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
December 27, 2006
The presidential pardon of Richard Nixon's Watergate misdeeds defined Gerald Ford's singular presidency. That's not exactly what Ford had hoped. He saw Nixon's pardon as the first step toward being elected to the presidency on the merits of his own work. And there was no way Ford could focus on the nation's business as long as Nixon's legal fate remained unresolved. A criminal trial could take years, and Nixon would not wait out that time quietly, Ford wrote in his autobiography.
Ye
Source: This Is London/Evening Standard
December 25, 2006
History lessons for 13-year-olds blacken the name of Winston Churchill and promote the Kama Sutra, it is claimed.
Leading historians accused curriculum chiefs of adopting an "anti-British" stance and misquoting the revered former Prime Minister.
They said new teaching packs on the British Empire were grossly unsuitable for their intended audience of 13 and 14-year-olds since they directed pupils to a sexually-explicit internet edition of the Kama Sutra.
Source: Times Online (UK)
December 27, 2006
The magnificent historic villa that was the home of Benito Mussolini when he was the all-powerful Duce of Italy has been reopened to the public after nearly 30 years of restoration.
The nine buildings and gardens of the Villa Torlonia, which were largely built in the 19th century by the Torlonia princes of the Vatican aristocracy, will now house an art museum dedicated to the Roman school of 20th-century painting.
The complex will also house a high-tech playground and
Source: http://www.taipeitimes.com/
December 27, 2006
A Cambodian genocide museum yesterday called for help in preserving the deteriorating bones of more than 8,000 Khmer Rouge victims salvaged from its mass graves.
Rous Sophea Ravy, deputy director of the Choeung Ek Genocide Museum on the outskirts of the capital, said the thousands of skulls and other bones currently housed at the site needed to be preserved or risk deteriorating into dust.
She said curators of the private company JC Royal, which took over the site in Ma
Source: MosNews
December 26, 2006
Moscow museum dedicated to a Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov, who was condemned by the Orthodox Church for his works, was largely destroyed last week, AFP reports.
The museum celebrated the life and work of Mikhail Bulgakov, author of “The Master and Margarita” a work of fantasy and satire telling us about the devil coming to Communist-era Moscow.
The Orthodox Church called the book published only 26 years after Bulgakov’s death in 1940 “the fifth gospel, that of Satan.
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
December 27, 2006
The State Department said today that it will modify the latest
Nixon-era volume of the official Foreign Relations of the United
States (FRUS) series to include the amount of the 1970 U.S.
intelligence budget after Secrecy News pointed out that this
number had previously been disclosed in an earlier volume of
FRUS.
According to an editorial note in the latest FRUS volume
published last week,"The President [Nixon] stated that the
United States is spending a total of about [dollar amou
Source: International Herald Tribune
December 27, 2006
Chinese and Japanese scholars on Wednesday finished the first in a planned series of historical study groups ordered by their governments amid fresh efforts to mend strained ties and reduce bitterness between the former World War II enemies.Twenty academics — ten each from China and Japan — met in Beijing for two days focusing first on the basic format and dates of future talks, said Shinichi Kitaoka, a University of Tokyo professor and head of the Japanese delegation.
Source: AP
December 26, 2006
Gerald R. Ford, who picked up the pieces of Richard Nixon's scandal-shattered White House as the 38th and only unelected president in America's history, has died, his wife, Betty, said Tuesday. He was 93.
"My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather has passed away at 93 years of age," Mrs. Ford said in a brief statement issued from her husband's office in Rancho Mirage. "His life w
Source: NYT
December 26, 2006
After 11 years, the hunt for Radovan Karadzic and Gen. Ratko Mladic may well be the most frustrating, infuriating and fruitless around.
The two, wanted for the most heinous crimes of Bosnia’s bloody civil war from 1992 to 1995, have managed to elude thousands of Western peacekeepers and local police forces with what is widely suspected to be the collusion of the Serbian military. Reality and myth have grown indistinguishable as stories have emerged of their possible hide-outs and of
Source: Virginia Gazette
December 26, 2006
YORKTOWN The oldest customhouse in America has unearthed new history in its own backyard.
Over the last three weeks local archaeologists have uncovered handfuls of artifacts from the 18th and 19th centuries as part of a routine pre-construction archaeological dig at the Old Custom House.
