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: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Apr 3, 2009
Archaeologists and museum directors are paying close attention to a lawsuit in which the Peruvian government demands that Yale University return artifacts collected more than 90 years ago at Machu Picchu, the Andean redoubt that is believed to have been the last major settlement of the Inca empire. The university and Peru reached an agreement on the artifacts in 2007, but Peruvian activists and scholars objected to it so strongly that it fell apart.
Source: NYT
Apr 2, 2009
The chief White House florist, Nancy Clarke, who has bedecked the Executive Mansion with roses, tulips, sweet peas and other blossoms since the Carter administration, is retiring at the end of May.
Mrs. Clarke, who has worked for six presidents, started as a volunteer in 1978 and joined the White House full time in 1981. She presides over a staff of three people and is responsible for decorating the West Wing, the East Wing and the first family’s private residence.
Source: Slate
Apr 2, 2009
Heads of state have been exchanging gifts since the beginning of
recorded time. The pharaohs of ancient Egypt presented stone vessels
emblazoned with the royal cartouche, a kind of monogram, to the
neighboring Hittites in the second millennium BC. Gift exchange had
become a ritualized part of diplomatic contact by the Middle Ages:
During the Third Crusade, an emissary of Richard the Lionheart
presented a flock of birds to the representative of Saladin by
formally noting,"It is the custom
Source: Boston Globe
Apr 2, 2009
President Obama signed legislation this week that extends the boundary of Minute Man National Historical Park to include Barrett's Farm, a Concord property that played a central role in the American Revolution.
The farm is where colonists were storing the munitions that caused British troops to march from Boston through Lexington to Concord, a key milestone in the War of Independence.
Source: Austrain Times
Apr 2, 2009
The ruins of a village dating back to the fall of the Roman empire have been found at an excavation site in Salzburg.
Workers found the remains of the village which is thought to date back to the 5th to 7th centuries at a 6,000-square-metre site for construction of a home for pensioners at Anif-Niederalm in the Flachgau region.
Archaeologists say that a layman probably wouldn’t recognise anything special at the site, but claim it may shed considerable light on a period
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 2, 2009
Barack Obama, concerned about offending Britain and Germany, rebuffed strenuous attempts by President Nicolas Sarkozy of France to persuade the new American president to make a trip to Normandy this week.
White House officials travelled to France at the start of March to discuss a visit by Mr Obama to Omaha Beach, the site of the American Cemetery, established in 1944 just after D-Day and where 9,387 American personnel are buried. Among them is Theodore Roosevelt Jr the eldest son
Source: The Root (edited by Henry Louis Gates)
Apr 2, 2009
In tracing the arc of black history and politics, it is easy to draw
the link between Dr. King and Barack Obama. But the black power
movement deserves equal credit for reshaping the face of American
politics.
April 4, 2008—The 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968
slaying in Memphis—provoked endless conversations about the way
forward for black politics and whether it was King who truly prepared
the nation to elect Barack Obama as the first black president. This
year, t
Source: AP
Apr 2, 2009
A jury ruled Thursday that the University of Colorado wrongly fired the professor who compared some Sept. 11 victims to a Nazi, a verdict that gives the professor $1 and a chance to get his job back.
Then-Gov. Bill Owens was among the officials who had called on the university to fire Ward Churchill after his essay touched off a national firestorm, but the tenured professor of ethnic studies was ultimately terminated on charges of research misconduct.
Churchill said cla
Source: Salon
Apr 2, 2009
In the months since Barack Obama replaced George W. Bush as president of the United States, the global financial crisis has overshadowed most other ideas about the new White House. But for veterans of the American civil rights movement, discussions of economics have become part of a previous conversation about what it means for the world's wealthiest nation to have elected its first black leader. During the week of Obama's inauguration ceremony, photographer Lauren Hermele met with several vete
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Apr 2, 2009
The trial in Ward Churchill's wrongful-dismissal lawsuit against the University of Colorado drew to a close on Wednesday with the embattled professor’s lawyer telling jurors that nothing less than the fate of the Constitution rested in their hands.
“The United States of America wants to know what you are going to do with the freedom we have in this country,” the lawyer, David Lane, said in his closing argument in a packed Denver courtroom. Placing a pitcher on a stack of books writt
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
Apr 2, 2009
The Army Corps of Engineers has agreed with archaeologists for the SugarHouse casino that the project's 22-acre Philadelphia site along the Delaware River does not hold remnants of a British fort from the Revolutionary War or an 18th-century men's social club.
