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: Telegraph
Feb 18, 2007
The US's standing in the world may have plummeted under President George W. Bush, but a bizarre cargo cult in the Vanuatu island nation holds America in god-like esteem.
The Jon Frum movement celebrated the 50th anniversary of its founding yesterday with a lavish feast in which village men dressed up as US soldiers and marched in front of a giant Stars and Stripes flag on a bamboo pole...
The origins of the cult date back to the 1930s, when Britain and France jointly ra
Source: Independent
Feb 18, 2007
The rarest and most elaborate collection of religious manuscripts in the world, including one of the earliest Korans and a Torah from a lost community of Chinese Jews, is to be displayed at the British Library in a unique exhibition on the great religions.
Sacred texts from Christianity, Judaism and Islam are to be displayed side by side in an exhibition showing what the three great faiths have in common.
The exhibition includes one of the earliest surviving Korans, com
Source: Independent
Feb 18, 2007
A fierce bidding war erupted yesterday over a rare bottle of 1943 Führerwein featuring a portrait of Adolf Hitler on the label. The bottle, with a predicted auction price of £500, finally sold to an anonymous buyer for almost £4,000.
It came from a batch given to German officers during the Second World War. But, rather like the Nazi dream of a 1,000-year reich, the wine has spectacularly failed to stand the test of time and is undrinkable.
A spokeswoman for Plymouth Auc
Source: Boston Globe
Feb 17, 2007
To the uninitiated, the dirty mix of mud, bone, and cow dung is a 350-year-old piece of trash. But to archeologists, the recent discovery at Boston's oldest house is a gleaming, golden nugget.
The brick-hard concoction, used in the mid-17th century for insulation and retrieved during restoration at the James Blake House in Dorchester, is giving archeologists their earliest glimpse of the everyday lives of the city's first European settlers.
The mix, called wattle and da
Source: NYT
Feb 17, 2007
A sharply divided House of Representatives passed a resolution on Friday formally repudiating President Bush’s decision to send more than 20,000 new combat troops to Iraq.
The rare wartime rebuke to the commander in chief — an act that is not binding, but that carries symbolic significance — was approved 246-to-182, with 17 Republicans breaking ranks to join all but two Democrats in supporting the resolution....
Several historians compared its significance to the repeal
Source: Los Angeles Times
Feb 17, 2007
PARIS —- More than a decade after the genocide, a mystery still lies at the heart of Rwanda's darkness.
But France's most celebrated anti-terrorism magistrate believes he knows who assassinated two African presidents on April 6, 1994. The shooting down of the Rwandan presidential jet that night was followed by the killings of an estimated 800,000 people, most of them members of the Tutsi minority.
In a report to French prosecutors late last year, Magistrate Jean-Louis B
Source: NYT
Feb 17, 2007
A leader of the Texas House of Representatives apologized Friday for circulating an appeal to ban the teaching of evolution as derived from “Rabbinic writings” and other Jewish texts.
“I had no intention to offend anyone,” said the lawmaker, Warren Chisum, a Republican from the Panhandle who is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.
Mr. Chisum said he had received the information from Ben Bridges, a Georgia legislator, and “I never took it very seriously.”
Source: AP
Feb 17, 2007
PARIS -- Maurice Papon, a former Cabinet minister who was convicted of complicity in crimes against humanity for his role in deporting Jews during World War II and became a symbol of France's collaboration with the Nazis, died Saturday. He was 96.
Papon, who underwent surgery on his pacemaker at a clinic east of Paris last week, died in his sleep on Saturday, said his lawyer, Francis Vuillemin.
Papon was the highest-ranking Frenchman to be convicted for a role in the pr
Source: AP
Feb 17, 2007
DALLAS -- The auction of a window advertised as Lee Harvey Oswald's sniper perch in the killing of President John F. Kennedy brought a bid of about $3 million, but the sale quickly fell through.
The window was up for auction Friday on eBay with a starting price of $100,000, and bidding quickly rose to seven figures. But 32 bids were either retracted by the bidders_ normally because a wrong price had been entered, including one for $17 million -- or canceled by the seller because a b
Source: Reuters
Feb 17, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO -- Police have issued an arrest warrant for a New Jersey man suspected of accosting Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel in the elevator of a San Francisco hotel in early February.
Eric Hunt, 22, was being sought on charges of attempted kidnapping, false imprisonment, elder abuse, stalking, battery and the commission of a hate crime, according to the warrant issued by San Francisco police on Friday.
