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: Scotsman
Apr 22, 2008
AN EXHIBITION featuring photographs of Paris taken during the Nazi occupation has provoked so much public indignation that the Paris city council has ordered posters advertising the show to be taken down and has even called for the exhibition to be closed altogether.
Entitled Paris Sous l'Occupation (Paris Under the Occupation), the exhibition at the Paris History Library shows 270 colour photographs – part of the only collection of colour images of their kind – taken between 1941 a
Source: Tom Ferrick in the NYT
Apr 22, 2008
WHEN Philadelphia ward leaders realized the contest for the Democratic nomination for president would extend through the Pennsylvania primary, it set their salivary glands running. It meant they would have an opportunity to extract street money from the campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. And street money is the manna of Philadelphia ward politics.
Street money is the name for cash given to party committeemen and women who hand out literature and drum up the vote on prima
Source: AP
Apr 22, 2008
One of President Nixon's daughters, Julie Nixon Eisenhower, apparently supports a Democrat in this year's presidential contest _ Barack Obama.
Eisenhower has contributed the maximum amount allowed during the primary season to Obama's campaign: $2,300. Federal Election Commission records show she gave Obama's campaign $1,000 on Feb. 4, another $1,000 on Feb. 18 and $300 on March 5.
Source: Chicago Tribune
Apr 21, 2008
A coffee urn given as a wedding present by Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln has been donated to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.
Beginning Monday, the silver-plate coffee urn will be on display at the museum.
The donation was made by a descendant of the groom, a young lawyer named Christopher Columbus Brown.
Source: USA Today
Apr 21, 2008
President Bush has set a record he'd presumably prefer to avoid: the highest disapproval rating of any president in the 70-year history of the Gallup Poll.
In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday, 28% of Americans approve of the job Bush is doing; 69% disapprove. The approval rating matches the low point of his presidency, and the disapproval sets a new high for any president since Franklin Roosevelt.
The previous record of 67% was reached by Harry Truman
Source: AP
Apr 21, 2008
For a society accustomed to the likes of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, the images of the women from the polygamist compound in Texas are almost shocking in their understatement: Ankle-length dresses, makeup-less faces, hauntingly uniform hair.
And while no one would accuse the women of making a fashion statement, the pioneer-style outfits are a rare example of how in an age of overexposure, modesty, too, can give pause.
The puff-sleeved, pastel dresses worn by the wom
Source: WaPo's The Fix (blog)
Apr 21, 2008
Hours after Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) began airing an ad in Pennsylvania that subtly questions Sen. Barack Obama's readiness to handle a pending crisis, the Illinois Senator's campaign unveiled an ad of its own that starkly rebuts that charge.
Clinton's ad declares that the presidency is "the toughest job in the world" and asks "Who do you think has what it takes?" It is similar in message to the "3 a.m. telephone call" ad that Clinton's campai
Source: http://www.archaeology.co.uk (date unknown)
Apr 21, 2008
After a gap of some forty four years, Stonehenge is once again being excavated. Admittedly, this time it is only a very small hole, and is only being dug for a fortnight, but it is a very important hole, and on April the 9th, we were invited down to Stonehenge to inspect it. It was a wonderful trip, not least because the weather was perfect. After the heavy snow fall at the weekend the sun decided to shine and since we were allowed inside the circle, I took the opportunity to take hundreds of p
Source: Washington Times
Apr 21, 2008
As a child, Klaus Schmidt used to grub around in caves in his native Germany in the hope of finding prehistoric paintings. Thirty years later, as a member of the German Archaeological Institute, he found something infinitely more important: a temple complex almost twice as old as anything comparable.
"This place is a supernova," said Mr. Schmidt, standing under a lone tree on a windswept hilltop 35 miles north of the Syrian border.
"Within a minute of fir
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 21, 2008
The law that forces the daughter of a monarch to make way for her younger brother in the succession could be abolished under new equality legislation.
Ministers want to give women equal rights to succeed the throne, ending the rule of primogeniture set down under the provisions of the 1701 Act of Settlement.
