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: NYT
Jul 25, 2007
Unhappy that The New York Times had published confidential information on American troop deployments, the administration sent a letter of complaint: “I cannot feel any sense of security either for the safe conduct of the affairs of this Department or for the lives and welfare of the soldiers of the United States on the Mexican border, if information of a highly confidential and delicate matter is likely to appear in a newspaper, either through a lack of loyalty on the part of the persons in the
Source: BBC
Jul 25, 2007
An octopus with a porcelain plate stuck to its suckers has led to the discovery of a hoard of ancient pottery, South Korean scientists say.
A fisherman caught the octopus off South Korea's west coast in May. He said the animal appeared to be hiding under a plate.
Archaeologists searched the area and discovered a 12th Century wooden wreck buried in mudflats.
They said more than 500 pieces of porcelain had been recovered so far.
Source: Yahoo
Jul 25, 2007
A US federal judge on Wednesday ordered Sudan to pay 7.9 million dollars to the families of the 17 sailors killed in the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole.
The bombing was carried out by two Yemeni militants with Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network who had trained in Sudan. The US destroyer was anchored in the Yemeni port of Aden at the time of the attack.
The Yemenis blew themselves up next to the Cole, punching a 12-meter (40-foot) hole in its side. Thirty-nine sail
Source: http://americas.irc-online.org
Jul 25, 2007
A much awaited human rights abuse trial is underway in Argentina. The accused is a catholic priest charged with carrying out human rights abuses while working in several clandestine detention centers during the nation's 1976-1983 military dictatorship. The priest was arrested four years ago while living under an alias in Chile. This is the latest human rights trial of accused torturers since the landmark conviction of a former police officer for genocide in 2006.
Source: Independent Online (South Africa)
Jul 25, 2007
President Vladimir Putin said no one should try to make Russia feel guilty about one of the most notorious episodes of the Stalinist era -the so-called Great Purge of 1937 - saying that "in other countries even worse things happened."Speaking at a televised meeting on Thursday with social studies teachers, Putin noted that 2007 is the 70th anniversary of a year that many Russians regard as a synonym for state-sponsored terror. It is an anniversary that has, however
Source: NYT
Jul 25, 2007
Almost half the nation’s school districts have significantly decreased the daily class time spent on subjects like science, art and history as a result of the federal No Child Left Behind law’s focus on annual tests in reading and math, according to a new report released yesterday.
The report, by the Center on Education Policy, a Washington group that studies the law’s implementation in school districts nationwide, said that about 44 percent of districts have cut time from one or mo
Source: NYT
Jul 25, 2007
After more than two years of public tumult, the University of Colorado Board of Regents voted Tuesday to fire a professor whose remarks about the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks led to a national debate on free speech. But it was the professor’s problems with scholarship that the board cited as the cause for his termination.
The professor, Ward L. Churchill, was dismissed on the ground that he had committed academic misconduct by plagiarizing and falsifying parts of his scholarly re
Source: NYT
Jul 25, 2007
When Portuguese television viewers recently voted the former dictator António de Oliveira Salazar “the greatest Portuguese who ever lived” — passing over the most celebrated kings, poets and explorers in the nation’s thousand-year history — the broadcaster RTP braced itself for a strong reaction. But what ensued resembled a national identity crisis.
First the left howled in protest, demanding to know how a man who had sent his enemies to concentration camps in Africa could be revere
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 25, 2007
Inauspiciously, the first day of [Tony Blair's] trip [to the Middle East] marked the anniversary of the "saddest day in Jewish history'' - the Tisha Be'av commemoration of the destruction of the temples of Solomon and Herod in Jerusalem. This unfortunate coincidence should remind Mr Blair that history will stalk him every step of the way - and not always ancient history.
Sixty years ago, the use of the King David by the British colonial government of what was then called Palest
Source: Hal Smith in the Shamokin
Jul 25, 2007
This July 25th marks the 130th anniversary of the Shamokin Uprising, when desperation and starvation drove railroad workers and miners to join the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, America's first nationwide strike.
Railroad workers and miners had perilous jobs in the late 1800's. More than 200 railroad workers and 1000 miners died in accidents every year. The companies often forced both to buy from company stores at inflated prices and work from sunup to sundown. Companies made engine
Source: AP
Jul 24, 2007
Mark Twain had hoped that a president or two might visit his gothic Victorian home in Hartford someday.
