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: BBC News
February 12, 2007
A former member of the Baader-Meinhof gang is to be freed on probation after serving 24 years for her involvement in kidnappings and murders in the 1970s.
A German court ruled that Brigitte Mohnhaupt, 57, qualifies for early release after serving a minimum proportion of her five life sentences.
The group, also known as the Red Army Faction, were behind kidnaps and killings in West Germany.
The prospect of Mohnhaupt's release has sparked a fierce debate in G
Source: People's Daily Online
January 31, 2007
A Chinese government official said on Thursday that the evidence for the Nanjing Massacre was "ironclad" in response to reports that a Japanese filmmaker in planning a documentary denying the atrocity.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu said Japan should take a correct and responsible attitude to history issues in order to win true trust from its Asian neighbors and the international community.
Jiang made the remarks when asked to comment on the pl
Source: DPA (German Press Agency)
February 11, 2007
TAIPEI -- The 'Rape of Nanking,' an important part of modern Chinese history, has disappeared from Taiwan's revised history textbook, a newspaper said on Sunday.
The United Evening News said the textbook from one publishing house has ommitted mention of the World War II atrocities committed by the Japanese in China, while the textbooks from four publishing houses only make a brief reference to it...
The 'Rape of Nanking' refers to the massacre which began after Nanking,
Source: Peoria (Ill.) Journal Star
February 11, 2007
BLOOMINGTON, Ill. -- Visitors to the David Davis Mansion and State Historic Site will soon have the chance to view two rare portraits of a great American president.
Paintings of Abraham Lincoln by Edward Dalton Marchant and Alban Conant were loaned to the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency for temporary exhibits...
"We're very excited because the (Marchant) portrait hasn't been out on exhibit that much," said site manager Marcia Young, explaining the portra
Source: Jackson (Miss.) Clarion-Ledger
February 11, 2007
MONEY, Miss. -— The place where the civil rights movement began now lies in ruin.
Bryant Grocery and Meat Market has been broken by years of neglect and battered by high winds from Hurricane Katrina, but few have forgotten the events during the summer of 1955 that started here with a wolf-whistle and ended with the slaying of a black teenager named Emmett Till.
"Like the Liberty Bell, it's the symbol of the movement," said state Sen. David Jordan, D-Greenwood.
Source: Guardian
February 12, 2007
ROME -- Alessandra Mussolini, the granddaughter of Italy's late dictator, has said newly found diaries, allegedly kept by her grandfather before the second world war, show that he took Italy into the conflict only with great reluctance.
A controversial Italian senator and bibliophile, Marcello Dell'Utri, told the newspaper Corriere della Sera that the books were with a lawyer at Bellinzona, in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland. He said he examined them last summer and found f
Source: NYT
February 11, 2007
RETURNING to the White House after the Memorial Day weekend in 1975, the young aide Dick Cheney found himself handling a First Amendment showdown. The New York Times had published an article by Seymour M. Hersh about an espionage program, and the White House chief of staff, Donald H. Rumsfeld, was demanding action.
Out came the yellow legal pad, and in his distinctively neat, deliberate hand, Mr. Cheney laid out the “problem,” “goals” while addressing it, and “options.” These last i
Source: NYT
February 11, 2007
Thomas Paine may have helped inspire the American Revolution, but inspiring Arkansas lawmakers to commemorate a day in his honor is another matter.
The proposal by Rep. Lindsley Smith, D-Fayetteville, to commemorate Jan. 29 as ''Thomas Paine Day'' failed in the state House of Representatives after a legislator questioned Paine's writings criticizing the Bible and Christianity.
The vote Thursday was 46-20 in favor of the measure, but 51 votes were needed to pass.
Source: Independent
February 11, 2007
The leafy country mansion Undershaw, where Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created his most famous work, The Hound of the Baskervilles, is at the centre of a literary controversy.
The home is revered by millions of Sherlock Holmes devotees around the world. Campaigners are furious that their efforts to upgrade the listed status of the 36-room property in Surrey, designed partly by Conan Doyle himself, to preserve it for future generations, have been blocked by the Department for Culture, Med
Source: International Herald Tribune
February 9, 2007
FLORENCE -— Maurizio Seracini claims not to be pleased that he is the only person mentioned by his real name in “The Da Vinci Code.” A scientist turned art detective, he has no need for any manufactured mystery around Leonardo. For 32 years he has chased a real one —- and he seems now, finally, poised to solve it.
