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: Baltimore Sun
March 2, 2007
Many people know that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's father was from Kenya and his mother from Kansas.
But an intriguing sliver of his family history has received almost no attention until now: It appears that forebears of his white mother owned slaves, according to genealogical research and census records.
The records - which had never been addressed publicly by the Illinois senator or his relatives - were first noted in an ancestry report compiled by
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
March 2, 2007
From the founding of Howard University in 1866 as a premier college for black scholars until the civil-rights movement of the 1960s, "strong color prejudice" against darker-skinned black students was commonplace at the institution, writes Audrey Elisa Kerr, an associate professor of English at Southern Connecticut State University.
Drawing largely on oral history, Ms. Kerr traces color prejudice -- "or the belief in color prejudice" -- at Howard back to the 1887
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
March 2, 2007
Yale University has received a “generous gift” from an alumnus — Jeffrey H. Loria, owner of the Florida Marlins baseball team — that will help pay for the construction of a new building for the department of art history.
The university did not disclose the amount of the donation, but said the building would be named the Jeffrey Loria Center for the History of Art. It is part of the university’s Arts Area Plan, a $500-million effort involving renovation and new construction for Yale’
Source: Lee White in the newsletter of the National Coalition for History
March 2, 2007
On February 28, 2007, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee
held a hearing on changing the presidential library funding disclosure
process. Sharon K. Fawcett, Assistant Archivist for Presidential
Libraries, testified on behalf of NARA. Also testifying were Celia Viggo
Wexler of Common Cause and Sheila Krumholz of the Center for Responsive
Politics.On March 1, Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) introduced legislation (H.R. 1254)
to require presidential lib
Source: AP
March 2, 2007
ATHENS, Greece -- Archaeologists have discovered extensive remains of what is believed to be an ancient marketplace with shops and a religious center at the southern edge of Athens, the Culture Ministry said Friday. The finds, in the coastal neighborhood of Voula, date from the 4th or 5th century B.C.
"It is a very large complex," the ministry said. "It was a site of rich financial and religious activity, which was most probably a marketplace."...
Ar
Source: The Australian
March 2, 2007
The Australian Government may join an attempted mediation between Aborigines and a leading British museum over tests on indigenous remains.
London's Natural History Museum has offered to try mediation in the dispute over its plans to conduct DNA and other tests on the remains of 17 Tasmanian Aborigines.
Yesterday, Aboriginal representatives responded to the offer with caution and surprise, while federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough flagged a role for the commo
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
March 2, 2007
Public access to presidential records came under scrutiny in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday as a panel of archivists, historians, and lawyers told a subcommittee about threats to access, and lawmakers introduced two bipartisan bills that would reform key aspects of how presidential documents are preserved and controlled.At a hearing of the Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census, and National Archives, witness after witness told lawmakers that public access
Source: AP
March 2, 2007
TOKYO -- Anyone who doubts that the Japanese army forced Asian women into sexual slavery in World War II should "face the truth," South Korea's foreign minister said Friday as outrage grew over comments by Japan's prime minister that there was no evidence of the enslavement.
Women's rights activists in the Philippines and a group of lawmakers in South Korea also denounced the remarks by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday that there was no proof that so-called &
Source: Washington Post
March 2, 2007
A bipartisan proposal targeting White House rules on the release of presidential papers would claw back power over public records from the executive branch, advocates of the bill say.
The House measure, introduced yesterday, would overturn President Bush's 2001 executive order. Bush's order "gave current and former presidents and vice presidents broad authority to withhold presidential records or delay their release indefinitely," Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of
Source: Los Angeles Times
March 2, 2007
TOKYO —- The sensitive debate over Japan's wartime conduct was reignited Thursday when nationalist lawmakers demanded that the government recant its admission that the Japanese military forced women into sexual slavery, and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed there is no evidence that it did.
But Abe also said the government would not revise or reopen debate on its 1993 apology to the victims, in which it acknowledged the Japanese military's role in forcibly recruiting women and holdin
Source: Times (of London)
March 2, 2007
ROME -- The first known painting by Piero della Francesca, thought to have been lost, has been found in Chile nearly 70 years after it disappeared. Madonna col Bambino, painted in tempera on panel between 1436 and 1439, was last seen in 1940 in the collection of a Florentine count in Italy. It was tracked down to the collection of a lawyer in Santiago by the organisers of an exhibition that opens in Arezzo this month.
