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
Mar 9, 2007
DAYTON, Ohio -- A building used as a top-secret code-breaking lab for the United States during World War II will be demolished, the University of Dayton announced Friday.
From 1942 to 1945, the Navy used the building as a lab for designing and building sophisticated code-breaking machines, including the NCR Bombe, credited with helping crack German U-boat codes.
The university, which owns the property, said a study showed the building had lost its historical integrity b
Source: Al Wafd (via MEMRI--Middle East Media Research Institute, Washington DC)
Mar 9, 2007
Egyptian Education and Culture Ministry official Dr. Radha Abu Sari'a announced that it had been decided to eliminate foreign history studies in international and foreign schools in Egypt. He said that starting with the next school year, the only history taught would be Egyptian history, in Arabic.
The change is aimed at preserving Egypt's cultural identity and preventing a recurrence of incidents such as that in which a schoolbook claimed that the Jews had built the pyramids.
Source: Independent
Mar 9, 2007
For the Hualapai tribe, the construction of a skywalk over the Grand Canyon is a way of exploiting the site's tourism revenue. But other Native Americans accuse them of greed...
Related Links
Skywalk rolled out (photo and artist's conception)
Source: AP
Mar 9, 2007
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. -- Exactly 145 years after the USS Monitor faced the Confederate ship CSS Virginia in the first clash of ironclads, a $30 million center dedicated to the Union vessel opened Friday.
The Monitor Center, a new wing of The Mariners' Museum, houses more than 1,200 artifacts from the Civil War ship and an interactive exhibition on both armored vessels...
The Monitor, a new design, and the Virginia, built atop the burned-out hull of the Union steam f
Source: Guardian
Mar 9, 2007
A national register is to be created to protect England's precious historic sites, bringing together everything from Stonehenge to Blenheim, from Canterbury cathedral to the wreck of the Hanover, an 18th century treasure ship breaking up on the seabed off Cornwall.
The culture secretary, Tessa Jowell...promised to beef up protection for World Heritage sites: Britain's range from the Tower of London to the old iron and coal works at Blaenavon in south Wales, but the honour which flags them
Source: Email from the Nation to subscribers
Mar 9, 2007
Four years ago, The Nation launched a Classroom Education Program as a way to encourage a healthy diversity of opinion by offering massively marked-down short-term subscriptions for students. One part of that program offers teaching aids and archival resources to educators which have been so popular that we're now making special history packs available to all students of history, whether you're in a classroom or not, at very reasonable rates.
Nation editors have combed the magazine
Source: Reuters
Mar 9, 2007
BERLIN -- The mayor of a small town in Germany on Thursday called on Google Earth to delete a reference to a nearby "Mount Hitler" from its geographic image service, saying it was misleading.
Andreas Wiedemann, mayor of Bad Toelz, south of Munich, said the peak near the Bavarian town had been known as Mount Hitler for a short time during the Third Reich but had been given back its original name of Heigelkopf after World War Two.
Google Earth users who call up
Source: AP
Mar 9, 2007
ISTANBUL -- Turkey lifted its ban on YouTube Friday, an official for the country's largest telecommunications firm said, two days after a court ordered the Web site blocked because of videos that allegedly insulted the founder of modern Turkey.
Ahter Kutadgu, head of corporate communications for Turk Telekom, told the Anatolia news agency his company had been notified of a court decision to lift the ban...
The Istanbul court that ordered the site blocked on Wednesday ha
Source: AP
Mar 9, 2007
NEWARK, N.J. -- The financially struggling New Jersey Symphony Orchestra is selling its prized collection of "Golden Age" string instruments, four years after acquiring them for $17 million from a benefactor who wound up in jail.
The NJSO had hoped the 30 violins, violas and cellos made by such Italian makers as Antonio Stradivari and Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesu would place it among the world's top orchestras.
But orchestra officials said the debt from the 2003
Source: AFP
Mar 9, 2007
GENEVA (-- The flowing, elegant lines and even the name of the Russo-Baltique Impression appearing at the Geneva Motor Show on Thursday for the first time mark a distinct shift in gear for Russia's ramshackle old motor industry.
So does the price tag: more than 1.0 million euros (1.3 million dollars).
