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: Reuters
Nov 13, 2007
China's multi-billion-dollar building boom ahead of the Beijing Olympics has unearthed hundreds of ancient relics -- some 2,000 years old -- leaving archaeologists to pick up pieces behind construction crews.
The director of the State Administration and Cultural Heritage, Shan Jixiang, has urged local officials to conduct archaeological investigations of sites before construction, the China Daily reported on Tuesday.
But in the rush to finish projects ahead of the Augus
Source: Chicago Tribune
Nov 13, 2007
It might come as a surprise to the soldiers who defeated fascism in World War II, but the United States has become a refuge for Nazism and other brands of extremism over the last decade.
On the Internet, that is.
Hundreds of foreign-language Web sites -- some tied to the Chicago area -- are using U.S. servers to dodge laws abroad that prohibit Holocaust denial or racist and anti-Semitic speech. Run by hosts in the United States, they thrive out of reach of prosecutors i
Source: NYT
Nov 13, 2007
Ieng Sary and Ieng Thirith, a husband-and-wife team of French-educated Communist revolutionaries who held senior positions in the Khmer Rouge government in Cambodia in the 1970s, were arrested in Phnom Penh on Monday and charged with crimes against humanity.
Mr. Ieng Sary, a onetime history and geography teacher who became the Khmer Rouge foreign minister and deputy prime minister, was also charged with war crimes.
The two were arrested at their Phnom Penh home, where
Source: HNN Staff
Nov 13, 2007
In a single week three New York Times columnists have addressed the question of Ronald Reagan's intentions in 1980 in starting his campaign for the presidency near Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site of the notorious murders of civil rights activists, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney. First was David Brooks, the Times's sole in-house conservative columnist, in a piece titled,
Source: National Security Archive
Nov 13, 2007
A federal judge yesterday ordered the Executive Office of the President to preserve all e-mail backup media in its possession, or under its custody or control, under conditions that will preserve its eventual use. The Order came in two cases, consolidated today, that seek to enforce the Executive Office of the President's, and its component agencies', Federal Records Act obligations. The two cases were separately filed by the National Security Archive and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics i
Source: http://www.newsleader.com
Nov 12, 2007
STAUNTON — The sculpted figures of men, women and children writhe and twist as they are pulled through the layers of a whirlpool.
In the center of the oil clay maquette, a figure stretches its arm pleadingly as it is pulled down.
Local sculptor Ken Smith said the idea for his “Middle Passage,” a piece that tells the story of slaves crossing from Africa to the new world, was partially inspired by a scene in the movie “Amistad.” The scene depicts passengers, chained toget
Source: http://www.praguemonitor.com/
Nov 12, 2007
U.S. Ambassador Richard Graber handed over unique documentary film shots from the liberation of the Czech Lands in 1945 to the Czech National Film Archive director Vladimir Opela Friday, on the occasion of the November 11 Veterans Day.
The film, shot by U.S. military amateur photographers, has never been presented in the Czech Republic yet.
Graber said the shots are evidence of the joint U.S.-Czech history connecting both countries, and they enable to preserve the legac
Source: BBC
Nov 12, 2007
Northern Ireland's largest loyalist paramilitary group, the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), has said it is standing down its units and putting beyond use - but not decommissioning - its weapons.
The UFF units have been ordered to stand down
Like a lot of things in Northern Ireland at the moment, if this had happened 10 years ago, it would have made front page headlines around the world.
As it is, the main reaction from the public has been scepticism and
Source: History Today
Nov 12, 2007
Three Qing vases have been pieced together and are back on public display after they were toppled by a museum visitor last year. The 17th-century porcelain was left in hundreds of pieces after a visitor to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge accidentally fell into the antiques in January 2006. One of the items (in 113 fragments) had already been glued together by restorer Penny Bendall and the remaining two have now gone on show – behind a specially designed glass case. The repair work cost up t
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Nov 12, 2007
What a high school girl found in 6 inches of South Georgia dirt last year may help rewrite the history of Europeans' earliest forays into the great, green New World that greeted them half a millennium ago.
The discovery is a glass bead no larger than a pencil eraser. It and four other beads, plus two ancient slivers of iron, may prompt historians to reconsider the presence of Spaniards in Georgia five centuries ago.
Source: AFP
Nov 12, 2007
Time, as we all know, is relative: good experiences seem to fly by, whereas bad ones seem to drag on forever.
