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: NYT
December 6, 2006
“Is that just a bust?” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg asked. “Or is that a figment of his imagination?”
Mr. Bloomberg was regarding a ghostly head floating at the edge of a 154-year-old portrait of Hamilton Fish by Thomas Hicks that hangs outside the mayoral bullpen at City Hall. Though the head is transparent enough to be an apparition, it probably is just a bust.
The point is, you can’t tell.
Details, color and life in the painting have been hidden by pollut
Source: NYT
December 6, 2006
Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day is always a major event in the hometown of World War II Pacific Fleet commander Adm. Chester Nimitz. [Fredericksburg is 70 miles NNW of San Antonio.]
Thursday, the 65th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, is no different.
Veterans will lead a solemn tribute at the National Museum of the Pacific War, where a middle school choir will sing the National Anthem, a Pearl Harbor survivor will address the crowd and a 21-gun salute
Source: USA Today
December 6, 2006
Vatican archaeologists have unearthed a sarcophagus believed to contain the remains of the Apostle Paul that had been buried beneath Rome's second largest basilica.
The sarcophagus, which dates back to at least A.D. 390, has been the subject of an extended excavation that began in 2002 and was completed last month, the project's head said this week.
"Our objective was to bring the remains of the tomb back to light for devotional reasons, so that it could be venerated and
Source: IraqCrisis newsletter
December 7, 2006
Drawing from a variety of specialists, this cutting-edge new journal studies Iraqi society and the forces that have brought it to its current juncture.
€ In a political culture that punishes deviation and rewards convention, the study of Iraq has increasingly become the pursuit of professional ideologues, mercenary scholars working in the service of government. These hired hands, de facto spokesmen for government policy, form the coterie of experts whom the mass media draw upon, com
Source: NYT
December 7, 2006
Donny George, who directed the National Museum in Baghdad and became a vocal advocate for
protecting Iraqi antiquities before leaving his post recently and fleeing to Syria, has been hired
as a visiting professor at Stony Brook University on Long Island, the university announced. Mr.
George became the international face of the plight of ancient artifacts in Iraq, many of which
have been stolen or destroyed since the war began in 2003, but left his job in August after
telling colleagues
Source: http://www.wna-news.com
December 6, 2006
Iraqi national- WNA / Office of Dhi-Qar / report / Since the beginning of the war on Iraq and the
archeological sites in Iraq are subjected to theft, voices rise and demand an end to cross-border
smuggling operations.
The Administrator of archeological Inspectorate of Dhi-Qar Abdul Amir Al-Hamadani believes that
thieves threaten the Elimination of the Sumerian civilization of southern Iraq, where the
stronghold of civilizations in the world.
But today, the cradle of humanity is in d
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
December 7, 2006
After months of determined efforts to keep going amid Iraq's deepening violence and chaos, the National Library and Archive, the country's largest depository of books and documents, has closed.
Saad Bashir Eskander, the library's director-general, said in an e-mail message to The Chronicle on Wednesday that he had reluctantly decided to shutter the institution on November 21 after several staff members were killed and the building had increasingly come under fire.
The i
Source: Reuters
December 7, 2006
QUEDLINBURG, Germany (Reuters) - The Christmas market in this medieval
German town could be off a page in a children's picture book.
The sugary smell of"Gluehwein" (mulled wine) wafts over wooden stalls
selling toys and gingerbread while children sway to seasonal songs.
Christmas lights illuminate the half-timbered houses around the square.
Last Saturday evening, three burly policemen stood under those fairy
lights clutching truncheons.
Their job: to stop neo-Nazi violence.
Source: Reuters
December 7, 2006
Escaped convict"Terrible" Tommy O'Connor can rest a
little easier.
The warped wooden gallows used more than a century ago to hang convicts in
Chicago, beginning with those condemned for the May 4, 1886, Haymarket
Square riot, has been bought at auction by Ripley's Believe It or Not
museums for $68,000, Mastro Auctions said on Thursday.
Between 1887 and 1927, 86 men were hanged from the gallows built to
execute those convicted of inciting the violence at the labor rally in
which
Source: AP
December 7, 2006
With their number quickly dwindling, survivors of Pearl Harbor will gather Thursday one last time to honor those killed by the Japanese 65 years ago, and to mark a day that lives in infamy.This will be their last visit to this watery grave to share stories, exchange smiles, find peace and salute their fallen friends. This, they say, will be their final farewell.
