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: AP
Dec 20, 2006
Maryland will spend $600,000 to help buy George Washington's handwritten resignation from the Continental Army that he read to the Continental Congress, then meeting in Annapolis.
State archivists said in February that they acquired the two-page letter to put in the city's State House, where the Revolutionary War hero resigned his commission Dec. 23, 1783. On Wednesday, the state Board of Public Works approved that purchase, along with $150,000 for an accompanying letter written by
Source: USA Today
Dec 20, 2006
The most recent fight for Gettysburg ended Wednesday when Pennsylvania gambling regulators rejected a proposal for a slot-machine casino near the Civil War battlefield.
The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board awarded five licenses for casinos in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, the Pocono Mountains and Bethlehem. Among the 13 applications was a proposal to build a 3,000-slot casino, a luxury hotel and spa, and several restaurants a little more than a mile from a portion of the Gettysburg Nat
Source: Reuters
Dec 20, 2006
The Getty Museum, one of the world's leading
repositories of antiquities, refused on Wednesday to hand over to Italy a
2,500-year-old Greek statue of a boy to end a bitter dispute over looted
works of art.
Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli made the demand in Rome, saying Italy
would break off ties with the wealthy Los Angeles museum, which funds
several restoration projects in Italy, unless it quickly returned art
works, including the bronze statue, that Rome says were looted.
"
Source: AP
Dec 20, 2006
President Clinton's national security adviser removed classified documents from the National Archives, hid them under a construction trailer and later tried to find the trash collector to retrieve them, the agency's internal watchdog said Wednesday.
The report was issued more than a year after Sandy Berger pleaded guilty and received a criminal sentence for removing the documents.
Berger took the documents in the fall of 2003 while working to prepare himself and Clinto
Source: NYT
Dec 20, 2006
Images of villagers dying from what prosecutors said was a chemical attack on Kurds were shown here on Tuesday at the trial of Saddam Hussein.
Mr. Hussein is facing charges of genocide in connection with the deaths of 50,000 Kurds in a campaign that ultimately killed 180,000 Kurds in the 1980s. He has already been convicted in a separate trial and sentenced to death by hanging for his role in the killing of 148 Shiites.
The images shown by prosecutors were some of the
Source: AP
Dec 20, 2006
Before the Freedom Riders came to Jackson, nine black students from Tougaloo College entered the city's segregated main library branch and began reading.
After refusing orders by the police chief to leave, the so-called Tougaloo Nine were arrested, charged and convicted of breaching the peace.
Their actions in March 1961 were among the first high-profile efforts to break down a stubborn, long-standing system of segregation in Mississippi.
After that, the
Source: Indo-Asian news service
Dec 20, 2006
AMRITSAR, INDIA, Dec 20 (IANS) The 18th century Gobindgarh Fort here, once home toGeneral Reginald Dyer who was responsible for the massacre of 2,000 Indians in Jalianwala Bagh, was Wednesday thrown open to the public by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
The prime minister handed over the symbolic key of the fort, which was under the Indian Army since October 1948, to the state government, opening up the sprawling 50-acre complex to the public.
The fort was first bui
Source: LAT
Dec 20, 2006
Dick Cheney will be called to testify at the perjury and obstruction trial of his former chief of staff, in what would be a historic appearance by a vice president in a criminal prosecution, lawyers said Tuesday.
The decision by I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's lawyers to call Cheney as a witness in the federal trial scheduled to begin here Jan. 16 ends months of speculation about the role senior White House officials would play.
It also sets the stage for a dramat
Source: Houston Chronicle
Dec 20, 2006
Robert G. Heft once sat patiently at an autograph signing in Dallas while hundreds of people flocked to NBA legend Michael Jordan to claim one of his $30 signatures.
Standing in Heft's 10-person line, a boy asked his father why they were waiting for the autograph of a man he'd never seen. The father replied that Heft — who designed America's 50-star flag — is a piece of history.
Although he'll grace the pages of history books one day for his accomplishment, Heft, 64, of
Source: Yahoo/AP
Dec 20, 2006
More than nine out of 10 Americans, men and women alike, have had premarital sex, according to a new study. The high rates extend even to women born in the 1940s, challenging perceptions that people were more chaste in the past.
"This is reality-check research," said the study's author, Lawrence Finer. "Premarital sex is normal behavior for the vast majority of Americans, and has been for decades."
