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: National Geographic
Mar 26, 2008
A fast-dying language in remote central Siberia shares a mother tongue with dozens of Native American languages spoken thousands of miles away, new research confirms.
The finding may allow linguists to weigh in on how the Americas were first settled, according to Edward Vajda, director of the Center for East Asian Studies at Western Washington University in Bellingham.
Since at least 1923 researchers have suggested a connection exists between Asian and North American la
Source: Wired.com
Mar 26, 2008
Family and friends of servicemen and women who died or vanished in the Vietnam War no longer have to travel to Washington to pay their respects at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
An interactive version debuts online this week, a project of historical document archive site Footnote.com in conjunction with the National Archives and Records Administration.
Source: Voice of America
Mar 26, 2008
The fields around the battlefield of Ypres, the site of four years of bloodshed during World War I, are littered with hidden trenches, bunkers and dugouts that are being excavated by archaeologists. But the expansion of an industrial park, combined with the city of Ypres' rapid expansion, threatens to destroy kilometers of hidden history.
Source: Times (UK)
Mar 26, 2008
Friedrich Nietzsche declared famously that “God is dead!” so it is probably safe to assume that he did not much care what happened to his skeleton.
Which may be just as well as bulldozers prepare to turn over the philosopher's grave and his birthplace in search of brown coal.
The village of Röcken, south of Leipzig, is plastered with posters bearing quotes from Nietzsche's masterpiece, Thus Spake Zarathustra, announcing “Be true to the soil!” in a desperate attempt to p
Source: NYT
Mar 26, 2008
Next time you’re considering whether to run for president, don’t forget to weigh the value of the fast and free genealogical research that comes with candidacy, guaranteed to uncover your ancestral connection to a modern-day celebrity — or at least a minor historical figure.
Last fall, The Chicago Sun-Times revealed that Senator Barack Obama and Vice President Dick Cheney are distant cousins. On Tuesday, the New England Historic Genealogical Society said Mr. Obama had at least six p
Source: WaPo
Mar 26, 2008
Sen. Barack Obama offers himself as a post-partisan uniter who will solve the country's problems by reaching across the aisle and beyond the framework of liberal and conservative labels he rejects as useless and outdated.
But as Obama heads into the final presidential primaries, Sen. John McCain and other Republicans have already started to brand him a standard-order left-winger, "a down-the-line liberal," as McCain strategist Charles R. Black Jr. put it, in a long line of
Source: Nixon Blog
Mar 26, 2008
Sen. Clinton erred again today even as she admitted she misspoke about her experience in Bosnia as First Lady:
Clinton backpedalled Tuesday, saying that she had “made a mistake in describing it. “We were … very much told by the Secret Service and the military that we were going into a war zone and that we had to be conscious of that,” Clinton told an audience. “I was the first first lady taken into a war zone since Eleanor Roosevelt during World War II.”
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
Mar 26, 2008
In a memorable TV interview with former Secretary of State James Baker,
prankster"Ali G" (Sasha Baron Cohen) wondered about the possibility of
confusing"Iran" and"Iraq.""Do you think it would be a good idea if one of them changed their name
to make it very different sounding from the other one?" he asked
Secretary Baker."Ain't there a real danger that someone give like a message over the
radio to one of them fighter pilots whatever saying bomb 'Ira...' and
the geezer don't hear it pr
Source: Boyd Tonkin in the Independent (UK)
Mar 26, 2008
Outbreaks of revisionist history are currently questioning the deepest beliefs about the past of countless citizens in France, Britain and the US.
In France, a compendium of essays entitled The Black Book of the French Revolution has triggered a media avalanche of dismay and disgust with its indictment, not only of the violence of the Terror and the ruinous wars that wracked Europe from 1792 to 1815, but of the revolutionary ideal itself.France, of course, does maintain a state fait
Source: http://www.wiscnews.com
Mar 26, 2008
There won't be a sign telling motorists that they're about to traverse the newly named Veterans of the American Revolution Memorial Bridge across the Wisconsin River on Interstate 39/90/94 just south of Portage.
However, travelers who stop at the rest areas just south of the bridge soon will see plaques acknowledging the bridge's designation and detailing the ways in which veterans of the American Revolution (1775-1783) touched Wisconsin.
