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: AP
Oct 19, 2007
Hippies used to say if you remember Woodstock, you weren't really there. Republicans say presidential contender Hillary Rodham Clinton can forget about getting $1 million in taxpayer funds for a Woodstock museum.
Clinton and Charles Schumer, Democratic senators from New York, want to earmark the federal money for a museum that would commemorate the 1969 music festival in their state.
"Woodstock Museum is a shining example of what's wrong with Washington on pork-bar
Source: AP
Oct 18, 2007
SALT LAKE CITY: A vase that was a gift to Adolf Hitler was turned over to investigators, who are rounding up a collection of Nazi artifacts stolen from a Utah storage unit in 2005, authorities said Friday.
The vase was one of five items stolen in that burglary. Three other items were confiscated this week from an antiques dealer, who had been approached by a man who wanted to sell them.
The items apparently were taken from Hitler's "Eagle's Nest" mountain home
Source: Jerusalem Post
Oct 18, 2007
The city of Herzliya is planning to create a wall of boulders at the base of the Apollonia beach cliff in order to prevent it from crumbling further and to preserve the Crusader ruins on top, reports Ha'ir-Tzomet Hasharon. But the wall would also prevent public access to the beach and is being criticized as a "brutal" and unworkable solution to the erosion problems in the area.
According to the report, Herzliya's planning and construction sub-committee decided on the drama
Source: Catholic News Agency
Oct 18, 2007
“Let us love our enemies, bless those who curse us, pray for those who persecute us. For love will conquer and will endure for all eternity.” — Franz Jagerstatter
Franz Jagerstatter was a rare soul and could be compared to the great contemplatives and saints. He was a simple Austrian farmer who stubbornly refused to serve in the armies of the German Third Reich and to support the Nazi party and was executed as a consequence. Jagerstatter became one of the outstanding figures of Chri
Source: AP
Oct 18, 2007
Detectives said they recovered Nazi artifacts that somehow moved from Adolf Hitler's mountain stronghold to a Utah storage unit where they were stolen two years ago.
The documents, ornately decorated and addressed to Hitler, were obtained from an antiques dealer who had been approached by somebody who wanted to sell them.
The items are believed to have come from Hitler's "Eagle's Nest" in the Bavarian Alps and brought home by an American soldier after World Wa
Source: AP
Oct 18, 2007
The restoration of Germany's famed Anna Amalia Library, a UNESCO World Heritage List site gutted by fire three years ago, has been completed and the building will reopen to the public next week, officials said Thursday.
The US$18.2 million restoration was undertaken after a fire on Sept. 2, 2004, tore through the roof and top floor of the 16th-century rococo palace that houses the library.
Tens of thousands of irreplaceable books were lost and damaged in the fire, thoug
Source: Reuters
Oct 18, 2007
A group of mediaeval minarets in the Afghan city of Herat could be saved thanks to the closure of a busy road threatening their foundations.
The minarets, standing at more than 100 feet, are all that remain of what was once a brilliantly decorated complex for Islamic learning and devotion on the Silk Road on the outskirts of the western Afghan city.
Just over a century ago, more than a dozen minarets stood in Herat, part of a madrasa-mosque complex built in the 15th cen
Source: Newsday
Oct 18, 2007
London's Science Museum canceled a talk by Nobel Prize-winning geneticist James Watson after the Long Island-based scientist told a newspaper that Africans and Europeans had different levels of intelligence.
Watson, a world-renowned scientist who co-discovered the structure of the DNA molecule - one of the 20th century's greatest scientific finds - has been quoted in a London newspaper saying Africans are less intelligent than Europeans, prompting a backlash from researchers, even t
Source: NYT
Oct 18, 2007
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday that she was reconsidering her pledge to force a vote on a resolution condemning as genocide the mass killing of Armenians starting in 1915, as President Bush intensified his push to derail the legislation.
“Whether it will come up or not and what the action will be remains to be seen,” Ms. Pelosi said in light of the decline in support for the proposal, which, though nonbinding, has angered Turkey and raised fears that the Turkish governmen
Source: Salon
Oct 18, 2007
The 2008 crop of presidential candidates is certainly a literate bunch. They've all written books, except Rep. Duncan Hunter,R-Calif., unless he's the Duncan Hunter who wrote, "A Martian Poet in Siberia," a self-published sci-fi novel about global warming. Published between 1972 and two weeks from now, the candidates' books vary as much as their authors, ranging from gripping personal revelation to high-minded speechifying to run-of-the-mill wonkery.
