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
April 5, 2007
RALEIGH, N.C. - The North Carolina Senate apologized Thursday for the Legislature's role in promoting slavery and Jim Crow laws that denied basic human rights to the state's black citizens.
Following the lead of lawmakers in neighboring Virginia, the Senate unanimously backed a resolution acknowledging its "profound contrition for the official acts that sanctioned and perpetuated the denial of basic human rights and dignity to fellow humans."
Source: Discovery News
April 5, 2007
The darkness and terror on the night the Titanic sank are described in a letter, released yesterday, written by survivor Laura Mabel Francatelli shortly after the disaster.
The letter, along with her official affidavit during a subsequent legal inquiry and her life preserver, will be sold at a Christie's auction on May 16. The life preserver was signed by men and women aboard the lifeboat...
[After finally boarding an emergency lifeboat] she wrote, "...we went down
Source: UPI
April 5, 2007
CLEVELAND -- John Demjanjuk, the retired autoworker accused of being a Nazi concentration camp guard, appears likely to live out his days in the United States.
No other country is willing to accept the 87-year-old, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported...
Demjanjuk was sentenced to death in Israel for being a notorious guard at the Treblinka death camp known as Ivan the Terrible. But he eventually won an appeal and returned to the United States.
A federal jud
Source: AP
April 5, 2007
The most infamous feud in American folklore, the long-running battle between the Hatfields and McCoys, may be partly explained by a rare, inherited disease that can lead to hair-trigger rage and violent outbursts.
Dozens of McCoy descendants apparently have the [Von Hippel-Lindau] disease, which causes high blood pressure, racing hearts, severe headaches and too much adrenaline and other "fight or flight" stress hormones...
"This condition can certainly m
Source: BBC News
April 4, 2007
ATHENS -- Controversy is raging in Greece over a new school history book, which critics say is designed to improve relations with Greece's ancient rival, Turkey.
Leading opposition is the Orthodox church, which says the book waters down the severity of Turkish brutality towards Greece over the centuries...
"There won't be any clear identity of what the Greek fights were all about and why did we want to rebel against the Turks," Jeni Tutsis, a teacher, told the
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
April 5, 2007
The Central Intelligence Agency has released a newly
declassified version of its closely-held internal history of
the Berlin Tunnel Operation, which was an effort in the
mid-1950s to tap into Soviet communications through a tunnel
constructed in the Soviet sector of Berlin. The operation was
famously compromised by a Soviet mole in British intelligence
before it even began.
The official CIA history of the operation was prepared in 1968
Source: Telegraph
April 5, 2007
Tajikistan's increasingly eccentric president yesterday demanded the surrender of the Oxus treasure, one of the British Museum's most celebrated collections, as he stepped up a controversial campaign to restore national pride.
Emomali Rakhmonov made the call after visiting the location where he believes the priceless Persian artifacts from the 5th to 4th century BC were found...
A museum spokesman said that trustees had received no formal request from the Tajik governme
Source: Times (of London)
April 5, 2007
JOHANNESBURG -- A folk song that invokes the return of a fabled Boer general to lead his downtrodden people has become a massive hit in South Africa and raised fears of a revival of Afrikaner nationalism.
More than 180,000 copies have been sold of De La Rey, a tribute to Koos de la Rey, regarded as the most powerful and unyielding of the Boer generals who fought against the British.
Wherever young Afrikaners now gather —- at rugby matches, cultural festivals or barbeque
Source: Telegraph
April 5, 2007
ROME -- A drama professor has published a two-act play after a 30-year labour of love studying a text scribbled by the baroque sculptor and architect Bernini on the back of sketches for his work on the Trevi Fountain in Rome.
Gian Lorenzo Bernini was also a playwright to the popes and led a troupe of actors in Renaissance Italy. The play, Truth Uncovered by Time, is a farce in which a genius sculptor called Graziano Magnifico struggles against a rival for the patronage of Pop
Source: Telegraph
April 5, 2007
One of the earliest Victoria Crosses presented to a British serviceman is to be sold.
Commander John Bythesea's honour was presented for his bravery during the Crimean War when he led a raid to capture important dispatches sent by the Tsar of Russia.
In August 1854 Commander Bythesea, later a rear-admiral, was serving on the frigate Arrogant stationed in the Baltic when he volunteered to take on the mission.
