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)
Jun 8, 2008
Former Second World War allies Germany and Italy are battling each other over compensation claims by former slave labourers.
The wrangling has been prompted by a ruling last week in Italy's top civilian court that Germany must pay compensation to Italian soldiers it forced into working for Hitler's regime.
In 1943, Italy declared a truce with the Allies and the Nazis seized an estimated 600,000 Italian soldiers.
But yesterday, Manfred Gentz, from the Rememb
Source: LAT
Jun 8, 2008
BADLANDS NATIONAL PARK, S.D. -- The southern half of this swath of grasslands and chiseled pink spires looks untouched from a distance. Closer up, the scars of history are easy to see.
Unexploded bombs lie in ravines, a reminder of when the military confiscated the land from the Oglala Sioux tribe during World War II and turned it into an artillery range. Poachers who have stolen thousands of fossils over the years have left gouges in the landscape. On a plateau, a solitary makeshif
Source: NYT
Jun 8, 2008
How black is too black?
Millions of African-Americans celebrated Barack Obama’s historic victory, seeing in it a reflection — sudden and shocking — of their own expanded horizons. But whether Mr. Obama captures the White House in November will depend on how he is seen by white Americans. Indeed, some people argue that one of the reasons Mr. Obama was able to defeat Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was that a large number of white voters saw him as “postracial.”
In other w
Source: NYT
Jun 8, 2008
By the time the campaign tracked down the small-city Indiana mayor, Bill Clinton was in a lather. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton had lost the North Carolina primary that evening and was eager to offset it with a win in Indiana. But a vote-counting delay in one county threatened to rob her of a prime-time victory speech.
The Clinton campaign called a supporter for help. “I’ve got an angry president here and a candidate who wants to know whether or not she won,” a local campaign repre
Source: WaPo
Jun 7, 2008
LOUISA, Va. -- Planted in the lawn at the courthouse on West Main Street here is a gray historical marker that draws little attention. It proudly proclaims that the country's first black elected official was native son John Mercer Langston, born in this central Virginia county, the son of a wealthy white planter and an emancipated slave of Indian and black ancestry.
History seems to whisper more often than it shouts. Langston was one of the most extraordinary men of the 19th century
Source: Guardian
Jun 7, 2008
It would have strained credulity to imagine during the orgy of terror unleashed by the US-backed coup on the other 9/11, in 1973. But 35 years after Richard Nixon gave the green light to the Chilean military to drown Salvador Allende's elected socialist government in blood, the net is finally closing on the man who personally machine-gunned to death one of the outstanding political songwriters of the 20th century.
This week, Judge Juan Eduardo Fuentes agreed to re-open the investig
Source: Ari Kelman, an associate professor of history at UC Davis, at the blog, Edge of the American West
Jun 7, 2008
To me, the image [above] looks an awful lot like an anthropomorphic chimpanzee (sorry for the lousy screen cap). But that’s silly, of course, because it’s Barack Obama! Brought to you by the New Yorker! Right on the magazine’s home page! Actually, the image is a tease for a
Source: NYT
Jun 7, 2008
No matter that Alexander Hamilton’s country home, the Grange, is 206 years old. Until now, it had been in a perfectly contemporary Manhattan real estate bind: not enough space.
What to do? Move, of course.
So on Saturday, the two-story, 298-ton wood-frame house will be rolled conspicuously — and slowly — from its cramped site on Convent Avenue to an appropriately verdant new location a block away in St. Nicholas Park, facing West 141st Street. That is as close as it can
Source: Bloomberg News
Jun 7, 2008
Barack Obama's political career boasts a long list of firsts. He is the first presumptive presidential nominee to be a native of Hawaii and the president of the Harvard Law Review. He's also the first candidate with more than 1 million contributors.
Obama, an Illinois senator, is the first presumptive presidential nominee in modern times to have a father who wasn't a U.S. citizen, the first to earn an undergraduate degree from Columbia University in New York and the first to have at
Source: seattlepi.com
Jun 6, 2008
YAKIMA, Wash. -- A former Yakama Indian museum curator was given a nine-month sentence and her daughter a six-month prison term for stealing beaded bags and other artifacts from the museum.
At the Thursday federal court sentencing in Yakima, the 58-year-old woman, Marilyn Skahan-Malatare, and her 30-year-old daughter, Colette Julia Malatare, also were ordered to pay about $1,200 in restitution.
