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: Inside Higher Ed
December 22, 2006
Anger is growing at St. Francis Xavier University, in Nova Scotia, over a political science professor, Shiraz Dossa, who attended last week’s “conference” in Iran on the Holocaust — an event condemned worldwide as a platform for Holocaust deniers. More than 100 professors at St. Francis Xavier have signed a letter stating that while they uphold Dossa’s academic freedom “to espouse any views that he pleases,” they are “nevertheless profoundly embarrassed by his participation in the Holocaust-deni
Source: Inside Higher Ed
December 22, 2006
The committee appointed by President Bush to pick the site for his presidential library announced Thursday that it was entering into final negotiations with Southern Methodist University as the site. While the announcement is not a final agreement, it suggests that SMU will emerge as the winner of the competition to be the host of the library. The other finalists were Baylor University and the University of Dallas. SMU, which counts alumna Laura Bush among its trustees, has been pushing hard for
Source: BBC
December 22, 2006
The Spanish flu virus that killed up to 50 million people in 1918-19 was probably a strain that originated in birds, research has shown.
US scientists have found the 1918 virus shares genetic mutations with the bird flu virus now circulating in Asia.
Writing in Nature, they say their work underlines the threat the current strain poses to humans worldwide.
A second paper in Science reveals another US team has successfully recreated the 1918 virus in mi
Source: WaPo
December 22, 2006
An influenza pandemic of the type that ravaged the globe in 1918 and 1919 would kill about 62 million people today, with 96 percent of the deaths occurring in developing countries.
That is the conclusion of a study published yesterday in the Lancet medical journal, which uses mortality records kept by governments during the time of "Spanish flu" to predict the effect of a similarly virulent outbreak in the contemporary world.
The analysis, the first of its kin
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
December 19, 2006
No Christmas celebrations would be complete without them but, with rationing in post-war Britain, Christmas crackers were an expensive luxury few could readily afford.
Now, after spending 60 years hidden in the dusty attic of a family-run newsagents, two rare and untouched boxes dating back to the 1940s have been unveiled for the first time.
Containing 12 crackers in each, the two boxes are sparingly decorated, with little description and few illustrations. On the lid
Source: NYT
December 22, 2006
The board that oversees the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum here publicly distanced itself on Thursday from a member who recently condemned the first Muslim elected to Congress for planning to use a Koran during the private part of his swearing-in ceremony.
In November, the board member, Dennis Prager, a conservative commentator and radio show host, said that Keith Ellison, the newly elected Muslim member of Congress, should give up his post if he could not take his oath on
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
December 17, 2006
The resemblance, you have been told, is uncanny. Yet, even still, when the man himself finally steps out of the shadows, it causes a momentary hesitation, a faltering of your step. And indeed it is true -- even the photos don't accurately portray it.
Yevgeny Dzhugashvili is a compact, solidly built man. His neatly trimmed mustache is white, but at age 70, his gray hair is still thick. He has a fine, broad forehead, a strong nose, large ears and dark, watchful eyes. He speaks slowly
Source: AP
December 19, 2006
ALLENSWORTH, Calif. - Basque immigrant Sam Etchegaray had two seemingly perfect swaths for a pair of large dairies: 2,000 rural acres of dusty fields, where thousands of cows would be at home in the No. 1 milk-producing county in the nation.
The only problem is that the pastures were next to a state park that pays tribute to a community founded by a freed slave, raising the ire of environmentalists and blacks who objected to the pollution and stench that would come with the cows.
Source: Australian
December 22, 2006
WESTERN Australia's new Education Minister wants to change the teaching of high school history to give students a deeper understanding of international conflicts and Australia's role in them.
Mark McGowan, who has inherited the state's troubled gradeless curriculum, said an assessment and possible overhaul of the state's history curriculum was a priority.
The former naval legal officer landed the state education portfolio last week from Ljiljanna Ravlich, who stumbled
Source: Time
December 21, 2006
On the face of it, the Washington Capital Area Historical Autograph and Manuscript Show seemed like many such shows held around the country each year. Some 20 top dealers gathered at an Alexandria, Va., hotel on Dec. 9 to peddle thousands of autographs, letters and official papers of the famous — many of the more expensive items locked in glass cases. But among the customers wandering through the exhibits this time were two investigators from the National Archives. They passed out brochures on h
Source: Atlanta Business Chronicle
December 18, 2006
Atlanta's proposed civil rights museum should showcase battles for equality across the globe and be built adjacent to Centennial Olympic Park on land donated by The Coca-Cola Co., according to an advisory panel convened by Mayor Shirley Franklin.
