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: International Herald Tribune
May 28, 2008
WELLINGTON, New Zealand: The New Zealand government made a formal apology to the nation's Vietnam War veterans Wednesday for mistreatment and neglect — 36 years after they withdrew from the conflict.
Nearly 3,900 New Zealand troops were sent to fight in Vietnam — 37 were killed and 187 wounded. Since the war ended, hundreds more have suffered from or died of illnesses, particularly cancers increasingly linked to the use of the defoliant Agent Orange.
The government &quo
Source: Politico.com
May 28, 2008
Even after Scott McClellan’s publisher released a juicy excerpt from his memoir last November, some of his former combatants in the White House press corps remained skeptical that the longtime Bush loyalist would really open up.
But Newsweek’s White House correspondent Richard Wolffe wasn’t one of them.
“He promised when he first started writing this book that he’d engage in some truth-telling,” said Wolffe, who had spoken to McClellan in recent months. “And that’s wh
Source: Reuters
May 28, 2008
A speck of green in a sea of sand, St. Anthony's Monastery in Egypt welcomes those seeking God in silence broken only by the whisper of the wind.
Monks at what is considered by many to be the world's oldest active Christian monastery still rise before dawn to chant and pray just as their predecessors did for more than 1,500 years.
Now, they also carry mobile phones, send e-mails and maintain a website (http://www.stanthonymon
Source: LiveScience
May 28, 2008
Strands of 1,000-year-old DNA from 10 Viking skeletons have been retrieved, a team of scientists claims.
If true, the achievement would be notable, since many researchers say it is impossible to recover authentic DNA from ancient humans.
Jorgen Dissing of the University of Copenhagen and colleagues say they retrieved the genetic material from the freshly sampled teeth of skeletons dating back to around A.D. 1000 and found at a non-Christian burial site called Galgedil o
Source: WaPo
May 28, 2008
Nobody has walked across the Red Sea since Moses parted the waters. But it could happen again under an audacious plan to build the world's longest suspension bridge between Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.
If built, the bridge would cross the Red Sea at an 18-mile-wide strait known as the Bab al-Mandeb, or Gate of Tears, connecting the southern tip of Yemen with the tiny East African country of Djibouti. Estimated price tag: $10 billion to $20 billion.
The proposal is
Source: AFP
May 28, 2008
An ancient gold cup mysteriously acquired by a Taunton scrap metal dealer is expected to fetch some 500,000 pounds at auction after languishing for years in a shoe box under its current owner's bed.
Owner John Webber says his grandfather gave him the 5.5-inch (14-centimetre) high mug to play with when he was a child, back in 1945.
He assumed the golden cup, which is decorated with the heads of two women facing in opposite directions, their foreheads garlanded with two k
Source: AP
May 28, 2008
The oldest active ship in the U.S. Navy, the USS Kitty Hawk aircraft carrier, made its final departure from Japan on Wednesday to be decommissioned after nearly half a century of service.
The Kitty Hawk, with sailors lining its decks, pulled away from Yokosuka port just south of Tokyo to the cheers of hundreds of schoolchildren and the sounds of brass bands.
The Kitty Hawk, the last conventionally powered aircraft carrier in the Navy, is to be replaced later this summe
Source: AP
May 28, 2008
President Bush, linking the wars of his tenure to the deadliest one in history, is asking the country to commit anew to postwar rebuilding.
In an address for Wednesday to more than 1,000 graduates of the U.S. Air Force Academy, Bush frames their futures by drawing back to the World War II generation. He links the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to postwar Germany and Japan six decades ago.
"America has assumed this obligation before," Bush said in prepared remarks rele
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 28, 2008
Italian archaeologists have discovered a perfectly preserved skeleton of a 1400-year-old Lombard warrior, buried with his horse.
The skeleton, which was found in a park at Testona, near Turin, is of a 25-year-old Lombard who died of a fever. Unusually, his horse was buried alongside him.
"This is a very rare find," said Gabriella Pantò, the archaeologist leading the dig. "We have not seen many precedents in Italy. We have seen horses' heads buried with wa
Source: AP
May 28, 2008
The Vatican unveiled the largest and most luxurious of the pagan tombs in the necropolis under St. Peter's Basilica on Tuesday after nearly a year of restoration work.
