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: New York Times
May 17, 2007
WASHINGTON -— Stealing a page from the Soviet playbook, the current crop of presidential candidates has taken to eliminating whole chapters of their histories.
[For example,] Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s turbulent final years as first lady? While Mrs. Clinton, a New York Democrat, frequently invokes husband Bill on the stump, she has managed to avoid any mention of his impeachment and the unpleasantness leading to it...
Source: Independent
May 17, 2007
TALLINN -- Estonia's last synagogue was wiped out in 1944, amid fierce gunfire and overhead air raids, as Nazi troops fled the Red Army's advance. But yesterday, after a six-decade wait, the country's 3,000-strong Jewish population finally donned prayer shawls and clutched siddurs, as the first synagogue since the Holocaust opened in Tallinn.Construction of the $2m (£1m) ultra-modern design began in 2005...
Yesterday, Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves and
Source: Washington Post
May 17, 2007
Gary M. Beer, the founding chief executive of the Smithsonian's business unit and architect of a controversial deal with Showtime Networks Inc., has announced plans to leave amid internal and congressional inquiries into his management, expense account and promotions of a female subordinate.Beer told staff in an e-mail that he will not attempt to renew his contract in September as chief executive of the seven-year-old Smithsonian Business Ventures. The unit, known internally
Source: AP
May 17, 2007
SEOUL -- Trains from North and South Korea will pierce their heavily armed border on Thursday, restoring for the first time an artery severed in their 1950-1953 war and rekindling dreams of unification.
It has taken the two Koreas 56 years to send trains -- one starting in the South and one in the North -- across the Cold War's last frontier for the planned runs of about 25 km (15 miles)...
North Korea's military, fearful of increased openings between the isolated count
Source: Wall Street Journal (free article)
May 16, 2007
Lori White thinks high school students should study a variety of religions, including Christianity. But the Bible curriculum used in Odessa, Texas, and a growing number of other schools, she says, is aimed at instilling faith, not knowledge.
''It's a curriculum that proselytizes,'' says Ms. White, whose son graduated from Odessa's Permian High School last year.
The text used in Odessa high schools, developed by the nonprofit National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, rep
Source: JTA
May 16, 2007
An Israeli diplomatic initiative almost prevented the liberation of Jerusalem's Old City during the Six-Day War, according to a leading historian. Michael Oren, author of the celebrated history "Six Days of War," said Wednesday that new details gleaned from a British archive suggested that Israel's 1967 offensive in Jerusalem almost never happened.
Oren said he had learned that, as Israeli forces were poised to go in, then Prime Minister Levi Eshkol made a secret peace ov
Source: International Herald Tribune
May 16, 2007
PILSEN, Czech Republic -- Zdenek Sverak, dressed in a professorial gray suit with red club tie, nodded a greeting to the sold-out crowd in a municipal theater here and began his lecture about Jara da Cimrman, the greatest Czech of all time.
Cimrman nearly made it to the North Pole before any other human, according to Sverak, but missed the mark by about seven meters, or 20 feet, because he encountered hostile natives. He invented the telephone and dynamite, though others took the cr
Source: USA Today
May 16, 2007
The Great Pyramid of Giza, the sole surviving member of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, stands today as the most massive puzzle in the history of civilization.
From the ancient Greeks to today's techno-geeks, many have asked this question: How was something this huge built with such precision?...
Now French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin has reopened this conversation with a controversial proposal that the giant tomb of the pharaoh Khufu (Cheops to the Greeks), who reigned from
Source: AP
May 16, 2007
CHARLESTON, S.C. -- A federal judge has dismissed a counterclaim to a lawsuit relating to the discovery of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley, the first sub in history to sink an enemy warship.
Underwater archaeologist E. Lee Spence claimed he suffered as much as $309 million in damages because the discovery was credited to author Clive Cussler...The South Carolina Hunley Commission has credited [Cussler's outfit] with finding the sub off Charleston 12 years
Source: AP
May 16, 2007
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) -- A new book that challenges the official cause of deadly 1969 racial riots in Malaysia may be banned if it is found to disrupt national harmony, officials said Wednesday.