On Monday, Gov. Jim Doyle signe
Source: AP
Mar 26, 2008
JACKSON, Miss. -- The $73 million National Civil Rights Museum will be located on a 9-acre site at Tougaloo College in north Jackson, but not everyone is happy about it.
A commission set up by Gov. Haley Barbour voted 22-9 in favor of the location on March 11.
Opponents argued that downtown Jackson would be a more viable site for the museum, which is expected to draw 125,000 visitors a year. Along with several other museums and tourist attractions, proponents say downto
Source: AP
Mar 26, 2008
Ohio's Division of Tourism has joined the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in promoting Underground Railroad sites around the state.
The Web site http://www.passagetofreedomohio.com and a series of kiosks to be placed around Ohio will help people plan tours of Underground Railroad locations.
"Passage to Freedom is the first step in what we eventually hope will be a nationwide tourism promotion effort for
Source: Salon
Mar 26, 2008
Oh, look -- is feminism dead? Again? That's what two British papers would have you think. "Farewell to 'predictable, tiresome and dreary' women's studies," read the U.K. Independent’s headline, while the London Times posed a false dichotomy: "Women's studies is about to disappear as an undergraduate degree in the UK. But is it because it is no longer relevant or because it has done its job by putting the issues in the mainstream?"
Or maybe it's that, in fact, wom
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Mar 26, 2008
A federal judge ruled this month that a commercial plagiarism-detection tool popular among professors does not violate the copyright of students, even though it stores digital copies of their essays in the database that the company uses to check works for academic dishonesty. The decision also has wider implications for other digital services, such as Google's effort to scan books in major libraries and add them to its index for search purposes.
The lawyer for the students who sued
Source: Times of India
Mar 26, 2008
A British newspaper editorial comparing the Beijing Olympics to the 1936 Games in Nazi Germany is an ``insult to the Chinese people,'' China's Foreign Ministry said.
In a statement issued late Tuesday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang lashed out at The Sunday Times, which published an editorial by ex-British Cabinet minister Michael Portillo linking the two events.
``It is an insult to the Chinese People, and an insult to the people of every nation of the world,'' Q
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 26, 2008
Twenty-seven Bevin Boys who worked in Britain's coal mines during the Second World War have received commemorative badges from Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
The importance of the contribution by the Boys, who helped ease the UK's severe shortage of coal, has never before been formally recognised.
Mr Brown told them in the ceremony at Downing Street: "I'm sorry, in a way, it's taken until now to recognise your service, but it's right that we do so and it's right that
Source: Scotsman
Mar 26, 2008
THE government is to consider abolishing the 300-year-old Act of Settlement that prevents Catholics ascending to the throne.
The move was revealed by Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, after he unveiled his sweeping draft Constitutional Reform Bill yesterday.
While the bill did not include any move to abolish what Catholics say is legalised discrimination, the matter was raised in the Commons by the Livingston Labour MP, Jim Devine, a Catholic.
Describing the act
Source: CIA
Mar 25, 2008
Fifty years ago, the CIA embarked on a project to intercept Soviet and East German messages transmitted via underground cable. Intelligence was collected to determine the best place to hit the target, and then concrete planning for a new collection site was begun.
The tunnel was 1,476 feet in length and consumed 125 tons of steel liner plate and 1,000 cubic yards of grout . . . This was not a small operation!
Source: AP
Mar 25, 2008
Abraham Lincoln isn't the only Civil War-era historical figure receiving a tribute in Kentucky.
Lincoln's rival and fellow Kentuckian Jefferson Davis will be recognized in Hardin County on his 200th birthday in June, according to The News-Enterprise.
Davis, who as president of the Confederacy opposed Lincoln in the Civil War, was born June 3 near Hopkinsville in western Kentucky. Lincoln was born 199 years ago in what was then Hardin County in a small cabin near what la
Source: http://news.postbulletin.com
Mar 25, 2008
Although an opinion piece details factual errors at the Soldiers Field Veterans Memorial, much work was done to ensure the memorial contains accurate information, says Wayne Stillman of Rochester, the memorial's chairman.
On Tuesday, the Star Tribune of Minneapolis published an opinion piece written by Mark W. Powell of Arlington, Va. Powell saw the monument while visiting a friend in the area last December and said the memorial "fails outrageously" in surveying America's
