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: Reuters
Nov 22, 2006
DALLAS (Reuters) - The piano on which the late John Lennon composed his
famous anti-war song"Imagine" made an odd appearance on Wednesday at the
site where President John F. Kennedy was gunned down, competing for
attention with conspiracy buffs on the 43rd anniversary of the
assassination.
The plain-looking brown piano has been brought to America for exhibits by
British pop star George Michael and his partner Kenny Goss. Michael bought
it in 2000 at an auction for 1.45 million Britis
Source: Reuters
Nov 22, 2006
A lavishly illustrated"Atlas of Creation" is
mysteriously turning up at schools and libraries in Turkey, proclaiming
that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is the real root of terrorism.
Arriving unsolicited by post, the large-format tome offers 768 glossy
pages of photographs and easy-to-read text to prove that God created the
world with all its species.
At first sight, it looks like it could be the work of United States
creationists, the Christian fundamentalists who believ
Source: NYT
Nov 22, 2006
The mayor of Philadelphia has asked that city’s Historical Commission to consider designating a renowned Thomas Eakins painting a “historic object,” a maneuver that would prevent the artwork from being moved without the commission’s approval, The Associated Press reported. Thomas Jefferson University, the owner of the 1875 canvas, “The Gross Clinic,” voted on Nov. 10 to sell the painting for $68 million to the National Gallery of Art in Washington and to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Ar
Source: David Garrow in the NYT
Nov 22, 2006
“At no other time in U.S. history were the news media more influential than they were in the 1950s and 1960s,” argues “The Race Beat,” an important study of how journalists covered the civil rights movement. One might imagine that influence was all to the good, but Gene Roberts, a former managing editor at The New York Times, and Hank Klibanoff, a managing editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, describe here in richly instructive detail how, more often than not, the professional performance
Source: Reuters
Nov 22, 2006
Talks between Italy and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles over 52 art works that Rome says were looted have hit an impasse after the museum said it was prepared to return only half of them.
The Italian Culture Ministry said on Wednesday a letter from the Getty saying the museum would turn over only 26 objects -- not including two prized antiquities whose return Italy had demanded -- had been met with ``surprise and disappointment.''
It did not elaborate, adding si
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Nov 22, 2006
Professors normally want people to pay attention to their research findings.
But when anthropologists learned that some of their scholarship may have inspired tactics used in the Abu Ghraib prison — and may be increasingly central to the interrogation of prisoners being held by U.S. forces in many locations, sometimes without standard protections — many were taken aback.
As a result, scholars attending the American Anthropological Association’s annual meeting last week
Source: Media Matters
Nov 21, 2006
Even though Democrats gained control of the House of Representatives and the Senate without losing a single seat -- an electoral feat last accomplished in 1938 -- the media have not highlighted this achievement in the two weeks after Election Day. But when Republicans gained seats in both the House and Senate in the 2002 midterm elections, the first time since 1934 a president's party had done so during its first midterm election, news outlets praised it as "remarkable" and "histo
Source: Fox News
Nov 21, 2006
he winds whipped up to 130 mph, snapping pine trees like pick-up sticks and blowing houses into oblivion. A surge of water, 21 feet high at its crest, engulfing victims as they desperately scurried for higher ground.
The merciless storm, pounding the coast for hours with torrential sheets of rain, was like nothing ever seen before. One observer predicted the damage would linger for decades.
This wasn't New Orleans in August 2005. This was New England in August 1635, bat
Source: AP
Nov 21, 2006
Teacher Bill Morgan walks into his third-grade class
wearing a black Pilgrim hat made of construction paper and begins snatching
up pencils, backpacks and glue sticks from his pupils. He tells them the
items now belong to him because he"discovered" them. The reaction is
exactly what Morgan expects: The kids get angry and want their things back.
Morgan is among elementary school teachers who have ditched the traditional
Thanksgiving lesson, in which children dress up like Indians
Source: National Security Archive
Nov 21, 2006
Mexican authorities released a groundbreaking report over the weekend on the government's use of violent repression to crush its opponents during the 1960s-80s. The National Security Archive posted the full report today on the Mexico Project Web page.
The report by the Office of Special Prosecutor Ignacio Carrillo Prieto, named by President Vicente Fox in 2002 to investigate past human rights crimes, accuses three Mexican presidents of a sustained policy of violence targeting armed
Source: Reuters
Nov 21, 2006
A Greek prosecutor on Tuesday charged a former curator
of the American J. Paul Getty Museum with knowingly buying an ancient
artifact which had been illegally dug up and smuggled out of Greece 13
years ago.
