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
May 19, 2007
NEW YORK -- The word "amnesty," at the core of the debate over a proposed immigration overhaul, has been a volatile, politically charged term throughout its history, often applying to acts hailed by supporters as magnanimous and assailed by critics as weak-kneed.
It's a word with flexible meanings. There were sweeping amnesties after the English and U.S. civil wars; nowadays the term is sometimes used when authorities invite the public to turn in unregistered guns or overd
Source: BBC News
May 19, 2007
...So just how did the explorers find one of the most lucrative shipwreck sites of all time?
First things first, this venture had nothing to do with luck.
It took months of painstaking research, dozens of dedicated crew members, a needle-in-a-haystack type search and several millions pounds to recover one of the largest coin collections ever salvaged.
An almighty task, but to those in the world of shipwrecks, pirates and treasure troves, this
Source: AP
May 18, 2007
OKLAHOMA CITY -- Amelia Earhart became famous in life as a pioneer for women in aviation, but the mystery of her death has helped maintain interest in her, seven decades after she disappeared at age 39 while attempting an around-the-world flight.An Oklahoma City museum run by a women's aviation group has unveiled an exhibition that includes personal mementos of the Kansas-born Earhart to commemorate the 70th anniversary of her 1937 disappearance and the 75th anniversary of h
Source: AP
May 19, 2007
GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. -- The Searles Castle has towered over this Berkshire town for 120 years, its seven turrets and blue dolomite exterior creating a fortress at the end of Main Street. It has been walled off from the public as a home to the uber-rich and as a private school, and has opened its gates as a conference center and cultural attraction. Now, the French chateau-style castle is for sale -- a $15 million property joining a small niche of the world's luxury real estate market.
Source: National Geographic News
May 17, 2007
Archaeologists working in Honduras have discovered an entombed human skeleton of an elite member of the ancient Maya Empire that may help unravel some longstanding mysteries of the vanished culture.
The remains, seated in an upright position in an unusual tomb and flanked by shells, pottery, vessels, and jade adornments, suggest a surprisingly diverse culture and complex political system in the influential Maya city of Copán around A.D. 650.
Located at the western edge
Source: AP
May 18, 2007
CHEYENNE, Wyo. -- More than a century ago, Buffalo Bill Cody took Wyoming to the world with his Wild West show.
His trick-roping cowboys, stern-faced Indian chiefs and exotic animal displays made Cody a celebrity in East Coast cities and European capitals alike. With his ever-present hat and distinctive goatee, Cody hobnobbed with kings and presidents as one of the best known U.S. citizens of his day.
Now Wyoming is planning to scour the world for the showman's correspo
Source: AP
May 19, 2007
BATH, Maine -- Le T. Phung credits the USS Sterett with saving her life: The ship rescued her after a week adrift in the South China Sea when she fled Vietnam nearly 25 years ago.
On Saturday, Phung was the matron of honor for the christening of the latest Navy warship to bear the Sterett name: a 510-foot destroyer. It is the fourth warship named after Lt. Andrew Sterett, who served aboard the frigate Constellation during the U.S. Navy's first victory against a foreign
Source: AP
May 19, 2007
TAIPEI -- Taiwan's president [Chen Shui-bian]renamed a landmark Taipei memorial honoring the late dictator Chiang Kai-shek on Saturday, less than an hour after pro-and anti-government demonstrators fought running battles in an adjacent boulevard...Earlier, Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin of the main opposition Nationalists said Chen lacked authority to change the name of the Chiang memorial to the National Democracy Memorial Hall and vowed to try to stop him...
Surrou
Source: AP
May 18, 2007
SEATTLE -- A man who tried to position himself as a leader of the anti-war movement by claiming to have participated in war crimes while serving in Iraq is facing federal charges of falsifying his record.
Jesse Adam Macbeth, 23, formerly of Phoenix, garnered attention on blogs and in some alternative media after he began claiming in 2005 to have been awarded a Purple Heart for his service, which he said included slaughtering innocents in a Fallujah mosque. His story was contradicted
Source: UPI
May 19, 2007
PHILADELPHIA -- A pipe bowl depicting a stereotyped African head was found in Philadelphia at the site of the first presidential mansion.
Jed Levin, an archaeologist with the National Park Service, said the pipe bowl is probably not connected directly with the President's House but is relevant to the project's exploration "of the racial and racist legacy that allowed human bondage" at the birth of the nation, The Philadelphia Inquirer said Friday.