Wiesel, 78, was attending the Worl
Source: New York Times
Feb 17, 2007
KAMPALA, Uganda -— This year, the Oscar buzz has made it all the way to Kampala.
On Saturday, Forest Whitaker, a leading contender for best actor, parted a crowd of paparazzi in front of a chic hotel here in Uganda’s capital, and he strutted down a red carpet for the official opening of “The Last King of Scotland.”
Official being the key word. Because the movie, about the blood-soaked reign of Uganda’s mercurial dictator, Idi Amin, actually arrived a few weeks ago, via
Source: BBC News
Feb 17, 2007
An item described as the window and frame from where Lee Harvey Oswald shot US President John F Kennedy in 1963 has been sold at auction on eBay.
A mystery bidder paid more than $3m (£1.5m) for the item, apparently from Oswald's shooter's nest at the Texas Schoolbook Depository.
The starting price was just $100,000 but bidding was brisk and the item eventually fetched $3,001,501.
The depository was owned by a local family that listed the item on eBay.
Source: Telegraph
Feb 17, 2007
Gladiatorial contests took place at the largest amphitheatre in Roman Britain, according to new evidence unearthed by archaeologists.
Finds at an excavation of the arena in Chester provide the most conclusive proof yet that it played host to grisly fights to the death for public entertainment, and reinforce the view of the town's importance in the Roman Empire.
A stone block with iron fittings was discovered at the centre of the two-storey amphitheatre, which dates back
Source: AP
Feb 17, 2007
In a former box factory on an old Brooklyn street named for him, half a mile from where his defeated army escaped by night to fight another day, George Washington has all but come back to life.Not just one George Washington, but three -- the 19-year-old wilderness surveyor, the 45-year-old Revolutionary War general and the 57-year-old president on his inauguration day in 1789.
The trio of life-size wax figures, created by British-born artists Stuart Willia
Source: NYT
Feb 17, 2007
The images are familiar, yet different. Looking more than two centuries into the past, scientists have created what they say are the most accurate depictions of George Washington at three critical stages in his life, ages 19, 45 and 57.After almost two years of forensic research, historical delving, computer manipulation and work by a team of artists, Washington comes alive in three sculptures that are supposed to be the most accurate images of what he actually looked
Source: Lee White in the newsletter of the National Coalition for History
Feb 16, 2007
On February 14, the U.S. Senate passed a continuing budget resolution (H.J. Res. 20) to fund most federal government programs through the remainder of the 2007 fiscal year on September 30, 2007. The continuing resolution passed 81-15. Despite this show of bi-partisan support, many Republicans were upset that the new Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) brought the bill to the floor utilizing a parliamentary rule that did not allow amendments. Like the version passed by the House, the bil
Source: AP
Feb 16, 2007
PHOENIX -- Researchers at Arizona State University and the University of Pittsburgh have mixed technology, art and science to re-create the real face of George Washington. Using anthropology, 3-D scanning and digital reconstruction, the 2-1/2-year project has culminated in new life-size figures of the nation's first president and some say the images are the most accurate yet of Washington at a younger age.
There is Washington at age 19 as a land surveyor, Washington at 45 during the
Source: Telegraph
Feb 16, 2007
A rare bottle of Nazi wine with a label bearing a photograph of Hitler and handed out to senior German officers during the Second World War is expected to fetch £500 at auction.
The unopened bottle of red Fuhrerwein dates back to 1943 when it would have been presented to a high-flying Nazi general to mark Hitler's 54th birthday.
A label around the bottle, a 12 per cent Schwarzer Tafelwein, features a photograph of Hitler dressed smartly in suit and tie.
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Feb 16, 2007
The University of Illinois was planning today to announce that it was ending the use of Chief Illiniwek — a student dressed as an Indian who performs at athletic events — but may be forced to change its plans because of a lawsuit, The Chicago Tribune reported. The mascot’s use has been controversial for years, with American Indian groups calling its use offensive and athletic boosters calling the American Indians and their supporters politically correct or overly sensitive. But Illinois official
Source: Boston Globe
Feb 16, 2007
JERUSALEM -- Israel activated webcams yesterday at the site of a controversial building project in Jerusalem's Old City as part of an effort to refute accusations by Muslims that the work is threatening the Al-Aqsa Mosque...
Islamic leaders denounced the streaming video as" cosmetic," and said they would organize massive demonstrations in Jerusalem after prayers today...
Yechiel Zeligman, the Israel Antiquities Authority archeologist overseeing the excavation, s
