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: Fox
Nov 6, 2007
A $104 million dollar hockey arena may be forced to remove hundreds of images of "The Fighting Sioux," the logo and nickname of the University of North Dakota for more than 70 years, if officials can't reach an agreement with tribal councils.
The university, according to a settlement last month of a lawsuit against the National Collegiate Athletic Association, has three years to negotiate an agreement with two North Dakota Sioux tribes — Spirit Lake and Standing Rock — to
Source: Guardian
Nov 6, 2007
For a decade the curious case of the Rapparee Cove bones has caused diplomatic tension and fierce academic argument.
Found during an archaeological dig on the rocky coast of north Devon, the discovery of the remains seemed to confirm that a boatload of slaves was shipwrecked off the British coast and the survivors possibly sold on.
Ten years on, a row over the bones has reignited with one historian criticising a former colleague for not publishing the results of tests o
Source: http://www.novinite.com
Nov 6, 2007
Archaeologists have made a sensational finding on Saturday, dated back to the first Bulgarian Empire (years 681-1018) in the ancient Bulgarian capital of Pliska.
The team of archaeologists found state seals, which belonged to the rulers Simeon and Petar.
Source: Der Spiegel
Nov 5, 2007
When Helmut Kohl gave the green light for a Holocaust Memorial in Berlin during the early 1990s, he set in motion a process that has seen a proliferation of monuments across the capital's government district. This Friday the German parliament is to vote on yet another memorial: one dedicated to the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Nov. 9 is the perfect day to vote on memorials in Germany: It is the most German day of all. No other date is quite so pregnant with history: In 1918, it saw the
Source: NYT
Nov 5, 2007
With assertions of the rights of Palestinians to reclaim land in Israel expected to arise at an planned Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Md., a Jewish advocacy group has scheduled a meeting in New York on Monday to call attention to people it terms “forgotten refugees.”
The organizing group, Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, says it is referring to the more than 850,000 Jews who left their homes in Arab lands after the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948.
Source: BBC
Nov 5, 2007
A public appeal has begun to raise £100,000 to save a monument to honour servicemen who died in World War I.
The Memorial Arch, a well-known landmark near Bangor university, features the names of 8,500 men from Gwynedd who died in the Great War.
Built in 1923 the arch needs £155,000 of refurbishments to bring it up to scratch and £47,000 has been donated by the Welsh Assembly Government already.
One of those named on the monument is Trawsfynydd poet Hedd Wyn.
Source: Times (UK)
Nov 5, 2007
Noël Coward was recruited as a British undercover agent as early as 1938 and was deeply critical of fellow actors who “scuttled off” to Hollywood instead of fighting for their country, according to unpublished letters.
Many of the letters date from the war years – a period only touched on in Coward’s autobiography – and reveal details about his spying activities.
The screenwriter for classic films such as In Which We Serve and Brief Encounter – and whose screen performa
Source: Amy Goodman at the website of Democracy Now
Nov 5, 2007
We now turn to a real-life survivor of torture of the Algerian war. Henri Alleg is a French journalist who was arrested by French paratroopers in Algeria in ’57. Alleg was sympathetic to Algerian independence. He was interrogated for a month. He was questioned. He was waterboarded repeatedly. Alleg described his ordeal in an essay called "The Question," which was published in 1958 with a preface by Jean-Paul Sartre. The book was subsequently banned in France and legalized only after th
Source: BBC
Nov 5, 2007
Archaeologists working near Stonehenge have uncovered what they believe is the largest Neolithic settlement ever discovered in Northern Europe. Remains of an estimated 300 houses are thought to survive under earthworks 3km (2 miles) from the famous stone rings, and 10 have been excavated so far.
But there could have been double that total according to the archaeologist leading the work.
"What is really exciting is realising just how big the village for the Stonehen
Source: http://www.cais-soas.com
Nov 5, 2007
Archaeologists have discovered the world's most ancient inscription in the Iranian city of Jiroft, near the Halil Roud historical site.
"The inscription, discovered in a palace, was carved on a baked mud-brick whose lower left corner has only remained,” explained Professor Yousof Majid-Zadeh, head of the Jiroft excavation team.
“The only ancient inscriptions known to experts before the Jiroft discovery were cuneiform and hieroglyph,” said Majid Zadeh, adding that,”
Source: International Herald Tribune
Nov 5, 2007
BAGHDAD: There is neither a cross nor a sign on the heavy metal gate to indicate that this is the official residence of one of the country's most prominent Christians, the first in Iraq in modern times to be elevated to cardinal by the Roman Catholic Church.