Source: AP
March 1, 2007
BUCHAREST, Romania -- The Romanian government said Thursday it would return a castle and other confiscated property to former King Michael.
Peles castle was built in the mountain resort of Sinaia in the late 19th century by Romania's first German-born king, Carol of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. It was confiscated by the former Communist regime after Michael abdicated in 1947. The nearby Pelisor and Foisor palaces also will be returned.
Michael, 85, hailed the return of his castle, a pla
Source: Independent
March 2, 2007
As a place best known for its cable manufacturing industry, Prescot has been unaccustomed to a role in the cultural life of the nation. But that may be about to change as the town, on the Merseyside-Lancashire border, seeks to capitalise on the little-known fact that a young William Shakespeare sought refuge there in the 1580s and influenced the development of its Elizabethan theatre -- the first built outside of London.
Shakespeare was probably sent from Stratford Grammar School to
Source: Independent
March 1, 2007
Two centuries after William Wilberforce's campaign to abolish the slave trade was won, two of his descendants yesterday began a journey from his hometown to ask for "forgiveness".
The abolitionist's great-great-great-grandson, also called William Wilberforce, was among a team of modern-day anti-slavery campaigners dressed in yokes and chains who embarked on the 250-mile walk, beginning in Hull and finishing in London, together with his great-great-great-granddaughter, Lady
Source: International Herald Tribune
February 28, 2007
Bosnia's Serb Republic issued an official apology to the victims of the country's 1992-1995 civil war on Wednesday, two days after a UN court ruled that their forces had committed genocide by killing close to 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica.
The statement said the government, which Serbs refer to as Republika Srpska, believed it was "essential that a deepest apology be extended to the victims, their families and friends, regardless of their ethnicity."
Source: Der Spiegel
March 1, 2007
There was no annually published Guinness Book of Records to keep track, but the ancient Greeks and Romans were crazy about setting and breaking records. Now two Swedish archaeologists have compiled a selection.
The Ancient Greeks and Romans liked to keep records of top achievements in sport, nature, anatomy and sex. Not long after the birth of Christ, when the most debauched phase of Roman history began, the wife of Emperor Claudius -- Messalina, 34 years his junior -- made a name
Source: International Herald Tribune
March 1, 2007
INCHEON, South Korea -- All was quiet in South Korea's non-bustling new Chinatown on a recent weekday. The lunch-time trickle was over, leaving the streets as deserted as they had been in the morning. The shiny new arches, the ubiquitous red lanterns, the towering "Welcome to Chinatown" sign, all magnified the neighborhood's inactivity.
Hoping to lure ever-increasing numbers of Chinese tourists and investors, the local government here in Incheon, just outside Seoul, transf
Source: Times (of London)
March 2, 2007
Under close guard in a military prison in Phnom Penh, a solitary old man awaits trial for one of the 20th century’s worst episodes of mass murder.
A tribunal backed by the United Nations to examine the crimes of the Khmer Rouge is due to get under way later this year after a decade of foot-dragging, political obstruction and prevarication.
Yet with thousands of killers still living freely, including some of the most important figures from the old regime, there is so far
Source: Guardian
March 2, 2007
The poet WH Auden repeatedly evaded British intelligence's attempts to find out whether he was involved in the dramatic disappearance of the Cambridge spies Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean in 1951, according to secret files made public today.
The suspicion was triggered by reports from a Reuters journalist that Burgess had tried to call his friend Auden the day before he left England. Investigators thought Burgess may have been planning to flee to Auden's holiday villa on the island
Source: AP
March 2, 2007
THESSALONIKI, Greece -- A 2,200-year-old statue of the goddess Hera has been found in a wall of a city under Mount Olympus, mythical home of Greece's ancient gods, archaeologists announced Thursday.
The headless marble statue was discovered last year during excavations in the ruins of ancient Dion, some 50 miles southwest of Thessaloniki.
Archaeologist Dimitris Pantermalis said the life-sized statue had been used by the early Christian inhabitants of the city of Dion as
