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 2, 2006
Japan will compensate former leprosy sufferers in South Korea who were forced into isolation during Tokyo's colonial rule, South Korea's Foreign Ministry said Friday.
The Japanese government will pay $69,000 each to 64 people forced to live in a sanatorium on a small island, bringing to 155 the number of South Korean beneficiaries of such compensation, the ministry said.
Japan's Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry confirmed the number, adding that 282 South Korean vict
Source: Independent (UK)
December 2, 2006
North-east India's equivalent of King Arthur has ridden to the rescue of thousands of people opposing a massive dam project that will flood their homes.
The Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, cancelled plans to lay the foundation stone for the dam this weekend in the face of massive protests by tribal groups who say it will inundate the sacred lake still believed to hold the region's answer to Excalibur.
Manipur, the state where the dam is supposed to be built, lie
Source: Website of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)
December 4, 2006
CREW has been trying to obtain access visitor records to the White House for months now. Those records had been under the control of the Secret Service, which made them subject to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The White House is now claiming visitor records are under their control -- and, therefore, not subject to FOIAs because the White House is exempt. We believe that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has been in a dispute with the White House about those re
Source: AP
December 3, 2006
Archaeologists have unearthed what they say are
the only existing imperial insignia belonging to
Emperor Maxentius ˜ precious objects that were buried
to preserve them and keep them from enemies when he
was defeated by his rival Constantine.
Excavation under Rome's Palatine Hill near the
Colosseum turned up items including three lances and
four javelins that experts said are striking for their
completeness ˜ digs usually turn up only
Source: Reuters
December 4, 2006
Seventy years after he was shot during the
Spanish civil war, 90-year-old Leandro Saun turns red with anger when
talking about a conflict that still divides Spain."We're only partially over it," he says during a debate in Marca, a small
village near the Ebro river, site of one of the bloodiest battles of the
1936-1939 war.
Saun fought with the Republican forces against General Francisco Franco's
men, and spent 12 years in prison, four of them under a death sentence.
He has be
Source: Slate
December 1, 2006
The Department of Homeland Security released sample questions from a new
version of the naturalization test on Thursday. In the current system,
immigration officers quiz would-be citizens on a set of 10 civics
questions, chosen from a list of about 100. How often does the test change?
Every few decades. The list of questions used today dates back to the last
large-scale amnesty for illegal immigrants in 1986. Before then, the
process wasn't nearly as standardized as it is today. Each
Source: Salon
December 2, 2006
December 01,2006 | KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- World War I ended nearly 90 years
ago, only a few of its U.S. veterans are still alive, and about a decade
ago, its national monument was closed after years of neglect and
deterioration.
But this weekend, the"war to end all wars" takes center stage when the
National World War I Museum opens, giving the public a chance to learn
about -- and from -- the conflict that catapulted the United States toward
superpower status.
"Unfulfilled needs,
Source: Salon
December 2, 2006
A court Friday ordered the government to pay
millions of dollars in compensation to dozens of Japanese who, as
children, were stranded in China at the close of World War II.
The 65 plaintiffs claimed the government was responsible for their delayed
return to Japan and upon their return, had failed to provide adequate
support to help them reintegrate into Japanese society. They were each
seeking $285,000 in compensation.
The Kobe District Court ordered the state to pay between $5
Source: NYT
December 3, 2006
AT ages 84 and 83, Wang Zaiban and Wu Xiuzhen are old women, and their feet are historical artifacts. They are among the dwindling number of women in China from the era when bound feet were considered a prerequisite for landing a husband.
No available man, custom held, could resist the picture of vulnerability presented by a young girl tottering atop tiny, pointed feet. But Mrs. Wang and Mrs. Wu have tottered past vulnerability. They have outlived their husbands and also outlived ci
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 30, 2006
In the months immediately before his abdication, Edward VIII was hypnotised by a doctor who was fascinated by the occult and counted fascists among his patients, it was claimed last night.
A report from a country vicar that Dr Alexander Cannon, a qualified psychiatrist who used spirit mediums to "advise" hypnotised patients on how to counter alcoholism and other problems of addiction, reached the Archbishop of Canterbury on Dec 4, 1936.
