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: Reuters
November 13, 2006
AIZAWL, India (Reuters) - Dalia Doliani Sela sits in her simple house poring over the Bible and learning Hebrew, dreaming of a life of piety and a family reunion with her children in the Promised Land.
Sela is an Indian by birth, part of a community in the country's remote northeast who says they are one of the "lost tribes of Israel", exiled from their homeland 2,700 years ago.
"I want to be there when my last days come. Because Israel is the land of Sa
Source: McClatchy Papers
November 11, 2006
KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- As he descends more than 25 feet below the earth’s surface, Gary Pipes steps into a forgotten world.
Remnants of the Cold War era abound, conjuring up a time of nuclear armament, international unrest and frosty relations with the then Soviet Union.
That’s not what Pipes thinks about as he strolls through this missile silo near Pleasant Hill, Mo., however.
He sees a chance to make a few bucks. He’s not exactly sure how that will happe
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 13, 2006
Britain has issued a formal complaint after Israeli forces caused significant damage to the Commonwealth war cemetery in Gaza City, the last resting place for thousands of troops who died fighting the Ottomans in 1917.
The cemetery is the resting place for 3,686 Commonwealth servicemen, mostly British infantrymen
The British embassy in Tel Aviv wrote to the Israeli government four months ago after six headstones and a perimeter wall were destroyed by an Israeli army bu
Source: Guardian
November 13, 2006
In the classrooms of the Murambi school are the horrifying reminders of one of the worst acts of genocide in modern times. It was here in 1994, on a hilltop in southern Rwanda, that 50,000 Tutsis took refuge for two weeks without food and water before being massacred by Hutu militias who used guns, grenades and machetes to carry out the slaughter.
At the request of the survivors and the families of the dead, the bodies of thousands of the victims have been preserved in lime and pla
Source: NYT
November 14, 2006
At the southern end of Madagascar lie four enormous wedge-shaped sediment deposits, called chevrons, that are composed of material from the ocean floor. Each covers twice the area of Manhattan with sediment as deep as the Chrysler Building is high.
On close inspection, the chevron deposits contain deep ocean microfossils that are fused with a medley of metals typically formed by cosmic impacts. And all of them point in the same direction — toward the middle of the Indian Ocean where
Source: NYT
November 14, 2006
Many conservative Christians say they believe that the president’s support for Israel fulfills a biblical injunction to protect the Jewish state, which some of them think will play a pivotal role in the second coming. Many on the left, in turn, fear that such theology may influence decisions the administration makes toward Israel and the Middle East....
Now, in tandem with the Israeli government, many evangelical Christians have focused on a new villain, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ah
Source: Perspectives, the newsmagazine of the AHA
November 1, 2006
The American Historical Association instituted the Theodore Roosevelt-Woodrow Wilson Award in 2003 to honor a person not in academe—a public official or civil servant, for instance—who has made extraordinary contributions to the study, teaching, and understanding of history. At its 121st meeting, the Association will confer the award upon John Lewis, the congressional representative for the 5th District in Georgia. In honoring Representative Lewis, the AHA is recognizing in particular his unstin
Source: CBS 8 (San Diego)
November 14, 2006
It's settled. Basketball really did evolve from a childhood game called "Duck on a Rock." Such are the revelations contained in a newly unearthed trove of personal documents, photographs and mementos from basketball's founder, James Naismith.The items, including handwritten diaries and typed notes, were discovered last spring, when Naismith's granddaughter, Hellen Carpenter, went down to her basement to look for an old family photograph.
Instead, she f
Source: BBC
November 14, 2006
A German man deported from the US has gone on trial in the Germany city of Mannheim for alleged Holocaust denial.Germar Rudolf published a study saying the Nazis did not use gas to kill Jews at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
The prosecution says he "represented the Holocaust as invention" and used the internet to spread his documents.
If found guilty, Mr Rudolf will face up to five years in prison. He has already been given an jail sent
Source: La Times
November 14, 2006
Following directions in the Dead Sea Scrolls, archeologists have found the latrines used by the sect that produced the scrolls, discovering that efforts to achieve ritual purity inadvertently exposed members to intestinal parasites that shortened their lives. The young male zealots who established their sect at Qumran chose a life of austerity and isolation, but they could not have foreseen the hardships created by their religiously imposed toilet practices, researchers said Monday.
