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
Jun 30, 2007
he 1.5-mile barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border was designed to keep cars from illegally crossing into the United States. There's just one problem: It was accidentally built on Mexican soil. Now embarrassed border officials say the mistake could cost the federal government more than $3 million to fix.
The barrier was part of more than 15 miles of border fence built in 2000, stretching from the town of Columbus to an onion farm and cattle ranch.
A U.S. Customs and Borde
Source: BBC
Jun 30, 2007
Scientists in Spain say that they have found a tooth from a distant human ancestor that is more than one million years old.
The tooth, a pre-molar, was discovered on Wednesday at the Atapuerca site in northern Spain's Burgos Province.
It represented western Europe's "oldest human fossil remain", a statement from the Atapuerca Foundation said.
Source: AP
Jun 30, 2007
Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma said the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan by the United States during World War II was an inevitable way to end the war, a news report said Saturday.
"I understand that the bombing ended the war, and I think that it couldn't be helped," Kyodo News agency quoted Kyuma as saying in a speech at a university in Chiba, just east of Tokyo.
Kyuma's remarks drew immediate criticism from Japanese atomic bomb survivors.
"
Source: HNN Staff
Jun 30, 2007
Egil"Bud" Krogh, one of the Watergate Plumbers, in an op ed in the NYT, claims the break-in of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist office was the real start of Watergate. Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers. From the op ed:
THE Watergate break-in, described by Ron Ziegler, then the White House press secretary, as a “third-rate burglary,” passes its 35th anniversary this month. The common public perception is that Watergate was the principal cause of President
Source: BBC
Jun 29, 2007
An ancient Shetland settlement at risk of crumbling into the sea has been rebuilt - despite fears that it will soon be eroded.
The work on the burial site in Sandwick Bay, Unst, follows an excavation led by the Scottish Coastal Archaeology and the Problems of Erosion Trust (Scape).
It teamed up with the Council for Scottish Archaeology's Adopt-a-Monument scheme for the rebuild project.
The new structures will allow visitors to see the excavation findings.
Source: http://www.radio.cz
Jun 29, 2007
An ongoing dispute over whether the communist hammer and sickle symbols belong on a wartime memorial to Russian soldiers who died during the liberation of Brno at the end of the Second World War has stumped Czech officials, divided the inhabitants of Brno and elicited an official protest from Russia.
The dispute was set in motion by the deputy mayor of Brno, Rene Pelan, who took it upon himself to remove the hammer and sickle symbols from a monument built to commemorate 326 soldiers
Source: http://www.wbaltv.com
Jun 29, 2007
An extremely rare photograph featuring President Abraham Lincoln and his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, is heading to the auction block.
The pre-Civil War ambrotype, which came from a collector, was created with a photographic process that was used in the early 1850s, experts said. The photo can be traced back to the home of Union Civil War Gen. Joshua Chamberlain.
The image is directly on the glass and can be viewed because of the black paper behind it in the frame.
Source: http://www.kath.net
Jun 29, 2007
According to reliable sources, Pope Benedict XVI. has given green light for an examination of the interior of St. Paul's tomb in the Basilica San Paolo fuori le Mura. The position of the stone coffin has not been altered since the year 390. Soon, it is said, archeologists will remove a plug with which the coffin had been sealed in Antiquity. An endoscopic probe is supposed to transmit images of the content. What they will show nobody knows. This alleged decision of the Pope has to be seen in the
Source: Times Dispatch
Jun 29, 2007
It's been 30 years since Alex Haley's "Roots" became the top-rated television event of its time, drawing 130 million Americans' eyes to racial issues and enticing African-Americans to uncover their own complex genealogical histories.
But racially, according to Haley's son, little has changed since the author shared his story of African-born Kunta Kinte, his daughter, Kizzie, and her son, Chicken George -- the first freed slave in Haley's family.
"There h
Source: Globe & Mail (Canada)
Jun 29, 2007
A new poll by the Dominion Institute shows that Canadians are faring dramatically worse today than they did in 1997 in a test of their knowledge of history, politics, culture and geography.
About 60 per cent would fail today a test similar to the one that immigrants take to become Canadian citizens. A decade ago, when the institute began quizzing Canadians, just 45 per cent were unable to score a passing grade by answering 12 out of 21 questions correctly.