To add to the complete break from the aura of cheap Ladas and Volgas produced under communism, the grandiose new coupe by young Russian industrial designer Ivan Shishkin u
Source: AP
Mar 9, 2007
TOKYO -- Shortly after the Pearl Harbor attack, Emperor Hirohito told aides he hoped to visit the South Pacific after the war, when the entire region would be Japanese territory, according to a newly released journal. He also said, however, he did not want Japan to go to war with China.
Hirohito [who reigned 1926-89] made the South Seas comment on Christmas Day 1941 -- just weeks after Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the Pacific War, according
Source: AP
Mar 9, 2007
ATLANTA -- Georgia is poised to introduce two literature classes on the Bible in public schools next year, a move some critics say would make the southern state the first in the U.S. to take an explicit stance endorsing —- and funding —- biblical teachings.
The Bible already is incorporated into some classes in Georgia and other states, but some critics say the board's move, which makes the Bible the classes' main text, treads into dangerous turf. The U.S. Constitution's guarantee o
Source: AP
Mar 9, 2007
THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- Moving more quickly than expected, the 11-nation body overseeing a long-secret archive of Nazi war records set procedures in motion Thursday to open millions of files on concentration camps and their victims before the end of the year.
Member nations made the decision knowing that within a year 10 percent of all Holocaust survivors now living may be dead, one American archive director said.
The governing commission of the International Tracing
Source: Daily Times (Lahore, Pakistan)
Mar 9, 2007
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- US Ambassador Ryan C Crocker on Thursday handed over 38 Gandhara antiques, which were smuggled to US two years ago, to the Ministry of Culture. American Department of Customs has discovered these smuggled antiques...
...He praised the smuggled antiques like sculptures of Buddha in meditation in 1st and 2nd centuries and some artefacts of 3rd and 4th centuries.
He said US security agencies were tracing the smugglers, adding bilateral cooperation wa
Source: Times (of London)
Mar 9, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Federal US agents have seized disabled F14 fighter jets from museums in California because of fears that parts would be sold to Iran.
The raids reflect the nervousness that is driving policy towards the Islamic republic at a time when the US has stationed two aircraft carriers in the Gulf and is alleging that Iranian Revolutionary Guards are aiding attacks on its soldiers in Iraq. One European diplomat described the raids as evidence of American paranoia.
Source: Independent
Mar 9, 2007
An entirely elected House of Lords? Oliver Cromwell's boys would have heartily approved. Almost exactly 358 years ago, in March 1649, a Cromwell-dominated House of Commons voted to abolish the Lords altogether. "The House of Lords is useless and dangerous to the people of England," MPs declared. A week later Charles I was executed.
It was not the first row and it won't be the last. From intrigue and conspiracy to sleaze, cronies and cash for peerages, over the course of ne
Source: Los Angeles Times
Mar 9, 2007
For his first season as music director of Los Angeles Opera, James Conlon...put together [on Wednesday night] a special introduction to what he plans as the company's multi-year look at operas by composers the Nazis considered "degenerate" artists and wanted silenced. That project is called "Recovered Voices," and it is a passion for Conlon...
On a human-interest level, the semi-staged program couldn't help but fascinate. It included excerpts from works by Viktor
Source: Independent
Mar 9, 2007
Developers seeking to build skyscrapers in Britain's world heritage sites will be banned under proposals published yesterday in the Government's long-awaited White Paper on heritage protection.
The document gives Britain's 27 world heritage sites the same protection as national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty, and proposes buffer zones around them. Measures enacted have the potential to thwart high-rise building plans supported by the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone,
Source: Xinhua/ChinaView
Mar 8, 2007
BEIJING -- The Forbidden City -- once off-limits to ordinary citizens and foreigners - [is hosting] a British history exhibition...
The exhibition named "Britain Meets the World 1714-1830" [is being] held at the Forbidden City, also known as the Palace Museum, in Beijing...to June 10.
The exhibition will explore Britain's engagement with the world during the Georgian period when the nation was emerging as an international power.
The three-month ex
Source: Weekly Standard
Mar 8, 2007
On May 17, 1607, English settlers landed on Jamestown Island in Virginia and created what would be the first permanent British colony. An Anglican clergyman led them in prayers of thanksgiving and in constructing the first permanent Protestant church in the Western hemisphere.
In two months, the 400th anniversary of this event will be celebrated. The Episcopal Church, as the spiritual descendants of the original Jamestown colony, is participating, although perhaps with some hesitati
