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 14, 2007
DURING the midterm elections, a question nagged at Republicans who agreed to follow the White House script on the Iraq war: Does the president care more about his legacy than the party’s in pushing his course?
By last week, many Republicans on Capitol Hill had come to believe that their interests and the president’s may be diverging even wider.
On one end of Pennsylvania Avenue is a president who argues that history will judge him favorably on the war; on the other are
Source: Salt Lake Tribune
Jan 13, 2007
The pioneering artificial heart developed by Robert Jarvik will go on display at the Smithsonian Institution next month.
''As an item of historic interest, this is the only time the public has had a chance to look at it,'' Jarvik said of the heart first implanted by a University of Utah Health Sciences Center surgical team into the chest of Seattle-area dentist Barney Clark nearly a quarter century ago.
''Unfortunately, a lot of people who go see it would hav
Source: AP
Jan 13, 2007
EDINBURGH -- With barely the raising of a glass, Scotland is preparing to mark 300 years since accepting the Treaty of Union with England -- which bound two countries together and gave the world Great Britain.
The anniversary Tuesday of the Scottish parliament's voting to accept the treaty is focusing attention on growing discord, with advocates of Scottish independence gaining strength in their campaign for a referendum on breaking the union.
"This treaty can and
Source: AP
Jan 13, 2007
In 1759, British forces successfully beat back French occupiers of a triangular point of land where the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers meet to form the Ohio river. The British built Fort Pitt and named the adjoining area Pittsburgh.
Today, next to office buildings and sitting underneath modern highways, part of Fort Pitt is surrounded by a chain-link fence. Inside, construction equipment scoops up dirt and broken chunks of concrete in preparation to cover a wall and moat that onc
Source: AP
Jan 13, 2007
What appear to be crude stone tools may provide evidence that people lived in Minnesota 13,000 to 15,000 years ago, which if confirmed would make them among the oldest human artifacts ever found in North America, archaeologists said Friday.
Archaeologists in the northern Minnesota town of Walker dug up the items, which appear to be beveled scrapers, choppers, a crude knife and several flakes that could have been used for cutting, said Colleen Wells, field director for the Leech Lak
Source: Guardian
Jan 13, 2007
Mary Martin was 11 years old when her father taught her to box. She would come home from school scratched and bruised, her ears ringing with abuse from the playground. Mary Martin had the unhappy distinction of being the granddaughter of Britain's last convicted witch.
Mrs Martin knew her grandmother, Helen Duncan, as a comforting woman she could trust, the granny with a special gift: talking to spirits. But this was April 1944, at the height of the war with Germany. Mrs Duncan had
Source: National Geographic News
Jan 12, 2007
Recent excavations of Salisbury Plain in southern England have revealed at least two other large stone formations close by the world-famous prehistoric monument.
One of the megalithic finds is a sandstone formation that marked a ritual burial mound; the other, a group of stones at the site of an ancient timber circle.
The new discoveries suggest that many similar monuments may have been erected in the shadow of Stonehenge, possibly forming part of a much larger comple
Source: Reuters
Jan 12, 2007
A major new exhibition of Martin Luther King's personal papers reveals the years of work that lay behind his "I Have a Dream" speech that has come to symbolize the U.S. civil rights movement.
The exhibition of 600 documents at the Atlanta History Center is the largest display of the papers since they were bought from the King family by an Atlanta consortium on behalf of Morehouse College last June for $32 million.
Displays of speeches and sermons King wrote in
Source: AP
Jan 12, 2007
Howard Hughes could have tied the knot with the Hollywood glamour girl anywhere in the world. But the billionaire's obsession with privacy prompted him to marry actress Jean Peters in the remote mining town of Tonopah 50 years ago Friday.
After failing in an effort to save the improbable site of the secret Jan. 12, 1957 wedding -- the L&L Motel -- a group of Tonopah residents has announced plans to commemorate the event by building a life-size statue of the couple.
Source: BBC
Jan 12, 2007
Meet Dante. Not the best looking man in the world, but certainly better-looking than he has often been depicted in famous paintings.
Scientists believe this face is the closest match to the poet's skull found in his tomb.
And for Dante scholars it has thrown up a few surprises. They always imagined him to have a long aquiline nose.