Just as strik
Source: Christian Science Monitor
Jun 29, 2007
The Pentagon held a screening in 2003 of "The Battle of Algiers," a movie about French troops winning control of the Algerian capital. President Bush says that he recently read Alistair Horne's authoritative history on the war, "A Savage War of Peace." And last fall, Christopher Harmon, who teaches a course on the Algerian war at the Marine Corps University (MCU) in Washington, lectured marines in Iraq about the Algerian model.
Here in Algeria, some of those who
Source: http://www.dominicantoday.com
Jun 29, 2007
SANTO DOMINGO.- During the United States intervention of Dominican Republic in April ,1965 the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had the world’s second largest station in this country, only after Saigon, Vietnam, said the historian Bernard Vega yesterday.
He said that’s one of the reasons for the CIA’s many reports on Dominican Republic.Dominican Republic’s ex- ambassador in Washington said that during the 1965 Revolution, after World War II the Fede
Source: AP
Jun 29, 2007
Executive privilege. Words famously seared into history when Richard M. Nixon struggled to keep the Watergate tapes private in a criminal investigation.
In a political drama that held the nation in suspense, Nixon took his case to the Supreme Court in 1974, arguing that he had an absolute right of executive privilege to withhold information. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously against him and ordered him to turn over the tapes. Nixon resigned two weeks later.
Throughout
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
Jun 29, 2007
THERE was never any suggestion that a national history curriculum should omit the study of Gallipoli, the historians who helped to draft it and the federal Education Minister said yesterday.
The president of the History Teachers Association of Australia, Nick Ewbank, who helped draft the curriculum, said Gallipoli was among the milestones for compulsory study. His fellow working party member, John Gascoigne, from the school of history and philosophy at the University of NSW, said Ga
Source: LAT
Jun 29, 2007
South Americans were raising crops at least 10,000 years ago, about 5,000 years earlier than previously thought and nearly contemporary with the emergence of agriculture in the Old World, based on new ages obtained for agricultural samples excavated from the Andes 20 years ago.
"We always thought there was a gap of several thousand years before agriculture began in the New World," said archeologist Jack Rossen of Ithaca College in New York, one of the authors of the report
Source: NYT
Jun 29, 2007
The five opinions that made up yesterday’s decision limiting the use of race in assigning students to public schools referred to Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 school desegregation case, some 90 times. The justices went so far as to quote from the original briefs in the case and from the oral argument in 1952.
All of the justices on both sides of yesterday’s 5-to-4 decision claimed to be, in Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s phrase, “faithful to the heritage of
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 29, 2007
Government disarray over a jury's decision that Lady Chatterley's Lover was not obscene is revealed today in files released by the National Archives.
Sir Reginald Manningham-Buller, the Attorney General, and his deputy were involved in the 1960 prosecution at the Old Bailey, despite protestations at the time that it was not politically inspired.
Once Sir Reginald had read the first four chapters, he wrote to Sir Theobald Matthew, the director of public prosecutions: &qu
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jun 29, 2007
The Queen has appealed to ministers for an extra £1 million a year to help with urgent repairs after being told that Buckingham Palace is falling apart, it emerged yesterday.
One huge chunk of stone has already fallen from the East Wing facade into the quadrangle missing the Princess Royal's parked car by a few inches, her aides revealed.
Another chunk fell on the same day that hundreds of guests visited the palace to attend a science reception - though not when the vis
Source: Der Spiegel
Jun 29, 2007
Most of the 30,000 Germans sentenced to death by Nazi Germany's military courts have been rehabilitated. So far, however, soldiers found guilty of treason -- in many cases unjustly, have been excluded. Now, though, Germany's parliament may be prepared to do just that.At the Berlin opening of a travelling exhibit dedicated to victims of Nazi military justice last week, German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries seemed to indicate that the political will might very well be at ha
Source: http://uscnews.sc.edu
Jun 28, 2007
A theory put forth by a group of 25 geo-scientists suggests that a massive comet exploded over Canada, possibly wiping out both beast and man around 12,900 years ago, and pushing the earth into another ice age.
University of South Carolina archaeologist Dr. Albert Goodyear said the theory may not be such "out-of-this-world" thinking based on his study of ancient stone-tool artifacts he and his team have excavated from the Topper dig site in Allendale, as well as ones found
