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: The Art Newspaper
Aug 2, 2007
The Baghdad Museum, which has been sealed with concrete, is to
be reopened to staff. ... After facing the dilemma of having to
balance security and environmental risks, Dr Abbas has decided that the
building should be reopened to staff. In the current security
situation, there is no immediate prospect of the museum being open to
visitors. The Italian government recently provided a massive steel
security door for the Baghdad museum. Last month a gap was breached in
the wall and the
Source: Times (UK)
Aug 2, 2007
The Queen’s grandson Peter Phillips could be forced to renounce his place in the line to the British throne if he goes ahead and marries his Canadian fiancee.
Mr Phillips, who is the son of the Princess Royal and her first husband Captain Mark Philips, is tenth in line to the throne but his marriage could cost him his birthright because his fiance, Autumn Kelly, is a Roman Catholic.
The Tablet , the Catholic weekly, reveals in this week’s edition that Miss Kelly, the da
Source: New Zealand Herald
Aug 2, 2007
Sergei Antonov, the Bulgarian accused of plotting the failed assassination bid against late Pope John Paul II on behalf of the Soviet Union, has died of natural causes, officials said yesterday.
Antonov, 59, was found dead in his apartment in downtown Sofia, the interior ministry said. It did not reveal the cause of the death, but doctors said he had probably died two days earlier.
A former representative of Bulgaria's national airline in Rome, Antonov was accused, but
Source: Guardian
Aug 2, 2007
Google is set to keep a closer eye on what you do online with a new service that tracks of every web page you visit.
Web History, which is already available for American users, is being released to users worldwide in 26 languages today. The service allows surfers to keep tabs of the sites they have visited, and allows Google to provide more targeted results based on the sites users have looked in the past.
The system requires a piece of software to be installed which mo
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 2, 2007
For the past five days, it has been an extraordinary international celebration of youth and goodwill.
A rainbow of uniforms and flags has come together in a tented city as thousands of Scouts from more than 160 nations have marked the centenary of their movement.
A 100 years after Lt Gen Robert Baden-Powell founded the Scouts with an experimental camp of just 20 boys, 40,000 of their successors have descended on his native country for a two-week jamboree remembering him
Source: Kansas City Star
Aug 2, 2007
Who owns the voice of John J. Pershing?
You can hear the World War I general’s address to Americans from the battlefields of France at the Library of Congress or on its Web site — and nobody has a problem with that.
You can also hear it at the National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial — and there’s at least one person who has a problem with that.
Edward Golterman of St. Louis says he holds the rights to the Pershing speech and at least three other rec
Source: NYT
Aug 2, 2007
Nowhere in the ponderous rules of the United States Senate is there any reference to the Mae West hold, the chokehold or the rotating hold.
Yet over the past 50 years, all three variations on the Senate hold — one of the most secretive backroom weapons in Congress — have been used to tie the chamber in knots by allowing senators to block legislation and nominations anonymously, and to do so for reasons as simple as pique or payback.
Now senators are considering bringing
Source: AP
Aug 1, 2007
What began as a ninth-grade prank, a way to trick already-suspicious friends who had fallen for his earlier practical jokes, has earned Rich Skrenta notoriety as the first person ever to let loose a personal computer virus.
Although over the next 25 years, Skrenta started the online news business Topix, helped launch a collaborative Web directory now owned by Time Warner Inc.'s Netscape and wrote countless other computer programs, he is still remembered most for unleashing the &quo
Source: http://www.24dash.com/
Aug 1, 2007
Herefordshire Council is implementing its plans to preserve the Rotherwas Ribbon archaeological find and protect it for future generations.
A full council meeting confirmed that work on the Rotherwas Relief Road had been stopped around the site since the discovery in April of the Bronze Age ribbon of fire-cracked stones.
The council also determined that no irreversible action be taken that could prejudice its preservation for future generations.
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
Aug 1, 2007
On August 1, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee approved H.R. 1254, the “Presidential Donation Reform Act of 2007.” On March 14, 2007, the House of Representatives approved a similar bill by a vote of 390-34. The bill passed by the Senate panel would make changes from the House-passed version with regard to the triggering amount of a donation requiring disclosure and the length of time the presidential library must report contributions.
