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: Boston Globe
Jan 18, 2007
A French court handed a leading far-right French politician a three-month suspended jail sentence and fined him 5,000 euros ($6,500) on Thursday for questioning the Holocaust.The Lyon court found Bruno Gollnisch, No. 2 in the far-right National Front party, had "disputed a crime against humanity" in remarks he made during a news conference in the eastern French city on October 11, 2004.
The judge also ordered Gollnisch to pay 55,000 euros in damages to
Source: BBC
Jan 17, 2007
Hindus in Europe have joined forces against a German proposal to ban the display of the swastika across the European Union, a Hindu leader said.
Ramesh Kallidai of the Hindu Forum of Britain said the swastika had been a symbol of peace for thousands of years before the Nazis adopted it.
He said a ban on the symbol would discriminate against Hindus.
Germany, holder of the EU presidency, wants to make Holocaust denial and the display of Nazi symbols a crime.
Source: Tom Zeller Jr. in the NYT blog
Jan 17, 2007
Before we set aside the topic of Iraq’s botched hangings, which continue to cause a fair bit of consternation there, a reader reminds us to flash back to 1946, and the conclusion of the trials at Nuremberg, in which 11 high-ranking Nazi officers were ultimately condemned to death by hanging. One of them, Hermann Göring, managed to finish himself in his cell with a cyanide capsule just hours before the execution was to take place, but the others took their trip to the gallows.
Joachi
Source: AP
Jan 17, 2007
ST. GEORGE'S, Grenada -- Grenada's premier has called on the men convicted of leading a 1983 coup to reveal where they put the remains of slain officials, including former socialist leader Maurice Bishop.
The men who killed Bishop, four Cabinet ministers and six of their supporters have said they do not know the whereabouts of the remains, but Prime Minister Keith Mitchell said Tuesday he believes they could help solve the mystery.
The slain prime minister's mother, A
Source: http://news.newamericamedia.org
Jan 17, 2007
What was the first black newspaper in Boston In New England?
Though those questions are straightforward, the answers are not. Much of the history of the black press in the region and its largest city is missing, incomplete or contradictory. Copies of many early ones can not be found. Who published papers, and exactly for how long, is often hazy. The gaps persist even into the last century: No one has copies of the entire run of the region’s most influential black paper, William Monr
Source: Roanoke Va. Times
Jan 17, 2007
A resolution that would have the General Assembly apologize for Virginia's role in slavery has aroused passions in the legislature even before the measure gets its first hearing from committees in the Senate and House of Delegates.
A Hanover County lawmaker's published comments that blacks should "get over" slavery were denounced on the House floor Tuesday by two black delegates who are supporting a resolution of apology. The comments by Republican Del. Frank Hargrove lit
Source: Times Online (UK)
Jan 17, 2007
Giant cranes move into place tomorrow at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence to begin work on a €30 million (£20 million) plan to increase exhibition space at one of the world’s foremost treasure houses of art.
The extension scheme, which will last between four and five years, envisages demolishing the remains of a medieval church where Dante and Boccaccio are said to have preached.
The project will increase space at the Uffizi from 8,100sq m (87,000sq ft) to 12,900s
Source: Times Online (UK)
Jan 17, 2007
The ladies’ lavatory of Bella Italia in Central Edinburgh has three cubicles, the wall tiles are white with diagonal green stripes and the ceiling is grey chipboard. There is little to suggest that the site was of importance in the unification of England and Scotland and, even yesterday, few visitors were engaged upon pilgrimages.
But, according to Richard Finlay, of the University of Strathclyde, it was there, 300 years ago yesterday, that leaders of the old Scottish Parliament si
Source: Independent (UK)
Jan 17, 2007
Venice is to get a new bridge, its first in more than 70 years. This week the first piles were sunk on the bank of the Grand Canal by the railway station for Il ponte di Calatrava, which should be ready to bear its first cargo of tourists across to the buses and car parks of Piazzale Roma by the summer. The prefabricated sections were towed up the canal over the past two summers and are now ready to be bolted in place.
Designed by Santiago Calatrava, the Spanish engineer whose dram
Source: AP
Jan 17, 2007
Hawaii Sen. Daniel Akaka reintroduced the Native Hawaiian Recognition Bill on Capitol Hill on Wednesday morning.
