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
Nov 30, 2006
It’s not every day that an African country erects a 20-foot-tall statue in the busiest part of town to honor a white man.
But Brazzaville has always had a trend-defying relationship to its first master, Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza.
All across the continent, names that smacked of colonial rule were quickly jettisoned after independence. Leopoldville, the capital of the Belgian Congo named after King Leopold II, was renamed Kinshasa shortly after the country became Zaire.
Source: NYT
Nov 30, 2006
An appeals court on Wednesday cleared the way for the arrest and trial of former President Luis Echeverría on genocide charges in connection with the massacre of student protesters in 1968.
The court reversed earlier rulings that the statute of limitations had long since run out, saying it had two days to go.
The ruling is the final twist in a long battle by the administration of President Vicente Fox to charge and try Mr. Echeverría, who is 84 and in poor health, for h
Source: Reuters
Nov 30, 2006
Acting president Raul Castro is the"guardian" of
Cuba's communist government in the absence of his brother Fidel Castro and
in the face of U.S. threats, a hard-line member of the Cuban leadership
said on Thursday."We recognize Raul as the steadfast guardian of the Cuban Revolution,"
Information Minister Ramiro Valdes, a former security chief, said in a
speech to 200,000 people at a military-civilian rally in the eastern city
of Santiago.
His words added to the growing perception amon
Source: Reuters
Nov 30, 2006
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Pope Benedict visited Istanbul's Blue Mosque on
Thursday and appeared to pray alongside an Islamic cleric during the visit
that made him only the second Roman Catholic Pontiff to enter a mosque.
The dramatic gesture was seen as yet another attempt by the Pope at
reconciliation after he infuriated much of the Muslim world with comments
taken as indicating he believed Islam was violent and irrational.
The Pope took off his shoes and donned what looked like whit
Source: AP
Nov 29, 2006
ALBANY -- Now that he's going digital, maybe Sir William Johnson will finally emerge from the dusty pages of American history.
The William Johnson Papers will be digitized for a DVD, giving students, scholars and history buffs easier access to the 15,000 pages of documents generated by the wealthy and powerful British official who was a towering figure in 18th-century America but is largely forgotten today.
During a news conference Wednesday in Lake George, the site o
Source: AP
Nov 29, 2006
Flags waved, a bagpipe wailed "Amazing Grace" and eulogies of courage and comradeship flowed Wednesday for Army Sgt. 1st Class Schuyler B. Haynes, a descendant of a famous Revolutionary War general, who was killed in Iraq two weeks ago.
"He was a loyal friend and courageous leader, equally at home with any soldier, NCO or officer," said Jimmy Campbell, who served with Haynes in Iraq, and was among 300 at the funeral Wednesday at Madison Avenue Presbyterian Churc
Source: Asia News International
Nov 29, 2006
Fine art auctioneers and valuers Bonham's, which has been in the business of auctioneering since 1793, will today auction off the world's oldest known bottle of whisky.
The Glenavon, produced by a Speyside distillery, which closed down in the 1850s, could fetch as much as 10,000 pounds [almost $20,000] or 300 pounds a peg [= 60 ml], reports The Scotsman.
Collectors, it seems, have expressed a willingness to pay thousands for the olive-green bottle that sports a yellow
Source: Times Online (UK)
Nov 29, 2006
A tiny 18th-century ceramic bowl decorated with apricot blossom and swallows that was made for an emperor smashed the world record for a piece of Chinese porcelain yesterday by selling for more than $19 million (£9.8million).
The exquisite masterpiece of famille rose ware, which once belonged to Barbara Hutton, the Woolworth heiress, fetched double its expected sale price to become the most expensive artwork sold in Asia. Famille rose refers to the type of glaze used to coat the bo
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 29, 2006
Gordon Brown, Robert Burns, Lorraine Kelly, Robert the Bruce - which one is the most famous Scottish person past or present? The answer, none of them.
The Loch Ness monster, whose existence is still seriously in doubt, beat them all in a poll to discover the top Scot down through the ages.
More than 2,000 adults across the UK were asked who they thought was the country’s best-known son or daughter. Almost a third of them named the mythical creature.
Source: AFP
Nov 29, 2006
A plague of woodworm and a handy local
drugstore were the secrets behind the extraordinary
success of the Stradivarius violin, a scientist
believes.
For centuries, historians of music, instrument makers
and chemists have been trying to decipher how Antonio
Stradivari, working in the small Italian town of
Cremona three centuries ago, was able to make violins
whose acoustic qualities have never been surpassed.
