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)
Dec 7, 2008
Urgent reforms are needed to protect primary schools struggling to cope
with an overloaded curriculum, a Goverment report has concluded.
Under proposals outlined by Sir Jim Rose, the Government's top adviser on
primary schools, traditional lessons such as history and geography would
be axed to allow teachers greater flexibility to teach fewer subjects in
greater depth.
Instead of teaching subjects individually, the report said the curriculum
should focus on cross-curricular studie
Source: http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com
Dec 7, 2008
Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument offers a prime example of
re-imaging in NPS context. Custer’s Last Stand occurred at this place, but
so did the last stand of the Plains Indians. In 1991, a landmark
redesignation acknowledged that the battlefield has a duel identity. More
recently, an Indian Memorial has helped to re-image the place as hallowed
ground for Indians as well as whites.
Re-imaging, a concept very familiar to celebrities, politicians, and
tourism promoters, is
Source: International Herald Tribune
Dec 7, 2008
Constantin Ticu Dumitrescu, a Romanian dissident who spent many years in prison during the Communist era and later led the fight to open the files of the Securitate, the feared secret police, died Friday in Bucharest, the capital. He was 80.
His death was reported by Agerpres, the Romanian national news agency, which said that he had been released from a hospital two weeks ago after being treated for liver disease.
"We have lost one of the most powerful voices agai
Source: http://www.delcotimes.com
Dec 7, 2008
Two years ago at a Pearl Harbor memorial event in Media, Ed Kane overheard
a conversation between two teenage boys.
“One kid saw my hat and said, ‘Look, a Pearl Harbor survivor.’ The other
kid said, ‘I know where Pearl Harbor is. It’s a fishing village in
Florida.’”
The 87-year-old Middletown resident generally shies away from the
spotlight, but if he can help educate younger generations about World War
II, he is willing to do so.
Source: FoxNews.com
Dec 7, 2008
With an eye on the immediate aftermath of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor,
thousands of World War II veterans and other observers are expected on
Sunday to commemorate the 67th anniversary of the devastating Japanese
military raid.
The theme of the event —"Pacific War Memories: The Heroic Response to
Pearl Harbor" — is something of a departure from the past.
Usually, the commemoration focuses on the attack on the USS Arizona, Pearl
Harbor and several other installations on Oah
Source: Independent (UK)
Dec 7, 2008
Ancient techniques pioneered by pre-Columbian Amazonian Indians are about to be pressed into service in Britain and Central America in the most serious commercial attempt yet to reverse global warming.
Trials are to be started in Sussex and Belize early in the new year, backed with venture capital from Silicon Valley, on techniques to take carbon from the atmosphere and bury it in the soil, where it should act as a powerful fertiliser.
The plan is to scale up rapidly in
Source: Times (UK)
Dec 7, 2008
BRITAIN, which has long marketed itself to tourists as a treasure trove of monuments, is preparing to stop nominations to the United Nations list of the most important historic sites in the world.
The change of policy follows indications that Unesco, the UN body that monitors world heritage sites, believes Britain has its fair share. There are 24, ranging from Durham cathedral to the Palace of Westminster and neolithic Orkney.
Unesco wants instead to concentrate on th
Source: Observer (UK)
Dec 7, 2008
More than 400 years after a Spanish galleon loaded with gold and silver slid beneath the waves in the waters surrounding the Isle of Mull, a new mission has been launched to try to recover its hoard of treasure.
Divers will begin to sift through the silt at the bottom of Tobermory Bay in an attempt to recover the valuable cargo, reputed to have been intended to bankroll the ill-fated Spanish invasion of England in 1588. It is the second time that Sir Torquhil Ian Campbell, the 13th
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 7, 2008
Oxford University Press has removed words like "aisle", "bishop", "chapel", "empire" and "monarch" from its Junior Dictionary and replaced them with words like "blog", "broadband" and "celebrity". Dozens of words related to the countryside have also been culled.
The publisher claims the changes have been made to reflect the fact that Britain is a modern, multicultural, multifaith society.
Source: New York Times
Dec 7, 2008
It has remained one of World War II’s most enduring mysteries, one that resonated decades later after Sept. 11: Who in Washington knew what and when before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941?
Specifically, who heard or saw a transcript of a Tokyo shortwave radio news broadcast that was interrupted by a prearranged coded weather report? The weather bulletin signaled Japanese diplomats around the world to destroy confidential documents and codes because war with the Un
Source: Los Angeles Times
Dec 6, 2008
DANDONG, China -- Here at the Museum of the War to Resist American Aggression and Aid Korea, it's as if the clock stopped 55 years ago.
