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
September 30, 2005
Yektan Turkyilmaz, the Duke doctoral student in cultural anthropology, who was arrested in Armenia, says the government didn't know what to make of him: a Turkish-born scholar studying in the United States who believes that Armenians were indeed slaughtered by Turks in 1915. In an interview he remarked:"The interrogators’ questioning in the initial few days of my arrest was entirely devoted to my research, my political views and connections with Turkish intelligence and st
Source: Wa Po
September 30, 2005
John Glover Roberts Jr. was sworn in yesterday as the 17th chief justice of the United States, enabling President Bush to put his stamp on the Supreme Court for decades to come, even as he prepares to name a second nominee to the nine-member court.
The White House swearing-in ceremony took place three hours after the Senate voted 78 to 22 to confirm Roberts. All 55 Republicans, half the 44 Democrats and independent Sen. James M. Jeffords (Vt.) voted yes.
Source: Newsletter of the National Coalition for History
September 30, 2005
On 24 September 2004, Judge Kollar-Kotelly of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia issued a ruling on a claim made by historians and archivists in the case “American Historical Association, et al v. National Archives and Records Administration.” The case focuses on a claim for access to 74 pages (9 documents) of presidential-related “confidential” (P-5 exemption) materials dating back to the administration of Ronald Reagan that President
Source: Newsletter of the National Coalition for History
September 30, 2005
Proposals by the Chair of the House Resources Committee has National Park Service (NPS) oversight and history watchdog groups up in arms. In a 260-page draft of a budget reconciliation bill (a tool that is used by Congress to meet budget goals), committee chair Richard Pombo (R-CA) has advanced several controversial provisions aimed to help address the current governmental fiscal crisis.Among his ideas that purportedly are designed to save the government $2.4 billion is a pr
Source: Inter Press Service News Agency
September 28, 2005
The decision Tuesday by a U.S. immigration judge in Texas to deny Venezuela's request to extradite Luis Posada Carriles, whom Caracas has dubbed "the Osama bin Laden of Latin America", was greeted with surprise and disappointment by Latin America activists and even some former U.S. officials. Venezuela wants Carriles to stand trial for the October 1976 bombing of a civilian Cubana Airlines flight that killed all 73 people aboard shortly after it took off from Barbados.
Source: Times (UK)
September 30, 2005
The man set to continue Simon Wiesenthal’s work is Efraim Zuroff, a 56-year-old New Yorker of Jewish descent who now runs the Wiesenthal centre in Jerusalem. With Zuroff at the helm, the Wiesenthal centre will never be out of the headlines. He already believes he is on the verge of a breakthrough, closing in on a Nazi who eluded his predecessor. Before his illness and death, Wiesenthal was working on the case of Aribert Heim, the most wanted Nazi on the run. The
Source: Times (UK)
September 30, 2005
MILLIONS of Algerians confronted the legacy of their bloody civil war yesterday in a referendum on whether to pardon those responsible for tens of thousands of deaths. The authorities in Algiers were last night confident that the Government’s Charter for Peace and National Reconciliation would pass comfortably, enabling the country to heal the wounds of its bitter decade-long conflict. President Bouteflika, who has spent weeks travelling across Algeria campaigning for the “y
Source: Times (UK)
September 30, 2005
THE operation of the Freedom of Information Act is in severe difficulties because of a mounting backlog of appeals against Government secrecy. The Information Commissioner’s Office, which handles complaints from people whose open government requests are refused, is struggling to cope with more than 1,200 unresolved cases. More than half of those appeals have yet to be allocated to a caseworker. The Times is aware of cases that have been with the commissioner for
Source: HNN
September 29, 2005
The history-making storm, Katrina, may have an impact on history graduate students who rely on subsidized federal loans. A Republican Party subcommitee's proposed plan to finance the relief costs of the storm-wrecked Gulf region includes a provision eliminating all federally subsidized loans to graduate students across the nation according to a copy of the proposal released by the Democratic political action committee
Source: Independent (UK)
September 30, 2005
For centuries, scholars the world over have argued over the whereabouts of the lost kingdom, ruled over by one of the Greek heroes of the Trojan war.After a two-year odyssey of his own, an amateur British historian claims to have located the mythical land of Ithaca - the island homeland of Homer's legendary Greek hero Odysseus. Now thanks to 21st-century computer technology, space photography and the obsession of a management consultant from Surrey, the riddle may have been solved.
