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: Daily Times (Lahore, Pakistan)
February 27, 2007
LAHORE, Pakistan -- The Punjab Archaeology Department (PAD) will ask the government to stop “damaging historical sites” by arranging functions or cultural shows, PAD director general Oriya Maqbool Jan told Daily Times on Monday.
Jan said the PAD had objected to the holding of the recent fashion show at the Lahore Fort and several other activities held in the past...
The PAD DG said hammering on the walls of the monuments weakened them and affected their structural integ
Source: by Clay Thompson, Arizona Republic
February 25, 2007
OK, remember a couple of weeks ago when we discussed the origin of Arizona's name? I said it was a Spanish corruption of"Aleh-Shonak," which was a Native American village south of present-day Nogales and near the site of a big silver strike in 1736.
I said this with great confidence -- yea, even hubris -- because I read it in a book by good old Marshall Trimble, our official state historian.
I mean, if you can't believe our official state historian, who can you believe?
Source: CP (Canadian Press)
February 24, 2007
TORONTO -- Even as Canada's longest running aboriginal standoff closes in on its one-year anniversary, the Six Nations occupation of a former housing development site in a small southwestern Ontario town isn't going to end anytime soon, warns federal Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice.
Negotiators working to resolve the 200-year-old land claim and end the year-long occupation are still working on peripheral parts of the claim, and have a long way to go before they can end the st
Source: BBC News
February 27, 2007
A Yorkshire aristocrat who died nearly 90 years ago could help the global fight against bird flu, experts say.
A court has authorised the exhumation of the body of Sir Mark Sykes, the owner of the historic Sledmere House near Driffield.
Scientists hope the Spanish flu virus from which he died in 1919 may still be present in his body because it has been preserved in a lead-lined coffin.
If so, DNA samples could help experts develop drugs to fight the virus.
Source: EUobserver
February 27, 2007
BRUSSELS –- The EU has welcomed the UN's top court ruling which sees Serbia cleared of direct responsibility for the 1995 massacre of some 8,000 Muslims in the Bosnian village of Srebrenica, while urging Belgrade to distance itself from Milosevic-era crimes and hand over war criminals still at large.
"I appreciate very much that there [in the ruling] is no collective punishment", EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said, as it was the first time in the 60-year history of
Source: AP
February 24, 2007
SALT LAKE CITY -- While Mitt Romney condemns polygamy and its prior practice by his Mormon church, the Republican presidential candidate's great-grandfather had five wives and at least one of his great-great-grandfathers had 12.
Polygamy was not just a historical footnote, but a prominent element in the family tree of the former Massachusetts governor now seeking to become the first Mormon president.
Romney's great-grandfather, Miles Park Romney, married his fifth w
Source: APA (Azeri Press Agency)
February 27, 2007
Turkish Historical Society is going to raise claim on the Khojaly genocide against Armenians in international courts, APA reports. The head of the society Yusif Halacoglu publicized the decisions made in the meeting of Coordination Organization on Armenian Issue...
The investigation of Turkish and Azerbaijani history and Armenian problem was discussed at the meeting. Noting that large-scale investigation based on documents will be carried out, Yusif Halacoglu said they will raise cl
Source: The Examiner
February 27, 2007
WASHINGTON -- The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund (NLEOMF) will formally unveil plans Wednesday to construct the first National Law Enforcement Museum. At the event NLEOMF will also launch their fundraising campaign for the project, “A Matter of Honor: The Campaign to Support the National Law Enforcement Museum.”
Once the museum opens, NLEOMF Chairman and CEO Craig Floyd, says, “The highlight of the museum will be interactivity” [such as] “Shoot or Don't Shoot. “Actu
Source: theSun (Malaysia)
February 27, 2007
PETALING JAYA, Malaysia -- The communists' role in fighting for independence has been recognised by no less than first prime minister Tunku Abdul Rahman, a historian said.
Two former deputy prime ministers -- Tun Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman and Tun Ghafar Baba -- have also publicly acknowledged the contributions of the left wing movement towards nationhood, former Universiti Sains Malaysia history professor Dr Cheah Boon Kheng said today.
"Malay attitudes towards the co
Source: AP
February 27, 2007
PORTLAND, Me. -- Remembrances of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who would have turned 200 on Tuesday, are hard to escape in his native Portland, the place he described in ”My Lost Youth” as ”the beautiful town that is seated by the sea.”
