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: Haaretz
Dec 17, 2007
The Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) has been instructed by the cabinet to continue its work at the Mugrabi walkway near the Western Wall in Jerusalem. The cabinet recently instructed the IAA to complete the work "as soon as possible, with full transparency and with the cooperation of the relevant bodies."
Excavations at the site, a walkway leading to the Mugrabi Gate at the Temple Mount, were halted in June after they raised an international protest. At the end of Sept
Source: The Star
Dec 17, 2007
They have learned how long it would take a runaway slave to walk to freedom from deep in the south.
A year.
"Now think how much longer it would take if you had children with you," prods the teacher. "Or if you lost your shoes wading through the river to throw bloodhounds off your scent."
Not a paper rustles; even the girl eating lunch at the back is fixed on the front.
In this unusual new "sold-out" class at a Scar
Source: Business Week
Dec 17, 2007
Want a present that will raise some eyebrows -- or maybe hackles -- this Christmas? A Finnish charity is selling rings engraved with a swastika to raise money for the country's 80,000 World War II veterans.
A silver ring [costing $86] featuring a swastika is being sold to raise money for Finnish World War II veterans....
The rings are replicas of the 1940 "Air Defence" ring, which was part of a wartime effort to raise money for the Finnish air force. The campa
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 17, 2007
Maps more than 200 years old are being used to help find and protect Britain's natural treasure house of ancient trees.
Historical maps help reveal how landscapes once looked when vast swathes of the country were covered in forest.
As well as showing how much woodland we have lost they can also help pinpoint the ancient survivors.
Source: Business Week
Dec 17, 2007
Want a present that will raise some eyebrows -- or maybe hackles -- this Christmas? A Finnish charity is selling rings engraved with a swastika to raise money for the country's 80,000 World War II veterans.
A silver ring [costing $86] featuring a swastika is being sold to raise money for Finnish World War II veterans....
The rings are replicas of the 1940 "Air Defence" ring, which was part of a wartime effort to raise money for the Finnish air force. The campa
Source: Business Week
Dec 17, 2007
Want a present that will raise some eyebrows -- or maybe hackles -- this Christmas? A Finnish charity is selling rings engraved with a swastika to raise money for the country's 80,000 World War II veterans.
A silver ring [costing $86] featuring a swastika is being sold to raise money for Finnish World War II veterans....
The rings are replicas of the 1940 "Air Defence" ring, which was part of a wartime effort to raise money for the Finnish air force. The campa
Source: Romenesko (media column)
Dec 17, 2007
A caller to the Tampa Tribune wanted to know why the media weren't reporting a story about Hillary Clinton and the Black Panthers -- a tale the woman had heard on Paul Harvey's "The Rest of the Story." Joseph H. Brown writes: "The reason the press hasn't 'covered' this story is that it's totally untrue. It's an urban legend that's been snaking its way across the Internet for years."
Source: USA Today
Dec 17, 2007
Bob Fuchigami was 12 years old when he and his family were told to leave their 20-acre farm in northern California. The peach trees that his immigrant parents had planted were about to yield their first big crop.
It was May 1942, five months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Fuchigami and his parents and siblings were among more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans ordered to report to internment camps. The Fuchigamis ended up at one in dusty southeastern Colorado.
He and
Source: AP
Dec 17, 2007
aqi archaeologists working in a city south of Baghdad unearthed more than 1,000
antiquities and delivered them Monday to the National Museum, which has struggled to rebuild its
collection since it was looted in the U.S.-led invasion.
The museum has been closed to the public since 2003, but curators have been trying to recover some
of the 15,000 stolen relics and piece together a collection.
Qais Hussein, who directs Iraqi archaeological digs, sai
Source: AP
Dec 17, 2007
White House visitor logs are public documents, a federal judge ruled Monday, rejecting a legal strategy that the Bush administration had hoped would get around public records laws and let them keep their guests a secret.
The ruling is a blow to the Bush administration, which has fought the release of records showing visits by prominent religious conservatives.
