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
Dec 27, 2007
The United States Mint has announced the designs for the next four coins in its decade-long series of one-dollar coins featuring American presidents. James Monroe, the fifth president, will appear on Feb. 14, followed at three month intervals by John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren. The Mint is also redoubling its efforts to get the public to use more of the dollar coins, which are the same size and color as the Sacagawea dollars first issued in 2000. A test program in the Wash
Source: Russia Today
Dec 27, 2007
Nineteen million documents stored in the archives of Russia's Defence Ministry have been digitalised. The aim of the project was to help people find relatives killed or never found during World War II. The site has attracted millions of visitors from across the world. All you need is a last name in order to trace a person.
It took a year of tireless work to sort and scan the records. Before scanning, the documents needed to be smoothed out to guarantee no information was lost.
Source: Press Release: David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
Dec 27, 2007
Holocaust-denial activity increased worldwide in 2007, following a temporary lull in 2006, according to this year’s annual report on Holocaust-denial activity around the world.
The year-end report, Holocaust Denial: A Global Survey - 2007, is published by The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, which is based in Washington, D.C. The report’s co-authors are Holocaust scholars Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of the Wyman Institute, and Dr. Alex Grobman, coauthor of the book D
Source: Reuters
Dec 27, 2007
Archeologists have discovered the ruins of an 800-year-old Aztec pyramid in the heart of the Mexican capital that could show the ancient city is at least a century older than previously thought.
Mexican archeologists found the ruins, which are about 36 feet high, in the central Tlatelolco area, once a major religious and political centre for the Aztec elite.
Since the discovery of another pyramid at the site 15 years ago, historians have thought Tlatelolco was founded b
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 26, 2007
He is synonymous with the traditional image of the Victorian English Christmas but Ebenezer Scrooge may have his roots much further afield.
According to Sjef de Jong, a Dutch academic, the Charles Dickens character may have been inspired by the real life of Gabriel de Graaf, a 19th century gravedigger who lived in Holland.
De Graaf, a drunken curmudgeon obsessed with money, was said to have disappeared one Christmas Eve, only to emerge years later as a reformed characte
Source: NYT
Dec 26, 2007
Calling it “an awful and disgusting lie,” Will Smith said through his publicist that he is angry with a newspaper reporter’s interpretation of comments he made about Hitler, The Associated Press reported. In an article published Saturday in The Daily Record, in Scotland, Mr. Smith was quoted as saying: “Even Hitler didn’t wake up going, ‘Let me do the most evil thing I can do today.’ I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was good
Source: Ascribe
Dec 26, 2007
"The human race has been dropping the ball both literally and metaphorically for much of its recorded history, and likely before that. However, no country has made a fetish of doing so prior to the United States in 1908 when we started the Times Square affair with a 700-pound monster some five feet in diameter," declares Hamilton College anthropologist Douglas Raybeck on the eve of the 100th drop.
"Anthropologists ponder the significance of all sorts of human
Source: AFP
Dec 26, 2007
AIN TAMUR, Iraq (AFP) - No-one celebrated Christmas in Al-Aqiser church on Tuesday, for what many consider to be the oldest eastern Christian house of worship lies in ruins in a windswept Iraqi desert.
Armed bandits and looters rule in the region and no one can visit the southern desert around Ain Tamur unescorted, local officials say.
But 1,500 years ago, the first eastern Christians knelt and prayed in this barren land, their faces turned towards Jerusalem.
Source: AP
Dec 26, 2007
A new book claims to have definitive evidence of a long-suspected technological crime — that Alexander Graham Bell stole ideas for the telephone from a rival, Elisha Gray.
In "The Telephone Gambit: Chasing Alexander Graham Bell's Secret," journalist Seth Shulman argues that Bell — aided by aggressive lawyers and a corrupt patent examiner — got an improper peek at patent documents Gray had filed, and that Bell was erroneously credited with filing first.
Shulman
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
Dec 26, 2007
If a new information security policy emerges, it's not likely to come
from the Central Intelligence Agency, which still adheres to the
coldest of cold war secrecy policies.
Due to CIA classification restrictions, a new State Department
documentary collection on The Intelligence Community, 1950-1955 suffers
from significant, basic omissions.
