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: Washington Post
May 17, 2007
Gary M. Beer, the founding chief executive of the Smithsonian's business unit and architect of a controversial deal with Showtime Networks Inc., has announced plans to leave amid internal and congressional inquiries into his management, expense account and promotions of a female subordinate.Beer told staff in an e-mail that he will not attempt to renew his contract in September as chief executive of the seven-year-old Smithsonian Business Ventures. The unit, known internally
Source: AP
May 17, 2007
SEOUL -- Trains from North and South Korea will pierce their heavily armed border on Thursday, restoring for the first time an artery severed in their 1950-1953 war and rekindling dreams of unification.
It has taken the two Koreas 56 years to send trains -- one starting in the South and one in the North -- across the Cold War's last frontier for the planned runs of about 25 km (15 miles)...
North Korea's military, fearful of increased openings between the isolated count
Source: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
May 11, 2007
From Tajikistan's capital city, Dushanbe, to remote districts and villages, authorities are busy removing Soviet-era statues, replacing some with monuments celebrating the Tajik nation.
The removal of monuments has attracted little attention -- unlike in Estonia, where the recent relocation of a Soviet war memorial from the center of the capital, Tallinn, provoked violent protests and diplomatic furor. But in contrast to the Estonia, World War II memorials in Tajikistan have been le
Source: AP
May 16, 2007
WASHINGTON -- The second dollar coin in the new presidential series goes into circulation around the country on Thursday with the U.S. Mint hoping it can turn 18th century statesman John Adams into a 21st century marketing phenomenon.
Related Links
Adams dollar description, photos (U.S. Mint)
Source: BBC News
May 16, 2007
Evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin thought the voyage of the Beagle was a "magnificent scheme" allowing him to spend time "larking round the world".
His delight at the five-year cruise is chronicled in a letter, available online [Thursday] for the first time.
The note is one of nearly 5,000 from and to the scientist held in a database at the University of Cambridge.
The Darwin Correspondence project includes summaries of a further 9,00
Source: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
May 16, 2007
The Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, whose founders fled Bolshevik rule almost a century ago, is poised to reunite with the Moscow-based church.
The formerly rival churches will seal their historic reconciliation at a ceremony on May 17 in the Russian capital's largest cathedral.
President Vladimir Putin has hailed the move, which will end more than eight decades of bitter estrangement, as an "epoch-making event."
The head of the Russian Orthodox C
Source: ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corp.)
May 15, 2007
An Indigenous burial site in the sand dunes of western Queensland's Simpson Desert is being hailed by an archaeologist as one of the most well preserved ever found.
Archaeologist Giles Hamm says the site is at least several hundred years old and its undisturbed condition makes it a very rare find.
"Across Australia it is probably one of the most significant burial sites that has yet been found," he said.
Of particular importance are 20 kopi caps p
Source: Reuters
May 16, 2007
LOS ANGELES -- The ashes are still smoldering from Southern California's second major wildfire in a week, a sign of what authorities warn could be one of the drought-plagued state's worst fire years.
But to the locals, the burning hills have also long been a part of life and key ingredient in the state's folklore and identity -- immortalized in art and popular culture from Nathanael West's 1939 novel The Day of The Locust to ''L.A. Woman,'' 1960s rock band The Doors' dark hom
Source: New York Times
May 14, 2007
The prosecutor who put Charles Manson behind bars now wants to solve another crime —- a really simple one, he insists. So simple that it takes only 1,612 pages to prove his case.
Vincent Bugliosi, whose prosecution of Charles Manson in 1970 led him to write one of the best-selling true-crime books of all time, Helter Skelter, has now turned his attention to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
And that is his full attention: 20 years of research, more
Source: National Geographic News
May 15, 2007
BEIJING -- Archaeologists last week announced the discovery of a new section of the Great Wall of China near the Mongolian border—the northernmost segment ever found.
But what's most noticeable about the wall today is not what's reappearing but what's vanishing.
After decades of government neglect and intentional destruction, the Great Wall is by turns crumbling, Disneyfied, and riddled with relatively new gaps you could literally drive a truck through.