The simple structure, in a dilapidated neighborhood of this capital, opposite empty former ministry buildings, is the home of Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly, whom the pope named on Oct. 17 to the College of Cardinals along with 22
Source: NYT
Nov 5, 2007
Deep in the bowels of the York Dungeon, visitors were being treated to a dramatic rendition of the horrific torture and bloodcurdling screams of Guy Fawkes, the city’s most famous deceased resident. Up at the cash register, Kate Stapylton, the duty manager, was talking about the health and safety regulations governing the attraction.
No wet floors. No obstructions in the passageways. Many well-lighted emergency exits. But even with her respect for such policies — “You don’t want any
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE)
Nov 5, 2007
Andrew Mellon’s mansion in Pittsburgh was thought to have one of the first residential indoor pools — a space featuring the same kind of intricate, interlocking Gustavino tile work that one sees all over New York. In 1941, when the Mellons gave the mansion to the Pennsylvania College for Women (known today as Chatham University), the small pool continued to be used by students.
It closed in 2004, when the university built a new athletic facility. Over the years, the room had lost it
Source: Media Matters (Liberal media watchdog group)
Nov 5, 2007
A November 3 Newsweek article headlined "The Hillary Paper Chase: 3,022,030 to go" reported that "National Archives documents obtained by NEWSWEEK and interviews with Archives officials indicate that the vast majority of the Clintons' health-care task-force records are still under lock and key in Little Rock -- and might stay that way for some time." But the article did not report that approximately 10,000 pages of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-NY) documents are already li
Source: Miami Herald
Nov 5, 2007
While the English-speaking Caribbean is this year commemorating the 200th anniversary of the end of the British transatlantic slave trade, communities like Accompong Town, made up of descendants of runaway slaves known as Maroons, stand as living reminders of the vicious yet empowering anti-slavery struggle.But the Maroon legacy in the western Jamaican village of Accompong Town and three other runaway slave settlements remains controversial, because their peace treaty with t
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
Nov 5, 2007
A MOBILE phone rings as Chicka Dixon is talking on the land line.
"What's that? That's bloody ASIO [Australian Security Intelligence Organisation], is it?" the 79-year-old says.
He is only half-joking.
With a 30-year embargo now over, Mr Dixon has in his hands 150 often tedious, sometimes frightening and occasionally humorous pages of his ASIO file from the 1960s and '70s, when he was one of the leaders of the indigenous rights movement.
Source: http://www.bangkokpost.com/O
Nov 5, 2007
About 2,000 books, magazines, photo albums, video tapes, movie and audio CDs relating to homosexuals fill the small room that is the country's only library dedicated to documenting the local gay community.
Called the Thai Queer Resource Centre (TQRC), it was founded by Australian scholar Assoc Prof Peter Jackson with the aim of preventing the history and voice of the Thai GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender) community from erosion by the state.
"No officia
Source: NYT
Nov 4, 2007
As David Rohde reported in The Times today, Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, speaking on Pakistani television about his decision to suspend his country’s Constitution, compared himself to Abraham Lincoln.
The general, dressed in civilian clothes, quoted from Abraham Lincoln and cited the former president’s suspension of some rights during the American Civil War as justification for his own state of emergency.
Speaking in English, General Musharraf began his
Source: Anthony Lewis in the NYT Book Review
Nov 4, 2007
Three years after the American invasion of Iraq, after endless searches had found no sign of weapons of mass destruction, President Bush still believed that Saddam Hussein had had them. He expressed that conviction repeatedly to his chief of staff, Andrew Card, until Card left the White House in April 2006.
So writes Robert Draper in his unusual biography of George W. Bush. It is unusual because Draper, a national correspondent for GQ magazine, was given extraordinary access to this
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
Nov 4, 2007
Pat Sasso couldn't believe his eyes.
He opened the mysterious package that had been delivered to his Glendora home and came face to face with his life as a young soldier 62 years ago.
There was the Nazi flag that Sasso hauled down after he and other American troops took over Cologne, Germany, in 1945. He and his buddies signed their names to it.
There was the swastika armband he took as a souvenir of Adolf Hitler's collapsing Third Reich - and the letter fr