Presidential libr
Source: I'mwithFred.com
Aug 1, 2007
In an article posted on the web Fred Thompson compares a judge whose appointment to the United States Court of Appeals has been delayed by Congress to a victim of the Salem Witch Trials. Quote:
You’ve probably never heard of Rebecca Nurse, but bear with me for a moment. Nurse arrived in Salem, Massachusetts in 1640. There, despite being known as a woman of virtue and piety, she was accused of being a witch. On July 19, 1692, she was hanged.
Now almost 315 years to the day
Source: Arizona Republic
Aug 1, 2007
The Phoenix Museum of History is asking city residents to become a part of its next exhibit.
"The Mexican American Mirror: Reflections of Our City's Heritage" will open Oct. 12, and museum officials are looking for donations and loans for the temporary exhibit. Residents can donate or loan items that pertain to Mexican-American history in Phoenix.
"This is a really great opportunity for the community to share what they have with the public," said mus
Source: BBC
Aug 1, 2007
There is no plaque on the wall outside the premises at 52 Friars Vennel in Dumfries.
Sandwiched between a Chinese takeaway and a fishing tackle store it hardly has the aura of historical importance.
Yet it was from that doorway that a "mischievous" young man emerged who would go on to receive the Croix de Guerre from France and Britain's Distinguished Flying Medal.
Now a retired journalist and author from Whitehaven hopes to take the story of Edwa
Source: Army Times
Aug 1, 2007
The Army will present the Silver Star on Tuesday to the daughter of a World War I Army nurse who treated wounded soldiers while under artillery fire in 1918.
Maj. Gen. Gale Pollock, acting surgeon general of the Army and chief of the Army Nurse Corps, will present the posthumous award for Linnie Leckrone at a 1:15 p.m. ceremony at The Women in Military Service for America Memorial in Arlington, Va., according to an Army press release.
Leckrone, who died in 1989, was aut
Source: NYT
Aug 1, 2007
All branches of science search for origins. Biologists want to know how life on earth began. Astronomers want to know how the universe got started. Even in mathematics, questions about how different numerical systems came to be constitute a legitimate line of inquiry.
Linguists are different. In the middle of the 19th century, the main professional bodies governing linguistic research formally banned any investigation into the origins of language, regarding it as pointless. The topi
Source: LAT
Aug 1, 2007
In a sweeping deal to end years of controversy, the J. Paul Getty Museum agreed today to return to Italy 40 antiquities from its collection, including several masterpieces and its prized 5th century BC statue of Aphrodite, a touchstone of its collection.
The draft agreement, reached over a furious exchange of faxes late Tuesday night, includes broader cultural cooperation and loans. It is expected to be finalized in the coming days. With the deal, the Getty will avoid a threatened c
Source: NYT
Aug 1, 2007
Supreme Court justices guard their medical privacy fiercely, and Chief Justice Roberts has proved no exception. All that he authorized the court’s public information apparatus to disclose were the bare facts of the incident on Monday and his release from a Rockport, Me., hospital on Tuesday “to resume his vacation,” as Kathleen Arberg, the court spokeswoman, put it. No further information would be forthcoming, Ms. Arberg said.
The chief justice was following the model of his former
Source: NYT
Aug 1, 2007
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed some irritation on Tuesday at the resolution approved by the House of Representatives in Washington that calls on Japan to acknowledge its wartime sex slavery. His reaction indicated strongly that the Japanese government would not offer surviving victims an official apology.
“The resolution’s approval was regrettable,” said Mr. Abe, who caused a furor in Asia and the United States in March by denying that the Japanese military had directly coerced
Source: Chicago Tribune
Aug 1, 2007
The neighborhoods along Chicago's southern lakefront have been so thoroughly studied that sociologists sometimes confront each other, notebooks and tape recorders in hand, as if they were competing for choice territory....
Chicago's South Side is "the most studied place in the world," according to Howard Becker, one of the most influential of American sociologists. Pattillo's book, published this year, is the latest to explore the Black Belt, the area's historic name.
Source: Monsters and Critics
Aug 1, 2007
Memorial ceremonies across Poland Wednesday marked the 63rd anniversary of the tragic Warsaw Uprising of Polish Home Army (AK) partisans against occupying Nazi German forces, bent on systematically destroying the Polish capital and its population during World War Two.With Poland's post-war communist authorities bent on trivializing the Home Army's wartime drive for Polish sovereignty, the uprising was relegated to the margins of history until the demise of communism in 1989.