He convinced the ship's captain, Hastings Yelvert
Source: Times (of London)
April 5, 2007
The band played on, engineers fought to maintain power and the captain remained at his post as the Titanic went down on the night of April 14, 1912.
To these stubborn acts of courage can be be added those of the ship’s five postmen.
This month the keys and chain of the postmaster of the Titanic mail room, prised from his frozen body, emerged for auction, and with them a bewildering story of postal heroism...
[Postmaster Oscar Woody] had no intention of lett
Source: AP
April 5, 2007
NEW YORK -- A Russian researcher, delving anew into once-secret Soviet files from the Cold War, says she has found no evidence that Alger Hiss spied or that Soviet intelligence had any particular interest in him.
In a speech to be delivered at a New York University symposium Thursday, Svetlana A. Chervonnaya says neither Hiss' name nor his alleged spy moniker, Ales, appears in any of dozens of documents from Soviet archives that she has reviewed since the early 1990s...
Source: NYT
April 4, 2007
The parallels are striking: bold new Congressional majorities swept into power by public dissatisfaction with White House policies. The administration and Congress digging in for a test of wills over federal spending. A watershed presidential election looming.
Memories of the rancorous 1995 budget fight between President Clinton and leaders of the Republican revolution are casting a distinct shadow over the current impasse between President Bush and Congressional Democrats on Iraq.
Source: AP
April 5, 2007
PHILADELPHIA -- The typed letter in which Teddy Roosevelt first used the phrase "speak softly and carry a big stick" is for sale at $200,000.
It was written in 1900, and Roosevelt, then governor of New York, is pleased he convinced Republicans to reject a reappointment: "I have always been fond of the West African proverb: 'Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.' If I had not carried the big stick ... I would not have had 10 votes. But I was entirely go
Source: New York Times
April 4, 2007
WASHINGTON -- As the Smithsonian’s museum directors filed into a conference room at the organization’s headquarters here Wednesday for their monthly meeting, Cristián Samper had some difficulty getting in the door. That’s because so many people stopped him in the hallway to shake his hand and wish him luck. “I feel like I’m on a receiving line,” he said.
In a way, he was. Just two days before, Mr. Samper, 41, had been catapulted from director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of
Source: New York Times
April 4, 2007
ATLANTA -— Less than a year after a dramatic eleventh-hour deal by a coalition of civic leaders saved a large trove of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s papers and personal items from the auction block, a new cache of his documents has surfaced for sale to the highest bidder.
The owner of an Atlanta auction house, Paul Brown, said he was given the papers by an elderly Maryland woman who wished to remain anonymous.
Mr. Brown said the woman told him she had accepted
Source: Salt Lake Tribune
April 4, 2007
WASHINGTON -- A Japanese-American internment camp in southern Utah that confined some 8,000 people during World War II will join the ranks of some of the most historic sites in America.
The Interior Department announced Wednesday that the Topaz Camp, near Delta about 140 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, will be recognized as a National Historic Landmark...
The camp, now mainly a windswept field, was used during the war to jail Japanese-Americans and recent immigrants as racial fear
Source: Honolulu Advertiser
April 4, 2007
U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne today announced the designation of Washington Place in Honolulu as a national historic landmark.
The former home of Queen Lili'oukalani — the last reigning monarch of the Hawaiian kingdom — is among one dozen new national historic landmarks recognized for their importance in interpreting the heritage and history of the United States.
The others established today are in Massachusetts, Ohio, California, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Utah,
Source: AP
April 4, 2007
PHILADELPHIA -- A 40-year-old intern with the National Archives pleaded guilty Wednesday to stealing 164 Civil War documents, including the War Department's announcement of President Lincoln's death, and selling most of them on eBay.
Denning McTague, who worked at a National Archives and Records Administration facility in the city last summer as an unpaid intern, pleaded guilty to one federal count of stealing government property.
The stolen documents are valued at abou
Source: Reuters
April 4, 2007
DAMASCUS -- Iraqi film director Basim Kahar says the homeland he remembers in two films set for release this month is no longer recognizable to his generation of secular artists.
"Khatoun (the Ladies)" tells the stories of 62 Iraqi actresses who left Iraq in phases, most of them after the U.S. invasion four years ago. "Ambassador in a Cafe" is about Abu Haloub, a leftist Iraqi exile who has for years been going to Rawda cafe in Damascus, and sits at the same tabl