Visitor records are created by the Secret Service, which is subject to the Freedom of Information Act. But the
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Dec 17, 2007
Most academic disciplines largely trust a decentralized approach to policing potential instances of plagiarism, counting on scholars to report situations when they occur, and journal editors or academic administrators to respond to and punish breaches upon learning about them. The assumption that wrongdoing will eventually become known, and that a cheater’s reputation will be destroyed (along, not unimportantly, with fears of legal dangers for getting involved) has led most scholarly societies t
Source: Deborah Lipstadt at her blog
Dec 17, 2007
According to MEMRI, Syrian Cleric Muhammad Sa'id Ramadhan Al-Bouti said on Al Jazeera that Benjamin Franklin had called upon Americans to Deport Jews from the U.S.
Simply put: this is completely false. No proof of this statement has been found in anything Franklin said. In addition, it contains language that was not used in Franklin's times, e.g. homeland. Moreover, the statement never surfaced before the 1930s. And it comes from a book which no one has ever seen.
If y
Source: Bloomberg News
Dec 17, 2007
Shlomo Venezia was a slave laborer in the crematoriums at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
For eight months in 1944, he loaded the corpses of his fellow Jews into the Nazi ovens -- 12 hours a day, seven days a week, cadaver after cadaver until it became a mechanical task, like feeding a heating furnace with cords of wood.
"Men are animals,'' Venezia says, recalling in a conversation in his Rome clothing shop how he hardened himself. "They resist things you can't ever imagi
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 17, 2007
The Queen will this week pass another milestone in her reign when she becomes the oldest monarch in the history of the nation.
On Saturday she will overtake Victoria, one of her most illustrious predecessors, but the event will pass without any fanfare at Buckingham Palace.
The Queen will spend the day at Windsor Castle with the Duke of Edinburgh. There will be no public pronouncements.
Victoria died on Jan 22, 1901, aged 81 years, seven months, four weeks
Source: Independent (UK)
Dec 17, 2007
It's gone down as the social event of the age – Robert Dudley's three-week bash for Elizabeth I. Now new documents reveal just how lavish it was.
***
If you want to marry the Queen, you have to know how to party. At least, that seems to have been the Earl of Leicester's thinking more than 400 years ago.
Almost no one in England had a good word to say about Robert Dudley, one of the most colourful figures from the years when Elizabeth reigned – apart from th
Source: NYT
Dec 17, 2007
Nashville | On Saturday morning, cars jammed the street outside James and Laura Jane Bowen’s home. Friends chatted in the yard, hands around coffee cups.
With history buffs and curious neighbors looking on, an archaeologist directed the excavation of the Bowens’ lawn in search of a 201-year-old grave and, possibly, the resolution of a long-standing historical puzzle.
The dig’s goal was to solve a mystery over the grave of Charles Henry Dickinson, who was killed in an 1
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 17, 2007
Britain is losing its identity because of over-zealous political correctness and a failure to deal with immigration, the Chief Rabbi has warned.
Sir Jonathan Sacks said that the drive for a multi cultural society had left Britain increasingly intolerant and that too many people were embarrassed about their history.
In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, he stressed that the historic Union with Scotland and the concept of Britain must be preserved.
Echo
Source: NYT
Dec 17, 2007
They call themselves America’s forgotten soldiers.
Four decades after the Central Intelligence Agency hired thousands of jungle warriors to fight Communists on the western fringes of the Vietnam War, men who say they are veterans of that covert operation are isolated, hungry and periodically hunted by a Laotian Communist government still mistrustful of the men who sided with America.
“If I surrender, I will be punished,” said Xang Yang, a wiry 58-year-old still capable
Source: Newsweek
Dec 17, 2007
In a telephone interview with NEWSWEEK'S Holly Bailey, Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, declined to say whether he agreed with evangelical Christians who believe Mormonism is a heretical cult. "First of all, I don't think it's appropriate for me to start evaluating other religions," Huckabee said. "The more I answer these questions, the more people want to say, 'Ah, you describe yourself as a theologian,' or 'Oh, you're the one who is setting yourself up as a judge
Source: Newsday
Dec 16, 2007
A group has formed to oppose the planned Theodore Roosevelt museum in Oyster Bay.
While scattered comments have been made against the proposed $100-million Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Museum and Research Center on Firemen's Field, adjacent to the railroad station, the opposition has been ratcheted up a notch with the formation of Save Firemen's Field.
The group takes its name from the 3.5-acre tract of open land -- now a town parking lot -- where the museum would be
