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: OneWorld/Yahoo
May 30, 2007
For the first time in recorded history, the majority of the world's population is living in cities.
"It's a wake-up call," said Ron Wimberley, distinguished professor of sociology at North Carolina State University. "It's always been assumed that rural areas will always produce what they're supposed to produce: natural resources, food, fiber, water, air, timber -- the things that are our daily basic needs."
"But if we keep extracting all the goo
Source: Inside Higher Ed
May 29, 2007
[Hank Brown, president of the University of Colorado System] formally recommended that [Ward] Churchill, who has tenure as an ethnic studies professor at Boulder, be fired. In a detailed letter to the Board of Regents, Brown said that Churchill’s violations of academic research norms were too serious and too numerous to ignore — regardless of the circumstances that led to all the scrutiny.
Brown emphatically rejected the idea that First Amendment issues were raised because the inqui
Source: Scotsman
May 30, 2007
KEY coastal sites which tell the story of Scotland's ancient past are in danger of being washed away, experts warned yesterday.
Archaeologists said that historic treasures could be lost forever unless action is taken now.
The most endangered sites include Viking and Iron Age remains in Shetland, Orkney and the Hebrides - where rare dry-stone brochs and Viking houses are threatened by global warming, rising sea levels, storms and erosion.
Source: http://www.newswatch50.com (New York State)
May 28, 2007
Part of long-forgotten War of 1812 fortifications have been rediscovered in Sackets Harbor.
Local archaeologist Dr. Timothy Abel says he has uncovered remains of a palisaded breastwork in the village.
Sackets Harbor was a major Navy base and shipbuilding site during the War of 1812. It saw heavy fighting during a brief British invasion in 1813.
Source: Reuters
May 29, 2007
In a high-tech age of instant communication, old-fashioned history is enjoying a renaissance in U.S. popular culture.
History tomes crowd best-seller lists. Historical documentaries fill the airwaves. And people pay thousands of dollars to spend whole weekends with noted historians, much the way rock-n-roll or baseball fans attend fantasy camps with their heroes.
"At all levels of American society there is this hunger to understand the past and relate it to the pre
Source: NYT
May 29, 2007
In the collection of the British Library there are two Gutenberg Bibles, two copies of Magna Carta, five copies of Shakespeare’s First Folio and now something new: your e-mail messages.
Or at least ones like them. Throughout this month the library, in partnership with Microsoft, has been collecting e-mail notes that ordinary Britons and others have sent — 13,807 so far — as a way of capturing a sense of life in the 21st century.
“E-mail is the first major upheaval in wr
Source: AP
May 29, 2007
A lawyer for Vice President Dick Cheney told the Secret Service in September to eliminate data on who visited Cheney at his official residence, a newly disclosed letter states. The Sept. 13, 2006, letter from Cheney's lawyer says logs for Cheney's residence on the grounds of the Naval Observatory are subject to the Presidential Records Act.
Such a designation prevents the public from learning who visited the vice president.
The Justice Department filed the letter Friday
Source: LAT
May 28, 2007
Memorial Day traditionally honors military veterans who died in America's many wars, but amid all the ritualistic remembering, some "veterans" are mostly forgotten, namely, the cannons and war wagons that accompanied flesh-and-blood vets in training and battle.
Beneath tall, swaying evergreens and palm trees, more than a hundred such antiquities rest in splendid obsolescence in a dusty dirt lot in South El Monte. Retrograde tanks and personnel carriers, outdated anti-aircr
Source: Guardian
May 28, 2007
As the 10th anniversary of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, approaches, the Diana memorial industry is creaking into action once more. The website that sells David and Elizabeth Emanuel's tome, A Dress for Diana, is taking orders for a special "limited edition" volume that includes a swatch of silk from the offcuts of her bridal gown. A thousand copies of the book are for sale, and the bargain price of this self-proclaimed "piece of history" is 1,000 pounds.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 28, 2007
THE fabric of French village life is in danger of destruction as mayors consider demolishing 19th century churches, conservationists and historians have warned.
A wave of threatened demolitions in the Anjou area has sparked fears of a wider phenomenon as mayors struggle to pay for the upkeep of the buildings, a responsibility they have held since secularisation laws passed in 1905.
No exhaustive list of the nation's rural churches exists.
However, of its 1
Source: AP
May 28, 2007
A group of Incline Village residents led by the son of late ‘‘Bonanza'' star Lorne Greene is trying to preserve the history of the north Lake Tahoe community.
