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: Scotsman.com
Aug 13, 2007
ARCHAEOLOGISTS have unearthed the remains of a medieval tower at Edinburgh Castle thought to have been lost forever.
Fragments of Constable's Tower, which was destroyed by Elizabeth I's army during a siege, were found during excavation work for the attraction's new visitor centre.
A team of experts found a drain beneath the surface just inside the Castle's main portcullis gate, where a new timber kiosk selling audio tours is to be built.
They were amazed to
Source: Student Press Law Center
Aug 13, 2007
A federal district court on Friday dismissed a lawsuit filed by three high school students who were punished for wearing Confederate symbols to school.
Farmington High School student Bryce Archambo wore a hat in September with a picture of the Confederate flag and the words "C.S.A., Rebel Pride, 1861." School officials made him take off the hat, but Archambo returned the next day wearing a T-shirt and belt buckle with a Confederate flag image and the words "Dixie Clas
Source: http://www.eveningecho.ie
Aug 13, 2007
Germany’s highest court today banned a far-right rally marking this week’s anniversary of the death of Adolf Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess.
The Karlsruhe-based court upheld the local authorities’ decision to ban the demonstration and rejected an emergency appeal by Juergen Rieger, a member of the right-wing NPD party who had requested permission for a rally in the southern town of Wunsiedel where Hess was buried 20 years ago.
Hess hanged himself at age 93 in Spandau Pris
Source: http://www.scoop.co.nz
Aug 13, 2007
The history of New Zealand's intelligence agencies and those it has spied on have been laid bare in a book by Auckland-based journalist, author, and historian Graeme Hunt.
Spies And Revolutionaries – A History of New Zealand Subversion details how several prominent New Zealanders, all of whom are dead, spied for the former Soviet Union during the Cold War. Accusations and suspicions are laid bare before files and information that has never before been made public. This book will cle
Source: Catholic Review
Aug 13, 2007
A bust of the first Catholic Chief Justice of the United States may get booted from its prominent perch in front of Frederick’s City Hall if a group of civil rights activists gets its way.
Pointing to Chief Justice Roger Taney’s role in writing the controversial Dred Scott v. Sanford decision that declared blacks to be non-citizens and that made slavery legal in all territories, members of the Frederick chapter of the NAACP are calling on city leaders to take down the bust.
Source: Time
Aug 13, 2007
SDS is back, and it has a whole new set of rules. Students for a Democratic
Society was once a successful New Left organization in the 1960s until it turned
radical. During a 1968 strike at Columbia University, bands of SDSers took the
Dean of Students hostage, and another faction later developed into the
Weathermen, a militant underground group best remembered for their penchant for
bombs.
Now a new group using the SDS name has emerged, one with a penchant for
participatory demo
Source: Time
Aug 13, 2007
Karl Rove is the most famous, and infamous, political strategist in American
history. There was a time when his range seemed so vast, his influence over
every aspect of the George W. Bush Administration so complete, that Democrats
and Republicans alike simply assumed that the hidden hand of Rove was behind
everything that happened in American politics — whether good or bad for the
President, the Republican Party or the conservative movement.
Source: AP
Aug 13, 2007
Artists, sculptors and photographers knew
Abraham Lincoln's face had a good side. Now it's
confirmed by science.
Laser scans of two life masks, made from plaster casts
of Lincoln's face, reveal the 16th president's unusual
degree of facial asymmetry, according to a new study.
The left side of Lincoln's face was much smaller than
the right, an aberration called cranial facial
microsomia. The defect joins a long list of ailments
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
Aug 13, 2007
Comprehensive data on U.S. military deaths from the Revolutionary War
and the War of 1812 through Operation Iraqi Freedom were presented in a
recently updated report from the Congressional Research Service.
"This report is written in response to numerous requests for war
casualty statistics and lists of war dead. It provides tables, compiled
by sources at the Department of Defense (DOD), indicating the number of
casualties among American military personnel serving in principal wars
and
Source: http://www.independent.ie
Aug 13, 2007
LEGAL action will be taken within a week to stop the excavation of a national monument site on the route of the controversial M3 motorway unless the Government orders all work to stop.
The TaraWatch campaign said that unless Environment Minister John Gormley stopped excavations by next Tuesday it would seek a High Court injunction on the basis that the works were illegal and contrary to EU law.