And we have read many
Source: AP
Oct 17, 2007
A poll published Wednesday showed a quarter of Germans believe there were at least some positive aspects to Nazi rule — a finding that comes after a popular talk show host was fired for praising Nazi Germany's attitude toward motherhood.
Pollsters for the Forsa agency, commissioned by the weekly Stern magazine, asked whether National Socialism also had some "good sides (such as) the construction of the highway system, the elimination of unemployment, the low criminality rate (a
Source: International Herald Tribune
Oct 17, 2007
Almost from the start, it seems, humans headed for the shore to get away from the cares at home. But this was no holiday for them. More than likely, it was a matter of survival at a perilous time of climate change throughout Africa 164,000 years ago.
By then, Homo sapiens had developed a taste for shellfish, out of necessity and much earlier than previously thought, while adapting to life in caves on the craggy coast of southern Africa, scientists report in Thursday's issue of the j
Source: Boston Globe
Oct 17, 2007
The gathering of prominent black leaders and activists at Faneuil Hall a century ago was a pivotal moment in the history of the African-American civil rights movement and for Boston, but it has been largely forgotten.
W.E.B. DuBois, Boston's William Monroe Trotter, and scores of other organizers of the Niagara Movement, a civil rights organization that spawned the NAACP, met in 1907 to discuss how best to oppose segregationist laws in the United States.
Disagreements am
Source: NYT
Oct 17, 2007
Since leaving Capitol Hill in 1999, former Representative Robert L. Livingston has been the main lobbyist for Turkey in blocking Congressional efforts to pass an Armenian genocide resolution.
After succeeding twice before — and collecting more than $12 million in fees for his firm, the Livingston Group — he is pushing once again for his client.
In recent months, Mr. Livingston, a Louisiana Republican who was once speaker-designate of the House, has consulted with Vice P
Source: Christian Science Monitor
Oct 17, 2007
A dramatic rise in tourism ignites a debate in Mexico: Should a private family own an archaeological treasure?
***
Chichen Itza, Mexico - This ancient city, once the most important center of the Maya world, has stood in the jungle here for more than 1,000 years. Scattered across 100 acres, the remains of stone temples and a crumbling observatory offer an imposing glimpse into the innovative Maya civilization, which recorded the annual solar cycle with Swiss-watch precis
Source: Miami Herald
Oct 16, 2007
For 10 years, they fought, hid and prayed for freedom here by the river, those 750 fugitive slaves, free blacks and black Seminoles who drifted west from the middle of Florida to form the largest community of its kind in the early 19th century South. Then, in 1821, their settlement, which they had named Angola after its kindred region in West Africa, was burned and looted and destroyed, probably by order of Gen. Andrew Jackson.
For the past five years, documentary producer Vickie Oldham has
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org
Oct 16, 2007
The unfinished Obelisk Quarry in Aswan, Egypt, has a canal that may have connected to the Nile and allowed the large stone monuments to float to their permanent locations, according to an international team of researchers. This canal, however, may be allowing salts from ground water to seep into what has been the best preserved example of obelisk quarrying in Egypt.
"Working deposits and surfaces exposed during excavation are being damaged by accumulation of salts," the re
Source: MSNBC
Oct 16, 2007
In an interview with MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell this afternoon, Lynne Cheney revealed that while researching the Cheney family tree for her new book "Blue Skies, No Fences," she discovered that the Vice President Cheney and Barack Obama are related -- albeit distantly. According to Mrs. Cheney, the two politicians are eighth cousins.
*** Update *** The Obama campaign emails NBC/NJ's Aswini Anburajan that the Chicago Sun-Times actually wrote about this relation back in Septemb
Source: http://home.hamptonroads.com
Oct 16, 2007
Four Revolutionary War battle flags that were spirited away to Britain more than 200 years ago as battle trophies will find their way to Virginia soon.
Colonial Williamsburg officials announced today that the flags –- three that flew over the 3rd Virginia Detachment, and a Connecticut cavalry flag -- will go on view Dec. 22 through Jan. 9, 2009, in the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum. The display is a coup. The flags were owned by the descendants of a British officer for more
Source: http://www.local6.com
Oct 16, 2007
A sheriff's dive team discovered what is believed to be a late-1800s era steamboat at the bottom of a Central Florida lake during a training exercise last month.
The Lake County sheriff's dive team found the boat at the bottom of Lake Minneola in the lake's southwest corner in Clermont while training with side-scan sonar, which they recently acquired.
The sonar is a piece of equipment that is dragged by a boat and projects images of the underwater environment.
