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: Salon
Dec 14, 2006
Catherine Pollard, who became the Boy
Scouts of America's first female U.S. scoutmaster after a years-long legal
fight, died Wednesday. She was 88.
Pollard, who volunteered with the Scouts in Milford, died in Seminole,
Fla., said Shawn Smith of Smith Funeral Home in Milford, which is handling
arrangements.
Pollard ran a Milford troop from 1973 to 1975 when no men volunteered. But
her application for a leadership position was denied when the Boy Scouts
contended a woman was not
Source: Breitbart
Dec 14, 2006
Greece has asked the Louvre Museum in Paris to not show a disputed
4th century BC statue of Apollo on loan from a US museum, saying
it may have been illegally acquired, a culture ministry source
said."We do not want this work, attributed to the great sculptor Praxiteles, to
be presented at the Louvre because doing so would legitimize" its
acquisition by the Cleveland Museum in Ohio, the source told AFP,
requesting anonymity.
Source: Reuters
Dec 14, 2006
A top German court rejected on Thursday restitution
claims by relatives of a Nazi doctor for art confiscated by Soviet
occupiers after the war in a ruling which could set a precedent for a host
of similar cases.
Gustav Schuster, a gynecologist who worked in Nazi courts which ordered
the sterilization of handicapped women as part of Adolf Hitler's drive to
create a 'master race', had collected hundreds of paintings, graphics and
etchings.
The paintings, among them a work by Germ
Source: Reuters
Dec 14, 2006
Greece's top religious leader asked Pope Benedict
on Thursday to return a piece of the Parthenon in the Vatican Museums,
Greek officials said.
Christodoulos, Orthodox archbishop of Athens and of all Greece, made the
request during a visit when he and the Pope signed a joint declaration on
issues of common concern, such as the defense of life.
According to spokesmen for Christodoulos, the Pope was a bit perplexed by
the request, perhaps not knowing that the vast museums he techni
Source: Reuters
Dec 14, 2006
[NOTE: IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR"Ronald Dworkin debates possibility of democracy" CLICK HERE.]
The head of an organization of former Russian spies was
quoted as saying on Thursday Moscow abandoned its policy of assassinating
enemies long ago, and that Alexander Litvinenko was probably murdered by
criminals.
Former KGB agent Valentin Velichko said fellow former agent Litvinenko,
who died in London on November 23 from radiatio
Source: AP
Dec 14, 2006
LOS GATOS, Calif. -- It was called Holy City, but it was not exactly a model of Christian piety. It was, rather, a commune and tourist trap created in the 1920s by a white-supremacist huckster.
Now, decades after Holy City fell into ruin, the 142-acre site is a prime piece of real estate in the hills outside booming Silicon Valley, and it is up for sale for $11 million.
"Bad, good or indifferent, there is a history here, and my hope is that somebody will take tha
Source: AP
Dec 14, 2006
Parliament on Thursday began debating a law that seeks reparations for victims of Spain's 1936-39 Civil War and the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco.
The bill, proposed by the Socialist government in July, would also ban symbols and references to the Franco regime in public buildings and asks local and regional governments to rename streets or plazas that are named after Franco or refer to his regime.
Source: National Geographic News
Dec 14, 2006
Humans first moved out of Africa about 70,000 years ago, but 30,000 years later some of them moved back.
That's according to a new study based on DNA evidence from ancient human remains found in Africa. The findings are reported in tomorrow's issue of the journal Science.
Source: Guardian
Dec 14, 2006
History seems to be in a hurry to judge Donald H. Rumsfeld.
And despite his half century in public service, a defense secretary who served three presidents and oversaw two wars is being sized up not by the long reach of his career but by its ending - the body slam of Iraq.
With an eye on his legacy, Rumsfeld asked to be judged by the extraordinary nature of today's threat, like none that has come before.
``There's no road map, no guidebook,'' he said. ``The
Source: Media Matters
Dec 14, 2006
Fox News Washington bureau managing editor Brit Hume, CBS national political correspondent Gloria Borger, and Fox News host Neil Cavuto reported that if Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD), who was hospitalized on December 13 with intracerebral bleeding and underwent brain surgery, were "incapacitated" or "unable to serve in any way," or his condition were to "worsen," then South Dakota Gov. Michael Rounds (R) would appoint a replacement to take Johnson's seat until the 2008 ge
Source: Newsday
Dec 14, 2006
The tipping point for Donny George came the day last summer his sister found a letter with a bullet in it in the driveway of their mother's home in Baghdad.
