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: Bloomberg News
November 13, 2006
Andy Warhol's Jackies, Maos, Marilyns and flowers may be the stars of the New York contemporary-art auctions that start tomorrow and could total $500 million. Collectors said the pop artist's icons have become a refuge from uncertainty as prices rise.
``Warhol is like Microsoft,'' said New York private dealer Alberto Mugrabi, who aims to augment his Warhol holdings this week. ``He is an artist who has overachieved, and he is not going to go away if the market goes up and down.'' M
Source: AP
November 15, 2006
Lee "Shorty" Gordon, believed to be the first American prisoner of war to escape from a German camp during World War II, has died. He was 84.
Gordon died Tuesday of complications from recent stomach and kidney surgery at a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Menlo Park, according to his daughter, Cherie Gordon.
Gordon, who made two failed escape attempts from Stalag VIIA -- including one on a bicycle while yelling the only German he knew, "Heil,
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
November 15, 2006
Twenty-five Bay Area historic sites will share $1 million in cash grants as the result of an unusual electronic vote and a review by a panel of experts....
The final decision about how much money each site got was made by a panel of experts who considered historical significance and need along with the number of votes. ...
The online election, which National Trust Vice President David Brown said was inspired by the television show "American Idol," ran from mid
Source: Nicholas Wade in the NYT
November 16, 2006
The archaic human species that dominated Europe until 30,000 years ago is about to emerge from the shadows. With the help of a new DNA sequencing machine that operates with firefly light, the bones of the Neanderthals have begun to tell their story to geneticists.
One million units of Neanderthal DNA have already been analyzed, and a draft version of the entire genome, 3.2 billion units in length, should be ready in two years, said Dr. Svante Paabo, the leader of the research projec
Source: Inside Higher Ed
November 16, 2006
Racism and ignorance churn on college campuses as surely as they do in society at large, with a number of high-profile incidents each year serving as a ready reminder lest anyone forget. In fact, experts say, some of the incidents stem from a type of cultural forgetfulness — and a sense among certain students, sometimes willful, sometimes not, that they live in a world wherein it is no longer relevant to remember.
“Some of it is deliberately hostile, from the stories that I’ve read,
Source: Salon
November 16, 2006
Three dozen antique maps worth about $1
million are still missing from the Boston Public Library from books and
atlases used by a dealer convicted of stealing rare maps from libraries in
five cities. Thirty-four of the library's maps have already been
recovered.
Library officials released a detailed list of the missing documents to map
dealers Wednesday, in case they show up on the market."We'll shine the bright light and see if some of these things out there
can find their way home,
Source: Reuters
November 16, 2006
Milton Friedman, one of the most influential
economists of the past century and winner of a 1976 Nobel Prize, died on
Thursday morning of heart failure at a San Francisco area hospital, a
spokeswoman for his family said. He was 94.
A free-market economist, Friedman preached free enterprise in the face of
government regulation and advocated a monetary policy that called for
steady growth in money supplies.
His ideas played a pivotal role in informing the governing philosophies of
Source: Guardian (UK)
November 16, 2006
The Chinese and Japanese foreign ministers today agreed to a joint study on the nations' different interpretations of history - particularly the second world war - that have bedevilled bilateral relations.A Japanese official said Taro Aso and his Chinese counterpart, Li Zhaoxing, had taken the decision at a meeting in the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi.
The two countries will each set up a team of 10 historians to study ancient, wartime and modern history, with the r
Source: NPR (audio)
November 15, 2006
President Bush travels to Vietnam this week for a summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. He's the second U.S. president to visitcommunist Vietnam since the war ended in 1975.
In Vietnam, the publication of a wartime diary written by an idealistic young doctor has captured the imagination of readers, and become a runaway best-seller. The diary of Dang Thuy Tram was rescued from destruction by an American soldier.
In December 1969, Frederick Whitehurst w
Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch
November 15, 2006
Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, will visit Jamestown in May to celebrate the historic settlement's 400th anniversary.
The queen announced the visit in a speech today launching a new session of the British Parliament.
At about the same time, President Bush released a statement welcoming the royal couple "for a state visit to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Jamestown Settlement.
