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: http://thechronicleherald.ca
Feb 2, 2007
History isn’t pretty, says RCMP Cpl. Craig Smith — especially black history in Nova Scotia.
And that history includes the n-word, which Cpl. Smith, a Halifax Mountie, used in his new book, You Had Better Be White by Six A.M.: The African-Canadian Experience in the RCMP. He used the word in describing a scene in a segregated New Glasgow in 1946.
But he says that word has made the Education Department hesitant about using the book in the classroom, where he thought the bo
Source: International Herald Tribune
Feb 2, 2007
NEW YORK -- The break of contemporary culture with the artistic past is now so radical that most of us are no longer able to look at Old Master paintings.
A series of occurrences in Sotheby's $110 million sale last week lead to that astonishing conclusion.
One was the good old game which could be dubbed "Shall we call it a Rembrandt?" The master's œoeuvre goes up and down depending on the mood of those who know. From the early 20th century, when nearl
Source: AP
Feb 2, 2007
SAN DIEGO -- Free to a good home: vintage submarine, recently restored. One prior owner.
That's not quite how the notice is worded, but that's the message from the Navy, which is looking for someone to take over the USS Dolphin, one of the oldest submarines in its fleet.
The Dolphin, a one-of-a-kind research vessel, was commissioned in 1968. In a notice published in this week's Federal Register, the Navy said it will accept offers from government agencies, nonprofit gro
Source: AP
Feb 2, 2007
LONDON -- They won't let you eat cake at Windsor Castle, but visitors are being invited to admire a couple of 167-year-old slices.
Pieces of Queen Victoria's wedding cake will go on display as part of an exhibition on Royal weddings from 1840 to 1947 to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II's diamond anniversary this year, palace officials said.
The slices will be on display for a year starting on April 27 in small boxes, one cardboard, another silver, marked "Buckingham Pa
Source: UPI
Feb 2, 2007
JERUSALEM -- A government-run company has asked the Israel Museum to relinquish 400 works of art owned by Jews killed in the Holocaust. American troops found the paintings -- appropriated by Nazis from private collections throughout Europe -- hidden in salt mines in Germany.
The museum is negotiating with the company, which was established to locate and restore assets belonging to Holocaust victims, Haaretz reported. The company wants the artwork -- housed in the museum since its
Source: Live Science
Feb 2, 2007
Male nudes are the norm in Greek art, even though historians have stated that ancient Greeks kept their clothes on for the most part. New research suggests that art might have been imitating life more closely than previously thought.
Nudity was a costume used by artists to depict various roles of men, ranging from heroicism and status to defeat.
"In ancient Greek art, there are many different kinds of nudity that can mean many different things," said Jeffrey H
Source: National Geographic News
Feb 2, 2007
A study of the oldest known sample of human DNA in the Americas suggests that humans arrived in the New World relatively recently, around 15,000 years ago.
The DNA was extracted from a 10,300-year-old tooth found in a cave on Prince of Wales Island off southern Alaska in 1996.
The sample represents a previously unknown lineage for the people who first arrived in the Americas.
The findings, published last week in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology
Source: AP
Feb 2, 2007
ROME -- In a city where traffic rumbles past the Colosseum and soccer fans celebrate victories among the remains of the Circus Maximus, it comes as no surprise that relics of the glory that was Rome turn up almost every day, and sometimes get in the way of the modern city's needs.
The perennial tug-of-war between preserving ancient treasures and developing much-needed infrastructure is moving underground, as the city mobilizes archaeologists to probe the bowels of the Eternal City i
Source: AP
Feb 2, 2007
LINCOLN, Neb. -- A dead man's storage locker yielded dozens of tombstones, a macabre collection that police believe represents "a lifetime of stealing."
Some of the 47 gravestones date to the late 1800s; others are relatively recent. Police say they probably came from different cemeteries at different times...
Police Chief Tom Casady said the tombstone collection "probably came from a lifetime of stealing headstones."
Source: AP
Feb 2, 2007
FORT WORTH, Texas -- An elementary school teacher was disciplined for showing her fifth-graders parts of the R-rated film "Amistad" during a lesson on slavery.
On Jan. 25, Larue Washington showed her Ridglea Hills Elementary class clips from the 1997 Steven Spielberg film depicting slaves en route to the Americas, including a scene in which a character was stabbed, district officials said.