George, an antiquities expert recently recruited for the faculty of Stony Brook University, said the letter threatened to kidnap and behead his son Martin, 17, for allegedly "cursing Islam and teasing Muslim girls," unless he apologized and paid a $1,000 fine.
"The letter also mentioned his father wa
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Dec 14, 2006
The president of a Canadian university on Wednesday condemned the “conference” on the Holocaust held in Iran this week — amid shock at his institution and elsewhere in Canada at the news that one of his professors had presented a paper there.
“I express my shock and regret that the name of St. Francis Xavier University has been associated with the recent ‘conference’ in Tehran due to the presence of a member of university faculty,” said the statement from Sean Riley, president of th
Source: NYT
Dec 14, 2006
Iran’s so-called Holocaust conference this week was billed as a chance to force the West to reconsider the historical record and, thereby, the legitimacy of Israel. But why would the Iranians invite speakers with so little credibility in the West, including a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard and disgraced European scholars?
That question misses the point. Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, portrays participants like David Duke, the former Louisiana Klan leader, and Robert Fauris
Source: NYT
Dec 14, 2006
Behind the dusty stools and the old towels, under the broken telephones and the picture frames, amid the spider webs, sits one of the country’s most important collections of artifacts devoted to the history of African-Americans.
Painstakingly collected over a lifetime by Mayme Agnew Clayton — a retired university librarian who died in October at 83 and whose interest in African-American history consumed her for most of her adult life — the massive collection of books, films, documen
Source: NYT
Dec 14, 2006
Senator Tim Johnson, a Democrat from South Dakota, was in intensive care today after undergoing surgery late Wednesday night for a brain hemorrhage, a development that highlighted the fragility of the Democrats’ new majority in the Senate.... [HNN: If he dies or resigns, he would be replaced by the Republican governor. The new senator would remain in place until Johnson's term is up in 2008.]
According to information from the Senate historian cited on CQ.com, at least nine senator
Source: CNN
Dec 13, 2006
Vidor is a small city of about 11,000 people near the Texas Gulf Coast, not too far from the Louisiana border. Despite the fact that Beaumont, a much bigger city just 10 minutes away, is quite integrated, Vidor is not. There are very few blacks there; it's mostly white. That is in large part because of a history of racism in Vidor, a past that continues to haunt the present.
"We've been trying to live down something for 40 to 50 years," said Orange County Commissioner Beam
Source: Economist
Dec 13, 2006
THE iPod is five years old this autumn. It already has its own biography*, by the journalist Steven Levy, who considers the gizmo an icon of modern times. Its birthday generated glowing tributes in newspapers from India to Egypt to Brunei. And this is just one of the many anniversaries that the computer industry has seen fit to celebrate this year.
Last month the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California hosted a symposium commemorating the 35th anniversary of Intel's 400
Source: AFP at Yahoo News
Dec 13, 2006
In this central Turkish village, peasants and archaeologists celebrate a unique achievement -- a 3,246-year-old dam, once buried under mud and slime, is back in service to irrigate farmlands.
The dam is a heritage of the Hittites, who ruled over vast areas of the Middle East from 2000 to 1000 BC, fought Pharaoh Rameses The Great, among others, and built some of the biggest cities of the time in the heart of Anatolia, the Asian part of modern Turkey.
The 2,500 inhabitant
Source: AP
Dec 13, 2006
A collection of about 1,000 letters to French impressionist painter Claude Monet from his friends and admirers fetched more than $1 million at an auction Wednesday, Artcurial auction house said.
The letters sold for $1.7 million — more than double the estimated price.
Source: AP
Dec 13, 2006
Israel's prime minister asked Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday to urge Christians to protest Holocaust denials, Israeli government officials said.
During their meeting at the Vatican, Benedict told Prime Minister Ehud Olmert he would consider the request, which followed an Iranian conference questioning the Nazi genocide against the Jews.
Benedict met with Olmert alone for 35 minutes, longer than the 10 minutes expected, and praised Israel's restraint in Gaza, Israeli s