Source: Reuters
November 14, 2006
A stamp that initially appeared to be a rare 1918 "Inverted Jenny," used by a Florida voter to mail an absentee ballot last week, is probably a fake, an official with the American Philatelic Society said on Tuesday.
After viewing photographs of the stamp, which turned up on a ballot envelope in Fort Lauderdale, officials with the U.S. stamp collectors' organization said they found inconsistencies that led them to believe it was a reproduction.
The Inverted Jen
Source: Independent Institute
November 15, 2006
In Leeds, a former police station has found new life as a bar and restaurant, while the old Shoreditch town hall in the East End of London has become a venue for community events. Yet, all around the country many public buildings are facing an uncertain future through simple neglect of their worth, English Heritage says.
The conservation body warns that many of the nation's redundant town halls, fire stations, courts, schools and libraries are in serious danger of decaying over the
Source: BBC
November 15, 2006
130 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Teddy Roosevelt became the first president to travel outside the country while in office, visiting Panama to inspect the progress of building the strategically-crucial canal.
It seems extraordinary today that the "leader of the free world" should not venture abroad but, in November 1906, both the presidency and technology were hugely different from what they are today.
In 1906, just three years
Source: Newsday
November 15, 2006
Fox plans to broadcast an interview with O.J. Simpson in which the former football star discusses "how he would have committed" the slayings of his ex-wife and her friend, for which he was acquitted, the network said.
The two-part interview, titled "O.J. Simpson: If I Did It, Here's How It Happened," will air Nov. 27 and Nov. 29, the TV network said.
Simpson has agreed to an "unrestricted" interview with book publisher Judith Regan, Fox
Source: NYT
November 15, 2006
The old chestnut tree visible from Anne Frank’s attic window in Amsterdam that comforted her as she hid from the Nazis from 1942 to 1944 is diseased and rotten and must be cut down, the city council said. Experts estimate the tree’s age at 150 to 170 years. The Anne Frank House Museum, where the tiny apartment has been preserved, said that grafts had been taken from the chestnut and that it hoped to replace it. Anne Frank made several references to it in her diary. “Nearly every morning I go to
Source: NYT
November 15, 2006
FUKUOKA, Japan — Graying but walking with ramrod-straight backs, Chinese men in their 70s and 80s quietly toured a coal-mining museum here recently. But in a moment of recognition reaching back to their youth, the sight of a shovel, a rake and a vise made them call out the Japanese names for the antiquated tools.
The words were seared in the memories of the men, who otherwise spoke no Japanese, when they were forced to toil in slavelike conditions in southern Japan’s mines during Wo
Source: The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
November 14, 2006
A leading Holocaust research institute is challenging a museum's suggestion that paintings created by an Auschwitz prisoner really belong to the infamous Nazi war criminal, Dr. Josef Mengele.
The controversy concerns portraits that Mengele forced Auschwitz prisoner Dina Babbitt to paint of Gypsy prisoners on whom he was performing sadistic medical experiments. (Mrs. Babbitt, now 83, resides in northern California.) The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, in Poland, later acquired sev
Source: NYT
November 14, 2006
Archaeologists, it seems, will dig anything, even latrines. Sometimes this uncovers the stuff of scholarly evidence.
Over a hill, a discreet distance from and out of sight of the ruins of Qumran, near the Dead Sea, a broad patch of soil appeared to be discolored. Two archaeological sleuths had reasons to suspect this may have been Qumran’s toilet. Soil samples yielded the desiccated eggs of human intestinal parasites.
The researchers say this could well be evidence supp
Source: AP
November 14, 2006
A paternity claim by a 72-year-old woman claiming to be the daughter of late Argentine strongman Juan Peron hit a new bump Tuesday with revelations that a privately commissioned DNA test found no relation.
Martha Holgado has maintained for years through the courts that she is the product of a brief affair between Peron and her mother. The third wife of former President Peron, Maria Estela Martinez de Peron, commissioned the DNA test on a sample of Peron's bones after insisting the l
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 14, 2006
Baroness Thatcher will be invited by the Government to play a major role in the 25th anniversary commemorations of the Falklands conflict next year, it was announced yesterday.
The former prime minister, who led the country in the campaign to retake the South Atlantic islands after they were invaded by Argentina in 1982, is expected to take part in the ceremonies despite recent ill health.
