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: NYT
Jan 28, 2007
STANDING ROCK RESERVATION, S.D.
Here, on a snow-dusted bluff overlooking the Missouri River, rests Sitting Bull. Or so it is said.
Stand before the monument and see the pocks left in the granite by bullets. Notice where the nose was replaced after vandals with chains and a truck yanked the bust from its pedestal. Spot where the headdress feather was mended after being shot off. And wonder, along with the rest of the Dakotas:
Is Sitting Bull here?
Source: http://www.chron.com/
Jan 28, 2007
Virginia Sen. John Warner's words betray the guilt he still carries about the Vietnam War and help explain why this pillar of the Republican establishment is leading a bipartisan revolt against the war plans of a president in his own party.
"I regret that I was not more outspoken" during the Vietnam War, the former Navy secretary said in an interview in his Capitol Hill office. "The Army generals would come in, 'Just send in another five or ten thousand.' You know, mo
Source: The Guardian
Jan 28, 2007
The foreign office has made a last-ditch attempt to stop one of its former senior diplomats from publishing a book claiming that the government knew that Iraq did not represent a significant threat to the West in the run-up to the Iraq war.
Last night Carne Ross, who was a member of the British mission to the United Nations, declined to comment on a letter asking him to 'reconsider' his decision to publish his book, Independent Diplomat, other than to describe it as 'unpleasant'...
Source: Sunday Telegraph
Jan 28, 2007
ROME -- For years it was derided by unwilling schoolboys for being "as dead as dead could be". Now, despite the Vatican's best efforts, the Pope's top adviser on Latin has reluctantly joined them by saying the language of St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas is almost extinct.
"It is dying in the Church. I'm not optimistic about Latin. The young priests and bishops are not studying it," said Fr Reginald Foster, 68, a Carmelite friar who was appointed the Papal Lati
Source: Washington Post
Jan 28, 2007
About half a mile to the east of the bustle of the Kennedy Space Center visitors' center at Cape Canaveral is a little-visited part of American space history. Here the Atlantic breeze sighs among the stunted palms and the palmetto grass and whines through the twisted steel gridwork of abandoned skeletal launch gantries.
It is Launch Pad 34, site of one of the first -- and worst -- disasters in space history. It was here 40 years ago this weekend, on Jan. 27, 1967, that astronauts Vi
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Jan 27, 2007
Adam Willis was brought to California as a slave in 1846, gained his freedom nine years later, then searched the country using newspaper ads to find his family and build a home for them in Solano County.
The recent discovery of Willis' 152-year-old manumission record in the Solano County Archive has, along with other records from that era, stimulated a new examination of California's past that's been left out of the Gold Rush history books.
The existence of slavery in e
Source: Independent (UK)
Jan 27, 2007
A macabre 1,700-year-old mass grave of people and horses, discovered in Normandy, poses perplexing new questions about the Roman conquest of France. Was there a small part of ancient Gaul which refused, Asterix-like, to surrender for 300 years?
The grave site, from the 3rd century, which was discovered by French state archaeologists at Evreux, appears to contain ritual arrangements of human and horse remains. In one, a human skull is clasped between two horse's skulls, like the two
Source: Washington Post
Jan 27, 2007
MOSCOW -- Into one of the most sordid episodes in Russian literary history, the Soviets' persecution of Boris Pasternak, author of "Doctor Zhivago," a Russian historian has injected a belated piece of intrigue: the CIA as covert financier of a Russian-language edition of the epic novel.
Ivan Tolstoy, who is also a broadcaster for Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe, writes in a forthcoming book that the CIA secretly arranged for the publication of a limited Russian-languag
Source: The Independent
Jan 27, 2007
It was a film that portrayed some of the most harrowing and controversial images of modern British troops at war. 'Tumbledown' [directed by Richard Eyre] shocked the nation with gruesome scenes of hand-to-hand fighting in which a young lieutenant speared Argentinian troops with a broken bayonet and nearly met his own end when he was shot in the head by a sniper.
Now, with the 25th anniversary of the Falklands War looming, Robert Lawrence, on whose life Tumbledown was based, plans to
Source: The Times (London)
Jan 27, 2007
BERLIN -- The hideaway villa used by Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda chief, to entertain his lovers is to be put up for sale in an attempt to bail out the cash-strapped city of Berlin.
The rundown, empty Waldhof estate, set in woodland 40 kilometres (25 miles) north of the city, has become a financial burden for the Berlin council, which has been contemplating the closure of opera houses and other desperate measures to avert bankruptcy...