Wine bottles and pottery have been found by the James River Institute for Archaeology. Crews found a bayonet from a British Brown Bess Musket believed to have been used during the Rev
Source: AP
December 26, 2006
In a span of a few hours, 2,973 people were killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In a span of 45 months, the number of American troops killed in Iraq exceeded that grim toll as the war continues.
The milestone in Iraq came on Christmas, nearly four years after the war began, according to a count by The Associated Press.
The U.S. military on Tuesday announced the deaths of six more American soldiers, pushing the U.S. military death toll since the beginning o
Source: AP
December 19, 2006
he wreck of a World War II German submarine off Norway's coast should be covered with sand to contain its cargo of environmentally damaging mercury, a study said Tuesday.
The submarine U-864 was torpedoed and sunk by the British submarine Venturer off western Norway on Feb. 9, 1945. Its wreckage, found by the Royal Norwegian Navy in March 2003, is believed to have about 70 tons of mercury aboard.
The submarine was sunk while trying to get to Japan, a German ally, with m
Source: Cox News Services (in Midland, Tex., Reporter-Telegram),
December 25, 2006
When it comes to presidential legacy, the current George W. claims to have learned the lessons of the original George W.
Earlier this year, gazing at an Oval Office portrait of George Washington, President Bush, unprompted, offered this thought:
"The important thing about him is that I read three or four books about him last year. Isn't that interesting? People say 'So what?' Well, here's the 'so what.' You never know what your history is going to be until long
Source: This Is London/Evening Standard
December 25, 2006
An Ofsted [Office for Standards in Education] report found that many pupils wanted to drop British history and focus on world events
Historians have raised fears that A-level history will be "dumbed down" after teachers called for a new course with more film and TV for less academic teenagers.
An Ofsted report found that many pupils wanted to drop British history and focus on world events, which they said would be more useful for their future careers.
Source: LAT
December 26, 2006
The tip came in an e-mail from the home office in Los Angeles, the headquarters of a human rights organization that promotes tolerance around the world.
It sent Efraim Zuroff and an informal network of associates on a hunt from Jerusalem to Scotland to Hungary. In Budapest, they found the subject of their search: Sandor Kepiro, a frail old man living quietly across the street from a synagogue.
Zuroff wanted him thrown in jail for crimes committed in 1942. It didn't mat
Source: International Herald Tribune
December 25, 2006
OBIHIRO, Japan -- It was one of the last contests of the day at the draft- horse racetrack in this rural corner of Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost main island.
The spotlights glimmered in the snow-streaked evening sky as the gamblers, who had been inside huddling around portable kerosene heaters, took their spots alongside the track. The gates opened, and 10 huge draft horses, each weighing about a ton and pulling an iron sled just as heavy, rumbled forward as the jockeys urged them
Source: Northern Echo (Darlington, County Durham) (UK)
December 26, 2006
A First World War soldier who was shot for cowardice is to be formally recognised on a war memorial.
Private Harry Farr of the 2nd Battalion Yorkshire Regiment was shot in October 1916 for cowardice despite suffering severe shell shock.
Pte Farr was one of 306 soldiers shot for military offences during the conflict. His was one of several cases highlighted by The Northern Echo and, after years of campaigning, all have now received pardons from the Government.
Source: Regnum News Agency (Moscow)
December 27, 2006
274 works of art stolen in July 1993 from the Azerbaijani National Museum of Arts were found in the United States, APA agency informs. According to head of the national Interpol Central Bureau Mamed Mikailov, six guidelines were sent to Interpol member-countries in connection with the theft. The stolen works of art were found after activity carried out together with Washington, Wiesbaden and other national central bureaus. According to him, persons involved in the crime were found.
Source: Reuters
December 14, 2006
[NOTE: IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR"Ronald Dworkin debates possibility of democracy" CLICK HERE.]
The head of an organization of former Russian spies was
quoted as saying on Thursday Moscow abandoned its policy of assassinating
enemies long ago, and that Alexander Litvinenko was probably murdered by
criminals.
Former KGB agent Valentin Velichko said fellow former agent Litvinenko,
who died in London on November 23 from radiatio
Source: National Geographic News
December 22, 2006
A team of archaeologists has discovered what it says is evidence of humankind's oldest ritual.
Africa's San people may have used a remote cave for ceremonies of python worship as much as 70,000 years ago—30,000 years earlier than the oldest previously known human rites—the team says.
"The level of abstract thinking within the peoples of [this period] and the continuity of their cultural patterns is proving to be astonishing for such an early date," said Shei