The so-called Akaka bill is part of a seven-year push for legislation to recognize Native Hawaiians as indigenous inhabitants of the 50th state. Their legal status would be similar to that of American Indians and Alaskan Natives.
The bill provides a process to set up a Native Hawaiian government and then start negotiations to transfer power and property from
Source: Dallas Morning News
Jan 17, 2007
Southern Methodist University's president told about 175 professors Wednesday that any agreement to put the Bush presidential library, museum and a policy institute on the campus will preserve SMU's academic values and ethics.
"I assure you that any real or perceived fears or concerns about the institute or any part of the library in some way inhibiting this university's practice of academic freedom and diversity of opinion and practices are unfounded," SMU President Geral
Source: Asia Media News Daily
Jan 17, 2007
The CIA has fixed information regarding South Korea's history on its World Factbook website, a civic group said yesterday. The CIA has changed its description of Korea from an "independent kingdom for much of the past millennium" to an "independent kingdom for much of its millennia-long history," the Voluntary Agency Network of Korea said.The original sentence was inaccurate as it insinuated that South Korea's history only began a millennium ago and ignor
Source: AP
Jan 17, 2007
Monkeys infected with a resurrected virus that was responsible for history's deadliest epidemic have given scientists a better idea of how the 1918 Spanish flu attacked so quickly and relentlessly: by turning victims' bodies against them.
The research, which found that an over-stimulated immune system killed even as it tried to fight the flu, helps explain why many of the 50 million people who died in the epidemic were healthy young adults. Conventional flu usually claims mostly the
Source: AP
Jan 16, 2007
Clarksville school officials say they have ordered teachers to end a role-playing exercise on slavery for elementary students after a teacher complained one student took her role as a slave master too seriously.
For four years, social studies teachers at Ringgold Elementary School have held an exercise that had fifth-graders play slaves and others play masters while learning about the Civil War.
Teachers divided their classes into slaves and masters on one day and then
Source: Press Association (UK)
Jan 16, 2007
Prime Minister Tony Blair has mounted a strong defence of the 300-year-old union of Scotland with England, warning it would be "crazy" for Scotland to quit the UK.
His defence came as politicians north and south of the border marked the anniversary with fresh wrangling over Britain's constitutional future.
Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond said the lack of mass celebrations to mark the event showed there was little public enthusiasm for the Union.
Source: NYT
Jan 16, 2007
Archaeologists digging in Syria, in the upper reaches of what was ancient Mesopotamia, have found new evidence of how one of the world’s earliest cities met a violent end by fire, collapsing walls and roofs, and a fierce rain of clay bullets. The battle left some of the oldest known ruins of organized warfare.
Source: USA Today
Jan 16, 2007
A massive ruin offers fresh clues about the culture of Peru's vanished Chachapoya, the "cloud warriors" who battled the Inca Empire more than 500 years ago.
Best known for building mountainous cliff-side tombs and filling them with bundled mummies, the Chachapoya (cha-cha-POY-ah) were once rulers of the northern Andes. Aside from cliff tombs and stone houses, they have left archaeologists few large ruins to study.
Until now.
The ruin was first discovere
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
Jan 16, 2007
Whether it is the hunt for the last surviving perpetrators of the Holocaust, the restitution of looted artworks, or new evidence of the complicity of governments in that immense crime against humanity by Germany and its allies, U.S. public interest in European war crimes has not flagged since the end of World War II.
But the war crimes committed by Japan — including biological warfare, human experimentation, and massacres — have attracted much less attention in the six decades since
Source: Yahoo
Jan 16, 2007
Putting to rest a 200-year-old mystery, scientists say Napoleon Bonaparte died from an advanced case of gastric cancer and not arsenic poisoning as some had speculated.
After being defeated by the British in 1815, the French Emperor was exiled to St. Helena--an island in the South Atlantic Ocean. Six years later, at the age of 52, Bonaparte whispered his last words, "Head of Army!"
An autopsy at the time determined that stomach cancer was the cause of his deat
Source: NYT
Jan 16, 2007
Because of its otherworldly brilliance, the 16th-century Taíno Indians of Cuba called it turey, their word for the most luminous part of the sky.
They adored its sweet smell, its reddish hue, its exotic origins and its dazzling iridescence, qualities that elevated it to the category of sacred materials known as guanín. Local chieftains wore it in pendants and medallions to show their wealth, influence and connection to the supernatural realm. Elite women and children were buried wit