Goebbels took over the pla
Source: AP
Jan 27, 2007
STOCKHOLM -- There are places on the Moon named after him. His face appears on Swedish currency, and an era of scientific history bears his name. But Carl Linnaeus is best known for creating the system of classifying living organisms that became the international standard.
Sweden on Saturday began yearlong celebrations that will mark the 300th anniversary of the birth of its most famous scientist, launching festivities with music and fireworks in Linnaeus' hometown.
''H
Source: AP
Jan 27, 2007
Israel's Holocaust memorial has launched a version of its Web site in Farsi to educate the country's most bitter enemy — Iran — about the Nazi genocide of 6 million Jews.
Iran has faced widespread condemnation for hosting a conference last month that questioned whether the Holocaust took place. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called the Holocaust a "myth" and said Israel should be "wiped off the map."
The Web site was unveiled this week to
Source: DPA (German Press Agency)
Jan 27, 2007
BERLIN -- Germans held services around the country on Saturday to mark the annual Holocaust Memorial Day, while the country's Jewish community issued a stern warning about the danger of denying the crime in which some six million Jews were murdered.
Politicians led the way in the ceremonies at various Holocaust sites in marking the day set up to coincide with the January 27, 1945 liberation of the infamous Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz.
In Berlin, the Greens party l
Source: The Guardian
Jan 27, 2007
Senior leaders within the Muslim Council of Britain tried to reverse the controversial decision to stay away from Holocaust memorial day, the Guardian has learned.
Key figures such as Sir Iqbal Sacranie were desperate for the organisation to change tack, arguing that the current stance was damaging the MCB's reputation among the government and public.
A secret meeting of the ruling committee saw more than a third of its senior figures vote to join Jewish leaders and tho
Source: AP
Jan 27, 2007
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- Argentina on Friday authorized officials to reveal state secrets if called to testify in human rights trials, a move intended to speed up prosecution of atrocities committed during the country's 1976-1983 military dictatorship...
President Nestor Kirchner's decree lifts the ban on former and current military, police and government officials from revealing state secrets in certain court cases...
Encouraged by Kirchner, who took office in 2003,
Source: Deutsche Welle World
Jan 26, 2007
As one of the most famous Holocaust deniers goes on trial in Germany, the EU takes steps to criminalize denying the Shoah.
German prosecutors in Mannheim demanded a five-year jail sentence Friday for one of the most high-profile figures in the Holocaust denial movement, Ernst Zündel, in closing arguments at his trial.
Zündel, a 67-year-old German citizen, stands accused of inciting racial hatred for disputing the historical fact that Nazi Germany systematically slaug
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
Jan 26, 2007
[Last] week in Amsterdam, Sotheby's [began] selling 76,000 pieces of Chinese Export porcelain recovered from a circa 1725 shipwreck off the coast of present-day Vietnam. Because it was bound for the western market, the cargo reveals the era's fads and fashions in Europe, and precise details about the arduous journey made by goods in demand...
"In the 18th century, if it took two years to get something, it was still worthwhile doing," says Marcus Linell, Sotheby's Export-po
Source: http://www.sun-sentinel.com
Jan 26, 2007
A petition drive to get Confederate-themed clothing banned from school grounds has exposed a rift at Hollywood Hills High. The episode may lead the Broward School Board to examine whether its student conduct code should address the Confederate flag.
Sophomore Ilana Hostyk started a petition this week at Hollywood Hills in hopes of pressing officials to ban the symbol, considered a show of Rebel pride by some and a reminder of Southern race-based prejudice by others.
Source: International Herald Tribune
Jan 26, 2007
BUCHAREST -- King Michael I of the Romanians was sitting alone at his desk here, looking over some correspondence, when a visitor arrived. He had evidently been sitting there for some time because the sun had set and the room had dimmed to near darkness around him. His personal secretary, Oana Carbunescu, flipped on a light and he stirred.
Michael, 85, is the last living head of state from World War II. He lunched with Hitler, shook Churchill's hand and lived briefly under Stalin's
Source: AP
Jan 26, 2007
DENVER -- A federal judge on Friday proposed keeping secret for 25 years the sworn statements made by the parents of the Columbine High School gunmen for a civil lawsuit settled more than three years ago.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Babcock suggested the plan to settle a dispute over whether the depositions should be destroyed. His proposal calls for the material to be turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration. It was not immediately clear what would happen to th