Levin said &
Source: AP
May 18, 2007
ROME -- An Italian university closed one of its campuses for the day Friday to prevent a planned lecture by a retired French professor who denies gas chambers were used in Nazi concentration camps.
Robert Faurisson, who has been convicted five times in France for denying crimes against humanity, had been expected to speak at a local hotel instead but that conference too was later canceled after scuffles with protesters.
Source: Los Angeles Times
May 19, 2007
Deep-sea treasure hunters said Friday they have recovered what could be a record haul of gold and silver coins from a colonial-era shipwreck -- but their failure to provide many details has set off a galleon-sized controversy over their claims...
"There is no such thing as $500 million on any wreck in the world," said Robert Marx, a veteran treasure hunter. "Anybody who says so is...lying."George Bass, an archaeologist at Texas A&M Univer
Source: LiveScience
May 18, 2007
"This is not my day job." So begins Michel Barsoum [professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Drexel University] as he recounts his foray into the mysteries of the Great Pyramids of Egypt. As a well respected researcher in the field of ceramics, Barsoum never expected his career to take him down a path of history, archaeology, and "political" science, with materials research mixed in...
The widely accepted theory-that the pyramids were c
Source: AP
May 18, 2007
TAMPA, Fla. —- Deep-sea explorers said Friday they have hauled up what could be the richest sunken treasure ever discovered: hundreds of thousands of colonial-era silver and gold coins worth an estimated $500 million from a shipwreck in the Atlantic Ocean.
A chartered cargo jet recently landed in the United States to unload hundreds of plastic containers packed with the 50,000 coins, which are expected to fetch an average of $1,000 each from collectors and investors.
Source: Government Computer News blog
May 18, 2007
Salon has a report by a political scientist who, in his searches through the Coalition Provisional Authority's Consolidated Weekly Reports, found all sorts of additional information buried in the documents. Turns out the CPA wasn't keeping close enough of an eye on the Microsoft Word's track changes capability."Presumably, staffers at the CPA's Information Management Unit, which produced the weekly reports, were cutting and pasting large sections of text into the reports and then eliminating all
Source: JTA
May 16, 2007
An Israeli diplomatic initiative almost prevented the liberation of Jerusalem's Old City during the Six-Day War, according to a leading historian. Michael Oren, author of the celebrated history "Six Days of War," said Wednesday that new details gleaned from a British archive suggested that Israel's 1967 offensive in Jerusalem almost never happened.
Oren said he had learned that, as Israeli forces were poised to go in, then Prime Minister Levi Eshkol made a secret peace ov
Source: Reuters
May 18, 2007
NORTH SMITHFIELD, R.I. -- In a thick forest of maple, willow and oak trees where 17th century European settlers fought hundreds of American Indians, algae-covered stones are arranged in mysterious piles.Wilfred Greene, the 70-year-old chief of the Wampanoag Nation's Seaconke Indian tribe, says the stone mounds are part of a massive Indian burial ground, possibly one of the nation's largest, that went unnoticed until a few years ago.
"When I came up here and
Source: Reuters
May 18, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO -- Actress Elizabeth Taylor can keep a Van Gogh painting that might have been illegally seized by the Nazis because the family who once owned it waited too long to ask for it back, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Friday.
Taylor, 75, bought the 1889 painting "View of the Asylum and Chapel at Saint-Remy" at a Sotheby's auction in London in 1963 for 92,000 British pounds -- about $257,000 at the time...
The Orkin family, South African and Canadian des
Source: WBIR-TV (Knoxville, Tenn.)
May 18, 2007
CLINTON, Tenn. -- Fifty-one years ago, 12 black students became the first to attend a court-ordered, desegregated school in the South.
On Thursday, 12 life-size statues were unveiled in Clinton to commemorate those students who became known as the "Clinton 12." The bronze statues stand outside the Green McAdoo Cultural Center.
On their first day at Clinton High School on August 27th, 1956, the students walked down the hill from their neighborhood and passed a
Source: AP
May 18, 2007
Last year, Alabama became first state to pass the Rosa Parks Act, which gives people the option of having their records expunged. Tennessee's version won final approval in the legislature Thursday and awaits the governor's signature....
Tennessee's Rosa Parks Act passed the House 88-6 and was approved unanimously in the Senate on Thursday. It now goes to Gov. Phil Bredesen, whose spokeswoman said he had not yet looked at the legislation.
"It's important because it