Source: CNN
Jan 12, 2007
In 25 years of interviews with his hometown paper that could only be released upon his death, former President Ford once called Jimmy Carter a "disaster" who ranked alongside Warren Harding, and said Ronald Reagan received far too much credit for ending the Cold War.
"It makes me very irritated when Reagan's people pound their chests and say that because we had this big military buildup, the Kremlin collapsed," Ford told The Grand Rapids Press.
Ford
Source: NYT
Jan 12, 2007
From a new analysis of a human skull discovered in South Africa more than 50 years ago, scientists say they have obtained the first fossil evidence establishing the relatively recent time for the dispersal of modern Homo sapiens out of Africa.
The migrants appeared to have arrived at their new homes in Asia and Europe with the distinct and unmodified heads of Africans.
An international team of researchers reported yesterday that the age of the South African skull, which
Source: International Herald Tribune
Jan 12, 2007
Germany wants to use its European Union presidency to push through legislation that would make denying the Holocaust punishable by stiff jail sentences in all 27 EU member states.The country's justice minister, Brigitte Zypries, said Thursday night that Germany's commitment to combating racism and xenophobia — and keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive — was both an enduring historical obligation and a present-day political necessity.
"We have always sai
Source: David Swanson in a column emailed around the Internet
Jan 12, 2007
[Mr. Swanson has been in the forefront of the small movement to impeach President Bush.]
There is a decent chance that within the next month or two the New Mexico State Legislature will ask the U.S. House of Representatives to begin impeachment proceedings against President Bush and Vice President Cheney. And there is the definite possibility that a Congress Member from New Mexico will take up the matter when it gets to Washington. The Jefferson Manual, rules used by the U.S. Hous
Source: http://publicaffairs.cua.edu
Jan 11, 2007
The record had a thick, deep scratch around its aluminum circumference, but that wasn’t the first thing Patrick Cullom noticed. It had been sent to CUA’s archives from Nugent Hall back in the `90s, packed in a sagging cardboard box that didn’t look much different from other boxes that found their way to the archives from the back of some closet or basement storeroom. The box contained antiquated record albums just like the one Cullom held in his hand, discs that needed to be sorted and filed, or
Source: LAT
Jan 11, 2007
The military's new strategy for Iraq envisions creating "gated communities" in Baghdad — sealing off discrete areas and forcibly removing insurgents, then stationing American units in the neighborhood to keep the peace and working to create jobs for residents.
The U.S. so far has found it impossible to secure the sprawling city. But by focusing an increased number of troops in selected neighborhoods, the military hopes it can create islands of security segregated from the
Source: John Steele Gordon in Am Heritage
Jan 11, 2007
Today is Alexander Hamilton’s 250th birthday. Unless, of course, it’s his 252nd. He claimed to have been born in 1757, but there is considerable nearly contemporary evidence that he was actually born in 1755. But there is no argument that he was not yet 50 when he died at the hands of Aaron Burr in 1804. And there is no argument that despite his brief life he had more influence on the future of the United States than all but a very, very few of the Founding Fathers.
Source: AP
Jan 11, 2007
A judge Thursday ordered the arrest of former President Isabel Peron -- wife of Argentine strongman Juan Peron -- for questioning into alleged links to a right-wing death squad before she was ousted in a 1976 military coup.
Isabel Peron is sought in connection with three decrees she signed calling on the armed forces to crack down on "subversive elements," a judge's spokesman said.
Judge Raul Acosta also ordered her detained for questioning into the disappe
Source: Guardian
Jan 11, 2007
The international effort to recover “stolen” works of art from some of the world’s best museums gathered pace today with reports that Italy is seeking the return of Roman antiquities from Japan.
Authorities in Italy suspect that up to 100 treasures from ancient Rome were looted and have asked the Japanese government to help secure their return, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reported.
Source: Independent (UK)
Jan 11, 2007
It has been one of America's happiest conservation stories. After teetering on the edge of extinction more than 100 years ago, bison are back, roaming the grasslands of national parks and private ranches of the western US in significant herds. But there's a hitch. How many really are bison?
Not that many, it seems. Animal geneticists have determined that, because of a long history of ranchers cross-breeding cattle with bison in search of a better beef animal, fewer than 3 per cent
