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: Independent
Feb 25, 2007
With its exhaustive dissection of 19th-century Russian society, Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace is arguably the greatest, and certainly one of the longest, novels ever written.
Now, for those unable to face wading through its 1,500 pages, there is hope. What is being billed as Tolstoy's "original version" is to be published -- some 600 pages lighter, with the removal of Tolstoy's philosophical musings and the prospect of a happy ending. Not everyone, however, is pleased. Acade
Source: Newhouse News Service
Feb 25, 2007
FLINT, Mich. — Accepting an offer to join the Daughters of the American Revolution could be a hard sell for a black woman.
That's why Gail Buckner Odom once declined an invitation to attend a DAR meeting.
As the descendant of a Revolutionary War patriot, though, Odom has changed her mind. Today, the retired Flint teacher is the sole black member of Genesee County's DAR chapter and believes she's among a select few dozen black members in the nation. National organizers s
Source: CNN
Feb 25, 2007
Brown University on Saturday promised to raise $10 million for local public schools and give free tuition to graduate students who pledge to work there in response to a report that found slave labor played a role in the university's beginnings.
The university will also explore creating an academic center on slavery and justice, strengthen its Africana Studies Department, begin planning for a slavery memorial and revise its official history to provide a more accurate account of the s
Source: WaPo
Feb 25, 2007
In April 1959, just months after a charismatic 32-year-old revolutionary named Fidel Castro seized the reins of power in Cuba, a slim volume of his correspondence, titled "Cartas del Presidio," or "Letters from Prison," was published in Havana. The book contained 21 letters addressed to Castro's inner circle of supporters, including his wife, Mirta Diaz-Balart; his half-sister, Lidia; a future mistress; the father of a fallen comrade; and nine missives to his devoted friend a
Source: Newhouse News Service
Feb 25, 2007
Christina Wall has traveled back in time, to a place where there is no television, no Internet and no e-mail.
In this pre-1950 land, there are no frozen dinners, no nonstick skillets and no fast-food franchises. She can't use a dishwasher, clothes dryer or microwave; she has no access to ATMs, DVDs or CDs.
Wall, 32, an Eastern Michigan University graduate student, hasn't left her west-side Ann Arbor home for another plane in the space-time continuum. She's simply going
Source: UPI
Feb 25, 2007
NEW YORK -- U.S. civil rights activist the Rev. Al Sharpton is amused after learning his relatives were once slaves owned by relatives of late Sen. Strom Thurmond,
The New York Daily News said Sharpton was in disbelief when he learned that his great-grandfather's family was once owned by a distant relative of the late South Carolina senator.
"I have always wondered what was the background of my family," Sharpton said. "But nothing -- nothing -- could prep
Source: Washington Post
Feb 25, 2007
At the center of Baghdad's neglected North Gate War Cemetery, near the edge of the old city walls, stands an imposing grave. Sheltered from the weather by a grandiose red sandstone cupola, it is the final resting place of a man from whom George W. Bush could have learned a great deal about the perils of intervening in Iraq.
Lt. Gen. Sir Frederick Stanley Maude was head of the British army in Mesopotamia when he marched into Baghdad on a hot, dusty day in March 1917...
Source: Jerusalem Post
Feb 25, 2007
The Israeli-born, Canadian-based filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici is reigniting claims, first made over a decade ago, that a burial cave uncovered 27 years ago in Talpiot, Jerusalem, is the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth and his family.
At a press conference in New York on Monday, the two-time Emmy winner Jacobovici and his team -- including Hollywood director James Cameron -- will detail claims that of 10 ossuaries found in the cave when it was discovered in 1980, six bear inscriptions ident
Source: Observer
Feb 25, 2007
It has survived the collapse of the sophisticated civilisation that built it, centuries of consumption by the suffocating jungle and the nihilism of the Khmer Rouge, who beheaded its stone Buddhas and used its walls for target practice. Now, Cambodia's awe-inspiring Angkor Wat complex is facing the biggest threat in a millennium - the fastest-growing tourist onslaught of any World Heritage site, which conservationists warn is already damaging its treasures irreparably.
In 1993, afte
Source: CP (Canadian Press)
Feb 24, 2007
TORONTO -- Even as Canada's longest running aboriginal standoff closes in on its one-year anniversary, the Six Nations occupation of a former housing development site in a small southwestern Ontario town isn't going to end anytime soon, warns federal Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice.
