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: UPI
January 3, 2007
- U.S. senators and other officials are pushing for a faster release of Nazi-era documents from Germany.
U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden, the incoming leader of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is concerned that the delayed release is interfering with Holocaust survivors' search for closure, Deutsche Welle reported Wednesday. Approximately 50 million documents are archived in Bad Arolsen, Germany.
An 11-nation panel International Red Cross' International Tracing Servi
Source: AP
January 3, 2007
Japan is allowing researchers to study 11 royal tombs, the graves of ancient emperors, sealed centuries ago, in a move that may shed light on the myth-shrouded origins of Japan's imperial family, according to a news report.
The secretive Imperial Household Agency has until now refused to let the public, and even scholars, enter the old tombs, saying the spirits of past emperors should not be disturbed.
But after a petition by the Japanese Archaeological Association a
Source: Asia News International
January 4, 2007
Rajasthan’s state government plans to 'correct imbalances' in its official history, chronicled by colonial officials. It will do so by revisiting all 41,000 villages and 186 cities and towns in this western Indian state to collect fresh historical material and set the record straight.
The decision has however caused controversy and criticism. Professional historians but also the Catholic Church have said that the project is unscientific; instead, they view it as another attempt by t
Source: AP
January 3, 2007
The Navy will name its next aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford in honor of the president who was laid to rest Wednesday in his home town of Grand Rapids, Mich., officials said.
The Navy had not planned to make the announcement yet, but Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary who served in the Ford administration, divulged the news during his eulogy at the funeral.
"How fitting it would be that the name Gerald R. Ford will patrol the high seas for decade
Source: AFP at Yahoo News
January 3, 2007
A German archaeologist says he has found relics of "humanity's first war" in the northeast of Syria in the form of clay balls used as ammunition almost 6,000 years ago, Die Zeit weekly said in its edition due for publication on Thursday.
"We have there the oldest example of an offensive war," said Clemens Reichel, who is leading an archaeological dig in the ancient city of Hamoukar, on the border with Iraq, for the University of Chicago.
Reichel said
Source: AP
January 4, 2007
Embittered by career diplomats during his
first term, President Nixon said he wanted to "ruin
the Foreign Service" before leaving office, according
to newly released State Department documents.
Days after his re-election on Nov. 7, 1972, Nixon
vented his frustrations about the diplomatic corps
during a meeting with his national security adviser,
Henry Kissinger.
Just before saying he was going "to take the
Source: AP
January 4, 2006
It's a glass ceiling no one else has even cracked, and Nancy Pelosi was crashing through it Thursday, preparing to be sworn in as the nation's first-ever female House speaker."This is an historic moment - for the Congress, and for the women of this country. It is a moment for which we have waited more than 200 years," Pelosi planned to say in prepared remarks for the House. "Never losing faith, we waited through the many years of struggle to achieve our rights
Source: AP
January 4, 2006
Italian scientists believe they have uncovered a 400-year-old murder. Historians have long suspected that Francesco de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and his second wife Bianca Cappello did not die of malaria but were poisoned — probably by Francesco's brother, Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici, who was vying for the title.Now, forensic and toxicology experts at the University of Florence report evidence of arsenic poisoning in a new study published in the British Medical Jour
Source: NYT
January 4, 2007
Seymour Martin Lipset, who ignored family pressure to be a dentist and instead became a pre-eminent sociologist, political scientist and incisive theorist on American uniqueness, died on Dec. 31 in Arlington, Va. He was 84.
The cause was a stroke, his wife, Sydnee, said.
Mr. Lipset’s convictions were shaped early, in the cauldron of leftist politics in New York City in the 1930s, a time when his poor immigrant family urged him to study dentistry in order to take over hi
Source: Seattle Times
January 3, 2007
.. Never realizing all the time that you were cutting, you were defining how you saw yourself, taking in the images of what the mass producers of toys told you was the standard of beauty.
Arabella Grayson knows what it was like for children to take in those images. And it is what led her to begin collecting paper dolls, black ones, and trying to understand their place in history. Her efforts are on display at the Smithsonian's Anacostia Community Museum in "Two Hundred Years of
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 3, 2007
The cavalier attitude of the polar explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes meant his earliest adventures were opposed by the Government and the most famous names in the field.
