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: Telegraph (UK)
April 17, 2007
Doctors have removed a bullet from the heart of a Vietnamese soldier nearly four decades after he was shot by US troops during the Vietnam war.
Le Dinh Hung, 60, underwent surgery at a Hanoi hospital on Friday and is recovering quickly, said Dr Nguyen Sinh Hien, who spent three hours operating on the patient.
"It is the strangest case that I have ever seen," Dr Hien said. "Normally a person with a bullet in his heart would die immediately if they didn't h
Source: Der Spiegel Online
April 17, 2007
Baden-Württemberg governor Günther Oettinger has distanced himself from his own comments.
It took Günther Oettinger, governor of the south-western German state Baden-Württemberg, almost a week, but on Monday, he finally withdrew his comments delivered at the funeral for former Baden-Württemberg governor and ex-Nazi Hans Filbinger.
"I no longer adhere to my formulation," Oettinger said at a meeting of the Christian Democrat party leadership on Monday. "Rather, I
Source: National Geographic News
April 18, 2007
CAIRO -- She may not be Helen of Troy, but the face of another ancient beauty has nearly launched a "scientific war" between Germany and Egypt.
In an escalating conflict over a famous 3,400-year-old bust of Queen Nefertiti, the head of Egypt's antiquities authority has threatened to ban exhibitions and tours of Egyptian artifacts from Germany.
Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, had requested the sculpture for a temporary
Source: Newark Star-Ledger
April 18, 2007
It was a balmy spring Wednesday, with a southwest breeze blowing across New York Harbor. In doors, the Great Hall on Ellis Island was bustling.
Masses of newly arrived immigrants queued up in long lines that stretched the length of the cavernous hall.
It seemed to be an ordinary day in an era of mass immigration, but officials processing the mostly European hoard had no way of knowing it would, in fact, be memorable.
One hundred years ago yesterday -- April
Source: AP
April 17, 2007
UNITED NATIONS -- The U.N. marked Holocaust Remembrance Day with a screening of "Steal a Pencil For Me," a documentary based on the love letters exchanged by two Holocaust survivors in concentration camps during World War II. Both survivors attended.
Academy Award-nominated director Michele Ohayon said the letters of Jack and Ina Polak, collected in a book in 2000 by the same name as the film, "put a face" on the Holocaust for her...
Source: Gothamist
April 18, 2007
As the museum-going public excitedly awaits the opening of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's expanded southern wing, the NY Times reveals more details. About 5,300 works of Greek and Roman art now will see the light of day, with the gallery reopening tomorrow after a 15-year, $220 million redesign. During that time, an unbelievable 95 percent of the Met’s Greek and Roman collection had been collecting dust, so to speak.
The redesign comes more than 80 years after the opening of McKim
Source: Savannah Morning News
April 18, 2007
A Georgia state-owned railroad rented hundreds of slaves a year for nearly two decades, a California historian says.
Research by Theodore Kornweibel of San Diego State University surfaced Tuesday as a proposal for the state to apologize for slavery remains stalled...
Kornweibel's research follows other reports that the state bought -- and later sold -- about 190 slaves who worked on road and river projects.
Kornweibel, a professor emeritus in SDSU's Departm
Source: AP
April 17, 2007
NEW YORK -- A 2 1/4-inch Faberge chair sold for $2.28 million at a Sotheby's auction Tuesday, easily surpassing the $1 million presale estimate.
The chair, made of gold and enamel by the Russian jeweler Carl Faberge, was included in a two-day Russian art sale that totaled $50.9 million, slightly higher than the $48.7 million presale estimate.
Sotheby's auction house said Faberge miniature furniture, such as the empire-style chair, is among the rarest of the artist's cre
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
April 18, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO -- San Francisco celebrated one of its oldest traditions Wednesday morning with two small but poignant ceremonies to commemorate the 101st anniversary of the earthquake and fire that nearly destroyed the city in 1906.
As recently as last year, a dozen survivors were on hand at Lotta's Fountain at Market and Kearny streets for the early morning ceremony. This year there was only one -- Herbert Hamrol, who is 104-years-old. Hamrol said he took a day off work and got up a
Source: AFP
April 18, 2007
A tantalizing piece of evidence has been added to the puzzle over so-called "hobbit" hominids found in a cave in a remote Indonesian island, whose discovery has ignited one of the fiercest rows in anthropology.
Explorers of the human odyssey have been squabbling bitterly since the fossilized skeletons of tiny hominids, dubbed after the diminutive hobbits in J.R.R. Tolkien's tale, were found on the island of Flores in 2003...