The book, titled "May 13: Declassified Documents on the Malaysian Riots of 1969," was released Sunday by author Kua Kia Soong, who says the worst riots in Malaysia's 50-year history were not random acts of communal violence but a coup attempt by a faction within the ruling Ma
Source: BBC News
May 16, 2007
An eleventh-hour bid has been made to prevent Dumfries House and its contents being sold to a private owner.
The SAVE Britain's Heritage Fund has received £7m in donations to keep the historic home and its contents intact.
Completed in 1759, Dumfries House in Cumnock was put up for sale by the Marques of Bute at a price of £6.75m.
The property's contents, which include furniture made by Thomas Chippendale, are due to be auctioned in July and are expected to
Source: AP
May 16, 2007
WASHINGTON -- The second dollar coin in the new presidential series goes into circulation around the country on Thursday with the U.S. Mint hoping it can turn 18th century statesman John Adams into a 21st century marketing phenomenon.
Related Links
Adams dollar description, photos (U.S. Mint)
Source: BBC News
May 16, 2007
Evolutionary theorist Charles Darwin thought the voyage of the Beagle was a "magnificent scheme" allowing him to spend time "larking round the world".
His delight at the five-year cruise is chronicled in a letter, available online [Thursday] for the first time.
The note is one of nearly 5,000 from and to the scientist held in a database at the University of Cambridge.
The Darwin Correspondence project includes summaries of a further 9,00
Source: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
May 16, 2007
The Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, whose founders fled Bolshevik rule almost a century ago, is poised to reunite with the Moscow-based church.
The formerly rival churches will seal their historic reconciliation at a ceremony on May 17 in the Russian capital's largest cathedral.
President Vladimir Putin has hailed the move, which will end more than eight decades of bitter estrangement, as an "epoch-making event."
The head of the Russian Orthodox C
Source: New York Times
May 16, 2007
At his death yesterday, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, the founding father and long the public face of the religious right, left behind a university, a megachurch and a movement that are likely to carry on his legacy.
Mr. Falwell was best known to the public as a reliably combative television guest, who spouted off on everything from the Clintons to Sept. 11 to the children’s television show “Teletubbies,” which he saw as a gay conspiracy. But out of the limelight, Mr. Falwell was busy bui
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
May 16, 2007
Sacre bleu, they've unearthed part of Fort Duquesne!
Digging during the ongoing, $35 million renovation of Point State Park has exposed the remains of a drain that archaeologists say is part of the fort built at the Forks of the Ohio by the French in 1754.
The discovery is the first physical evidence of the French fort ever dug up, according to Brooke Blades, an archaeologist with A.D. Marble & Co., the firm hired by the state to oversee historical matters on the pa
Source: Reuters
May 16, 2007
LOS ANGELES -- The ashes are still smoldering from Southern California's second major wildfire in a week, a sign of what authorities warn could be one of the drought-plagued state's worst fire years.
But to the locals, the burning hills have also long been a part of life and key ingredient in the state's folklore and identity -- immortalized in art and popular culture from Nathanael West's 1939 novel The Day of The Locust to ''L.A. Woman,'' 1960s rock band The Doors' dark hom
Source: AP
May 16, 2007
WASHINGTON -- More students are learning the basics when it comes to history and civics, but they aren't rising to the next level, national tests show.The history and civics tests were given to students nationwide in the fourth, eighth and 12th grades last year, and the results were released Wednesday...
The Washington-based Center on Education Policy reported last year that a third of elementary school districts reported cutting back on time for social studies,
Source: AP
May 16, 2007
WARSAW -- The pilgrims keep coming, seeking out the fragile 97-year-old woman in her tiny nursing home room filled with pictures and flowers.
The attention tires Irena Sendler sometimes. She never sought credit for smuggling 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto anyway. Not for risking execution to save other people's children, or holding out under torture by the Nazis, or enduring decades as a nonperson under the communist regime that followed.
She once dismis
Source: AFP
May 16, 2007
BEIJING -- The demolition of a supposedly protected section of Beijing's old city began this week, triggering renewed outrage over the demise of the Chinese capital's historic courtyards and alleyways.
The homes in Beijing's Dongsi Batiao are being razed to make way for a new residential development, crystallising the plight of the narrow maze-like alleys known as hutongs that once dominated the ancient city centre.
State media have seized on the destruction of the site
