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: Scotsman.com
Nov 20, 2006
THE face of Jack the Ripper, the 19th-century killer whose identity still remains a mystery, has been revealed for the first time.
Using state-of-the-art profiling, investigators have created a vision of what the murderer, who strangled and butchered five London prostitutes, would have looked like - and revealed that police at the time were probably searching for the wrong kind of man.
Source: Newsweek
Nov 20, 2006
George Herbert Walker Bush is a proud father; tears easily come to his eyes when he thinks of his children, all of them, and there is gracious deference in his tone when he talks about the son he calls, with emphasis, "The President." He is not given to boasting about or bragging on his family; he still hears his mother's voice warning him to avoid "the Great I Am," but several times over the past few years the 41st president has mentioned to visitors that the 43rd president
Source: AP
Nov 19, 2006
The largest collection of information on Holocaust victims and survivors is held by the International Red Cross at its International Tracing Service facility in Bad Arolsen, Germany. Requests for information may be submitted directly to ITS or through a national Red Cross office in your state or country.
These organizations may provide documentation of forced labor, forced evacuation from Soviet-controlled areas, internment in concentration camps, or deportation.
Thei
Source: Independent (UK)
Nov 19, 2006
Stonehenge was a major international healing centre, according to a leading British archaeologist.
Up till now, most scholars have accepted that the 4,600-year-old stone circle was used mainly for ritual purposes but new research suggests that it was a prehistoric version of Lourdes packed full of pilgrims from all over the ancient world.
Professor Timothy Darvill, who has just published the most detailed study of the area ever carried out ['Stonehenge: Biography of a
Source: Press Release-- Washington & Lee
Nov 18, 2006
Roger Mudd, an acclaimed television journalist and alumnus of Washington and Lee University, has donated his extensive collection of 20th-century Southern writers to the Washington and Lee University Leyburn Library. The collection, some 1,500 volumes in total, will be transferred in installments. Mudd, W&L class of 1950, presented the first 100 volumes at a program sponsored by The Friends of the Library on Oct. 21 during W&L's 2006 Presidential Inauguration Weekend.
The to
Source: Independent (UK)
Nov 18, 2006
An Israeli-Arab lawyer plans to travel to Iran next month to preach his message at an official conference that all Muslims need to appreciate the true magnitude of the Holocaust.
Khaled Mahameed, who started the Arab world's first Holocaust museum in Nazareth, has been invited to address the conference, Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision, in Tehran on 11 and 12 December.
Mr Mahameed said yesterday his challenge to the questioning of the Holocaust by the Iranian Pre
Source: Times Online (UK)
Nov 18, 2006
WITH its disappearing ink and cunning electronic gadgets it could be straight out of a James Bond story.
But this laboratory, where grey-bearded engineers invent fiendish devices and test machinery, grapples with altogether trickier problems than keeping secret agents ahead of the game. The 40-year-old institute, in a scruffy block on the fringes of Jerusalem, conjures up solutions thatallow observant Jews to meet the challenges of modern life without violating the Sabbath laws.
Source: Reuters
Nov 18, 2006
For all the talk of laying to rest the ghosts of a wartime past, President George W. Bush had a grim reminder on Saturday of some of America's unfinished business from the Vietnam war.
Taking a break from diplomacy on the second day of his trip to Vietnam, Bush visited the joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, where U.S. experts are working to find and identify the remains of American war dead.
It was only a brief stop for Bush, the second post-war U.S. president to visit V
Source: NYT
Nov 18, 2006
As part of its special issue evaluating 300 technology-based products, Wired Test, published by Wired, lists “10 Gadgets That Changed the World.”
There are two things that are intriguing about the compilation by Christopher Null. First, instead of just listing a generic product like a television, which was the oldest device ranked, the magazine names a specific version (the RCA Model 630TS) that either defined the category or caused it to catch on. It lists when the device became al
Source: NYT
Nov 18, 2006
resident Bush, visiting a country that forced the United States into a humiliating withdrawal three decades ago, declared Friday that Vietnam’s transition to a modern, growing economy gave him hope about what could be rebuilt from the ruins of Iraq. But he added that the lesson he drew from the bitter American experience here was that “we’ll succeed unless we quit.”...