It is a long, and satisfyingly complex, story. But it can be summed up with one question: What happened to “The Battle of Anghiari,” a grimacing crunch of men and horses c
Source: Hampton Roads (Va.) Daily Press
February 9, 2007
WILLIAMSBURG -- A skeptical group of archaeologists and historians will meet here Monday with an embattled Army archaeologist who recently identified a site near Cape Henry in Virginia Beach as a previously unknown early Colonial settlement called Henry Towne.
Made up of prominent figures based in the Williamsburg area, the group believes that the documentary evidence on which the identification is partly based actually refers to a Richmond-area settlement known as Henricus.
Source: Guardian
February 10, 2007
He was responsible for bringing to the world a high-quality compact camera that changed the face of 35mm photography. But after dogged research by a British rabbi it has emerged that Ernest Leitz II had a secret but possibly greater claim to fame -- saving Jews from Nazi persecution in prewar Germany.
Days after Hitler's rise to power, Leitz, who manufactured the Leica camera, began taking on a string of young Jewish apprentices from the town of Wetzlar where his optics factory bega
Source: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com
February 9, 2007
The calendar boasts plenty of religious holidays, but how many scientific holidays can you name? One of the red-letter days is coming up on Monday, when more than 850 events around the globe will mark Darwin Day, the 198th anniversary of the evolutionary theorist's birth. You can hear about Charles Darwin and the revolution he sparked from hundreds of church pulpits this weekend, as part of a program called Evolution Sunday.
Are those godless secularists trying to take on the trappi
Source: http://cbs2chicago.com
February 8, 2007
Illinois may not have the ancient Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Colossus of Rhodes or the Great Pyramid of Giza, Egypt.
But it does have the Garden of the Gods in the Shawnee National Forest the southern part of the state.
That is just one in a list of sites and attractions that have been nominated in a contest to choose the Seven Wonders of Illinois.
Anything from historic sites to cheesy tourist attractions can be nominated. ...
Source: http://www.middle-east-online.com
February 8, 2007
Morocco's capital Rabat is rebuilding its seafront and in so doing uncovering a vast treasure trove of relics, artefacts and ruins.
"We have made some fantastic discoveries not only for the history of Rabat but of the kingdom," said archaeologist and historian Mohammed Essemmar.
Essemmar, 43, heads the heritage department of the agency in charge of redeveloping the Bouregreg valley, a watercourse linking the twin cities of Rabat and Sale.
Source: Breitbart
February 10, 2007
BUCHENWALD, Germany (AP) -- The hunt begins with a number.
Harry Stein sits nose-to-screen, squinting at the fuzzy digits in column after column on faded microfilm, searching for clues to a mystery: Who was Auschwitz inmate 185403?
The number was tattooed on the left forearm of one of the thousands who were processed through Auschwitz, shipped off to Buchenwald concentration camp, and never seen again.
Male? Female? Old? Young? Jewish? Christian? Reason
Source: AP
February 10, 2007
TRENTON, N.J. -- Among the casualties of the Iraq war is a little-known religious faith called Mandaeanism that has survived roughly two millennia and whose adherents believe that John the Baptist was their great teacher.
While there were more than 60,000 Mandaeans in Iraq in the early 1990s, only about 5,000 to 7,000 remain. Many have fled amid targeted killings, rapes, forced conversions and property confiscation by Islamic extremists, according to a report released last week by t
Source: Los Angeles Times
February 9, 2007
JERUSALEM -- Israeli police raided the grounds of Islam's third-holiest shrine Friday, chained the compound's gates behind them, and fired tear gas and stun grenades into a crowd of thousands of Muslim worshippers to quell a rock-throwing protest over Israeli excavation work nearby.
The clash outside the Al Aqsa mosque set off protests across the Muslim world and scattered violence in the West Bank. It came a day after the rival Palestinian movements Hamas and Fatah agreed to end mo
Source: UPI
February 9, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO -- Holocaust survivor and chronicler Elie Wiesel escaped unharmed from an attacker who may have been a Holocaust denier, police in San Francisco say.
Wiesel was accosted in the elevator at the Argent Hotel, where he was attending a conference on "Facing Violence: Justice, Religion and Conflict Resolution," police said. A man insisted on interviewing Wiesel, who agreed but said they would talk in the hotel lobby.
Police Sgt. Neville Gittens told t
Source: NPR All Things Considered (includes audio link)
February 9, 2007
Twenty-five years ago, a missile silo south of Tucson was one of the most top-secret places in America. At the height of the Cold War, it was part of a network of nuclear warheads designed to avert a nuclear attack. The silo housed the Titan 2 Missile, which could be launched in less than a minute from its position 150 feet beneath the Sonoran Desert.
The missile was never launched. And the site is now a National Historic Landmark that hosts a museum dedicated to the Titan 2 Missile