Source: NYT
November 14, 2006
William Alfred Shea was off by a decade and a half.
He once predicted that 15 minutes after he died, his name would be taken off the Queens stadium where the New York Mets play baseball. It took 15 years instead.
But Mr. Shea got the big picture right. Nothing lasts forever, certainly not a name on the facade of a ballpark, certainly not when huge bucks are at stake and corporate egos need nourishing.
For 42 years, the Mets’ home field has been called Shea
Source: NYT
November 14, 2006
The Montauk Point Lighthouse was commissioned by President George Washington and completed in 1796 and may be the most recognized landmark on Long Island. If left unprotected, it could also be a few good storms away from falling down its steadily eroding bluff into the ocean.
So the Army Corps of Engineers is embarking on a $14 million plan to save the lighthouse by building a sea wall of boulders to protect the bluff. But a group of surfers say the boulders that would save the ligh
Source: CBS News
November 13, 2006
Lt. Col. Herbert Carter has a lot of memories about two of this country's hardest-fought battles — one against Adolf Hitler, the other against Jim Crow.
Carter made history in World War II as one of the first African-American fighter pilots, CBS News correspondent Richard Schlesinger reports. At age 22 he was an original member of the all-black Tuskegee Airmen, who had to fight for the right to fight for their country.
"We were told that we were lackadaisical. Th
Source: NYT
November 13, 2006
CROSSING the Rappahannock is considerably easier for Jim Campi than it was for Ambrose Burnside.
Burnside, the ill-fated Union Army commander in the winter of 1862, endured mud, cold, communications breakdowns and unreliable supply lines — not to mention hostile fire — during his attempt to ford this Northern Virginia river.
Despite the cool drizzly weather of October 2006, Mr. Campi, the policy and communications director for the Civil War Preservation Trust, has no su
Source: BBC
November 11, 2006
The grave of Russian literary giant Boris Pasternak, author of Dr Zhivago, has been desecrated by vandals.
Wreaths taken from around the cemetery were set alight on top of the writer's gravestone, Russian TV reported.
Pasternak's daughter-in-law, Natalya, said she feared the monument, which features a sculpture of the writer, could be lost forever.
Source: AP
November 12, 2006
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Nov. 11 -- An absentee ballot was mailed with what may have been a valuable, extremely rare stamp, but the envelope is now in a box that by law cannot be opened before September 2008.
While reviewing absentee ballots Tuesday night, Broward County Commissioner John Rodstrom noticed what looked like a small stamp collection on one envelope. There was no name on the envelope, so the vote contained inside did not count.
At least one of the stamps was from 1
Source: BBC
November 11, 2006
Vandals have daubed Nazi swastikas on a war memorial in West Sussex.
Police officers also found anti-Semitic graffiti painted on one home and a shop close to the memorial in Chapel Road, Worthing, on Saturday morning.
A spokesman for Sussex Police said: "This is offensive and racist graffiti. It's fairly large-scale."
The Royal British Legion said it was "dismayed and upset" by the graffiti, which was removed prior to the main service
Source: Times Online (UK)
November 11, 2006
EACTLY 88 YEARS ago today, the victorious allied powers were faced with a quandary that has stark parallels with today. Should they put Wilhelm II of Germany on trial or let him rot in Holland? For at the 11th hour on November 11, 1918, as the guns fell silent and the mourners stood still, the former Kaiser was on the move, the imperial train rumbling on between Venlo and Nijmegen, conveying him into Dutch country-house exile.
There was, just as there was with Saddam Hussein, a com
Source: Times Online (UK)
November 10, 2006
A DEEPLY moving last letter written by a British soldier executed by the Germans in 1916 has been discovered in an attic in Hastings. It casts fresh light on one of the most tragic episodes of the First World War.
Private David Martin, from Belfast, was one of a handful of soldiers left behind during the British retreat in 1914, and then trapped behind the lines in German-occupied France.
For 18 months, Martin and three other British soldiers were hidden by French pea
Source: BBC
November 10, 2006
A retired Swedish gym teacher is the toast of Greece after returning a piece of sculpted marble taken from the Acropolis more than a century ago.
Birgit Wiger-Angner's family held the marble for 110 years, but she decided to return it to Athens after hearing about Greece's Elgin marbles campaign.
The small fragment comes from the Acropolis's Erechtheion temple.
The move has boosted the international campaign to persuade the British Museum to return the E
