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: UPI
Jan 5, 2007
FBI files released this week show the late U.S. Chief Justice William Rehnquist was addicted to a sleeping drug during his early years on the Supreme Court.
When Rehnquist, then an associate justice, was hospitalized and taken off Placidyl, he suffered such severe withdrawal symptoms that he became delusional and thought the CIA was plotting against him, the Washington Post reported. Doctors then put him back on the drug and weaned him off it successfully by early 1982.
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
Jan 5, 2007
The Federal Bureau of Investigation appears to have quietly given up pursuing the archives of Jack Anderson, the well-known Washington muckraker.
In a November 30 letter to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee -- a response to a series of questions that committee members issued after a hearing last May -- the Department of Justice said that "at this time the FBI is not seeking to reclaim any documents" from the archive, which is now held at George Washington University.
Source: CSMonitor
Jan 4, 2007
CAIRO –- Zahi Hawass is one part celebrity, one part investigator. Egypt's lead sleuth in the country's hunt to reclaim ancient antiquities has gained a reputation for often strong-arming curators and bullying museum directors. But while he's attracted critics in his hunt for Egypt's mummies and pharaonic masks, his hard-nosed techniques are indeed paying off.
Mr. Hawass, chief of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, has recovered some 3,500 objects, including the Ramses
Source: AFP at Yahoo News
Jan 4, 2007
Libya is reportedly to build a statue showing Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi leader executed in Baghdad on Saturday, on a gallows.
It did not say where the statue would be placed.
The official JANA news agency added the Saddam statue will be put up at the same time as another representing Omar al-Mukhtar, the Libyan resistance leader who fought the Italian military occupation and who was executed in 1931, also by hanging.
Source: Pascale Combelles Siege at the website of Foreign Policy in Focus
Jan 4, 2007
In the wake of last year's controversy over the publication of cartoons of the prophet Mohammed, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad decided to launch an international cartoon contest. The objective: invite people from all over the world to question the reality of the Holocaust. The contest drew participants from all over the world and yielded more than 200 Holocaust-related cartoons.
The first prize went to Moroccan cartoonist Abdellah Derkaoui. His caricature features an Israeli
Source: Reuters
Jan 4, 2007
An ancient Vishnu idol has been found during excavation in an old village in Russia’s Volga region, raising questions about the prevalent view on the origin of ancient Russia, the Reuters news agency reports.
The idol found in Staraya (old) Maina village dates back to VII-X century AD. Staraya Maina village in Ulyanovsk region was a highly populated city 1700 years ago, much older than Kiev, so far believed to be the mother of all Russian cities.
“We may consider it in
Source: http://www.tri-cityherald.com
Jan 4, 2007
The Department of Interior has ruled that World War II-era burn pits at Hanford are eligible for listing on the National Register for Historic Places.
The ruling could lead to more careful excavation and study of the site by archaeologists as the pits are emptied as part of the cleanup of the Hanford nuclear reservation.
The burn pits have the "potential to provide important information otherwise unrepresented about the people who lived and worked at the Hanford
Source: Jewish Exponent
Jan 4, 2007
Among the treasure trove of historical papers that adorns the walls of the Raab Collection's new [Philadelphia] Center City office are: a letter from King George IV to Czar Alexander I; another from General George Washington to one of his spies; and the executive order signed by President William McKinley appointing Jacob Trieber to the federal bench, the first Jew to achieve the position. And that's just the beginning.
The Raab Collection, which moved last month from Ardmore to Ce
Source: http://movies.monstersandcritics.com
Jan 4, 2007
The Berlin Film Festival unveiled Thursday the first entries competing at next month's Berlinale, with the batch of movies seeking to shed light on major historical events through personal and often deeply emotional stories.
One of the world's three top film festivals, Berlin festival organisers said this year's line-up of films will include entries from the US, South Korea and Germany and star a raft of big names in the movie business.
This includes America's George
Source: AP
Jan 4, 2007
In a quirk dating back to the origins of Congress, members-elect in the House will cast their vote for the new speaker before taking the oath of office.
The Constitution does not outline how the House should be organized other than to say it should choose its speaker and other officers, determine its rules and publish a journal of its business.