'This will be one to remember,' said Mal Middlesworth, president of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Associ
Source: IraqCrisis newsletter
December 6, 2006
Friends and Colleagues,
Numerous individuals have expressed concern over the status of the Iraq National Library and Archive since I reported on its closing a week ago Monday. I have conveyed some of these messages directly to Dr. Saad Eskander, Director-General of the library. He has stated that he and his staff deeply appreciate the moral support provided under such extremely difficult conditions.
Dr. Eskander was contemplating the issue of whether to reopen this pa
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
December 6, 2006
A professor of public administration at Gazi University, in the Turkish capital of Ankara, has been suspended for his comments at a conference last month about the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The Associated Press reported that the professor, Atilla Yayla, was suspended last week after he referred to Atatürk, who died in 1938, as “that man,” criticized the display of portraits of the leader in government offices, and said Atatürk’s dictatorial rule had led to “regression rath
Source: AP
December 6, 2006
World War II internment camps for Japanese-Americans will be preserved as reminders of how the United States treated some citizens in wartime.
The Republican-led Congress sent President Bush on Tuesday a bill for $38 million in National Park Service grants to restore and pay for research at 10 camps. The lawmakers returned on Tuesday for four days of work, and the House passed the bill on a voice vote.
The park service operates centers at two camps, the Manzanar Nati
Source: WaPo
December 6, 2006
Maps in future Israeli public school textbooks will show the boundary that existed between Israel and the West Bank before the 1967 Middle East war, Israel's education minister announced Tuesday. The move drew sharp protest from lawmakers, settler groups and religious leaders who claim the West Bank as part of the Jewish state.
The minister, Yuli Tamir, is a member of the Labor Party and a founder of the advocacy group Peace Now, which opposes Jewish settlement in the occupied terri
Source: CNN
December 6, 2006
A rare 1939 German race car commissioned by Adolf Hitler is expected to command the highest price ever paid for any automobile at auction, according to Christie's, which will conduct the auction in Paris in February 2007.
The car, one of five remaining "Auto Union D-Types," is expected to sell for as much as $12 million, said Rupert Banner, head of Christie's motor cars department.
In 1933, after becoming chancellor of Germany, Hitler offered 500,000 reichmark
Source: AP
December 5, 2006
WARSAW, Poland -- The International Auschwitz Council agreed Tuesday to modernize a 51-year-old exhibition at the site of the Nazi death camp and build walls to prevent the ruins of gas chambers from sinking into the ground.
The decision to renovate and preserve remains of the vast Nazi death camp in southern Poland marks a change in the long-standing approach to maintaining the site, which has been left as the Allies found it when they liberated the camp at the end of World War II
Source: AP
December 5, 2006
Iran, whose president has described the Holocaust as a "myth," said Tuesday they will hold a conference to discuss the evidence that the Nazis committed genocide against the Jews in World War II.
The two-day conference scheduled for next week was initiated by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called the systematic killing of some six million Jews, which has been extensively researched and documented, a "myth" and "exaggerated."
"
Source: AP
December 5, 2006
A family is suing the U.S. Mint, saying it illegally seized 10 gold coins that are among the rarest and most valuable in the world that the family found among a dead relative's possessions.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, accuses the Mint of violating the Constitution and breaking federal forfeiture laws by refusing to return the 1933 "double eagle" coins to the family after it handed the coins over to have their authenticity confirmed.
Source: Times Online (UK)
December 6, 2006
The richest 2 per cent of adults own more than half the world’s wealth, according to the most comprehensive study of personal assets.
Among the largest economies, Britain boasted the third-highest average wealth of $126,832 (£64,172) per adult, after the United States and Japan, a United Nations development research institute found.
Those with assets of $500,000 could consider themselves to be among the richest 1 per cent in the world. Those with net assets of $2,200
Source: AP
December 6, 2006
Archeologists discovered the mummified
remains of a doctor they believe lived more than 4,000 years ago and who
was buried along with metal surgical tools.
Egypt's official Middle East News Agency quoted Zap Haws, chief of the
Supreme Council of Antiquities, as saying Tuesday that archaeologists
discovered the mummy in Saqqara, 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of Cairo
as they were cleaning a nearby archaeological site.
Hawass said the doctor, named Qar, lived under the sixth dyna
