposal to honor the most popular Underground Railroad conductor by revamping a Niagara Falls street near where she moved escaped slaves to freedom.
Meanwhile, state officials have begun to embrace a $250,000 plan downriv
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
May 31, 2007
The National Archives and Records Administration has announced the impending release of an additional 11 hours and 30 minutes of Nixon White House tape recordings. The three tapes to be released were all recorded in November 1972. The Archives has not announced the date for the release of the tapes, but it will not occur earlier than July 5, 2007. A copy of the full announcement, including details about how researchers may access the recordings, is available in the May 31, 2007, Federal Register
Source: NYT
May 31, 2007
Valerie Wilson, the former Central Intelligence Agency operative at the heart of an investigation that reached into the White House, sued the agency in federal court in New York today over its refusal to allow her to publish a memoir that would discuss how long she worked for it.
Although that information is set out in an unclassified letter to Ms. Wilson that has been published in the Congressional Record, the C.I.A. insists that her dates of service remain classified and may not b
Source: AP
May 25, 2007
Army Pvt. Clinton Tyler McCormick is buried in Florida, but his photo and his words are still online. They haven't changed since he logged in to his MySpace.com profile on Dec. 27, 2006 — the day before he was killed by a makeshift bomb in Baghdad.
In earlier wars, families had only the letters that soldiers sent home; often, bits and pieces were removed by cautious censors. Iraq is the first war of the Internet age, and McCormick is one of many fallen soldiers who have left ghosts
Source: LAT
May 31, 2007
This is the story of one man's broken dream to serve his country and love his woman.
Kan Zhonggan was a spy. His master was the government of Taiwan, an island that broke with mainland China in 1949 after a protracted civil war. Ever since, mutual espionage has been a way of life, but it was especially robust in the early years of the split.
Little was known about the lives of the secret agents who risked everything for the cause until a group of elderly former spies d
Source: LAT
May 31, 2007
President Bush would like to see the U.S. military provide long-term stability in Iraq as it has in South Korea, where thousands of American troops have been based for more than half a century, the White House said Wednesday.
Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, told reporters that Bush believes U.S. forces eventually will end their combat role in Iraq but will continue to be needed in the country to deter threats and to help handle potential crises, as they have done in Sout
Source: WaPo
May 31, 2007
With Fred Thompson deciding to read for the part of Republican presidential nominee, we thought we'd see how the pickup-driving former senator and "Law & Order" star stacked up against others who used their SAG cards to gain political favor.
[The list includes: Helen Gahagan Douglas, Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sonny Bono, Clint Eastwood, Fred Grandy, Jesse Ventura, Ben Jones.]
Source: The Detroit News
May 31, 2007
American presidents have come close to apologizing to African-Americans for slavery, and several have spoken of the evil of what some historians call the peculiar institution. Soon, in a measure introduced by Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., the U.S. House of Representatives could formally apologize for slavery, Jim Crow segregation and the continuing legacy of discrimination against black people.As of last week, due in part to a strategy devised to appeal more intimately to poten
Source: Independent (South Africa)
May 31, 2007
A Japanese court on Thursday refused to award compensation to Korean women who were allegedly forced to work in a Japanese machinery factory during World War II.In the latest rejection in a string of similar cases, the Nagoya High Court upheld a lower court's ruling that the six Korean women - aged 76 to 78 - and a relative of a now deceased woman had lost their rights to seek damages.
Judge Kunio Aoyama acknowledged the plaintiffs were "forced to come to J
Source: Japan Focus
May 28, 2007
One year after media reports that Aso Mining used 300 Allied prisoners of war for forced labor in 1945, Foreign Minister Aso Taro is refusing to confirm that POWs dug coal for his family’s company—and even challenging reporters to produce evidence.
That is not hard to do. Records produced by both Aso Mining and the Japanese government clearly show that POWs toiled at the Aso Yoshikuma mine in Fukuoka Prefecture.
Source: MESA website
May 29, 2007
The Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) is gravely concerned by the escalating pattern of harassment and detention of American academic researchers and scholars by the Iranian government, and believes that there are significant risks for researchers who intend to travel to Iran, especially those holding dual Iranian-American citizenship.The Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) was founded in 1966 to promote scholarship and teaching on t
Source: NYT
May 30, 2007
In what has become an annual rite, British college teachers will debate Wednesday whether they should punish their Israeli colleagues, in solidarity with Palestinians calling for boycotts, and whether it would be anti-Semitic to do so.
The questions reflect some of the deepest and most ambiguous strands in the history of a land that issued the Balfour declaration in 1917, offering “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine in almost the same breath as it promised Arab inde
Source: Denver Post Editorial
May 29, 2007
More than two years have passed since the waves of controversy first started lapping at Ward Churchill, the embattled University of Colorado professor. In that same time, other recognizable names tied to CU - Betsy Hoffman, Gary Barnett - have been relegated to history.
Yet Churchill remains.
That's because the ethnic studies professor has been given the appropriate due process - and then some.
It's never been easy to fire a tenured professor, which is good
Source: NYT
May 30, 2007
As the Bush administration completes secret new rules governing interrogations, a group of experts advising the intelligence agencies are arguing that the harsh techniques used since the 2001 terrorist attacks are outmoded, amateurish and unreliable....
President Bush has insisted that those secret “enhanced” techniques are crucial, and he is far from alone. The notion that turning up pressure and pain on a prisoner will produce valuable intelligence is a staple of popular culture
