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: Editor & Publisher
Jan 24, 2007
In an online chat at washingtonpost.com this afternoon, Carl Bernstein, the famed Watergate reporter at that paper and now writing articles for Vanity Fair, took several hard shots at the current Bush administration - almost every time he was asked about the Nixon era. It came just as news of the death of former Watergate ringleader E. Howard Hunt was circulating widely.
After a long explanation of how the American system "worked," eventually, with Watergate, Bernstein
Source: Christian Science Monitor
Jan 24, 2007
Scientific advances sometimes come as lightning flashes of inspiration. But when scientists sit down to record and take credit for what they've found, they still use much the same method they have for decades – an article published in a scholarly journal.
But science's hidebound traditions are changing. The Internet has opened up new forms of publishing in which anyone in the world can find and read a scientific paper. And papers themselves are becoming more interactive, leading rea
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 24, 2007
White men with an unusual Yorkshire surname have black African roots, according to a study that shows Britain's multiracial society dates back hundreds of years earlier than most people realise.
It underlines how the concept of race has no scientific meaning by revealing that a white "Caucasian" man in Leicester has a significant African genetic ancestry, along with a lot of other men with the same rare surname.
The research is the first genetic evidence of Af
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
Jan 24, 2007
A federal appeals court has ruled against archivists who sought to ease copyright restrictions on old books and films in order to promote archiving them on the Internet, where they would be freely available.
In the case, Kahle v. Gonzales, two groups -- the Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital library, and Prelinger Associates, which preserves films -- sued the U.S. Justice Department. The archivists said that four copyright laws were thwarting the public from viewing out-of-print
Source: Haaretz
Jan 24, 2007
A boat that plied the coast of the Holy Land 1,300 years ago carrying fish, carobs and olives is helping researchers better understand a little-known period in the region's history.The boat, discovered in a coastal lagoon near the northern city of Haifa this week, dates from the early 8th century, not long after the rise of Islam and the Arab conquest of the Middle East.
Marine archaeologists studying the craft say it is the only one from this period discovered
Source: International Herald Tribune
Jan 24, 2007
When Japanese troops conquered the then-capital of China in 1937, historians agree they slaughtered tens of thousands of civilians in an orgy of violence known since then as the Rape of Nanking.
A Japanese nationalist filmmaker announced on Wednesday he is working on a documentary with a very different message: the massacre never happened.The film, to be called "The Truth about Nanking" and completed in August, will be based on testimony from Japanese
Source: NYT frontpage
Jan 24, 2007
E. Howard Hunt, a cold warrior for the Central Intelligence Agency who left the spy service in disillusionment, joined the Nixon White House as a secret agent and bungled the break-in at the Watergate that brought the president down in disgrace, died Tuesday in Miami. He was 88.
His death, at North Shore Medical Center, was caused by pneumonia, said his wife, Laura.
“This fellow Hunt,” President Richard M. Nixon muttered a few days after the June 1972 break-in, “he know
Source: AP
Jan 23, 2007
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- The former chief photographer at a torture center run by Cambodia's Khmer Rouge said Tuesday he intends to set up a museum with pictures of the leaders of the notorious communist group as his way of apologizing for the death and destruction they caused.
Ngem En, now 47, documented for the Khmer Rouge the thousands taken into Phnom Penh's S-21 prison for torture and eventual execution in the late 1970s. Haunting photos of the victims are the centerpiece of a g
Source: BBC
Jan 23, 2007
In the 1960s four US soldiers separately defected to North Korea, and were little heard from again.
Now one -- the last known former American GI left in the country -- has spoken for the first time to British documentary-makers.
James Dresnok is something of a celebrity around the North Korean capital Pyongyang, his home for the last 44 years.
Unmissable thanks to his 6ft 5in height and bulky frame, the 64-year-old has appeared in North Korean films, tau
Source: LAT
Jan 23, 2007
Eight men were arrested today in connection with the 1971 shotgun murder of a San Francisco police officer in a case that authorities said involved a five-year conspiracy to kill police officers throughout the United States.
A joint task state and federal task force identified seven of the arrested as former members of the Black Liberation Army, a violent group made up mostly of former Black Panthers.