The change would not affect the current line of succession, but would mean that if Prince William had a daughter and then a son, his daughter would become Queen.
Source: Times (UK)
Apr 21, 2008
Medieval physicians believed that they could diagnose disease by holding up a flask of the patient’s urine to the light and squinting at it. According to scientists at Imperial College London, they could have been on to something.
A team there has completed the first worldwide study of the metabolites (breakdown products) that are found in urine, reflecting the diet, inheritance and the lifestyle of the people from whom it came. They call such studies “metabolomics” by analogy with
Source: Newsweek
Apr 21, 2008
He was just a college kid, vagabonding around the world. But Barack Obama says the weeks he spent traveling through Pakistan in 1981 shaped the views that he still holds today—and that he would bring into the White House. Obama remembers most vividly the desperation and hopelessness—"essentially a feudal life"—he witnessed in the countryside surrounding Karachi, a city that is today a hotbed of jihadist activity. At the tender age of 20, Obama suggested, he was already beginning to und
Source: George Weigel in Newsweek
Apr 21, 2008
The influence and magnetism of the modern papacy are, in fact, surprises. When Leo XIII was elected in 1878—the first pope in 1,100 years not to control substantial territory as an internationally recognized sovereign—many thought the papacy an impotent anachronism. Leo, however, created the modern papacy as an office of moral persuasion. John Paul II, elected precisely 100 years after Leo, turned the papal bully pulpit into something to be reckoned with in the world. John Paul was one of the ke
Source: Guardian
Apr 20, 2008
As the anniversary of its independence approaches, Israel remains haunted by conflicts of the past and is split along racial, religious, economic and ideological lines. Terrorist attacks are commonplace. But there is also pride mixed with self-criticism, and a yearning for a fresh start on both sides of the Arab-Israeli divide.
Source: http://www.eveningsun.com
Apr 20, 2008
The Adams County Historical Society provided tourists in Gettysburg a great opportunity Saturday to tour the [ Lutheran Theological Seminary] cupola, which is closed save for two times of the year.
"Until recently, nobody was allowed to go into the cupola," said Tim Smith, research assistant with the historical society. "The stairway leading up to the cupola was not safe. Our liability was insane."
In fact, the cupola was closed from 1964 to about th
Source: UPI
Apr 20, 2008
The Boston Tea Party has become more than a moment in history, now representing a template for protests across the nation, a historian says.
Tea Party historical consultant George Quintal Jr. said the event nearly 235 years ago has been mimicked countless times since by protesters in Boston and across the nation, The Boston Globe reported Sunday.
"That's the American way of protest," Quintal said. "We started out protesting with the tea party."
Source: http://www.newsadvance.com
Apr 20, 2008
For more than a century, The Museum of the Confederacy’s home was in Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy during the Civil War.
Housed downtown in the White House of the Confederacy, President Jefferson Davis’ home during the war, the museum, the institution has become the repository of all things relating to the Civil War. But its location in Richmond was also a problem, too: the nearby Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center kept growing and growing, literally engulfing the
Source: Mercury News
Apr 20, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO—As Spain shrugs off the last cobwebs of Gen. Francisco Franco's fascist regime 70 years after it hatched amid civil war, Americans are also looking back, honoring their own who fought there and the ideals for which they stood.
The faces of some of the approximately 3,000 men and women who broke American isolationism to volunteer in the 1936-1939 Spanish war look out from the translucent onyx squares of a monument recently inaugurated on this city's touristed Embarcader
Source: AP
Apr 20, 2008
It's a priceless piece of real estate largely unknown to New York's 8 million inhabitants. From its shore, visitors can see the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and the Brooklyn Bridge.
Situated in the middle of New York Harbor, just a half mile from lower Manhattan, Governors Island is about to undergo an extensive makeover that would turn much of it into lush parkland.
A consortium of five design companies was chosen in December to transform the teardrop-shaped island,
Source: BBC
Apr 20, 2008
Rome took a step back in time on Sunday as the city marked the anniversary of its legendary foundation.
[Click on the SOURCE link to view pics.]