Negotiators working to resolve the 200-year-old land claim and end the year-long occupation are still working on peripheral parts of the claim, and have a long way to go before they can end the st
Source: CHN (Cultural Heritage News, Iran)
Feb 24, 2007
TEHRAN -- Didehgan Dam which was constructed some 2500 years ago during the Achaemenid dynastic era (550-330 BC) to the north of the world heritage site of Pasargadae in Iran’s Fars province in order to prevent seasonal flooding in the region has been demolished as a result of removing soil in the region by bulldozers.
Announcing this news, Mohammad Jafar Malekzadeh, secretary of the high commission for dam construction of Fars Regional Water Organization, told CHN: “A very high tec
Source: AP
Feb 24, 2007
TOKYO - Col. Masanobu Tsuji was a fanatical Japanese militarist and brutal warrior, hunted after World War II for massacres of Chinese civilians and complicity in the Bataan Death March. And then he became a U.S. spy. Newly declassified CIA records, released by the U.S. National Archives and examined by The Associated Press, document more fully than ever how Tsuji and other suspected Japanese war criminals were recruited by U.S. intelligence in the early days of the Cold War. The documents also
Source: AP
Feb 24, 2007
SALT LAKE CITY -- While Mitt Romney condemns polygamy and its prior practice by his Mormon church, the Republican presidential candidate's great-grandfather had five wives and at least one of his great-great-grandfathers had 12.
Polygamy was not just a historical footnote, but a prominent element in the family tree of the former Massachusetts governor now seeking to become the first Mormon president.
Romney's great-grandfather, Miles Park Romney, married his fifth w
Source: AP
Feb 24, 2007
BOSTON —- Less than a month after highways and bridges were shut down during a bomb scare touched off by an advertising stunt, a new marketing scheme has led angry city officials to shut down a historic site.
A clue in a Dr Pepper promotion suggested a coin that might be worth as much as $1 million was buried in the 347-year-old Granary Burying Ground, the final resting place of John Hancock, Paul Revere, Samuel Adams and other historic figures.
After contestants showed
Source: CNN
Feb 24, 2007
TUSCALOOSA, Alabama (AP) -- With a debate swirling nationwide over the n-word, a historically black college in Alabama has set aside four days to discuss the racial slur.
Participants at the conference, which began Thursday and ends Sunday, discussed topics ranging from the origins of the epithet to whether juggling a few letters makes it socially acceptable at the "N" Surrection Conference at Stillman College.
Organizers said the goal of the event is to chall
Source: Reuters
Feb 24, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Chimpanzees and humans split from a common ancestor just 4 million years ago -- a much shorter time than current estimates of 5 million to 7 million years ago, according to a study published on Friday.
The researchers compared the DNA of chimpanzees, humans and our next-closest ancestor, the gorilla, as well as orangutans.
They used a well-known type of calculation that had not been previously applied to genetics to come up with their own"molecular clock" estimate of when hum
Source: AP
Feb 24, 2007
RICHMOND, Va. -- Meeting on the grounds of the former Confederate Capitol, the Virginia General Assembly voted unanimously Saturday to express "profound regret" for the state's role in slavery.
Sponsors of the resolution say they know of no other state that has apologized for slavery, although Missouri lawmakers are considering such a measure. The resolution does not carry the weight of law but sends an important symbolic message, supporters said.
Source: Times (of London)
Feb 24, 2007
BRUSSELS -- Europe’s 50th birthday is fast approaching but nobody can agree what to write on the card.
A grand statement —- the Berlin declaration — is planned next month to commemorate the founding in 1957 of what is now the EU, but the 27 member states are increasingly divided about what to celebrate.
Luxembourg is pushing for a prominent mention of the euro as one of Europe’s greatest achievements. But this will not go down well in Britain and Denmark, where the sing
Source: Times (of London)
Feb 24, 2007
DEGANIA, Galilee, Israel -- When Eliezer Gal arrived at Israel’s first kibbutz he had already served in the Red Army as a platoon tank commander at the siege of Leningrad, escaped to West Berlin after being marked down by Stalin for the labour camps and been turned away by the British when he arrived in Palestine aboard the Jewish refugee ship Exodus.
Mr Gal took a lowly job in the cow shed for 18 years and married Michal, a daughter of the kibbutz’s founders, raising his family in
Source: Telegraph
Feb 24, 2007
A little-known Second World War heroine who joined the Belgian resistance at 15, and was later tortured by the Gestapo, was buried near her home in Dorset yesterday.
Code named Lulu, Lucie Bruce, a Belgian national who moved to Britain in 1946, spied on Nazi troops and ammunition dumps, after joining the resistance in 1940 following Belgium's capitulation to German occupation.
She forged papers so she would appear old enough to be recruited, and by the time she was 17,