Source: Haaretz
September 27, 2005
Amid objections from some Holocaust survivors, a federal judge Monday approved a $25.5 million settlement between the U.S. government and Hungarian Jews who lost jewelry, artwork and other treasures when a Nazi "Gold Train" was commandeered by the U.S. Army during World War II. Despite the objections, Judge Patricia Seitz said the agreement represented a "historic" chance to right a 60-year-old wrong committed by some U.S. troops and never adequately addressed by the federal
Source: Guardian
September 30, 2005
A book published in Italy today is set to reignite a smouldering controversy over how close the Nazis came to manufacturing a nuclear device in the closing stages of the second world war. The 88 year-old author, Luigi Romersa, is the last known witness to what he and some historians believe was the experimental detonation of a rudimentary weapon on an island in the Baltic in 1944.Hitler's nuclear programme has become a subject of intense dispute in recent months, particularl
Source: CBS News
September 29, 2005
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, most have naturally focused on the human cost — the many lives, homes and jobs lost to the storm. But CBS News reports that Katrina also destroyed a lot of historical treasures, especially along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. In the mountains of debris piling up in Mississippi are some of this state's greatest treasures — literally consigned to the ash heap of history.
All along the Gulf Coast, mansion after glorious m
Source: NYT
September 29, 2005
After a summer of furious and steadily rising criticism, Gov. George E. Pataki evicted the proposed International Freedom Center museum yesterday from its place next to the World Trade Center memorial site. With that, the museum declared itself to be out of business. "The I.F.C. cannot be located on the memorial quadrant," Mr. Pataki said in a statement. That quadrant, at the southwest corner of the trade center site, contains the footprints of the twin towers.
Source: Times-Picayune
September 15, 2005
Jake Staples, the museum's assistant director of facilities, depended on the darkness and labyrinthlike exhibit spaces to hide him during his harried days alone in the museum, when police protection in the Warehouse District evaporated and looters marauded through the museum's ground floor amid the vintage landing craft and tanks. Before the flood, Staples spent his days seeing to the maintenance of the museum he loves. He understands the workings of the building and e
Source: AKI Italy
September 28, 2005
The European Union's parliament has approved a resolution in which it supports the start of membership talks with Turkey but lays down a series of provisos. The parliament says recognition as genocide of the killing of more than a million
Armenians in 1915 was "a prerequisite for accession". Euro-MPs also postponed a vote on extending Turkey's customs agreement to the ten newest member states, because of Ankara's refusal to recognise
Cyprus. The parliament's decisions do
Source: Newhouse News Service
September 29, 2005
There is a deja vu quality to the nation's post-Katrina interest in race and poverty. It brings to mind the call-to-conscience of the Kerner Commission, named by President Johnson in the wake of the urban riots of the 1960s, and its warning of an America "moving toward two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal." But of course, America is not black and white anymore, thanks to another legacy of that era -- the Hart-Cellar Immigration Act, which Johnson signed into law Oc
Source: The Australian
September 29, 2005
Controversial historian and publisher Keith Windschuttle has dismissed as a myth claims of an Aboriginal massacre at a Victorian site called Convincing Ground. Mr Windschuttle, whose criticisms of the "black armband" view of Australia's past sparked the "history wars" in 2002, describes the Aboriginal heritage claim on Convincing Ground as doubtful. The Convincing Ground dispute began on January 17 when local Koori Culture heritage officer Denise Lovett stopped earthworks at
Source: WSJ
September 29, 2005
The Austrian embassy to the U.S. points out that we erred in our editorial last week on Simon Wiesenthal in describing Kurt Waldheim as a "one-time SS officer" ("Nazi Hunter," September 21). The weight of the evidence indicates that Mr. Waldheim, who also served as U.N. Secretary General and as president of Austria, did not serve in the SS. We regret the error.Our modest editorial point, we hasten to add, was that Wiesenthal had not accused Mr. Waldheim o
Source: Inside Higher Education
September 29, 2005
The National Collegiate Athletic Association on Wednesday upheld its decision last month to include the University of North Dakota on a list of institutions that face restrictions on participation in NCAA championships because they use nicknames deemed “hostile and abusive” to Native Americans.Since the NCAA announced the policy August 5, it has granted appeals filed by three other institutions — Central Michigan and Florida State Universities and the University of Utah — th