In the heart of the downtown sits Wadsworth-Longfellow House, the three-story brick building where the poet lived as a youth. It’s a few blocks east of Longfellow Square and even closer to Longfellow Books. Some of the city’s elementary school pupils a
Source: AP
February 27, 2007
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- The biracial daughter of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond defended the former segregationist on Tuesday and said the Rev. Al Sharpton "overreacted" when Sharpton learned he is a descendent of a slave owned by the senator's relatives.
"In spite of the fact he was a segregationist, he did many wonderful things for black people ... I'm not sure that Reverend Sharpton is aware of all the things he did," said Essie Mae Washington-Williams, who was in Sou
Source: AP
February 27, 2007
NEW YORK -- Some books sell because Oprah Winfrey wants you to buy them. Others get help from a major prize, a controversy, a movie tie-in, a famous author or an especially clever marketing campaign.
And some, such as Irene Nemirovsky's "Suite Francaise," sell because they're great books.
Born in 1903, Nemirovsky was a Ukrainian Jew who emigrated to Paris as a young woman. She was arrested in 1942 during the Nazi occupation of France and soon died at Auschwitz
Source: AP
February 27, 2007
JACKSON, Miss. -- All but closing the books on a crime that helped give rise to the civil rights movement, a grand jury has refused to bring any new charges in the 1955 slaying of Emmett Till, a black teenager who was beaten and shot after whistling at a white woman in the Mississippi Delta.
The district attorney in rural Leflore County had sought a manslaughter charge against the white woman, Carolyn Bryant Donham, who was suspected of pointing out Till to her husband to punish the
Source: CHN (Cultural Heritage News, Iran)
February 24, 2007
TEHRAN -- Didehgan Dam which was constructed some 2500 years ago during the Achaemenid dynastic era (550-330 BC) to the north of the world heritage site of Pasargadae in Iran’s Fars province in order to prevent seasonal flooding in the region has been demolished as a result of removing soil in the region by bulldozers.
Announcing this news, Mohammad Jafar Malekzadeh, secretary of the high commission for dam construction of Fars Regional Water Organization, told CHN: “A very high tec
Source: AP
February 27, 2007
NEW YORK -- A federal judge on Tuesday approved a settlement involving Holocaust victims, their relatives and an Italian insurance company that ends a lawsuit brought a decade ago.
U.S. District Judge George B. Daniels announced his approval after listening to lawyers on all sides, including an attorney for six objectors who insisted the deal with Assicurazioni Generali would deny justice for tens of thousands of victims.
"The settlement is not perfect, but it's ha
Source: AP
February 27, 2007
Frederick Douglass is known for fiercely opposing slavery after running away from his Maryland owner, for championing equal rights and women's rights, and for being a forceful speaker.
But he spent much of his adult life as a journalist, first publishing a newspaper in Rochester, N.Y., where he lived near the Canadian border to be able to flee if pursued, and then in the District.
Douglass was the first black reporter allowed into the Capitol press galleries, wher
Source: CNN
February 27, 2007
The FBI reopened investigations of about a dozen decades-old suspicious deaths, officials said Tuesday amid a Justice Department focus on cracking unsolved cases from the nation's civil rights era.
The high-priority cases, which FBI Director Robert S. Mueller described as numbering between 10 and 12, are among an estimated 100 that investigators nationwide are looking at as possible civil rights-related murders.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales acknowledged many of the
Source: AP
February 26, 2007
JERUSALEM (AP) -- Archaeologists and clergymen in the Holy Land derided claims in a new documentary produced by the Oscar-winning director James Cameron that contradict major Christian tenets."The Lost Tomb of Christ," which the Discovery Channel will run on March 4, argues that 10 ancient ossuaries _ small caskets used to store bones _ discovered in a suburb of Jerusalem in 1980 may have contained the bones of Jesus and his family, according to a press release issued by the Discovery Channel.
Source: NPR, All Things Considered
February 26, 2007
The revelation that an ancestor of Rev. Al Sharpton was a slave owned by an ancestor of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond has highlighted the growing field of genealogy. Tracing family history is a challenge for many African-Americans who are the descendants of slaves.
For his part, Sharpton has said that he was "shocked" and "surprised" to learn that his great-grandfather, Coleman Sharpton, was a slave owned by a woman named Julia Thurmond. Thurmond's grandfather was
Source: AP
February 26, 2007
VANCOUVER, Wash. -- Archaeologists are using broken pottery, bullets and buttons found over the past 60 years to piece together the history of a 19th century fort along the Columbia River. Some 2 million artifacts have been dug up at Fort Vancouver, which from 1829 to 1866 served as a hub for fur and mercantile trade and military activity in the West.
The salvaged pieces have been stored in a replica fur store on the southern edge of a replica fort. Scientists are cataloguing the it
