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: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 22, 2009
The Israeli government will remove references to what Palestinians call the "catastrophe" of Israel's creation from textbooks for Arab schoolchildren, the education minister said on Wednesday.
The reference to "al-naqba," the Arabic word catastrophe as Palestinians call their defeat and exile in the war over Israel's 1948 creation, was controversially inserted by a dovish education minister for the first time in 2007.
Israeli Arab politician Hana Sw
Source: McClatchy
Jul 22, 2009
Sometimes, pork on Capitol Hill has to do with, well, pork.
Or in this case a pig, a dead pig.
With bipartisan support, a resolution has been introduced in the House of Representatives to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Pig War.
The name, age, sex, and size of the pig has long been forgotten but the dispute its death triggered is the reason the border is where it is today between Washington state and Canada.
The pig was part of a herd
Source: Guardian blog
Jul 22, 2009
The Christian right is making a fresh push to force religion onto the school curriculum in Texas with the state's education board about to consider recommendations that children be taught that there would be no United States if it had not been for God.
Members of a panel of experts appointed by the board to revise the state's history curriculum, who include a Christian fundamentalist preacher who says he is fighting a war for America's moral soul, want lessons to emphasise the part
Source: NBC Nightly News
Jul 22, 2009
Visit msnbc.com for
Source: NYT
Jul 22, 2009
Friday is the 50th anniversary of one of the more bizarre clashes of the cold war: the “kitchen debate” between Richard Nixon, then 46 and Dwight D. Eisenhower’s vice president, and Nikita Khrushchev, the cunning peasant who at 65 had just finished consolidating his position at the pinnacle of Soviet power.
Unscripted and often raw, it was one of the few times Soviet and American leaders publicly vented at each other. After the brash and mercurial Khrushchev was ousted, summit meeti
Source: BBC
Jul 22, 2009
The US town of Hanford, in Washington state, is opening up its nuclear secrets to tourists.
"I'm in love with B reactor," says historian Michelle Gerber to a bus-load of American tourists.
It is 8am on a Saturday morning and they are the lucky ones.
Around 20,000 people applied for this exclusive tour run by the US Department of Energy.
Source: AP
Jul 22, 2009
The Israeli government will remove references to what Palestinians
call the ''catastrophe'' of Israel's creation from textbooks for Arab
schoolchildren, the education minister said Wednesday.
The reference to ''al-naqba,'' the Arabic word catastrophe, as
Palestinians call their defeat and exile in the war over Israel's 1948
creation, was inserted by a dovish Israeli education minister in 2007.
The phrase remains contentious six decades later, a symptom of the
continuing divisi
Source: History Today (UK)
Jul 21, 2009
A searchable database containing 250,000 service records of soldiers who saw active duty in the latter phases of the Hundred Years War was published online yesterday, July 20th. The database is part of a research project about soldiers in English royal armies between 1369 and 1453 led by Dr Adrian Bell at the ICMA (International Capital Market Association), Henley Business School, University of Reading, and Professor Anne Curry from the University of Southampton. The project is funded by the Art
Source: NYT
Jul 21, 2009
Dan Rather won significant victories Tuesday in his suit against his former network, CBS. He won access to more than 3,000 documents that his lawyer said were expected to reveal evidence that CBS had tried to influence the outcome of a panel that investigated his much-debated “60 Minutes” report about former President George W. Bush’s military record.
Mr. Rather also won an appeal to restore a fraud charge against CBS that had been dismissed. Martin Gold, the lawyer representing th
Source: LiveScience
Jul 21, 2009
Newly analyzed remains suggest that a modern human killed a Neanderthal man in what is now Iraq between 50,000 and 75,000 years ago. The finding is scant but tantalizing evidence for a theory that modern humans helped to kill off the Neanderthals.
The probable weapon of choice: A thrown spear.
The evidence: A lethal wound on the remains of a Neanderthal skeleton.
