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: Politico.com
Jul 21, 2008
An Obama campaign ban on green clothing during the candidate’s visits to Israel and Jordan has created wide puzzlement among observers of the Middle East.
In a memo to reporters, described as “a few guidelines we sent staff before departure to the Middle East,” Obama advance staffer Peter Newell laid out rules on attire for Jordan and Israel.
First among them: “Do not wear green.”
An Obama aide explained to reporters that green is the color associated with
Source: Times of India
Jul 21, 2008
Soon after Adolf Hitler's waxwork in Berlin caused an outcry, a card game featuring the great dictators of history, including the Nazi leader and Josef Stalin, has sparked a row in Germany.
Hitler's waxwork at Madame Tussauds was beheaded earlier this month as it opened its doors in Berlin.
The card game, called The Fuehrer Quartet presents information on historical figures such as Hitler, Stalin, Franco of Spain and Ceaucescu of Romania. The dictators are divided int
Source: AP
Jul 21, 2008
The oldest surviving copy of the New Testament, a 4th century version that had its Gospels and epistles spread across the world, is being made whole again — online.
The British Library says the full text of the Codex Sinaiticus will be available to Web users by next July, digitally reconnecting parts that are held in Britain, Russia, Germany and a monastery in Egypt's Sinai Desert.
A preview of the Codex, which also has some parts of the Old Testament, will hit the Web
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Jul 21, 2008
It remains to be seen if the new law will prod more institutions to reach out to veterans or if it will transform veterans' enrollment patterns. But history suggests a skeptical view.
In the 60 years since its passage, the original GI bill has gained an almost mythical status. It has been credited with promoting postwar prosperity, expanding the middle class, and democratizing higher education in the United States. Some historians see it as a watershed in American higher education,
Source: CNN
Jul 21, 2008
Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has been arrested after more than a decade as a fugitive from war crimes charges, the U.N. tribunal that charged him announced Monday.
Karadzic, 63, was the Serb political leader during the 1992-1995 war that followed Bosnia-Herzegovina's secession from Yugoslavia. He is charged with genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the law of war.
No details of his arrest were immediately available. But the chief prosecutor for th
Source: NYT
Jul 21, 2008
Senator John McCain was all but a sworn enemy of Senator Trent Lott, the former Republican leader.
Mr. Lott had quashed Mr. McCain’s most cherished legislative goals. And, worse, Mr. McCain believed that in the 2000 Republican primaries, Mr. Lott had spread rumors about his colleague’s mental stability on behalf of his rival for the nomination, George W. Bush.
But when Mr. Bush turned on Mr. Lott in 2002, helping to push him out of the leadership over a racially insensi
Source: Las Vegas Review-Journal
Jul 21, 2008
Late-night talk show host Jay Leno can make a history teacher flinch with his "Jaywalking" segment.
Random individuals stopped on the street appear stumped when asked who the Americans fought in the Revolutionary War.
They can be wildly off the mark in blaming the North Vietnamese for bombing Pearl Harbor. (It was the Japanese).
Carson City School Board member Joe Enge thinks it's because history education has been dumbed down.
Enge,
Source: HamptonRoads.com
Jul 21, 2008
Divers on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's new
41-foot catamaran were geared up and waiting to descend to survey the
U-701, the most intact of discovered U-boats sunk off the North Carolina
coast.
Boat captain Chad Smith, NOAA's East Coast vessel coordinator, slowed the
catamaran's motor and circled the position above where the wreck lay
mostly buried on the ocean floor about 22 miles off Avon."All right, guys, start moving toward the stern," dive master Tane
Source: BBC
Jul 21, 2008
We have just 100 months to act to prevent dangerous climate change, says
Andrew Simms. In this week's Green Room, he outlines plans for a"Green
New Deal" that could sort out the pressing problems we have with climate,
energy and the financial system."Too important to fail" is the message heard repeatedly from governments
stepping in and spending billions to prop up failing financial markets.
But all the time, another system - an atmosphere convivial to human
civilisation, that rea
Source: http://www.abc.net.au
Jul 21, 2008
Indiana Jones's next adventure may well be in front of a computer if
Hollywood scriptwriters decide to embrace a new approach to archaeological
research in war-torn zones.
David Thomas, a PhD student in La Trobe University's archaeological
program in Melbourne, has used Google Earth to safely uncover historic
sites in a remote part of war-torn Afghanistan.
Using the free internet resource, Thomas found up to 450 possible
archaeological sites in Registan, which borders Helmand
Source: BBC
Jul 21, 2008
The village of Madar is perhaps an unlikely setting for a major scientific discovery that has been hailed as a 'new frontier' for the Middle East.