Carefully avoiding any direct mention of how the Vietnam War ended for the United States, Mr. Bush instead focused
Source: AP
Nov 17, 2006
Off an East Jerusalem side street, between an olive orchard and an abandoned hotel, sit a few piles of stones and dirt that are yielding important insights into Jerusalem's history.
They come from one of the world's most disputed holy places — the square in the heart of Jerusalem that is known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.
Source: Reuters
Nov 17, 2006
Admired by madmen and dreamers, the elegant skyline of St Petersburg has survived revolutions, wartime bombing and the heavy hand of Soviet planners.
But its charm may not survive Gazprom and a new generation of Russian rich who are building up their own dreams -- some say nightmares -- in Russia's imperial capital.
The gas behemoth wants to build a towering office block 300 metres (990 feet) high that will dominate the skyline of Russia's second city, an elegant Baroqu
Source: AP
Nov 17, 2006
Police have arrested former dictator Juan Maria Bordaberry and his foreign minister in connection with four "Dirty War" killings dating to 1976, officials said Friday.
The arrest of Bordaberry, 78, and former Foreign Minister Juan Blanco marked a new chapter in efforts by this small South American country to grapple with the 1973-85 dictatorship and its legacy of disappearances, torture and exile of thousands of political dissidents.
Bordaberry and Blanco, w
Source: Yahoo
Nov 17, 2006
As American involvement in Vietnam deepened, President Lyndon Johnson railed against "bunch of commies" running The New York Times and complained about the newspaper's criticism of the war, according to taped phone conversations released Friday.
The recordings, released by the LBJ Library, covered August to December 1966. Johnson had many of his calls from the Oval Office and his Texas ranch recorded on Dictabelt equipment.
In one conversation, Johnson blasted
Source: Reuters
Nov 17, 2006
The independent mayor of a Budapest district whose
councilors have suspended the local paper and TV station saying they are
biased, is hitting back by employing town criers to call out the news.
Tamas Derce, the mayor of Ujpest, told Reuters Thursday he is reviving the
medieval tradition in protest against the decision of the
Socialist-liberal majority in his town hall to silence the local media.
"I will hire someone who will stand with a drum at busy junctions of the
district, an
Source: PHDiva (Blog)
Nov 17, 2006
Donny George gave a lecture at the British Museum this evening. He was introduced by Neil MacGregor, and the news is that he will be moving from Damascus to Stony Brook University, New York. Elizabeth Stone, who has done a great deal of work on Iraqi archaeology, teaches there, and will help him continue his work.
Source: International Herald Tribune
Nov 17, 2006
The Associated Press was recently given extensive access to the largest archive of Nazi prison camp records, which has been closed for 50 years, on condition that names of the victims remain protected. This is the first in a series of reports.
BAD AROLSEN, Germany (AP) — The 21-year-old Russian sat before a clerk of the U.S. Army Judge Advocate's office, describing the furnaces at Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp where he had been a prisoner until a few weeks previously.
Source: BBC
Nov 17, 2006
The Natural History Museum in London is to return the remains of 18 aboriginal people to the Australian Government.
The remains include the skull of an aboriginal person thought to have been illegally exported to Britain in 1913.
The rest comprise the remains of 17 aboriginal people from Tasmania, which will be returned after a three-month period of data collection.
Museum director Dr Michael Dixon said the move was "a commonsense one" but ac
Source: Times Online (UK)
Nov 17, 2006
BERLIN-TEMPELHOF, Hitler’s favourite airport, may be rescued from closure by Ronald Lauder, one of the world’s most influential philanthropists for Jewish causes.
The extraordinary design of the Tempelhof complex — the terminal has huge cathedral-like ceilings — prompted Norman Foster, the British architect, to call it the “mother of all airports”.
Its future is in doubt because the cash-strapped Berlin city government wants to close it next year and move all flights
Source: Newsweek
Nov 17, 2006
Judging by the comments of White House aides, Vietnam is just another stop on President Bush’s Asian tour. Except that it isn’t just another country hosting an international summit. It’s the war that Bush avoided by serving in the Texas Air National Guard. And it’s the analogy he wants to avoid when it comes to his own war in Iraq.
As Air Force One flew over the country where 58,000 American troops lost their lives, his press secretary insisted that there was no historical prism for