"I feel like I am right there on the front lines," said Wang Binyan, a 23-year-old teacher. "I can feel what the Chinese soldiers felt. In this place, Americans are the enemy."
The museum in this provincial city on the North Korean border tells a personal version of the Korean War, one that casts U.S. foreign policy
Source: Newsweek
Dec 6, 2008
Let's try for a minute to take the religious conservatives at their word and define marriage as the Bible does. Shall we look to Abraham, the great patriarch, who slept with his servant when he discovered his beloved wife Sarah was infertile? Or to Jacob, who fathered children with four different women (two sisters and their servants)? Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon and the kings of Judah and Israel—all these fathers and heroes were polygamists. The New Testament model of marriage is hardly bett
Source: AP
Dec 6, 2008
Government investigators digging into the grim hidden history of mass political executions in South Korea have confirmed that dozens of children were among many thousands shot by their own government early in the Korean War.
The investigative Truth and Reconciliation Commission has thus far verified more than two dozen mass killings of leftists and supposed sympathizers, among at least 100,000 people estimated to have been hastily shot and dumped into makeshift trenches, abandoned m
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 6, 2008
He was history's most feared pirate, striking terror into seafarers as he
cut a bloodthirsty swathe through the Caribbean and North Atlantic.
But new research has found that Blackbeard may be innocent of one of the
most notorious charges against him.
For almost 300 years, the British pirate captain has stood accused of
deliberately sinking his flagship, Queen Anne's Revenge, so he could
swindle his crew out of their share of loot they had plundered.
But marine archaeolog
Source: Irish Times
Dec 6, 2008
The Irish economic boom may be over, but its flurry of road building has
uncovered a wealth of archaeological finds with lasting value. In
particular, digs along proposed routes have shed light on 'unknown'
archaeology that may not have otherwise been examined, according to Rónán
Swan, acting head of archaeology at the National Roads Authority. The
scale of road-related archaeological digs has increased massively in
recent years - in 1993 there was one road excavation, in 2007 there were
Source: NYT
Dec 6, 2008
A series of recent Israeli actions in the mainly Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem have raised tensions there, with Palestinian and Israeli critics contending that they are part of a wider plan to “Judaize” historically charged areas around the Old City.
The actions, ostensibly unconnected, include the demolition of two Arab homes in Silwan, a neighborhood adjacent to the Old City above the ruins of an ancient Jewish site; the start of a controversial infrastructure project there
Source: NYT
Dec 6, 2008
TAIPEI, Taiwan — After 10 minutes of drum-beating and incense-burning by her assistants, Chang Yin donned a black, spotted robe and a pointed hat. She picked up a fan with her right hand and a silver flask of sorghum liquor with her left.
Then, she sat in a chair before an altar piled with joss sticks, cans of beer, fruit, other snacks and images of deities. The session began. She appeared to slip into a trance.
Ms. Chang is a jitong, a shaman who dispenses advi
Source: NYT
Dec 6, 2008
SIMI VALLEY, Calif. — In the vast, cool basement of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library here, Jennifer Mandel held up a hand-drawn map of the United States from the late 1970s.
A Reagan campaign staff member had colored states with red and blue ink at the start of his first successful run for president.
The map is one of 750,000 pages from that campaign released to the public last week after two years of painstaking work by Ms. Mandel and several other archiv
Source: Politico.com
Dec 6, 2008
Dialing back his predecessor’s expansive view of the office, Vice President-elect Joe Biden plans on “restoring the Office of the Vice President to its historical role” as adviser to the president and tie-breaker in the Senate, an aide to Biden said Saturday.
The declaration results from an attention-getting article coming from the Las Vegas Sun, which is reporting Sunday in a story by Washington Bureau reporter Lisa Mascaro that the new Congress “will reassert its constitutional i
Source: http://www.dailynews.com
Dec 6, 2008
The roster of local Pearl Harbor survivors I pulled out of my desk drawer
to call Friday grows shorter every year as the men get into their late 80
s and early 90 s.
Our remaining national treasures are more fragile and important for us to
remember than ever."Bill and Gil went this year, and I'm not doing so hot myself right now,"
says 90-year-old Leon Kolb when I call to tell him I'll be thinking about
him today - the 67 th anniversary of that Day of Infamy: Dec. 7, 1941.