Tucked away in the heart of rural Yemen, Madar now finds itself in the limelight after a series of dinosaur prints were discovered in the village - the first such discovery on the Arabian Peninsula.
The dinosaur tracks have been lying exposed, above ground, for centuries, but scientists only recently stumbled across them followin
Source: Salon
Jul 21, 2008
Dinko Sakic, the last known living commander of a World War II concentration camp, died overnight in a Croatian hospital while serving a 20-year sentence for war crimes, officials said Monday. He was 87.
Sakic — a former chief of Croatia's infamous Jasenovac camp — died in a hospital in Zagreb, Justice Ministry spokeswoman Vesna Dovranic told The Associated Press.
Sakic had heart problems and had been receiving treatment at a prison hospital, but he was recently transfe
Source: Guardian (UK)
Jul 21, 2008
More than 600 people paid their respects yesterday to captain David Harold Kouba, an Iowa man whose dangerous life led him from crop-dusting in Mississippi and Australia to flying missions from 1968 to 1975 during the Central Intelligence Agency's "secret war" in Laos.
It was Kouba who flew general Vang Pao, the CIA's top Hmong leader, out of the agency's embattled headquarters at Long Cheng. A program distributed with services explained:
"On May 14, 1975
Source: Newsweek
Jul 21, 2008
In 1981 Barack Obama was 20 years old, a Columbia University student in search of the meaning of life. He was torn a million different ways: between youth and maturity, black and white, coasts and continents, wonder and tragedy. He enrolled at Columbia in part to get far away from his past; he'd gone to high school in Hawaii and had just spent two years "enjoying myself," as he puts it, at Occidental College in Los Angeles. In New York City, "I lived an ascetic existence," Ob
Source: Newsweek
Jul 21, 2008
John McCain might not recognize Nguyen van Sy, but they used to be neighbors. Back in the 1960s, Sy was left behind as caretaker at the North Vietnamese Ministry of Culture's Film Institute after its staff was evacuated to the countryside to escape the U.S. bombing. The Hanoi regime converted part of the abandoned facility into a POW camp—"the Plantation," inmates called it—and the 31-year-old Navy pilot was taken there a few weeks after he was shot down over Hanoi in October 1967. Som
Source: Houston Chronicle
Jul 20, 2008
When Franklin Roosevelt opened the first presidential
library in 1940, the price for the modest fieldstone structure on his
Hyde Park estate came to $376,000 — the equivalent of about $5.5
million in current dollars.
Today, as George W. Bush forges ahead with ambitious plans for a
library, museum and policy institute to be built in Dallas at his
wife's alma mater, Southern Methodist University, the cost to build
homage to his presidency has risen nearly fiftyfold to $250 millio
Source: AP
Jul 20, 2008
From Abraham Lincoln's boyhood residence to the Mary Todd Lincoln house, visitors this year are flocking to Kentucky sites dedicated to the 16th president.
But, Lincoln's Confederate counterpart, Jefferson Davis, is experiencing a similar resurgence. Kentucky, which claims both men as native sons and has statues of both in its Capitol Rotunda, isn't the only place experiencing a Davis boost.
"It'll be hard for anyone to approach the level of attention that Abraham Lincol
Source: AP
Jul 20, 2008
Papal apologies have been few in the long history of
the Vatican, though Benedict XVI and his predecessor John Paul II in
recent years have admitted errors by the church. Here are some examples:
Pope Benedict XVI
_ July 19, 2008: Said he was"deeply sorry for the pain and suffering" of
victims of child sex abuse by clergy in Australia.
_ April, 2008: Said he was"deeply ashamed" of the child sex abuse scandal
in the church and that the issue had sometimes been"very badly h
Source: AP
Jul 20, 2008
As a boy, John Brown remembers traveling with
his family to the wooded hills in northwest Rhode Island where his fellow
Narragansett Indians gathered near stone piles they believe were left by
ancient ancestors.
That belief is now at the center of a struggle between the rural town of
North Smithfield and a developer who wants to build a 122-lot subdivision
on the land.
The town suspects the piles are burial mounds, and has filed a lawsuit
asking a judge to declare the land a
Source: Time
Jul 20, 2008
Cambodia and Thailand will begin talks Monday
aimed at resolving a lingering dispute over territory near an World
Heritage Site temple, where more than 4,000 troops from the two sides have
been deployed.
Cambodia's mission at the United Nations has submitted a letter to the
chairman of the Security Council and the chairman of the General Assembly
to"draw their attention to the current situation on the Cambodian-Thai
border," Information Minister Khieu Kanharith said Sunday."Cambodia is no
