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: NYT
Feb 28, 2008
For the first time in the nation’s history, more than one in 100 American adults is behind bars, according to a new report.
Nationwide, the prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing it to almost 1.6 million. Another 723,000 people are in local jails. The number of American adults is about 230 million, meaning that one in every 99.1 adults is behind bars.
Source: Independent (UK)
Feb 28, 2008
Trevor Phillips, Britain's most influential black figure, has warned that the election of Barack Obama as US president would prolong rather than end America's racial divide.
The chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission accused Mr Obama of "ruthless cynicism" and said he would not be "the harbinger of a post-racial America" if he becomes the country's first black president.
Mr Phillips' surprise attack on the favourite to win the Democrati
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 28, 2008
A leading scientist accuses creationists of peddling the lie that there is no fossil evidence of evolution.
Some Christians claim there is a lack of "missing link" fossils, halfway between two major groups of creatures.
They say this proves Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is a fallacy and that God created each living species from nothing.
But, in an essay published in the magazine New Scientist today, geologist Donald Prothero claims that rep
Source: NPR
Feb 28, 2008
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is creating a commission to exhume the body of Simon Bolivar — the 19th century independence hero of South America. Chavez hopes of prove the liberator didn't die of TB in 1830 as historians believe.
Source: Chicago Tribune
Feb 28, 2008
For more than a century, the bodies of some 300 black soldiers who died in the Civil War have lain in unmarked graves on the bank of Skull Creek harbor in South Carolina. But for Howard Wright, 57, the great-great grandson of a former slave who fought in the war, Talbird Cemetery is part of his family's heritage and, he said, an integral part of American history that should not be forgotten.So he has set out on a mission to get the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to prov
Source: Deborah Lipstadt at her blog
Feb 28, 2008
An author who claimed that after the Nazis took her parents away she at age 7 wandered across Europe, crossed rivers, was befriended by wolves [wolves?? yup wolves], and managed to survive has apparently admitted she made the whole thing up. The European press is full of
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Feb 28, 2008
This week, Princeton University lifted restrictions it had placed on public access to Michelle Obama’s senior thesis. The limits on access to her scholarship on “Princeton Educated Blacks and the Black Community” had fueled a small firestorm. (“What’s Princeton Concealing for Michelle” read one headline Monday in The Conservative Voice.)
Similarly, Hillary Clinton’s Wellesley College senior thesis “has been speculated about, spun, analyzed, debated, criticized and defended,” as MSNB
Source: The Horse's Mouth (blog)
Feb 28, 2008
[Fox News radio host John Batchelor has reported that] Bill Ayers, a former member of the Weather Underground who has been unrepentant about the bombs set by the group, [was Obama's mentor.] The germ of the story -- that Obama has some sort of relationship with him -- is true. But look at how creatively Batchelor embellishes the whole tale...
You see, in Fox's telling, now Ayers is Obama's "mentor" and he and fellow Weather Underground member Bernadine Dohrn were "pri
Source: NYT
Feb 28, 2008
The question has nagged at the parents of Americans born outside the continental United States for generations: Dare their children aspire to grow up and become president? In the case of Senator John McCain of Arizona, the issue is becoming more than a matter of parental daydreaming.
Mr. McCain’s likely nomination as the Republican candidate for president and the happenstance of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 are reviving a musty debate that has surfaced periodically sin
Source: http://www.swissinfo
Feb 27, 2008
Swiss volunteers fought alongside the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, incurring punishments when they returned home. They have still not been pardoned.
A group fighting for their rehabilitation has published a list of the volunteers' names to heighten awareness of this forgotten chapter of Swiss history – 70 years on.
"We are in a state of enthusiasm. It's not pure anarchism here. Our Spanish companions have shown that you can live without masters... We are experie
Source: Prague Post
Feb 27, 2008
Members of Plzeň's Jewish community are suing police for allowing extremists at Saturday's demonstration to raise their arms in a "Sieg Heil" salute and to shout anti-Semitic slogans in front of the town's main synagogue, Radio Impuls reports.