In the first Congress, Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania was chosen the speaker on April 1, 1789, the first day a quorum wa
Source: Science and Development Network
Jan 4, 2007
Weak winter monsoon rains may have contributed to the decline of both China's Tang Dynasty and the Mayan civilisation in Mexico, suggests an article published in Nature.
Source: http://www.pittsburghlive.com
Jan 4, 2007
The image is grainy, but it's clear: Saddam Hussein plummets through the trapdoor and dangles in death, his vacant eyes open and his snapped neck almost at a right angle to the line of his shoulders.
By now, the illicit video of Saddam's execution, reportedly recorded on a camera phone, has spread throughout the Internet and aired internationally, including on American television stations.
It alternately has caused outrage, celebration and offense, and led to the Iraq
Source: Independent (UK)
Jan 4, 2007
The Nazi past of Ireland's foremost educational publisher is to be highlighted in a television programme to be broadcast on the state system, RTE, this month. The programme details the record of Albert Folens, a Belgian who after fleeing to Ireland following the war built up a highly successful business producing school textbooks.
Folens, who died in 2003 at 86, had not denied working for the Germans but minimised his part in the war. But his involvement with both the Gestapo and W
Source: Asia News International
Jan 4, 2007
Rajasthan’s state government plans to 'correct imbalances' in its official history, chronicled by colonial officials. It will do so by revisiting all 41,000 villages and 186 cities and towns in this western Indian state to collect fresh historical material and set the record straight.
The decision has however caused controversy and criticism. Professional historians but also the Catholic Church have said that the project is unscientific; instead, they view it as another attempt by t
Source: AP
Jan 4, 2007
Embittered by career diplomats during his
first term, President Nixon said he wanted to "ruin
the Foreign Service" before leaving office, according
to newly released State Department documents.
Days after his re-election on Nov. 7, 1972, Nixon
vented his frustrations about the diplomatic corps
during a meeting with his national security adviser,
Henry Kissinger.
Just before saying he was going "to take the
Source: NYT
Jan 4, 2007
Seymour Martin Lipset, who ignored family pressure to be a dentist and instead became a pre-eminent sociologist, political scientist and incisive theorist on American uniqueness, died on Dec. 31 in Arlington, Va. He was 84.
The cause was a stroke, his wife, Sydnee, said.
Mr. Lipset’s convictions were shaped early, in the cauldron of leftist politics in New York City in the 1930s, a time when his poor immigrant family urged him to study dentistry in order to take over hi
Source: Boston Globe
Jan 3, 2007
Dover-Sherborn -- A divisive book about the aftermath of war will remain in sixth-grade classrooms because the Dover-Sherborn Regional School Committee voted ... to revamp the English lesson to better reflect the story's historical context. "So Far from the Bamboo Grove" by Massachusetts author Yoko Kawashima Watkins was challenged by a group of 13 parents who said it was racist against Koreans and too graphic for sixth-graders. The award-winning book is Watkins's story, told through
Source: LAT
Jan 3, 2007
Liberated from its shipping crates, the ancient statue drew a crowd of employees when it arrived in December 1987 at the J. Paul Getty Museum's antiquities conservation lab.
The 7 1/2 -foot figure had a placid marble face and delicately carved limestone gown. It was thought to depict Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love. Some who came to see it believed that the sculpture would become the greatest piece in the museum's antiquities collection.
One man, however, saw troub
Source: UPI
Jan 3, 2007
- U.S. senators and other officials are pushing for a faster release of Nazi-era documents from Germany.
U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden, the incoming leader of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is concerned that the delayed release is interfering with Holocaust survivors' search for closure, Deutsche Welle reported Wednesday. Approximately 50 million documents are archived in Bad Arolsen, Germany.
An 11-nation panel International Red Cross' International Tracing Servi
Source: AP
Jan 3, 2007
Japan is allowing researchers to study 11 royal tombs, the graves of ancient emperors, sealed centuries ago, in a move that may shed light on the myth-shrouded origins of Japan's imperial family, according to a news report.
The secretive Imperial Household Agency has until now refused to let the public, and even scholars, enter the old tombs, saying the spirits of past emperors should not be disturbed.
But after a petition by the Japanese Archaeological Association a
