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: LAT
August 28, 2005
Given the pharaoh's mammoth celebrity, Tut's divine ka would eventually find itself holding down an unexpected job. Culture is a soft instrument in promoting a nation's interests in commercial, political and strategic fields, and Tut has been doing that work with skill and finesse for more than 30 years. He has shuttled around the world since the 1970s, first as a player in the Cold War and now, improbably, during the war on terrorism. The dead boy king was reborn as Ambassador Tut, Egypt's most
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
August 28, 2005
Playa Giron, Cuba: For Cubans, however, this pleasant beach is more than a garden spot for holidays. Forty-four years ago, it was the scene of a raging 60-hour battle in which Fidel Castro's newly minted revolution vanquished a band of Cuban exiles armed and trained by the CIA and sent to sweep the upstart Communist leader's regime out of Cuba. "All Cubans come here," said Ivan Torres, 30, a construction worker who recalls making trips to Playa Giron and the nearby Bay of Pigs as a sch
Source: NYT
August 29, 2005
As President Bush traveled around the country last week, he got caught up in a battle of women. The tableau was a striking change from the 1960's protests against the Vietnam War, when the demonstrations were largely led by young men, who were subject to the draft. Although mothers protested that war too, they were not in the forefront of the movement.Will Ms. Sheehan's movement spread? The historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, whose son, Lt. Joseph K. Good
Source: LAT
August 29, 2005
Bush's summer vacation at the 1,583-acre spread, which ends Friday after close to five weeks, allows him not only to relax, but to remind the nation that he's a Cowboy President. It's a tradition started by Teddy Roosevelt, and followed by Lyndon B. Johnson and Ronald Reagan, that casts the chief executive as a plain-talking, outdoors-loving leader.With a handful of cattle now on the property, some Texans suggest that calling the place a ranch could be considered a str
Source: Guardian
August 29, 2005
Scientists have identified the precise origin of the marble block used for Michelangelo's David, and say the discovery will be useful for helping to preserve one of the world's greatest sculptures. Until now, art historians knew only that the large block came from the Carrara quarries in Tuscany, which still produce many types and qualities of marble.Analysts have now used three tiny samples, retrieved from the second toe of the left foot of David when the figure was d
Source: Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
August 27, 2005
At a June 10 press conference at the Hotel Washington, Liberty survivors presented details of a “Report of War Crimes” brief filed by James R. Gotcher, general legal counsel for the USS Liberty Veterans Association (USS-LVA). On June 8, the anniversary of the attack, Gotcher submitted the 35-page, carefully footnoted report to Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey, who acts as executive agent for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. After receiving this report, which presents evidence allegedly impl
Source: NYT
August 29, 2005
A new book asserts that the American folklorist Alan Lomax gave short shrift to the work of black scholars who accompanied him on now legendary trips to the Mississippi Delta to record seminal blues artists like Muddy Waters.Lomax's recordings for the Library of Congress, made during his travels through the South in the 1930's and 40's, make up perhaps the greatest repository of American vernacular music ever compiled.
But he was not alone on some of
Source: CNN
August 27, 2005
Was there a black cat aboard the Civil War ironclad USS Monitor, placed inside a cannon by a superstitious but desperate sailor as the vessel was sinking? Conservators had hoped to verify the legend as they worked this month to extract concrete-like sediment from two cast iron, smooth-bore cannons salvaged from the ship's turret.A crewman who had survived the sinking off the North Carolina coast more than 140 years ago maintained that he stuffed the feline into
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
August 28, 2005
The computerized three-dimensional image of Washington at age 19, as well as images as he appeared as a Revolutionary War general at 45 and president at 57, are the result of a yearlong multidisciplinary effort led by University of Pittsburgh anthropologist Jeffrey Schwartz.No one ever painted or sculpted a likeness of Washington when he was an unknown frontier surveyor; in fact, no portrait of him before age 40 exists. But Schwartz said the new images are
Source: Romanesko
August 29, 2005
The photographer responsible for the Times-Dispatch business section cover that resembled a Dec. 2004 Richmond Style Weekly cover has been fired. "We learned that the photographer had seen the Style photo while at the candy company, and was told of the similarity, but submitted the picture anyway as original work," writes managing editor Louise Seals. "That is visual plagiarism and that is why we have dismissed the photographer."