In spite of protests from the Jewish community and other members of the public, the Supreme Administrative Court allowed some 200 neo-Nazi sympathizers, heavily guarded by police, to march through the center of Plzeň
Source: Discovery News
Feb 27, 2008
A Neanderthal-eat-Neanderthal world may have spread a mad cow-like disease that weakened and reduced populations of the large Eurasian human, thereby contributing to its extinction, according to a new theory based on cannibalism that took place in more recent history.
Aside from illustrating that consumption of one's own species isn't exactly a healthy way to eat, the new theoretical model could resolve the longstanding mystery as to what caused Neanderthals, which emerged around 25
Source: AFP
Feb 27, 2008
French fossil hunters have pinned down the age of Toumai, which they contend is the remains of the earliest human ever found, at between 6.8 and 7.2 million years old.
The fossil was discovered in the Chadian desert in 2001 and an intense debate ensued over whether the nearly complete cranium, pieces of jawbone and teeth belonged to one of our earliest ancestors.
Critics said that Toumai's cranium was too squashed to be that of a hominid -- it did not have the brain cap
Source: Toledo Blade
Feb 27, 2008
For decades Turkey Foot Rock has served as the Ohio Historical Society's monument to the role Native Americans played in the Battle of Fallen Timbers.
And perhaps for decades it's been upside down, the result of careless moving around that no one noticed for 60 or so years until an amateur archaeologist from Columbus discovered it last year.
Jim Murphy, a retired Ohio State University librarian who has a master of science degree in geology from Case Western Reserve University
Source: CNN
Feb 27, 2008
Williamsburg | Still a work in progress, Great Hopes Plantation's eerie, breeze-swept quiet is starting to speak softly but pointedly about the slavery that built the foundations of parts of colonial America.
In its fifth year, one of Great Hopes' most telling features is this working, living plantation's proximity to the most opulent icon of Colonial Williamsburg, the Governor's Palace.
Trees and a large berm help hide from view the Duke of Gloucester Street's well-to
Source: Press Release--http://www.savingantiquities.org
Feb 27, 2008
Dr. Donny George and SAFE / Saving Antiquities for Everyone invite you to participate in the 2008 Global Candlelight Vigil to mark the fifth anniversary of the 2003 looting of the Iraq Museum in Baghdad.
In the five years since this terrible event, nearly half of the missing works have been recovered. Yet thousands of Iraq Museum artifacts remain at large. Meanwhile, museums around the world are increasingly confronted by security challenges, and rampant looting at archaeological si
Source: Press Release--Justice for Jews from Arab Countries
Feb 27, 2008
Today, Congress moved one step closer to recognizing the 'forgotten refugees.'
In a unanimous bi-partisan decision, the House Foreign Affairs Committee approved H.Res 185, a Resolution recognizing the plight and flight of over 850,000 from Arab countries. The Resolution now moves to the full House of Representatives for a vote.
The Resolution was introduced in the House by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) along with Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-NY)
Source: Reuters
Feb 27, 2008
There was more than the obvious reason to feel blue for people offered in human sacrifice rituals by the ancient Maya to their rain god -- they were painted blue before being heaved into a watery sinkhole.
And it wasn't just any blue. It was Maya blue -- a vivid, somewhat turquoise-colored pigment used for about a millennium by Mesoamerican peoples to decorate pottery, figurines and murals that has long mystified scientists.
But now anthropologists from Wheaton College
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 27, 2008
Turkey is working on a revolutionary new interpretation of the Prophet Mohammed’s reputed sayings, known as the Hadith.
The project is aimed at allowing millions of Muslims to re-evaluate their religious obligations in the light of modern ways of living.
The sayings of the Hadith hold the key for Muslims worldwide to interpret the Koran. Sharia or Islamic law is also rooted in the Hadith.
Source: NYT
Feb 27, 2008
Prof. Jeremy D. Popkin returned to his office at the University of Kentucky on Feb. 19 after teaching a lesson about Vichy France in his course on the Holocaust. During its 30 years on the curriculum, the class has grown perpetually popular, with 60 applicants vying for half as many seats. The university has even created a Judaic Studies program.
Yet, when Professor Popkin opened his e-mail that day, he was informed that his class did not exist. “This week, the University of Kentuck