They were indicted in January and accused of embezzling and stealing artifac
Source: www.mediabistro.com
Jun 6, 2008
Well here's kind of a funny one. So the Association of Art Museum Directors has assembled a big batch of museum directors from all over the country to put together a new set of guidelines and publish a report called "Acquisition of Archaeological Materials and Ancient Art." (PDF) Basically, it boils down to this message: "We need to stop stealing stuff." Apparently tired of museums getting raided by federal agents with guns, having to return pieces to the foreign countries th
Source: AFP
Jun 6, 2008
A massive unexploded World War II bomb discovered in an east London river was defused by a specialist army team Friday, police said.
The discovery of the 2,200-pound (1,000-kilogramme) device, said by police to be "the largest bomb ever to be dropped on London" forced the closure of several rail services and part of the Underground.
The bomb was dredged from a river by a mechanical digger near Bromley-by-Bow Underground station on Monday, during work to clear
Source: http://www.iraqupdates.com
Jun 6, 2008
More than five years after their disappearance, the Antiquities Department issues special identification cards of all artifacts that were looted from Iraq Museum shortly after the 2003 U.S. invasion.
The museum’s procurement manager, Muna Hassan, said more than 10,000 cards have been printed and passed to Interpol, the International Criminal Police Organization.
The department hopes the presence of these cards will make it easy for police across the world to identify th
Source: Guardian
Jun 6, 2008
As Lake Victoria disappeared to the south, the road rose and fell, winding gently through the boulder-strewn hills of far western Kenya. Men rode heavy single-speed bicycles with sacks of charcoal strapped to the back; women walked, buckets of bananas balanced perfectly on their heads. Where a sign pointed the route to the Senator Obama Secondary School - Motto: Endeavour to excel - the asphalt gave way to bumpy red dirt. An American flag hung in front of the New Apostolic Church, providing a fu
Source: BBC
Jun 6, 2008
A team of historians says the lost city of the Incas, Machu Picchu, in Peru was discovered more than 40 years earlier than previously thought and ransacked.The story about its discovery by the western world has been shaken up by a team of historians who say a German businessman looted its treasures more than 40 years before.
They say the adventurer, Augusto Berns, who traded in Peru's wood and gold, raided the citadel's tombs in 1867 apparently with the blessing
Source: AP
Jun 5, 2008
An official says authorities in southern Vietnam have seized nearly 4 tons of Vietnam War-era bullets from fishermen.
Nguyen Van Thuong of the provincial coast guard command said Monday that coast guards intercepted a fishing boat off the coast of Binh Thuan province over the weekend.
Thuong says the six fishermen told authorities that they found the bullets off the coast and intended to sell them for scrap metal. He says the rusty bullets will be handed over to the mil
Source: History Today
Jun 5, 2008
A marine archaeological dig has started off the Suffolk coast to locate a prosperous medieval city swallowed by the sea. A research team from the University of Southampton began their search at Dunwich on June 5th using acoustic imaging technology. The group, which is funded by English Heritage and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, hope to find evidence of 16 large buildings, including a monastery and palace, dating from the 14th century. The prosperous Middle Ages port was submerged five centurie
Source: NYT
Jun 5, 2008
A long-delayed Senate report endorsed by Democrats and some Republicans has concluded that President Bush and his aides built the public case for war against Iraq by exaggerating available intelligence and by ignoring disagreements among spy agencies about Iraq’s weapons programs and Saddam Hussein’s links to Al Qaeda.
The report was released Thursday after years of partisan squabbling, and it marks the close of five years of investigations by the Senate Intelligence Committee into
Source: NBC News
Jun 5, 2008
Today is the 40th anniversary of Robert F. Kennedy's assassination in Los Angeles.[Brian Williams reports.]Related StoryPhotos taken after Robert F. Kennedy assassination released:
The Los Angeles Fire Department(LAFD) on Thursday released new photos taken moments after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, 40 years after the death of the former senator and younger brother of Pr
Source: AP
Jun 5, 2008
Jack Lucas, who at 14 lied his way into military service during World War II and became the youngest Marine to receive the Medal of Honor, died Thursday in a Hattiesburg, Miss., hospital. He was 80.
Lucas had been battling cancer. Ponda Lee at Moore Funeral Service said the funeral home was told he died before dawn.
Jacklyn "Jack" Lucas was just six days past his 17th birthday in February 1945 when his heroism at Iwo Jima earned him the nation's highest milita