A Foreign Office file released by the National Archives after 30 years reveals the animosity he aroused as he planned the Transglobe expedition that made his name.
Sir Ranulph Fiennes’ tenacity led him to take on the elements but won him few friends at the outset
Sir Wally Herbert, the first
Source: UPI
January 2, 2007
TEL AVIV, Israel -- The Rev. Angelo Roncalli, who later became Pope John XXIII, helped save thousands of Jews from the Holocaust, newly discovered records show in Israel.
The documents, which include memoirs and letters, describe multiple meetings at the Vatican compound in Istanbul between Roncalli, who at the time was a diplomat for the Vatican, and Chaim Barlas, a Jewish man sent to Istanbul on behalf of the Jewish Agency Rescue Committee, an organization dedicated to saving Je
Source: icCoventry
January 3, 2007
THE STRATFORD church where William Shakespeare worshipped and is buried urgently needs up to a million pounds worth of repairs.
The Holy Trinity Church attracts thousands of visitors annually but needs the cash to stop the oldest church in the town from crumbling.
It dates back to the 13th century and was where Shakespeare was baptised, where he worshipped with his family and where he lies buried in the chancel.
Source: BBC
January 3, 2007
Documents and papers shown to the BBC by a relation of the commander of British troops during the 1897 siege of Malakand - in what is now Pakistan's North West Frontier Province - provide a fascinating new insight into the struggle for South Asia.
The papers belong to Ben Tottenham, a relation by marriage of William Hope Meiklejohn, who commanded British and Indian troops at the Malakand garrison, which was besieged by thousands of tribesmen for 10 days before it was successfully
Source: Independent (UK)
January 3, 2007
Three weeks after two of Britain's most notorious spies defected to Soviet Russia, the Prime Minister and his cabinet were more concerned about the moral fibre of the Foreign Office than any threat posed to national security.
Top-secret papers released on New Year's Day reveal the true extent of the ignorance and incompetence at the heart of the then government and the intelligence services during one of the most serious breaches of security in British history. The classified notes
Source: BBC
January 3, 2007
It's not an epitaph one would wish for - to become the physical embodiment of a swear word. But how else do you explain "Gordon Bennett!", the expression of surprise that, in lewder company, would take four-letter form?
But who was the original Gordon Bennett, and how did he come to be immortalised in the English language?
No one knows for sure, which is why the country's leading language experts are consulting the public on the origins of this and dozens of
Source: WaPo
January 3, 2007
Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, found himself under attack last month when he announced he'd take his oath of office on the Koran -- especially from Virginia Rep. Virgil Goode, who called it a threat to American values.
Yet the holy book at tomorrow's ceremony has an unassailably all-American provenance. We've learned that the new congressman -- in a savvy bit of political symbolism -- will hold the personal copy once owned by Thomas Jefferson.
Source: Baltimore Sun
December 26, 2006
The Queen Mary luxury liner, which went from monarch of the sea to tourism tool over the years, has become a royal headache.
The owner of the lease to operate the 72-year-old ship and her 365-room on-board hotel was forced into Chapter 11 bankruptcy last year in a dispute over $3.4 million in back rent with the city of Long Beach. The city purchased the Queen Mary in 1967 to help it compete for visitors.
Now, a court-appointed trustee is trying to sell the 66-ye
Source: WaPo
January 2, 2007
You can't find "Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and Writings" at the Pohick Regional Library anymore. Or "The Education of Henry Adams" at Sherwood Regional. Want Emily Dickinson's "Final Harvest"? Don't look to the Kingstowne branch.
It's not that the books are checked out. They're just gone. No one was reading them, so librarians took them off the shelves and dumped them.
Along with those classics, thousands of novels and nonfiction works h
Source: WaPo
January 3, 2007
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich., Jan. 2 -- The line just kept growing.
Dozens of mourners became hundreds and then thousands. An hour's wait became two, then four, then six. Soon, the numbers and the time grew beyond counting as citizens young and old turned out Tuesday night to honor a president who had once lived among them.