On Tuesday, he got his belated wish _ almost.
First lady Laura Bush, a personal fan of Twain's writings, took a private tour of the home. She is the only first lady to visit the house, according to the Mark Twain Home & Museum officials. No president has yet toured the rooms, designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany.
"It's a real big deal for us. It'
Source: AP
Jul 24, 2007
Nobel laureate Alexander Solzhenitsyn has
accused the West of trying to ignore and sideline
Russia.
The 88-year old author, who documented the murderous
Soviet prison camp system based on his own seven-year
experience as a prisoner of the gulag, said the
Western criticism of Russia was often unfair,
according to an interview with Der Spiegel magazine
republished Tuesday in the Russian daily Izvestia.
"Of course, Russia is not a democratic country yet. It
is only starting to bu
Source: caboodle.hu
Jul 24, 2007
Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány has asked historian János Kenedi to lead a seven member panel to draw up a list of secret service documents not yet transferred to the State Security Services Historical Archives. "The team will make recommendations on improving the conditions of accessing former state security documents for research and making them public," government spokesman Dávid Daróczi announced yesterday.
Source: Denver Post
Jul 24, 2007
Sen. Ken Salazar played a key role in a nasty partisan spat on the Senate floor. So nasty that Senate leaders have rewritten history to get rid of it. The Senate purged from the Congressional Record a vote taken on legislation from Salazar, an amendment stating the Senate's opposition to President Bush pardoning Lewis "Scooter" Libby. The Senate defeated that amendment 47-49. But there's no official record that vote ever occurred.
That's fine with Sala
Source: Der Spiegel
Jul 24, 2007
A forgotten monument to Hitler's ideology has emerged from a 70-year time warp -- a castle built in the 1930s to train a new Nazi elite. Vacated by the Belgian army last year, it sheds light on the systematic brainwashing that churned out a generation of fanatics. Now it's being spruced up to teach visitors about the perils of indoctrination.Deep in the Eifel region of western Germany, a stone-clad reminder of Hitler's racist ideology towers above the surrounding wooded hill
Source: AP
Jul 23, 2007
Israel's official Holocaust memorial and museum has unveiled the private archives of one of the most contentious Jewish figures from the Holocaust era in an attempt to exonerate the man's tarnished legacy.
Yad Vashem officials said the material released Sunday should finally put an end to what it said was an unjustified smear campaign against Rudolf (Israel) Kasztner.
Kasztner was hailed by admirers as a Holocaust hero for saving thousands of Jews. But critics reviled h
Source: New Republic
Jul 23, 2007
As a rising St. Louis politician in the mid-1970s, Richard Gephardt was among a dynamic group of aldermen dubbed "The Young Turks." So perhaps it's not surprising that, 30 years later, the former Democratic minority leader of the House of Representatives has aged into an Old Turk. This spring, Gephardt has been busy promoting his new favorite cause--not universal health care or Iraq, but the Republic of Turkey, which now pays his lobbying firm, DLA Piper, $100,000 per month for his ser
Source: AP
Jul 23, 2007
Trees and grasses like those that members of the Chickasaw and Choctaw nations saw when they stopped along a stretch of Coleman Creek may soon grow again at the site where the Indians rested during the Trail of Tears relocation.
The University of Arkansas at Little Rock on Thursday started tearing down buildings on the five-acre site on the southeastern border of its campus. The buildings, including a former restaurant with pilings driven into the creek, are in the waterway's flood
Source: LiveScience
Jul 23, 2007
The Dark Ages had a few more proverbial light bulbs on than once thought, at least when it came to issues of the body.
People living in Europe during early Medieval times (400—1200 A.D.) actually had a progressive view of illness because disease was so common and out in the open, according to the research presented at a recent historical conference.
Instead of being isolated or shunned, the sick were integrated into society and taken care of by the community, the eviden
Source: http://www.freep.com
Jul 23, 2007
Michigan schools don't spend a substantial amount of time on the riot. Some may not cover it at all.
"There isn't anything that mandates it," said David Hales, a social studies consultant with the Wayne Regional Educational Service Agency.
State standards for social studies allow plenty of opportunities for coverage of the civil rights movement, but they don't specifically mention either civil rights or the Detroit riot. Proposed new standards do, suggesting i