Chuck Greene and other history buffs have discussed plans to create a local historical society and to open a museum.
‘‘Our near-term goal is preserving documents and memorabilia from the history of the community and doing oral histories with as many early residents as we can,'' Greene told the North Lake Tahoe Bon
Source: Inside Higher Ed
May 29, 2007
On Thursday, Robert L. Trivers took a train to Boston to give a talk at Harvard University the next day. Trivers is a prominent evolutionary biologist and anthropologist at Rutgers University and he had been invited to Cambridge in honor of his having won this year’s Crafoord Prize in Biosciences, a top international award that many consider a notch below the Nobel.
Trivers never got to give his talk. He says that hours before he was scheduled to lecture, he was called by an organiz
Source: Juan Cole at Informed Comment (blog)
May 29, 2007
Guerrillas detonated a huge bomb in front of the shrine of Abdul Qadir al-Gilani (Jilani, Kilani) in central Baghdad on Monday, killing (according to Reuters, above) some 24 persons and wounding 90 according to late reports. The bombing damaged the dome and the base of the minaret of the mosque attached to the shrine.
Shaikh Abdul Qadir al-Gilani (d. 1166 A.D.) was a great mystic who founded the vast Qadiriya Sufi order.
An Ottoman mystic, Shaikh Muzaff
Source: http://www.shippingtimes.co.uk
May 29, 2007
Shocking decision from Scottish council will see the last of two clippers consigned to history.
Glasgow's Evening Times newspaper reported today that the world's oldest clipper, the sv CARRICK, is to be scrapped.
North Ayrshire Council have decided that the ship should be 'deconstructed', despite pleas from Sunderland and Australia as well as voices in Scotland pointing out the historic merits of the Sunderland-built ship.
North Ayrshire Council planning co
Source: LiveScience
May 26, 2007
A moat and fortified walls have protected the Tower of London from vandals for almost 800 years, but against the ravages of pollution, the iconic royal palace doesn’t stand a chance. The entire complex is turning yellow from the exhaust of cars and trucks, according to a new study.
The discoloration is most noticeable at the complex’s White Tower, the original square fortress built by William the Conqueror in 1078. “When we question visitors, they say the color is cream,” said study
Source: Independent (UK)
May 29, 2007
A former Ku Klux Klansman will go on trial tomorrow for the murder of two young black men who were abducted, beaten and dumped into the Mississippi river in 1964.
James Ford Seale, 71, a former crop duster and sheriff's deputy, faces spending the rest of his life in prison if convicted in a trial that civil rights groups hope will be the first prosecution in a wave of rekindled investigations into unsolved race killings from the era.
Seale and fellow Klansmen are allege
Source: BBC
May 29, 2007
The former head of the British Army has said he believes innocent people were shot on Bloody Sunday. General Sir Mike Jackson made the comments in an interview with BBC Northern Ireland's Spotlight programme.
He is among former soldiers who gave their views to mark the end of the Army's role in supporting the police in Northern Ireland.
Sir Mike, who served in NI for seven years, was a captain with the parachute regiment on the day.
He said people must wait
Source: NYT
May 29, 2007
Japan’s agriculture minister, Toshikatsu Matsuoka, killed himself on Monday, just hours before he was to face parliamentary questioning about a political finance scandal, government officials said.
Toshikatsu Matsuoka was about to be questioned by Parliament.
Suicides have a long and often romanticized history in Japan, where they have been seen as a face-saving escape from public humiliation. But analysts said Mr. Matsuoka’s suicide could deal a fresh blow to Prime Minister
Source: AP
May 29, 2007
At least a dozen window panes are missing and other repair work is needed to fully rehabilitate the former Durham's Chapel school – also known as a "Rosenwald School" for Sears Roebuck and Co. president Julius Rosenwald, who funded it and nearly 5,000 others for black children in the South in the early 1900s.
Historians don't know how many schools are left standing, and several states are conducting surveys to try to identify how many have survived and if these crumbling r
Source: AP
May 28, 2007
The Veterans History Project wants families to spend some time on Memorial Day recording their veteran's story.
The project's director, retired Army Colonel Bob Patrick, says there are already some 50,000 stories in the archives, but more are needed. Patrick notes that World War Two veterans are dying at a rate of about a thousand a day. He says, "we're losing this collected memory of the most cataclysmic event in world history."
The memoirs of some of those