"Between the fiscal years ended June 30, 1947 and 1955 the total budget
has increased from approximately [dollar figures not declassifi
Source: NYT
Dec 25, 2007
At a time when some voters are asking how the religious views of candidates will shape their policies, a professor’s discovery of how little tax the biggest landowners in her state paid to finance the government has prompted some other legal scholars to scour religious texts to explore the moral basis of tax and spending policies.
The professor, Susan Pace Hamill, is an expert at tax avoidance for small businesses and teaches at the University of Alabama Law School. She also holds a
Source: Chicago Tribune
Dec 25, 2007
HAMBURG, Germany - This port city's most famous tourist draw will probably always be the Reeperbahn, the half-mile stretch of neon-lit strip joints, brothels and sex clubs that caters to the hedonistic urges of both sailors and landlubbing types.
But Hamburg's boosters wish to direct your attention to a new, entirely more wholesome waterfront attraction: The BallinStadt Museum, which opened its doors over the summer and offers visitors a glimpse into the remarkable story of how Hamb
Source: AP
Dec 25, 2007
Revolutionary War re-enactors are returned to the Pennsylvania shore by rescue craft after attempting to cross the Delaware River as part of a re-enactment of George Washington's historic crossing of the river, at Washington Crossing, Pa., Tuesday, Dec. 25, 2007. A strong current kept the re-enactors from making the crossing.
Source: WaPo
Dec 25, 2007
Was 2007 dull?
America's magazine editors seemed to think so. They kept finding excuses to publish stories about other years. U.S. News & World Report ran a cover story on 1957. Rolling Stone published an entire issue devoted to 1967. Newsweek ran a cover story on 1968. And Spin ran a package of stories about 1977.
Why? Well, 1957 was 50 years ago. And 1967 was the year Rolling Stone was founded. And 1968 was, Newsweek declared, "the year that made us who we ar
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 24, 2007
Ice skating is enjoying a revival as a family day out - but 5,000 years ago it was invented as a means of survival, say scientists.
Archaeological evidence suggests the first skates were made of animal bones in around 3000 BC to aid travel during the frozen winters in Finland.
Scientists who made the discovery say it means that ice skating is the oldest form of human-powered transport.
Source: NYT
Dec 23, 2007
They were some of the Cold War’s first warriors. Now they say they are among its last casualties, coping with cancers that may be linked to their work in Buffalo-area factories that made components for nuclear weapons half a century ago.
It took decades for the federal government to acknowledge that it exposed thousands of workers around the country to dangerous levels of radiation in factories handling nuclear materials, starting with the Manhattan Project in the 1940s and continui
Source: NYT
Dec 23, 2007
A newly declassified document shows that J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, had a plan to suspend habeas corpus and imprison some 12,000 Americans he suspected of disloyalty.
Hoover sent his plan to the White House on July 7, 1950, 12 days after the Korean War began. It envisioned putting suspect Americans in military prisons.
Hoover wanted President Harry S. Truman to proclaim the mass arrests necessary to “protect the countr
Source: Deutsche Welle
Dec 22, 2007
Munich is seeking to critically confront its past as the so-called capital of the Nazi movement with a new documentation center. Located in the former Nazi headquarters, the center is intended to be a place of learning.
It was in Munich that the National Socialist movement gained ground following the trauma of World War I. A young Adolf Hitler staged a failed coup in the conservative Bavarian capital in 1923 and after coming to power in 1933, the Nazi leader chose Munich as the head
Source: Der Spiegel
Dec 21, 2007
German urban planners have never been as active worldwide as they are today, and Albert Speer is the protagonist in the current success story. The son of the Nazi architect of the same name is preparing a new Olympic bid for Munich, has the ear of Moscow's mayor -- and is designing entire cities for the Chinese.
He changes the world wherever he goes, and yet he takes pains to keep as low a profile as possible. He builds new cities from scratch in China. As an advisor to Moscow Mayor
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
Dec 21, 2007
Legislation (S. 2488) to implement the first reforms to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in more than a decade has been sent the President’s desk for his signature after Congress passed the Openness Promotes Effectiveness in our National Government Act (OPEN Government Act) on December 18, 2007.
The legislation improves transparency in the Federal Government’s FOIA process by:
Restoring meaningful deadlines for agency action under FOIA;
Imposing real c