If [the claims are] true, it would
Source: BBC News
April 17, 2007
Emails are circulating around the world, claiming the UK has banned the teaching of the Holocaust in schools.
The false suggestion is that the action has been taken by the government to avoid offending Muslim communities.
The source of the rumour may be a report that some history teachers were uncomfortable with sensitive subjects.
In fact the government has reaffirmed that in England, teaching children about the Holocaust is compulsory, and it is not banne
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
April 17, 2007
Following is a list of major shooting incidents on college campuses in the United States.
Virginia Tech, April 16, 2007: At least 33 dead as of Monday afternoon, including the gunman; 26 injured. The gunman opened fire in a dormitory and a classroom building, killing at least 30 people and injuring many others. (Chronicle article.)
University of Texas at Austin, August 1, 1966: 16 dead, including the gunman; 31 injured. From atop a 27-story tower, Charles J. Whitman sho
Source: Charlotte Observer
April 15, 2007
LINCOLNTON, N.C. -- They came with new technology to probe mysteries in a Revolutionary War battlefield.
Using ground-penetrating radar, experts searched Saturday in Lincolnton for traces of a mass grave where 70 to 100 soldiers were buried after the Battle of Ramsour's Mill on June 20, 1780.
Terry Ferguson, program director for the geology department at Wofford College in Spartanburg sat on the stump of an oak tree old enough to have been around at the time of the battle. He watched thi
Source: People's Daily Online (Beijing)
April 4, 2007
Landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO) are still in 6 million hectares of land in Vietnam or over 21. 1 percent of the country's land surface area, according to a UN agency in Vietnam on Wednesday.
"According to Vietnam's Ministry of Defense's Technology Center on Unexploded Ordnance and Landmine Disposal, around 600,000 tons of war-era ordnance remain in the ground throughout Vietnam... It is estimated that from the end of the Vietnam-American war in 1975 to the year 2000, 42
Source: BBC
April 17, 2007
A sacred Jewish scroll buried by the Nazis during World War II has been put on display at a school in Manchester.
It was taken to King David's School in Crumpsall after a governor became one of hundreds of people to make a request to the Chief Rabbinate in Israel.
The 120-year-old parchment tells the story of the Old Testament in Hebrew.
The scroll was one of 48 scrolls confiscated from the large Jewish community living in Lithuania's capital, Vilnius.
Source: This Is Lancashire
April 13, 2007
Visitors to an East Lancashire battle re-enactment have been banned from wearing Nazi uniforms after a storm of protest from Jewish groups.
The 1940s Wartime Weekend has become one of the biggest events of its type in the country and attracts thousands of visitors each May.
But last year the Jewish community was left angered when visitors turned up dressed as Nazi officers.
Directors of the East Lancs Railway (ELR), which runs the event, have banned the uni
Source: PBS, Library of Congress
April 17, 2007
WASHINGTON -- The Library of Congress and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) announced today a joint community engagement initiative designed to gather the first-hand recollections of the diverse men and women who served our nation during wartime. The public outreach campaign begins this spring and will be continued beyond the broadcast of Ken Burns's new film,"The War," which airs on PBS beginning September 23, 2007.
The Veterans History Project (VHP), a major program of the Library of
Source: New York Times
April 17, 2007
When the Spanish flu reached the United States in the summer of 1918, it seemed to confine itself to military camps. But when it arrived in Philadelphia in September, it struck with a vengeance.
By the time officials there grasped the threat of the virus, it was too late. The disease was rampaging through the population, partly because the city had allowed large public gatherings, including a citywide parade in support of a World War I loan drive, to go on as planned. In four months
Source: Telegraph
April 16, 2007
Not just Dad's Army, but Mum's Marauders too.
The Home Guard was a very different organisation from the bumbling and badly-led eccentrics of the Walmington-on-Sea unit [fictional location of BBC comedy series"Dad's Army"], one in which women played a surprisingly large part, according to a new study.
Women were so prominent in protecting Britain's shores against imminent invasion that they were required to sign papers showing they understood that they could be shot as g
Source: Reuters
April 17, 2007
TULA, Mexico -- The grisly find of the buried bones of 24 pre-Hispanic Mexican children may be the first evidence that the ancient Toltec civilization sacrificed children, an archeologist studying the remains said on Monday.
The bones, dating from 950 AD to 1150 AD and dug up at the Toltecs' former capital Tula, north of present day Mexico City, indicated the children had been decapitated in a group.
The way the children, aged between 5 and 15, were placed in the grave,
