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
May 9, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Michael Dell never imagined his work would end up in a museum when he was sitting in his college dorm room in 1984, dreaming of building and selling his own personal computers.
Now, one of his original computers is going to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History.The 42-year-old chairman and chief executive of Texas-based Dell Inc. donated a collection of materials Wednesday to the Smithsonian, including his employee badge
Source: International Herald Tribune
May 9, 2007
NEW YORK -- Impressionist and Modern art prices reached dizzying new heights on Tuesday night as Sotheby's sold 51 paintings, drawings and sculptures for $278.5 million. This total was surpassed only once in the past, in May 1990, when a sale of Impressionist and Modern art also held here at Sotheby's realized $286.2 million.The most astonishing of the six world auction records set on Tuesday is the $25.52 million that was paid for Cézanne's watercolor "Nature Morte au
Source: International Herald Tribune
May 9, 2007
BARCELONA -- It has survived the death of its architect, a dearth of funding and the destruction of its prototypes during the Spanish civil war. Now the Cathedral of the Sagrada Familia, Antoni Gaudí's surreal, unfinished opus, faces a new threat: plans to bore a high-speed train tunnel within meters of its foundations.
"What would possess someone to build a tunnel like this next to the heaviest building in Barcelona, the most visited monument in Spain?" said Jordi Bonet,
Source: Fredericksburg (Va.) Free Lance-Star
May 9, 2007
FREDERICKSBURG, Va. -- For the past 26 years, a mysterious piece of history has tugged at Kay McFadden's curiosity.
The 40-pound, 172-year-old edition of "The Devotional Family Bible" entered the McFadden house in the Todds Tavern area of Spotsylvania County by chance [at a yard sale]...
And so began a journey that would lead Kay through history, from the inauguration of America's first president to the world's first trans-Atlantic flight and beyond...
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
May 9, 2007
Sylvia Mendez was honored Tuesday at the San Francisco federal courthouse where her elementary school -- one reserved for "Mexicans" -- was outlawed 60 years ago in a decision that led California to desegregate all its schools and public facilities.Mendez's parents and four other Latino families in Orange County had sued four school districts, in Mendez vs. Westminster, and the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the decades-old federal doctrine of "
Source: AP
May 9, 2007
ATHENS -- Archaeologists in Greece have discovered a rare 2,700-year-old piece of fabric inside a copper urn from a burial they speculated imitated the elaborate cremation of soldiers described in Homer's "Iliad."
The yellowed, brittle material was found in the urn during excavation in the southern town of Argos, a Culture Ministry announcement said Wednesday...
The cylindrical urn also contained dried pomegranates —- offerings linked with the ancient gods of
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
May 9, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO -- Nobel prize-winning author Elie Wiesel, speaking in San Francisco amid tight security today for the first time since he was assaulted by a Holocaust denier, declared that such people are "not mentally ill but morally ill.''
The 78-year-old professor and Holocaust survivor, who is in town to receive a lifetime achievement award from the Koret Foundation, said he remained "surprised and shocked that there are so many people who deny the Holocaust.''
Source: AP
May 9, 2007
THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- U.N. appeals judges on Wednesday overturned a conviction for complicity in genocide against a Bosnian Serb army colonel whose troops were involved in the 1995 slaughter of more than 8,000 Muslim men in Srebrenica.
Col. Vidoje Blagojevic, 56, was the wartime commander of the Bratunac brigade that took part in the worst post-World War II massacre in Europe by helping separate Muslim men from women and herding them into buses before the men were driven away an
Source: Washington Post
May 9, 2007
TALLINN, Estonia -- The passion that erupted in this storybook capital city and on the streets of Moscow in the past two weeks because of divided understanding of a shared history left Igor Britikovski cold.
The 23-year-old ethnic Russian, who is an Estonian citizen, had never visited the bronze statue of a Soviet Red Army soldier whose relocation from central Tallinn to a military cemetery on April 26 sparked riots by ethnic Russians here and a siege of the Estonian Embassy in Mosc
Source: DPA (German Press Agency)
May 9, 2007
TAIPEI -- Taiwan's Cabinet on Wednesday approved a motion to rename a memorial hall originally built to commemorate the late Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, in yet another move to erase the legacy of the late generalissimo.
''With the approval, the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall will be renamed as Taiwan Democracy Hall,'' said Cabinet spokeswoman Chen Mei-ling in a news conference...