Finer is a research director at the Guttmacher Insti
Source: LAT
Dec 20, 2006
The FBI agreed Tuesday to make public the final 10 documents about the surveillance of John Lennon that it had withheld for 25 years from a University of California, Irvine historian on the grounds that releasing them could cause "military retaliation against the United States."
Despite the fierce battle the government waged to keep the documents secret, the files contain information that is hardly shocking, just new details about Lennon's ties to New Left leaders and anti
Source: AP
Dec 19, 2006
he wreck of a World War II German submarine off Norway's coast should be covered with sand to contain its cargo of environmentally damaging mercury, a study said Tuesday.
The submarine U-864 was torpedoed and sunk by the British submarine Venturer off western Norway on Feb. 9, 1945. Its wreckage, found by the Royal Norwegian Navy in March 2003, is believed to have about 70 tons of mercury aboard.
The submarine was sunk while trying to get to Japan, a German ally, with m
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Dec 19, 2006
No Christmas celebrations would be complete without them but, with rationing in post-war Britain, Christmas crackers were an expensive luxury few could readily afford.
Now, after spending 60 years hidden in the dusty attic of a family-run newsagents, two rare and untouched boxes dating back to the 1940s have been unveiled for the first time.
Containing 12 crackers in each, the two boxes are sparingly decorated, with little description and few illustrations. On the lid
Source: AP
Dec 19, 2006
ALLENSWORTH, Calif. - Basque immigrant Sam Etchegaray had two seemingly perfect swaths for a pair of large dairies: 2,000 rural acres of dusty fields, where thousands of cows would be at home in the No. 1 milk-producing county in the nation.
The only problem is that the pastures were next to a state park that pays tribute to a community founded by a freed slave, raising the ire of environmentalists and blacks who objected to the pollution and stench that would come with the cows.
Source: Southern Maryland Online
Dec 19, 2006
Senator Paul S. Sarbanes (D-MD) applauded the signing into law today of legislation that would create the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail, which would become the first national “Watertrail” in the country. The legislation, which was spearheaded by Senators Paul S. Sarbanes (D-MD) and John Warner (R-VA) and Congresswoman Jo Ann Davis (VA) will trace the route of Captain John Smith’s two-year exploration of the Chesapeake Bay region almost 400 years ago.
In Apri
Source: BBC
Dec 19, 2006
Historically, Tony Blair has had a closer relationship with a US president than any British prime minister since the Thatcher-Reagan era and, before that, since Harold Macmillan persuaded John Kennedy to give Britain the Polaris nuclear missile. .
Every prime minister faces this problem. All live in the shadow of the great Churchill-Roosevelt duo. They have varied enormously in their response. This has not depended on their political outlook.
The Conservative Ted Heat
Source: BBC
Dec 19, 2006
The last British serviceman to serve in both World War I and World War II has died aged 106.
Captain Kenneth Cummins served in the Royal Navy in WWI and in the Merchant Navy in WWII.
Until his death at home in Great Bedwyn in Wiltshire on 10 December, he was one of five WWI veterans living in the UK.
Dennis Goodwin, chairman of the WWI Veterans' Association, said: "Any death of a veteran of WWI means the end of a unique and special generation."
Source: Reuters
Dec 19, 2006
St. Charles streetcar rumbled and clanked through the Big Easy on Tuesday for the first time since Hurricane Katrina shut down the world's oldest continuously running line 16 months ago.
Operator Clarence Glover, with 25 years on the St. Charles line, pulled out the pine green car built in 1922 with his first post-Katrina passengers, including Mayor Ray Nagin.
"It feels great, like I've been away from home for a long time and now I'm back," said Glover, 54.
Source: Reuters
Dec 19, 2006
The palace of Nero, one of Rome's most popular tourist
sites, will partly reopen to the public in January after being closed for
more than a year for emergency repairs, officials said.
The Domus Aurea, or House of Gold, had attracted an average of 1,000
visitors every day until water leaks last December stoked fears that the
nearly 2,000-year-old palace might collapse.
Source: Breitbart
Dec 19, 2006
The United States Congress is considering voting in funds next
year to help Vietnam clean areas heavily contaminated by toxic
defoliant Agent Orange, a US official said in Hanoi."We are going to provide assistance to help clean up sites where dioxin
continues to pose serious health threats to people living there," said Tim
Rieser, aide to Democrat senator Patrick Leahy."We also want to look for ways to extend assistance to people with
disabilities," he told journalists in Hanoi.