"After two hours, I looked at my watch," a reviewer of Wagnerian opera is said to have written. "I found that 17 minutes had gone by."
In 1905, Albert Einstein wrote his own treatise on the relativity of time, famously theorising that time speeds up or slows down according to how fast an object is moving in relation to another object.
Source: AP
Nov 12, 2007
The sophisticated design and colorful artwork found in a 4,000-year-old temple unearthed near Peru's northern desert coast suggests that early civilization here was more complex than originally thought, archaeologists said.
Ventarron, a 7,000-square-foot site — a bit larger than a basketball court — with painted walls and a white-and-red mural of a deer hunt, points to an "advanced civilization," said the lead archaeologist who excavated the site last week.
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Source: Reuters
Nov 12, 2007
The teenage son of a Mapuche Indian chief came a step closer to becoming Argentina's first indigenous saint on Sunday when he was beatified by the Roman Catholic Church in his remote Patagonian homeland.
Local media said about 100,000 people flocked to the small town of Chimpay for the ceremony to beatify Ceferino Namuncura, who died of tuberculosis more than a century ago when he was 18 and studying to become a priest.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 12, 2007
Our love affair with chocolate began at least 500 years earlier than previously thought, and was combined with a love of alcohol too, according to traces of the treat found in pottery shards uncovered in Honduras.
Archaeologists have long known that cocoa was cultivated in the land between the Americas - including what today is Guatemala, Mexico, and Belize - for thousands of years and was the favourite drink of the powerful elite.
Chocolate ultimately became the standa
Source: Chicago Tribune
Nov 12, 2007
Visitors to the gleaming glass-and-steel William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library can see the former First Lady Hillary Clinton's gold-embroidered 1997 inaugural ball gown and hear Clinton extol his wife's contributions to his administration.
In time, Hillary Clinton "will deserve a lot of the credit" for the comprehensive health coverage that the former president predicts is on the horizon, he gushes in the audio for an exhibit celebrating "The Work of the Firs
Source: NYT
Nov 12, 2007
DALLAS — Prospective bidders looking to buy a piece of the Old West here over the weekend were greeted by an intimidating view straight down the barrel of a Model 1883 Gatling gun. Behind the weapon, an exhibit hall at a hotel was filled with rows of exquisitely beaded moccasins, revolvers and well-oiled Western saddles.
The items were included in auctions of more than 800 artifacts from a trove of period photographs, Indian artifacts and historic memorabilia acquired by Mayor Steph
Source: NYT
Nov 12, 2007
The fate of the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery is uncertain this Veterans Day weekend, as the Army has yet to decide whether to replace or repair the 75-year-old monument, which is marred by several large cracks.
Under consideration for years, the idea of replacing the monument has pitted conservationists, who think the original structure should be restored, against those who say that replacing the tomb is inevitable and will properly memorialize America’s falle
Source: Richard Rubin in the NYT
Nov 12, 2007
BY any conceivable measure, Frank Buckles has led an extraordinary life. Born on a farm in Missouri in February 1901, he saw his first automobile in his hometown in 1905, and his first airplane at the Illinois State Fair in 1907. At 15 he moved on his own to Oklahoma and went to work in a bank; in the 1940s, he spent more than three years as a Japanese prisoner of war. When he returned to the United States, he married, had a daughter and bought a farm near Charles Town, W. Va., where he lives to
Source: NYT
Nov 12, 2007
He had all-American cover: born in Iowa, college in Manhattan, Army buddies with whom he played baseball.
George Koval also had a secret. During World War II, he was a top Soviet spy, code named Delmar and trained by Stalin’s ruthless bureau of military intelligence.
Atomic spies are old stuff. But historians say Dr. Koval, who died in his 90s last year in Moscow and whose name is just coming to light publicly, was probably one of the most important spies of the 20th ce
Source: AP
Nov 11, 2007
DZERZHINSK, Belarus: Among the splinters of a memory shattered by the Holocaust is Alex Kurzem's image of himself as a jolly little boy who liked to climb an apple tree in the family garden, pretending to be a sailor scanning the horizon from the crow's nest.
Then, at about age 6 or 8, a carefree childhood ends and life becomes a story of horror and deliverance. ...
Now gray-haired and in his 70s (he is still unsure of his age), he tells his story in a book, "The M