So seriously did the ar
Source: WaPo
December 1, 2006
The Army said yesterday that it will build a national museum at Fort Belvoir instead of on a nearby site that local officials warned would worsen the congestion expected with the military's planned relocation of thousands of employees to the area.
The reversal came under pressure from Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.) and Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), who share local officials' concerns that Belvoir's expansion could create a traffic disaster.
"We've got transportatio
Source: Independent Institute
December 1, 2006
Archaeologists excavating near the edge of Trafalgar Square in London have found evidence of early Christianity in England, suggesting the area has a much older religious significance than was originally believed.
A team from the Museum of London has discovered a hoard of what is almost certainly royal treasure, buried in a mysterious, empty human grave laid out in the traditional Christian manner - east to west.
"Our excavations demonstrate the position as a sig
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 1, 2006
The battlefield of a long-forgotten, far-off imperial war that once gripped the imagination of the British public is to be opened up for the first time to tourism.
Much of the Malakand battlefield, in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, has been under tight military control since Sir Winston Churchill's eyewitness accounts of the campaign were published in The Daily Telegraph in 1897.
The government has now decided to grant access to historic sites such as Malakand
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 1, 2006
The Greek royal family in exile, stripped of almost all of its property after a coup in 1967, is to sell silverware and other heirlooms rescued from one of its palaces in the hope of raising at least £2 million.
The treasures will be auctioned in London in January, Christie's announced yesterday.
The property is formally described as coming from the collection of King George I of the Hellenes, modern Greece's first monarch, who reigned from 1863 to 1913. But the vendor,
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 1, 2006
Those who believe that history is condemned to repeat itself need only examine newly-released files on the Suez affair showing how the government struggled to justify a legally dubious military operation.
Just as Lord Goldsmith, the current Attorney General, strove to put a legal gloss on Tony Blair's position on Iraq, so Lord Kilmuir, the Lord Chancellor in Sir Anthony Eden's cabinet in 1956, performed similar gymnastics.
Documents released at the National Archives 50
Source: NYT
December 1, 2006
For sale: history, with a view.
France is selling dozens of historic properties in Paris and the provinces, using the proceeds to move government bureaucrats into less expensive properties and to help pay off the national debt.
So far it has unloaded dozens of chateaus, villas and “hôtels particuliers,” the stone mansions of Paris’s golden age. Foreigners, primarily American pension funds and private equity firms, are the biggest buyers so far. For all their Gallic prid
Source: NYT
December 1, 2006
In new research on the great pyramids of Giza, a scientist says he has found more to their construction than cut natural limestone: some original parts of the massive structures appear to be made of concrete blocks.
If true, historians say, this would be the earliest known application of concrete technology, some 2,500 years before the Romans started using it widely in harbors, amphitheaters and other architecture.
Reporting the results of his study, Michel W. Barsoum,
Source: NYT
December 1, 2006
Just who was Mao Zedong?
In the English-language version of Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia, he was a victorious military and political leader who founded China’s modern Communist state. But he was also a man whom many saw as “a mass murderer, holding his leadership accountable for the deaths of tens of millions of innocent Chinese.”
Switch to Wikipedia in Chinese, though, and you read about a very different man. There, Mao’s reputation is unsullied by mentio
Source: NYT
December 1, 2006
The stark insignia of civil defense — a C and D forming a red circle in a white triangle on a blue disk — died yesterday after a long eclipse. It was 67 years old and lived in the mind’s eye of anyone who remembers air-raid drills, fallout shelters and metal drums filled with what had to be the stalest biscuits in the world.
Its demise was announced by the National Emergency Management Association, the group that represents state emergency managers.
The CD insignia, whi
Source: NYT
December 1, 2006
The federal government rolled out a new citizenship test Thursday to replace an exam that critics say has encouraged prospective Americans simply to memorize facts, rather than fully understand the principles of a democracy.
The exam will be assessed in a pilot program in 10 cities beginning early next year.
Gone are these questions: “How many stripes are there in the flag?”; “What color are the stripes on the flag?”; “What do the stripes on the flag represent?”; and th