A family of former slaves built the Valeri Mausoleum during the second half of the second century, when Emperor Marcus Aurelius ruled. It is one of 22 pagan tombs in the grottoes under the basilica.
The newly restored tomb was shown to media Tuesday. Visitors can have a guided tour of the grottoes by appo
Source: Salon
May 28, 2008
In remarks he made on Memorial Day, Sen. Barack Obama reached back to some old family history. "I had an uncle who was one of the, um -- who was part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps," Obama said. "The story in our family was that when he came home he just went up into the attic and he didn't leave the house for six months." (Video follows at the bottom of this post.) There was just one problem with this story: American tr
Source: NBC News
May 28, 2008
Source: Yahoo News
May 28, 2008
Egyptian archaeologists have
discovered what they say was the ancient headquarters
of the Pharaonic army guarding the northeastern
borders of Egypt for more than 1,500 years, the
government said on Wednesday.
The fortress and adjoining town, which they identify
with the ancient place name Tharu, lies in the Sinai
peninsula about 3 km (2 miles) northeast of the modern
town of Qantara, Egyptian archaeologist Mohamed Abdel
Maksou
Source: KC Johnson in the New York Sun
May 28, 2008
[Mr. Johnson, a professor of history at Brooklyn College, is the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in the Humanities for the 2007-2008 academic year.]
On March 24, 1968, President Johnson telephoned his ambassador to the United Nations, Arthur Goldberg. The previous few weeks had been among the most difficult of Johnson's presidency. In late January, the Tet offensive undermined public support for the Vietnam War. In early March, Johnson barely edged longshot Eugene McCarthy in the New Hampshi
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 27, 2008
A foreign policy expert consulted by Senator Barack Obama, the leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, has accused members of the American Jewish establishment of "McCarthyism" in its attitude towards critics of Israel.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former national security adviser, said that the pro-Israel lobby in the US was too powerful, while the slur of anti-Semitism was too readily used whenever its power was called into question.
Presenti
Source: Deutsche Welle
May 27, 2008
Germany's war graves authority has signed an agreement for the remains of some 4,000 German soldiers killed in former Czechoslovakia during World War II to be buried at a special site in the western Czech town of Cheb.
The head of the German war graves authority, Reinhard Fuehrer, and the mayor of Cheb, Jan Svoboda, agreed on Monday, May 26, to build a military cemetery for the German war dead next to the town graveyard.
The agreement was hailed by both sides as an act
Source: http://www.kentucky.com
May 27, 2008
A Jefferson Davis scholar at Rice University in Texas knew immediately that the letters she saw on an auction house Web site belonged to Transylvania University.
Lynda Crist, editor of The Papers of Jefferson Davis, said in a phone interview that her office had microfilmed the documents, worth more than $15,000, and included them in one of the volumes.
She notified Transy officials, who contacted Lexington police, according to the affidavit.
Eugene C. Zollm
Source: Time
May 27, 2008
Raoul Wallenberg was the diplomat who would appear like a phantom in Budapest, handing out the Swedish passports that saved some 15,000 Hungarian Jews from being murdered by the Nazis. But Wallenberg had no such help himself on January 17, 1945, when he was taken into custody by the Soviet forces that had liberated Budapest. The Swedish diplomat was never heard from again, and Moscow would later report that Wallenberg had died in Lubyanka Prison in 1947.
But in the 63 years since hi
Source: History Today
May 27, 2008
Guy Fawkes has been named as the most famous Briton in a survey of schoolchildren. The poll of 1,000 UK children was carried out by the London Dungeon and also tested the historical knowledge of the 10-14 year-olds. 97% knew the correct details about the Gunpowder Plotter while 96% were aware of Jack the Ripper, who came second in the poll. Winston Churchill was recognised by 82% of respondents while 67% identified Henry VIII correctly.
Source: Politico.com
May 27, 2008
Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan writes in a surprisingly scathing memoir to be published next week that President Bush “veered terribly off course,” was not “open and forthright on Iraq,” and took a “permanent campaign approach” to governing at the expense of candor and competence.
Among the most explosive revelations in the 341-page book, titled “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception” (Public Affairs, $27.95):
