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 6, 2007
POZNAN, Poland -- On a sunny April morning in 1944, 6-year-old Alodia Witaszek was combed and scrubbed, sitting in the children's home that had primed her for membership in Hitler's master race....
Only years later would she discover the full truth: that she was among some 250 children seized from their families as part of a Nazi attempt to improve the Aryan gene pool in pursuit of a mad dream of racial purity.Her adoptive mother, Luise Dahl, would later say she
Source: Los Angeles Times
May 6, 2007
Confucius famously considered a good woman to be an illiterate woman. The ancient sage might want to eat his words: More than 2-1/2 millenniums after his death, he's back in vogue, thanks in no small part to a Chinese woman with a PhD...
Since the publication of her enormously popular book on the teachings of Confucius late last year, Yu [Dan] has been racing from college lectures to book signings, TV appearances and speaking engagements. The public can't seem to get enough of this
Source: Times (of London)
May 6, 2007
When the first flames flared around the theatre’s stage, many of the excited Chinese children watching must have thought it was all part of the show.
Within minutes 288 of them were dead, a tragedy that has haunted their parents for more than a decade but was forgotten by many as China began its headlong rush to prosperity.
It is not forgotten any more, thanks to a band of internet campaigners who have exposed the shameful truth: the schoolchildren perished because they
Source: Times (of London)
May 6, 2007
More than 50 years after the death of Joseph Stalin, his mother’s previously unknown memoirs have been found in a secret former Soviet archive in his home state, Georgia. They portray the childhood of a sensitive boy who would become one of the great monsters of the 20th century, writes Tom Walker.
The Soviet dictator was born in 1878 (not 1879 as he later claimed), the only child of a cobbler and a seamstress, Beso and Keke Djugashvili. In her memoirs, Keke reveals that, hav
Source: Kenneth T. Walsh, U.S. News & World Report
May 6, 2007
"A generation shaped by Vietnam must remember the lessons of Vietnam. When America uses force in the world, the cause must be just, the goal must be clear, and the victory must be overwhelming." --George W. Bush, Aug. 21, 2000, speech to Veterans of Foreign Wars
To many Americans, George W. Bush's standards for making war have changed dramatically since he first campaigned for the White House. Clearly, he believes the Iraq conflict is just, but most people are by no means con
Source: ABC (Australia)
May 5, 2007
Russia's Parliament has voted to restore the communist-era hammer and sickle to the official flag of the Russian Army.
It is expect President Vladimir Putin will ratify the move in time for next week's commemorations marking the end of World War II in Europe.
If so, Russians will again have the Soviet version of the victory banner for next week's Victory in Europe parade in Moscow.
For many Russians, especially the elderly, its symbolism is immense.
Source: AP
May 5, 2007
Israel, Palestinians slowly pushing through disputes in race to save a biblical and ecological treasure, Dead Sea.
The famously salty sea, which lies at Earth's lowest point, is shrinking. It has receded by some three feet a year for the past 25 years. Jordan and Israel warn that if the trend continues, it will vanish by 2050 along with its unique ecosystem, defeated by river diversions, mineral extraction and natural phenomena like evaporation.
A crucial project to boo
Source: Telegraph
May 5, 2007
BERLIN -- His moustache is the most instantly recognizable -- and sinister -- in history.
Yet, according to new research into Adolf Hitler's early life, the distinctive, toothbrush shape that adorned his scowling face was not his first preference.
A previously unpublished essay by a writer who served alongside Hitler in the First World War trenches reveals that the future Führer was only obeying orders when he shaped his moustache into its tightly-clipped style. He was
Source: AP
May 5, 2007
LAKEHURST, N.J. -- At 87, Robert Buchanan says he sometimes has trouble remembering what he did 10 minutes ago. But he can recall in vivid detail the day 70 years ago when he watched the luxurious airship Hindenburg erupt into a fireball.
Flames roared across the surface of the mighty German dirigible only 100 or so feet above him, singeing his hair as he ran for his life.
''It was a piff-puff, just like someone would leave the gas on and not get the flame to it,'' said
Source: WaPo
May 4, 2007
JENA, La. -- Here in the woodsy heart of Louisiana, town leaders were looking for a fresh start, a way to erase the recent memory of Jim Crow-like hangman's nooses dangling from a shade tree at the local high school. So they cut the tree down.
But after the events of the past 12 months, that attempt by white officials about two weeks ago to heal the town's deep racial divide before the start of a new school year might be too little, too late.