A museum that embraces all human rights issues, not merely the historic efforts of black leaders in Atlanta and the South, is something no other city has attempted, said Central Atlanta Progress president A.J. Robinson, who led the panel.
Source: Daily Times (Lahore)
December 21, 2006
The new national curriculum of history for classes VI to VIII has chapters on religious tolerance and cultural syncretism to teach the young generation about the “soft image” of Muslim rulers of South Asia, Daily Times learnt on Wednesday.
The curriculum has been sent to the provinces for implementation from the academic year 2007 as a compulsory subject.
The main feature of the new curriculum is that it not only highlights the political developments during Muslim rule
Source: AP
December 20, 2006
Maryland will spend $600,000 to help buy George Washington's handwritten resignation from the Continental Army that he read to the Continental Congress, then meeting in Annapolis.
State archivists said in February that they acquired the two-page letter to put in the city's State House, where the Revolutionary War hero resigned his commission Dec. 23, 1783. On Wednesday, the state Board of Public Works approved that purchase, along with $150,000 for an accompanying letter written by
Source: Reuters
December 20, 2006
The Getty Museum, one of the world's leading
repositories of antiquities, refused on Wednesday to hand over to Italy a
2,500-year-old Greek statue of a boy to end a bitter dispute over looted
works of art.
Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli made the demand in Rome, saying Italy
would break off ties with the wealthy Los Angeles museum, which funds
several restoration projects in Italy, unless it quickly returned art
works, including the bronze statue, that Rome says were looted.
"
Source: AP
December 20, 2006
President Clinton's national security adviser removed classified documents from the National Archives, hid them under a construction trailer and later tried to find the trash collector to retrieve them, the agency's internal watchdog said Wednesday.
The report was issued more than a year after Sandy Berger pleaded guilty and received a criminal sentence for removing the documents.
Berger took the documents in the fall of 2003 while working to prepare himself and Clinto
Source: Reuters
December 21, 2006
The Japanese war shrine at the center of a long-running dispute between Japan and China has decided to soften the references to China in a war museum on its premises, a Japanese newspaper reported Wednesday.
Relations between Japan and China deteriorated to their worst in decades under former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, partly because of his annual visits to the site, the Yasukuni Shrine, which is seen by critics as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism.
Bilateral t
Source: National Security Archive
December 21, 2006
In his March 2003 executive order 13292, President Bush affirmed
that on December 31, 2006, with certain limitations, "all
classified records that (1) are more than 25 years old and (2)
have been determined to have permanent historical value under
title 44, United States Code, shall be automatically declassified
whether or not the records have been reviewed."That December 31 deadline is now almost here, the New York Times
noted in a front page story today.
Source: NYT
December 21, 2006
It will be a Cinderella moment for the band of researchers who study the hidden history of American government.
At midnight on Dec. 31, hundreds of millions of pages of secret documents will be instantly declassified, including many F.B.I. cold war files on investigations of people suspected of being Communist sympathizers. After years of extensions sought by federal agencies behaving like college students facing a term paper, the end of 2006 means the government’s first automatic d
Source: CNN
December 13, 2006
Vidor is a small city of about 11,000 people near the Texas Gulf Coast, not too far from the Louisiana border. Despite the fact that Beaumont, a much bigger city just 10 minutes away, is quite integrated, Vidor is not. There are very few blacks there; it's mostly white. That is in large part because of a history of racism in Vidor, a past that continues to haunt the present.
"We've been trying to live down something for 40 to 50 years," said Orange County Commissioner Beam
Source: NYT
December 20, 2006
Images of villagers dying from what prosecutors said was a chemical attack on Kurds were shown here on Tuesday at the trial of Saddam Hussein.
Mr. Hussein is facing charges of genocide in connection with the deaths of 50,000 Kurds in a campaign that ultimately killed 180,000 Kurds in the 1980s. He has already been convicted in a separate trial and sentenced to death by hanging for his role in the killing of 148 Shiites.
The images shown by prosecutors were some of the