Now
Source: AP
May 15, 2007
VICKSBURG, Miss. —- The Warren County Sheriff's Department will increase patrols along the borders of the Vicksburg National Military Park after vandals dug about 100 holes in an apparent search for Civil War artifacts...
"I would say that this is one of the larger damage sites that we have seen," said archaeologist Jill Halchin with the Tallahassee, Fla.-based Southeast Archaeological Center. "Typically, in Civil War parks, with the metal detection technology we have
Source: AP
May 15, 2007
AMSTERDAM -- Diplomats from 11 countries agreed Tuesday to bypass legal obstacles and begin distributing electronic copies of documents from a secretive Nazi archive, making them available to Holocaust researchers for the first time in more than a half century.
The decision was meant to avoid further delays in allowing Holocaust survivors to find their own stories and family histories, and for historians to seek new insights into Europe's darkest period.
The countries g
Source: International Herald Tribune
May 15, 2007
SRE LEAV, Cambodia -- Researchers are investigating a long unknown killing field in Cambodia with the graves of thousands of Khmer Rouge victims from the 1970s.
But local villagers found it first. By the time the researchers arrived last week, some 200 graves had been dug open and the bones scattered through the woods by hundreds of people hunting for jewelry...
It was the first such raid the researchers had recorded in the thousands of burial grounds they have document
Source: Steven Aftergood, Secrecy News (Federation of American Scientists)
May 15, 2007
Although it"has stirred significant controversy in recent years," the Congressional Research Service policy of restricting direct dissemination of its products to members of Congress is well-founded,
argued CRS director Daniel P. Mulhollan in a lengthy internal memorandum last month."The reasons for limiting public distribution of our work can be summarized as follows," he wrote."First, there is a danger that placing CRS in an intermediate position [between Congress and
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
May 16, 2007
Sacre bleu, they've unearthed part of Fort Duquesne!
Digging during the ongoing, $35 million renovation of Point State Park has exposed the remains of a drain that archaeologists say is part of the fort built at the Forks of the Ohio by the French in 1754.
The discovery is the first physical evidence of the French fort ever dug up, according to Brooke Blades, an archaeologist with A.D. Marble & Co., the firm hired by the state to oversee historical matters on the pa
Source: Independent
May 12, 2007
Bryan Ferry, the voice of Roxy Music, has been dropped as the face of Marks & Spencer's menswear collection.
The move follows criticism of the singer over remarks he made about Nazi Germany and his admiration for the work of Leni Riefenstahl, notorious for her Nazi propaganda films...The male style icon provoked outrage in the Jewish community after The Independent...revealed the contents of an interview he gave in Germany.
In the piece, publish
Source: AP
May 13, 2007
AMSTERDAM -- As the Third Reich headed to defeat in World War II, the Germans burned millions of records to cover up history's worst genocide. But the fraction that survived was enough to make up the largest Nazi archive in existence.
This week, efforts to lift the 52-year-old blanket of secrecy from this historical treasure are likely to take a big step forward.
The 11-nation commission governing the International Tracing Service, an arm of the International Committee
Source: Washington Post
May 14, 2007
JAMESTOWN, Va. -- President Bush marked the 400th anniversary of Jamestown's founding Sunday by praising colonists' indomitable spirit in the face of disaster and holding up the English settlement as a milestone on the path toward building American democracy.
"The story of Jamestown will always have a special place in American history," said Bush, whose speech capped a three-day commemoration. "It's the story of a great migration from the Old World to the New. It is a
Source: AP
May 14, 2007
JERUSALEM -- Everything is in place for gala celebrations marking the 40th anniversary of the moment many Israelis see as their most glorious -- the dramatic unification of Jerusalem under their control in the 1967 Middle East war.
But the guest list keeps getting shorter, because the world doesn't recognize Israel's claim to the whole city.
The anniversary celebrations, scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday, are underlining the controversy surrounding Israel's hold on t
Source: AP
May 15, 2007
UNITED NATIONS -- Indigenous people are being pushed off their lands to make way for an expansion of biofuel crops around the world, threatening to destroy their cultures by forcing them into big cities, the head of a U.N. panel said Monday.
Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, chair of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, said some of the native people most at risk live in Indonesia and Malaysia, which together produce 80 percent of the world's palm oil -- one of the crops used to make