The accusation that former antiquities curator Marion True illegally
obtained a 4th-century BC golden wreath is the latest controversy
surrounding acquisitions she made for the wealthy Los Angeles-based
museum.
True resigned from her post in a whirlwind of publicity last yea
Source: Broadside, the Newsletter of the American Revolution Round Table
Nov 21, 2006
Everyone's heard of the battle of Flamborough Head, where The Bonhomme Richard, captained by John Paul Jones, slugged it out by moonlight with the British frigate, Serapis. But does anyone remember what happened to the Richard? A few ARRT navy buffs will recall that it sank the next day -- but exactly where? That's what an expedition launched from the Avery Point campus of the University of Connecticut is trying to find out. The day before he left for England, the organizer of the hunt, Captain
Source: PNN Online
Nov 21, 2006
Beginning today, The Atlantic's 100 Most Influential Americans List is available on its website. In its 150th year of publishing, the country's oldest continuously published magazine challenged 10 award winning historians and authors to determine who have been the 100 most influential figures in American history. Written and compiled by associate editor Ross Douthat, The Atlantic's 100 Most Influential Americans List engaged 10 panelists to consider influence based on a pers
Source: Miami Herald
Nov 20, 2006
DALLAS - ''Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, you'll excuse the fact that I'm out of breath,'' the rumpled reporter gasped as he interrupted a fashion model's televised chat about the appropriateness of zippered sleeves. ''But 10 or 15 minutes ago, a tragic thing, from all indications at this point, has happened in the city of Dallas . . .'' Though he didn't know it, the reporter was bringing news not just of President Kennedy's assassination, but of a revolution in American journalism: Telev
Source: CNN
Nov 20, 2006
Bones discovered four years ago at the site of America's first permanent English settlement could be those of Jamestown's unsung founder, a knight or a captain.
A tooth analysis did not rule out that the skeleton is, as Jamestown researchers had theorized, that of Capt. Bartholomew Gosnold, principal organizer of the expedition from England that established Jamestown in 1607. Next year marks the settlement's 400th anniversary.
But test results released Monday also sugge
Source: Guardian
Nov 20, 2006
In 1968, Robert Kennedy seemed likely to follow his brother, John, into the White House. Then, on June 6, he was assassinated - apparently by a lone gunman. But Shane O'Sullivan says he has evidence implicating three CIA agents in the murder.
Related LinkMel Ayton: Did the CIA Kill Bobby Kennedy? The BBC's Blunder
Source: Salon
Nov 20, 2006
OBERLIN, Ohio -- An artist's creation of gingerbread
Nazis drew complaints after it was displayed in a hardware store window,
prompting the store owner to demand the artwork be removed. Charlie Palmer
covered the gingerbread men during the weekend and said he wanted them out
by of his business by Tuesday.
"He's gone way overboard this time," Palmer said of artist Keith McGuckin."A few of his other displays were on the edge, but never that crazy."
McGuckin said he chose the subject
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Nov 20, 2006
... Soon after the Brown report was issued, the University of Pennsylvania's student newspaper published an article asking whether Penn had any closeted skeletons of its own. The headline read: "Penn says 'all clear' as Ivies decry slave ties."
The source for that claim is Mark Frazier Lloyd, director of the university's archives and records center. Several years ago, administrators asked him to find out whether Penn had any historical connections to slavery that they shou
Source: AP
Nov 20, 2006
KARACHI One of the hundreds of historical artefacts, right, that Pakistani Customs stopped from being smuggled out of the country. The 625 artefacts, which were worth millions of dollars, had been concealed in a shipping container bound for Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. Muhammad Yaha, a Customs spokesman, said that no arrests had been made but that investigators were looking for the suspects. The artefacts were hidden in wooden boxes with ordinary furniture. (AP)
Source: NYT
Nov 20, 2006
The United States Mint is unveiling four designs for one-dollar coins today, featuring likenesses of the first four presidents. They begin a series that is to last a decade and portray every deceased president.
The first coin, displaying George Washington on one side and the Statue of Liberty on the other, will go into circulation in mid-February, in time for Presidents’ Day. After that, coins with John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison will be issued at three-month interval