A few weeks after the noose
Source: Seattle Times
May 4, 2007
SOMEWHERE NEAR YAKIMA -- Clyde Friend was bulldozing a driveway around his shop when he first saw them in the dirt: gleaming pieces of the past. A forest of stone, more than 15 million years old.
For the past five years, on this hillside above Yakima, Friend has been pulling out pieces of rare petrified wood, no two pieces alike. Branches, trunks and slices in sunset colors. Pieces purple and blue as mussel shells. Pieces like winter sky, gray and white and all the tones in between.
Source: China Daily
May 4, 2007
Chinese archaeologists say they have uncovered strong evidence that Stone Age people in southern East Asia were at least as technologically advanced as their European cousins -- challenging the long-standing theory of "two cultures".
Excavations at the Dahe Stone Age site, in southwest China's Yunnan Province, had revealed elaborate stone tools and instruments that rivaled those of the Mousterian culture that existed at that time in Europe, said Ji Xueping, chief archaeolo
Source: KQED, "California Report" (audio links)
May 4, 2007
More than a hundred years ago, Riverside was the richest city in the nation, thanks to a booming citrus industry. Oranges fueled the region's rapid growth. But that growth is also what led to the area's decline. The story all begins at the intersection of Washington and Magnolia streets in Riverside -- the site of what some say is the oldest living navel orange tree in the world...
Source: International Herald Tribune
May 4, 2007
LONDON -- There were the colonial invasions, the massacres, the elimination of entire cultures, and in between rare moments of strange encounters. "Between Worlds: Voyagers to Britain 1700-1850," on view at the National Portrait Gallery until June 17, is an unusual exhibition that deals less with art than with the mutual perceptions and misperceptions of humans who were, literally, worlds apart.
It does so through the personal stories of characters that read like short nov
Source: DPA (German Press Agency)
May 4, 2007
SOEMMERDA, Germany -- For the second time in days, neo-Nazi graffiti have been scrawled on a German monument commemorating Jewish women and the thousands of concentration camp victims killed on forced marches. Police in the eastern town of Soemmerda said they had no idea who had painted swastikas on the pillar in the night.
The monument marks the last terrible act of the Nazis, who forced weakened inmates of the filthy camps in 1945 to trek away from Allied armies. Thousands died of
Source: Guardian
May 4, 2007
A retired British army general says Iraq's insurgents are justified in opposing the occupation, arguing that the US and its allies should "admit defeat" and leave Iraq before more soldiers are killed.
General Sir Michael Rose told the BBC's Newsnight programme: "It is the soldiers who have been telling me from the frontline that the war they have been fighting is a hopeless war, that they cannot possibly win it and the sooner we start talking politics and not military
Source: AP
May 4, 2007
JACKSON, Miss. -- In life, FBI informant Earnest Gilbert so feared his fellow Ku Klux Klansmen that he never had the courage to testify about the 1964 killings of two black teenagers. In death, his voice is finally being heard in a courtroom.
Prosecutors in a revived civil rights-era case are trying to persuade a federal judge to allow a television interview that Gilbert, who died in 2004, gave in 2000 to be used as evidence in the trial of reputed Klansman James Ford Seale.
Source: AP
May 4, 2007
JAMESTOWN, Va. -- Queen Elizabeth II strolled Friday through a replica of a fortress built four centuries ago at what would become America's first permanent English settlement, then saw remains of the actual structure.
The queen, flanked by Vice President Dick Cheney and Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, strolled through Jamestown's tourist village of thatch-roofed buildings to commemorate the settlement's 400th anniversary...
The queen toured a replica of an armory, and
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
May 4, 2007
Only 111 years ago, Harvard University published a doctoral thesis called The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870 as the first volume in its Historical Monograph Series.
The author was W.E.B. Du Bois, who was also the first black man to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard. That publication commenced a literary career that spanned 72 years, extending past Du Bois's death in 1963 to include the posthumous publication of his autobiography in 1968.
Source: Guardian
May 4, 2007
A shepherd in a remote region of Nepal near the border with Tibet has been instrumental in the discovery of an extraordinary art treasure that lay hidden from the world for centuries -- a collection of 55 exquisite cave paintings depicting the life of Buddha.
A partially collapsed cave containing the 12th to 14th century depictions of scenes from Buddha's life was unearthed last month by a team of Italian, US and Nepalese conservators and archaeologists in Mustang, a lost kingdom lo