Source: Newsday
August 27, 2005
The body of Jumhour el-Zergany was found dumped alongside the road. Zergany had been tortured, his arms broken, before his tormentors finally put three bullets in his head. His crime, according to another professor who studied under him, was that he had converted years before from Shia to Sunni Islam and had dared to hire religious Sunni professors in the history department that he chaired.A police van was seen by witnesses to have stopped Zergany's car at the time of
Source: AP
August 29, 2005
A group representing California religious schools has filed a lawsuit accusing the University of California system of discriminating against high schools that teach creationism and other conservative Christian viewpoints.
The Association of Christian Schools International, which represents more than 800 schools, filed a federal lawsuit last week claiming UC admissions officials have refused to certify high school science courses that use textbooks challenging Darwin's theory of evol
Source: Journal of Turkish Weekly
August 29, 2005
In a speech he delivered at Setif on Thursday, Algerian President Abdulaziz Bouteflika called on France to recognize the fact that it tortured, killed and destroyed Algerian people between the years of 1830-1962 to eradicate their Algerian, Muslim, Arab and Berber identities, and their culture, history and language.
Source: Chosunilbo
August 29, 2005
An independent committee putting together an encyclopedia of collaborators during the Japanese colonial era on Monday announced an initial list of 3,090 names, many of them leading figures in Korea’s postwar development, to be included in the tome.
The Institute for Research in Collaborationists Activities said the standard of selection was cooperation with Japan's theft of Korea's sovereignty, participation in institutions of imperial control, interference with the independence mov
Source: IPS
August 29, 2005
The U.S.-based retail giant Wal-Mart, which last year opened a store near the ancient Teotihuacan pyramids of Mexico despite loud protests from local activists and small businesses, is now seeking a repeat of its earlier victory, this time in two heavily indigenous areas. But local opponents are set for a pitched battle. This time we will definitely keep Wal-Mart from continuing its attack on Mexico's culture and its people," said Lorenzo Trujillo, head of the Civic Fro
Source: CNN
August 29, 2005
North Carolina hopes that history will draw tourists -- from die-hard Civil War buffs to the merely curious -- to points around the state, each identified by a roadside marker. It's part of the Civil War Trails program, a mission in three states -- Virginia, North Carolina and Maryland -- to mark 700 historic points from the Civil War. And so, by the end of the year, state officials plan to have more than 150 roadside markers in place across North Carolina, forming a trail across the state. They
Source: BBC
August 27, 2005
A replica of Nelson's HMS Victory has been set alight in front of thousands of spectators to mark the Battle of Trafalgar's 200th anniversary. The Torrington Cavaliers fund-raising group, of Devon, hoped to raise £57,000 - the cost of the original Victory - with the event in the town.
The group spent two years building the 100ft-long half-size mock-up.
Hattie Hill, 11, and her sister Katie, nine, of Welcombe, lit the fire after their godfather wo
Source: BBC
August 28, 2005
One of the last surviving St Kilda islanders has returned to see his homeland, 75 years after its evacuation. Norman John Gillies only spent the first five years of his life on the islands, but his childhood memories remain clear.
Far out into the Atlantic, the islands are the most remote part of the British Isles ever inhabited.
Islanders lived there for thousands of years, until the last left in 1930.
On the anniversary of the 75th
Source: NYT
August 28, 2005
When the Portuguese arrived in Brazil five centuries ago, they encountered a fundamental problem: the indigenous peoples they conquered spoke more than 700 languages. Rising to the challenge, the Jesuit priests accompanying them concocted a mixture of Indian, Portuguese and African words they called "língua geral," or the "general language," and imposed it on their colonial subjects. Elsewhere in Brazil, língua geral as a living, spoken tongue died off long ago. But in SÃO GA
Source: NYT
August 28, 2005
After Senator Trent Lott was deposed as the Republican leader in December 2002 because of a racially charged remark, he slipped into the background, quietly rebuilding his power and career. But Mr. Lott is quiet no more, with a new memoir and an accompanying national book tour in which he is providing a behind-the-scenes view of his more than 30 years representing Mississippi in Congress and his admittedly inept handling of a furor that began with words of praise for Senator Strom Thurmond at hi