The arrests, which were made in California, New York and Florida, we
Source: UPI
Jan 23, 2007
Israeli scientists say an eighth century shipwreck is believed to be the only ship from that period discovered in the Mediterranean region.
The wreckage of the well-preserved small boat was discovered off Israel's Dor Beach, with much of the vessel's contents suggesting it was involved in local commerce and sailed along the Lavant coast between Mediterranean Sea ports.
Source: AP
Jan 23, 2007
A magic spell to keep snakes away from the tombs of Egyptian kings, adopted from the Canaanites almost 5,000 years ago, could be the oldest Semitic text yet discovered, experts said Tuesday.
The phrases, interspersed throughout religious texts in Egyptian characters in the underground chambers of a pyramid south of Cairo, stumped Egyptian experts for about a century, until the Semitic connection was found.
In 2002 one of the Egyptologists e-mailed the undeciphered part
Source: AP
Jan 23, 2007
Work on Rome's Palatine Hill has turned up a trove of discoveries, including what might be the underground grotto where ancient Romans believed a wolf nursed the city's legendary founders Romulus and Remus.
Archaeologists gathered Tuesday at a conference to save crumbling monuments on the Palatine discussed findings of studies on the luxurious imperial homes threatened by collapse and poor maintenance that have forced the closure of much of the hill to the public.
Source: Virginian-Pilot
Jan 23, 2007
It’s no surprise that Virginians cherish their history. Who knew the love affair extends to our dirt?
Roughly 27,000 tons of the stuff were recently scooped out of the south lawn of the state’s 200-year-old Capitol building. The dig made room for an underground addition, part of a $100 million renovation.
The soil, considered “historic earth,” was trucked to a secret spot in Henrico County and piled into a mountain.
“I can only tell you it was taken to s
Source: Independent (UK)
Jan 23, 2007
The Troubles may be over, but new horrors continue to emerge from Northern Ireland's dark past. And none is more shocking than the revelation that police let known UVF members get away with brutal murders.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 23, 2007
Pope John Paul II was on the brink of resigning in 2000 because of his poor health and considered changing Church law to allow popes to quit at 80, it emerged yesterday.
The revelations came in a new book by Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, the Pope's personal secretary for nearly four decades.
In A Life with Karol, which will be published initially in Polish and Italian on January 29, Cardinal Dziwisz, a fellow Pole, reveals that John Paul II called a meeting of his closest
Source: Times Online (UK)
Jan 23, 2007
BERLIN -- A smiling couple arrived bearing a bouquet of roses on the doorstep of the chief executive of Dresdner Bank. As the banker, Jürgen Ponto, turned to call for a vase, he was shot five times through the flowers by a woman terrorist.
That was almost 30 years ago, and yesterday the woman, Brigitte Mohnhaupt, pleaded with German judges to be allowed out on parole.
Now Germany has to decide if it should make its peace with the terrorists of the 1970s. The Baader-Me
Source: Reuters
Jan 23, 2007
- Britain has nominated the Antonine Wall in Scotland, the furthest northwest boundary of the Roman Empire, as a World Heritage Site, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said on Tuesday.
The 37-mile wall was built between 142 and 144 AD by Antoninus Pius who succeeded another famous wall-builder, Hadrian, as Emperor of Rome in 138 AD.
But his construction between the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde -- the narrowest portion of lowland Scotland -- was less s
Source: WaPo
Jan 23, 2007
The Virginia lawmaker who caused an uproar last week by questioning the need for a state apology for slavery proposed a measure Monday that would commemorate the freeing of the last U.S. slaves in June 1865.
Del. Frank D. Hargrove Sr., a Republican from Hanover County near Richmond, said he has been deluged with at least 4,000 phone calls and e-mails at his home and office since he inflamed the House of Delegates by saying that blacks should "get over" slavery and that ap
Source: Guardian
Jan 23, 2007
The man known as the Unabomber, who waged a 17-year battle against what he considered the evils of new technology, is trying to stop the US government selling his writings on the internet to provide compensation to his victims.
Theodore Kaczynski is arguing through lawyers that more than 40,000 pages of documents should be returned to him. He objects to plans to sell the papers in sanitised form, with the names of victims removed, which he claims violates his First Amendment right