Theories abo
Source: JTA--Global news service of the Jewish people
Nov 29, 2006
General Motors is rightly famous for the Chevrolets, Pontiacs and Buicks that roll off its assembly lines. But the company is infamous, as well. As this JTA exclusive [by Edwin Black] reveals, GM has a Nazi-era skeleton that has been lurking in its closet. The company was in league with Hitler commercially and helped power the Third Reich’s war machine.
Car wars: Doing business with the NazisGermany’s glorious militaristic destiny, according to Hitler, was dependent on a mass, four
Source: AP
Nov 29, 2006
St. Nick, nein! A ban on St.
Nicholas at Vienna's kindergartens is taking some of the ho-ho-ho out of
the holidays for tens of thousands of tots this year. And it's creating a
political ruckus, with opposition parties accusing City Hall of kowtowing
to a growing Muslim population by showing Europe's Santa the kindergarten
door.
Municipal officials insist their decision is prompted more by psychology
than political correctness. Instead of joy, the sight of a strange bearded
figure at
Source: Reuters
Nov 29, 2006
Three people have been detained for digging up part of
the Great Wall just days before strict new penalties are introduced to
protect China's most famous tourist attraction, Xinhua news agency said.
The men used excavators to take earth from the remains of part of the
Great Wall in Inner Mongolia, built at least 2,200 years ago, to use as
landfill for a village factory.
"It's just a pile of earth," Erhaihao village head Hao Zengjun was quoted
as telling officials from the Municipa
Source: Reuters
Nov 29, 2006
Building a housing complex or a road in the Holy
Land can often have grave implications.
Ancient cemeteries, burial caves from biblical times and centuries-old
artifacts have been unearthed during construction work in Israel over the
years, forcing contractors by law to call in archaeologists and sometimes
halt building projects.
In Holyland Park, a complex of apartments being built on a hill in
Jerusalem, archaeologists will soon finish removing bones and other
remnants from a
Source: Reuters
Nov 29, 2006
An ancient astronomical calculator
made at the end of the 2nd century BC was amazingly
accurate and more complex than any instrument for the
next 1,000 years, scientists said on Wednesday.
The Antikythera Mechanism is the earliest known device
to contain an intricate set of gear wheels. It was
retrieved from a shipwreck off the Greek island of
Antikythera in 1901 but until now what it was used for
has been a mystery.
Alt
Source: CSM
Nov 29, 2006
Not many people can still close their eyes and recall playing cards and folk dancing with Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and the young rebels in the bean-oil lit caves of Yanan. But Mr. Rittenberg can. The idealistic Jewish boy from Charleston, S.C., stayed behind when the US Army left China, dreaming of a new social order where skin color and ethnicity wouldn't matter.Madame Sun Yat-Sen, wife of China's founder, got him a UN relief job. He later joined the Communist Party, became
Source: International Herald Tribune
Nov 29, 2006
According to the English-language version of Wikipedia, the popular online encyclopedia, he was a victorious military and political leader who founded China's modern Communist state. He was also a man many saw as "a mass murderer, holding his leadership accountable for the deaths of tens of millions of innocent Chinese." Switch to Wikipedia in Chinese, and one discovers a very different man. There, Mao Zedong's reputation is unsullied by any mention of a death toll in the great purges
Source: Christian Science Monitor
Nov 29, 2006
"I never meant to stay in China.... I never even meant to go to China."
The contradiction defines Sidney Rittenberg's life and world. Mr. Rittenberg knows China's epic Communist revolution intimately, not as a witness, but a participant - often on the wrong side of history.
Not many people can still close their eyes and recall playing cards and folk dancing with Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and the young rebels in the bean-oil lit caves of Yanan. But Rittenberg can
Source: AP
Nov 28, 2006
Florida State University student Daniel Lee learned in fourth grade most of what he knew about the Seminole Indians, namesakes of his school's athletic teams. It wasn't much.
"You get the puddle deep in-depth analysis," joked Lee, 22, of Gainesville. "I want to know why we chose the Seminoles and how our university's policies embody the spirit and strength of the Seminole culture."
Lee, a music education major, had to wait until his senior year to
Source: AP
Nov 28, 2006
The lists run into the tens of thousands -- men, women and children tossed into the Nazi machinery of death from just one small country, Holland. Most are unknown, lost in the ashes of the Holocaust.
But buried in List No. 40 in a frayed ledger in the world's largest storehouse of documents on Holocaust victims, the name Anne Frank is quickly recognizable.
Today, her diary has made her world famous, but on a day in September 1944 she was just another name -- a terrifi