Washington failed to follow school board policy requiring commercial mo
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
Feb 2, 2007
People who question the official history of conflicts in Africa and the Balkans could be jailed for up to three years for "genocide denial", under proposed European Union legislation.
But the proposals, seen by the Telegraph of London, go much further and would criminalise those who question the extent of war crimes that have taken place in the past 20 years.
Deborah Lipstadt, professor of modern Jewish and Holocaust studies at Emory University, Atlanta, sai
Source: NYT
Feb 2, 2007
He is hailed by his supporters as the hope of an increasingly multicultural nation, a political phenomenon who can wow white voters while carrying the aspirations of African-Americans all the way to the White House....
But while many whites embrace Mr. Obama’s melting pot background, it remains profoundly unsettling for some blacks who argue that he is distant from the struggles and cultural identities of most black Americans. The black columnist Stanley Crouch has said, “When black
Source: NYT
Feb 2, 2007
With all the public criticism and praise laid at the doorstep of the Atlantic Yards project, the naming of the arena did not figure to be controversial. Last week, Bruce Ratner, the owner of the Nets and the president of Forest City Ratner, the Atlantic Yards developer, announced that the British bank Barclays would pay $400 million over 20 years for naming rights to the 18,000-seat stadium, to be called the Barclays Center.
Barclays’ accusers say the bank’s early founders had ties
Source: Washington Post
Feb 2, 2007
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- When a sprawling courthouse was inaugurated on the outskirts of this capital last year, it was largely welcomed by Cambodians, who expressed hope that one day the leaders of the Khmer Rouge would sit inside, squirm in the docks and face comeuppance for overseeing the brutal deaths of as many as 1.7 million people a quarter-century ago.
Today, however, the hopes of many Khmer Rouge victims have turned to frustrations. Rather than providing a promised airing o
Source: Telegraph
Feb 2, 2007
LIQIAN, China -- Residents of a remote Chinese village are hoping that DNA tests will prove one of history's most unlikely legends — that they are descended from Roman legionaries lost in antiquity.
Scientists have taken blood samples from 93 people living in and around Liqian, a settlement in north-western China on the fringes of the Gobi desert, more than 200 miles from the nearest city...
Studies claiming that Liqian has Roman ancestry have greatly excited the impove
Source: http://www.gazetteandherald.co.uk
Feb 1, 2007
DRUIDS are demanding the re-burial of a child's skeleton displayed in the stone circle museum in Avebury.
On Tuesday the Council of British Druids backed up their request with a small ceremony at the Alexander Keiller Museum.
The child's skeleton was discovered during excavations at the North Ditch at Windmill Hill in 1929. Dubbed Charlie or Charlotte, is one of the most popular exhibits in the museum.
Now the Order of Druids, the group that celebrates moth
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
Feb 1, 2007
David Horowitz, the conservative activist, has unveiled a new terrorism-awareness campaign aimed at college campuses. It encourages students to look beyond what Mr. Horowitz calls anti-American teachings by college professors and understand the threat of radical Islam.
“The curriculum, particularly in Middle East studies and women’s studies, is geared to painting a very negative picture of America and showing that there is some kind of justification for the attacks on us,” Mr. Horow
Source: Discovery News
Feb 1, 2007
U.S. army archaeologists believe they have located a very early English settlement known as "Henrytowne," which they say historical accounts and artifacts suggest was contemporaneous with Jamestown — America’s first permanent English colony.
While Jamestown, founded in 1607, probably predates Henrytowne by at least a few years, the newly identified Virginia Beach Cape Henry site could have been home to one of the nation's earliest English colonies, indicated lead archaeolo
Source: BBC News
Feb 1, 2007
In the year that Peru is trying to get Machu Picchu voted one of the new Seven Wonders of the World, there are growing tensions over the country's greatest tourist attraction.
A former mayor has built a bridge which creates a new route to the World Heritage site, threatening to bring more tourists and, some say, open up a new route for drug traffickers.
The 80-metre long Carilluchayoc bridge, which crosses the Vilcanota river near the base of the 15th-Century Inca cita
Source: Korea Times
Feb 1, 2007
U.S. Rep. Michael M. Honda introduced a bipartisan resolution to the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, calling for Japan to formally acknowledge and accept responsibility for sexually enslaving women during World War II.A similar resolution, drafted by Rep. Lane Evans, passed the committee last September. But it failed to go to the House's plenary voting session due to Japan's strong lobbying.
More than 200,000 ``comfort women'' suffered gang ra