In a letter Monday to the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, the chief of the corps' regulatory branch in Philadelphia, Frank Cianfrani, said the developer had made "a reasonable and good faith effort" to
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald
Apr 2, 2009
A list of 191 Australian soldiers who are believed to have died in the Battle of Fromelles in 1916 has been published by the Defence Force.
The group area mong 400 Australian and British soldiers who are believed to still lie at Pheasant Wood in Fromelles, France, after fighting in the first battle fought by Australians at the western front in the First World War. An excavation last May confirmed the group burial.
Source: BBC
Apr 2, 2009
Arnold Meri, a Soviet war hero put on trial in his native Estonia over his role in Stalin-era deportations, has been buried in Tallinn.
Mr Meri, who suffered from ill-health, died on Friday at the age of 89 while judicial proceedings against him were still in progress.
He denied the charge of "genocide" but admitted playing a part in the deportation of 251 civilians in 1949.
Estonia's contention that genocide took place is not widely accepted.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 2, 2009
Palestinian security in the West Bank detained and then deported to Israel a youth orchestra director who angered local leaders by taking the group to perform before Holocaust survivors in Israel, officials said.
Wafa Younis, head of the "Strings of Freedom" orchestra, said on Wednesday she was visiting the building where her group normally meets in Jenin refugee camp on Monday when armed men in plain clothes took her into custody.
Younis's orchestra performe
Source: BBC
Apr 2, 2009
The dig began in the midst of a dust storm.
Under armed guard, a team of excavators opened up a disused well shaft behind an abandoned roadside restaurant in south-eastern Turkey.
They were searching for the remains of hundreds of civilians who disappeared at the height of the Kurdish separatist conflict in this region in the 1990s.
Many were last seen with members of Turkey's security forces.
For many Kurdish families, the dig marked the s
Source: Guardian (UK)
Apr 2, 2009
New York City has positively matched another September 11 victim to long-held human remains after retesting DNA.
The city medical examiner's office says 54-year-old Manuel Emilio Mejia has been identified from remains found at the World Trade Centre site in the months after the 2001 terrorist attack.
Mejia was a kitchen worker at Windows on the World, the restaurant on top of the trade centre's north tower.
Nearly 2,800 people are on the city's September 11
Source: AP
Apr 2, 2009
More than four years after Yasir Arafat died, Arab doctors will meet in Jordan this week to look into lingering suspicions that he was poisoned. Mr. Arafat, who led the Palestinian movement for almost 40 years, fell violently ill in October 2004 at his West Bank compound in Ramallah. He was moved to a French hospital, where he died on Nov. 11, 2004, at the age of 75. At the time, French doctors bound by strict privacy rules were tight-lipped about Mr. Arafat’s condition, and his widow refused an
Source: BBC
Apr 2, 2009
The link is to encourage people to show respect to those who died in the communist revolution, it said.
The new web link comes ahead of the annual Qingming Festival when Chinese traditionally honour their ancestors.
Also known as Chingming, or tomb-sweeping Day, this falls on 4 April this year.
The online memorial was initiated by the Central Civilisation Office of the Communist Party of China on 26 March and will remain "live" until 14 April.
Source: Civil War News
Apr 1, 2009
Reenactors and Sons of Confederate Veterans members have done the Rebel Yell for years at Civil War battle reenactments and related events. “There’s only one problem: they’ve been doing it wrong,” according to Museum of the Confederacy Executive Director S. Waite Rawls III.
Rawls seeks to remedy the situation with “The Rebel Yell Lives!” the museum’s recently produced audio CD. He says it reveals the true sound of the famous Southern battle cry.
Many written accounts at
Source: http://media.www.navigatornews.org
Apr 1, 2009
Lincoln Log Cabin was built on an 86-acre site. It is a replica of the Lincoln home, originally built in 1835. With current budget issues constantly fluctuating, weight is falling on the shoulders of the volunteers to keep up the farm.
Last year Lincoln Log cabin operated with four paid interpreters and two paid maintenance workers, volunteers made up the rest of the staff. Their contract was originally set to run from May 1 through Oct. 31. However, the contract for paid workers wa