The latest move was another step in a sustained campaign by the pro-independence Dem
Source: CHN (Cultural Heritage News Agency, Tehran)
May 9, 2007
TEHRAN -- Development activities of Ramhormoz Water and Sewage Department, Khuzestan province, led into accidentally discovery of two historical coffins containing some 500 pieces of invaluable gold ornamentations and artifacts belonging to different historical periods including: Elamite (3400-550 BC),Achaemenid (550-330 BC), Parthian (248 BC-224 AD) as well as Mesopotamia civilization in two coffins.
Discovery of this unique treasury has faced archaeologists with a large number of
Source: AP
May 9, 2007
ROME -- Pope Pius XII, the wartime pontiff who some have accused of remaining largely silent in the face of the Holocaust, has taken another step toward possible sainthood, the Vatican said Wednesday.
A panel of bishops and cardinals at the Vatican's Congregation for the Causes of Saints approved a declaration on Pius' virtues Tuesday and passed it to Pope Benedict XVI, according to a Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini.
If Benedict signs the document, it will
Source: AFP
May 9, 2007
MIAMI -- A US judge on Tuesday dropped an immigration indictment against anti-Castro militant Luis Posada Carriles, bluntly claiming the government tricked the ex-CIA contractor, whom Cuba and Venezuela call a terrorist."I am free," exclaimed Posada Carriles, 79, on Miami's Radio Mambi, shortly after the judge in El Paso, Texas dismissed all seven charges linked to his sneaking into the United States and lying to immigration authorities.
"Thank Go
Source: Washington Post
May 9, 2007
The Smithsonian Institution has accelerated its search for a public or private partner to redevelop its landmark Arts and Industries Building, which has been closed to the public for three years since pieces of the roof began collapsing.The museum "does not have funding now or in the foreseeable future to rehabilitate" the 126-year-old building, the Smithsonian's facilities director, William W. Brubaker, said in a briefing paper sent to Congress.
The a
Source: Anniston (Ala.) Star
May 9, 2007
Cager Lee Jr. is a man of the earth, a farmer down in the soil scrabbling and scratching with honesty to earn a place more for his family than for himself in this world. In February 1965 his nephew, Jimmie Lee Jackson, a 26-year-old from Marion was shot dead by an Alabama state trooper during a violence-filled night in that Black Belt town.
And Cager Lee Jr. and his children and grandchildren want to talk about Jimmie Lee Jackson now, after all these years, because today in Selma a
Source: AP
May 9, 2007
PHILADELPHIA -- Archeologists said records indicate they have unearthed the crescent-shaped rock foundation of a bow window George Washington designed for a house on Independence Mall where he and successor John Adams resided as president.Those excavating the site discovered the foundation wall Monday when they broke through a 19th century basement floor. After checking plans and measurements from historical records, Jed Levin, an archeologist with the National Park Se
Source: Washington Post
May 9, 2007
HERODIUM, West Bank -- Israeli archaeologists revealed more details Tuesday about their discovery of what they believe is the tomb of King Herod...
The discovery dusted off the competing Israeli and Palestinian claims to the region between Bethlehem and the Judean desert. Israeli settler leaders said the reported find of the Jewish king's tomb supported their historic right to the area, while Palestinians expressed fears that it would be used as a pretext to increase Jewish settlement cons
Source: Times (of London)
May 9, 2007
BERLIN -- It is the most complex jigsaw puzzle of all time, so difficult that even a sophisticated new software program will need at least five years to match the millions of pieces.The German Government has now earmarked €6.3 million (£4 million) for the project: fitting together about 600 million shreds of secret police files ripped up in panic by Stasi agents after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989.
When the puzzle is complete, the files are likely to shed li
Source: Times (of London)
May 9, 2007
LONDON -- [An] illustration of Winnie-the-Pooh and Tigger is expected to fetch [$60,000] at Bonhams, Knightsbridge, on May 22.
"Tiggers Don’t Like Honey," by Ernest H. Shepard, was created to illustrate a 1958 edition of A. A. Milne’s The World of Pooh, but was cut from the printed version.
[Story includes illustration.]
Source: Washington Post
May 9, 2007
Nearly 400 years to the day that English settlers first landed in Virginia, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill yesterday that would grant federal recognition and status as sovereign nations to six Indian tribes from the state.The unanimous voice vote came just days after tribal chiefs danced, drummed and greeted Queen Elizabeth II on her visit to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, the first permanent settlement by the English in what