The victim: A 40- to 50-year-old male, now called Shanidar 3, with signs of arthritis and a sharp, de
Source: Science Daily
Jul 21, 2009
A 17-member team has found what may be the smoking gun of a much-debated proposal that a cosmic impact about 12,900 years ago ripped through North America and drove multiple species into extinction.
In a paper appearing online ahead of regular publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, University of Oregon archaeologist Douglas J. Kennett and colleagues from nine institutions and three private research companies report the presence of shock-synthesized hexag
Source: Time
Jul 21, 2009
What's in an apology? Some expressions of remorse are commonplace — we hear them on the playground when kids smack each other on the head, or they land in your inbox after a friend forgets your birthday. It's the grand-scale apologies, it seems, that are harder to come by.
On July 17, the California legislature quietly approved a landmark bill to apologize to the state's Chinese-American community for racist laws enacted as far back as the mid–19th century Gold Rush, which attracted
Source: Time
Jul 21, 2009
On the 40th anniversary of the moon landing — or was it just a sinister hoax? — TIME looks back at 10 of the world's most enduring conspiracy theories.
Source: USA Today
Jul 21, 2009
A president's standing after his first six months in office doesn't forecast whether he'll have a successful four-year term, but it does signal how much political juice he'll have for his second six months in office.
That's the lesson of history.
Barack Obama, who completed six months in office Monday, has a 55% approval rating in the USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, putting him 10th among the dozen presidents who have served since World War II at this point in their tenures.
Source: Discovery News
Jul 21, 2009
A set of 15 mysterious life-size masks, reminiscent of ancient Roman drama, have been rediscovered in Pompeii after being forgotten for more than two centuries, according to Italian archaeologists who have shown them for the first time at an exhibition in Naples, Italy.
Made of plaster, the rather heavy masks were unearthed in 1749 in Pompeii during the excavations promoted by King Charles of Bourbon. They were deposited, along with many other artifacts, in the Royal Palace of Porti
Source: Wiltshire Times
Jul 21, 2009
The family of a Bradford on Avon soldier who died in a First World War battle 93 years ago this month hope that DNA from a living relative will help to find his remains in a mass grave so they can give him a proper burial.
Westbury woman Rosina Clark, whose great uncle Private Walter John Deverell died in the Battle of Fromelles in northern France in July 1916, stumbled across the news of her relative’s death while researching her family tree and has been looking into his life for
Source: BBC
Jul 21, 2009
A Romanian mayor has been strongly criticised by Jewish groups after appearing dressed in a Nazi uniform at a local fashion show.
Radu Mazare, mayor of Constanza, appeared with his similarly dressed 15-year-old son at the event.
The Simon Wiesenthal human rights centre called on Mr Mazare to admit he made a mistake, apologise and resign.
He added that the uniform was a German army one, not that of an SS officer. And, he said, he had attempted to cover up
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 21, 2009
The French government has been accused of covering up the extent of violence during last week's Bastille Day festivities.
The interior ministry said that around 500 cars were burned by gangs of youths around the country on the night of July 13. However it has refused to issue figures for July 14, saying only that it was "relatively calm".
Journalists on local and national newspapers who tried to find out more were told by police that strict instructions had b
Source: The Times (UK)
Jul 21, 2009
To those who heard them live they are among the most unforgettable words uttered anywhere on - or off - the earth. But was Neil Armstrong’s “one small step” speech as he became the first man to set foot on the moon actually coined by a British scientist based at a deep space tracking station in the Australian outback?
He was stationed at Tidbinilla, an 85ft satellite dish near Canberra, and in the run up to the landing was wondering what the first words spoken on the moon would be.
Source: CNN
Jul 21, 2009
A prosecutor is dropping a charge against prominent Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. after Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the city's police department recommended that the matter not be pursued.
According to the report, officers responded to a call Thursday from a woman who said she saw "a man wedging his shoulder into the front door" at Gates' house near the university. The report, obtained by CNN affiliate WCVB-TV, indicates Gates refused to identify him