Source: Reuters
Aug 13, 2007
Archaelogists have discovered a more
than 2,000-year-old Etruscan tomb perfectly preserved
in the hills of Tuscany with a treasure trove of
artifacts inside, including urns that hold the remains
of about 30 people.
The tomb, in the Tuscan town of Civitella Paganico,
probably dates from between the 1st and 3rd centuries
B.C., when Etruscan power was in decline, Andrea
Marcocci, who led digging at the site, told Reuters.
"It's quite rare to find a tomb intact like this,"
said M
Source: AP
Aug 13, 2007
Speaking loudly and carrying on like
Theodore Roosevelt. It's a rare part of the 2008
presidential campaign rhetoric that crosses party
lines.
Democrats and Republicans alike are frequently
invoking the words of the nation's 26th president and
renowned political maverick as they project a
take-no-prisoners image in a time of protracted war
and continuing terrorist threats.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney managed to
mention Roosevelt, a GOP chief executive before he led
Source: Edwin Black at thecuttingedgenews.com
Aug 13, 2007
Although officials of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum have steadfastly insisted that the secret records at the International Tracing Service located at Bad Arolsen are technically not ready for the Internet, both Red Cross and senior Bad Arolsen officials deny this. Indeed, Red Cross and senior Bad Arolsen officials confirm that most of their 42 million records could be made Internet ready within three-to-four months. Moreover, the Red Cross reveals, the idea of Internet access direc
Source: Newsweek
Aug 13, 2007
Sami Adwan is the very model of a soft-spoken professor. He measures his words, and listens carefully to what others have to say. Yet while pursuing an education Ph.D. at the University of San Francisco in the 1980s, Adwan not only refused to listen to Jewish students, he says he dropped out of classes if he knew they included Jews. A Palestinian born in the village of Surif, near Hebron, Adwan had grown up under the shadow of the Israeli occupation, hearing tales from his father and grandfather
Source: Arizona Republic
Aug 12, 2007
The golf-ball-size chunk is among the oldest rocks you will ever see.
At 4.5 billion years old, it's part of a larger rock that spent years swirling in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
An impact with another asteroid tossed the chunk into an orbit that crossed the Earth's path. It eventually fell through the atmosphere and broke up above a Chicago suburb. One lump hit a firehouse near midnight March 26, 2003. Other pieces plowed into homes, with one landing
Source: AP
Aug 12, 2007
ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. - This city almost erected a billboard outside Jamestown, Va., to congratulate it on its 400th birthday - and remind everyone St. Augustine passed that milestone four decades ago.
It would have said, "Happy birthday to our younger brother," former Mayor George Gardner said.
Jamestown got a lot of attention this past spring celebrating the anniversary of its founding on May 14, 1607, making it the oldest English settlement in the nation. Que
Source: Times (UK)
Aug 12, 2007
THE last dedicated A-levels in Latin and Greek are to be scrapped from next year, sparking opposition from the country’s leading classicists.
As thousands of A-level candidates wait to get their results this week, it has emerged that the OCR exam board is planning to combine the two subjects along with ancient history and classical civilisation into a single classics A-level, to be taught from 2008. Other boards that set A-levels in England have already combined the subjects or stop
Source: startribune.com
Aug 12, 2007
Louisa May Alcott is probably best known for her classic novel, "Little Women."
But it was the rash on her face in a 19th-century portrait that intrigued Dr. Ian Greaves of the University of Minnesota.
Greaves, a professor of environmental health, suspected that it held the key to a medical mystery. Now, he and a colleague think they've finally diagnosed the problem 119 years after Alcott's death.
In a scientific paper published this spring, Greaves and
Source: WaPo
Aug 12, 2007
The depiction of the Battle of Gettysburg's climactic moment has begun the final stages of its return. The circular oil painting survived 124 years of use and abuse. It has been restored in an $11.2 million, four-year conservation program and will be the showpiece of a new $7.5 million building at Gettysburg National Military Park.
Last week, a Great Falls-based firm, Olin Conservation Inc., assisted by a team of Polish cyclorama experts, raised the first of 14 sections of the paint
Source: Baltimore Sun
Aug 12, 2007
A decade ago, the list of the top 10 TV shows favored by African-American viewers and the list of top shows among all viewers shared only one program: Monday Night Football.
But this year, for the first time in a generation, the polls on shows favored by white and black audiences are strikingly similar, in agreement on eight of the top 10.
Never in the 20 years that the data from Nielsen Media Research has been systematically compared based on race has such a convergenc
