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: BBC
Jun 30, 2006
The Vatican is to open its archives to allow historians to access documents from 1922 to 1939. Documents from the pontificate of Pius XI will be made available, and could provide an insight into the Vatican's attitude towards the growth of Nazism. New information about the Catholic church's views on the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s may also be unearthed.
Pius XI's successor, Pius XII, has long been accused of failing to help Jews during the Nazi g
Source: AP
Jun 30, 2006
Flood damage kept the National Museum of American History and the National Archives closed Friday at the start of the busy Independence Day holiday weekend.The Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Visitors Center castle, also closed since Monday because of basement flooding, were to reopen, said Smithsonian spokesman Peter Golkin.
Some of the most severe damage to Washington's cultural attractions is at the National Archives, home to the Declarati
Source: Belfast Telegraph
Jun 30, 2006
The First World War has all but passed out of living memory - Yet its hold on the imagination is as powerful as ever - On its 90th anniversary, John Lichfield reports from the tiny strip of northern France where a quarter of a million men lost their lives.In the neat, quiet village of Fricourt in northern France stands a stubby street of modern bungalows. You might be in a patch of rural mock-suburbia anywhere in Europe. The street runs away into a rough farm track between f
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
Jun 30, 2006
A planned service at a Buddhist temple to commemorate Japanese war dead, which critics had said was a propaganda exercise, was suddenly cancelled yesterday by Japan's Foreign Minister, Taro Aso.Invitations for Monday's service that were sent to Australia, Britain, the United States and the Netherlands have been withdrawn. A letter delivered to embassies in Tokyo said Mr Aso will now make a "personal and private" commemoration.
"This fi
Source: AP
Jun 30, 2006
Britain and the United States discussed the possible use of nuclear weapons against China if it moved to seize Hong Kong during the Cold War, according to documents released Friday.Some leaders in London thought the only way to keep Hong Kong a British colony was to convince China that any attempt to take the territory back by force would trigger American nuclear attack, according to the internal British government memos declassified and released by the National
Source: Orkneyjar
Jun 29, 2006
Men working on a peat bank in Orphir have unearthed an “outstanding” example of a late Bronze Age socketed axe – believed to be only the second found in Orkney to date.
The find is particularly exciting, given the comparative scarcity of Bronze Age artefacts in the county.
Michael Watt discovered the 3,000-year-old axe head while spreading peats at the Highland Park's Hobbister peat bank. The distillery uses the peats, which are mechanically extracted each spring and ma
Source: NYT
Jun 29, 2006
The words are carefully written in pencil on top of a page torn from spiral notebooks: "Loving Your Enemies." They are scribbled hastily on a torn, creased sheet, cutting across its ruled lines: "We come to the seat of government." They are squeezed into the yellowed margins of annotated books: "Religion must work here." They are written on a frayed slip of paper, folded as if long-carried in a wallet: "Gandhi speaks for us."
And they appear i
Source: Bloomberg
Jun 29, 2006
Atlanta's $32 million purchase of Martin Luther King Jr.'s papers, made just days before they were to be auctioned by Sotheby's Holdings Inc., will be a catalyst for getting a new civil rights museum built in the city, Mayor Shirley Franklin said. Franklin, facing a June 30 auction, won a commitment from SunTrust Banks Inc. to provide short-term financing to buy the papers from King's children and keep then in Atlanta. The mayor then scrambled to get commitments from executi
Source: Guardian
Jun 28, 2006
The Guardian Chinese archaeologists have unearthed evidence that a foreign worker helped build the Terracotta Army mausoleum, the resting place of the country's first emperor, who died more than 2,200 years ago.
The remains of the worker, described as a foreign man in his 20s, were found among 121 shattered skeletons in a labourers' tomb 500 metres from the mausoleum in the north-western city of Xian, the state-run Xinhua news agency said.
Source: NYT
Jun 28, 2006
Ever since Harper Lee's novel, "To Kill a Mockingbird," was published in 1960 and went on to sell 2.5 million copies in its first year and win the Pulitzer Prize, the author has led a low-profile life. Ms. Lee, now 80, has published virtually nothing of significance since then except a 1983 book review. But now she has written something for publication. It is a letter for O, the Oprah Winfrey magazine, about how she became a reader as a child in a rural, Depression-era Alabama town, Th
Source: Wa Po
Jun 28, 2006
A bipartisan group of senators and scholars denounced President Bush yesterday for using scores of "signing statements" to reserve the right to ignore or reinterpret provisions of measures that he has signed into law.
Bush's statements have challenged, for instance, a congressional ban on torture, a request for data on the administration of the USA Patriot Act and even a legislative demand for suggestions on the digital mapping of coastal resources.
Source: China View
Jun 28, 2006
Chinese archaeologists have discovered the remains of what may prove to be the country's first foreign worker -- an early European who labored on the mausoleum of China's first emperor.
The discovery was made after DNA tests on human remains from one of the laborers' tombs surrounding the mausoleum of Qingshihuang, in northwestern Shaanxi Province, which was built more than 2,200 years ago.
Archaeologists found the foreign remains among 121 shattered human sk
Source: haaretz.com
Jun 28, 2006
Two discs made of bone, which apparently served as buttons, are among the objects found in the municipal dump that served Jerusalem at the end of the Second Temple era. These buttons were intended to be not only practical, but decorative as well. In addition the dump has yielded a handful of glass fragments, which testify to the use of prestigious objects.
However, the vast majority of finds at the dump were very much everyday objects: fragments of household utensils including cook
Source: Yahoo News
Jun 28, 2006
The first tomb discovered in Luxor's Valley of the Kings did not reveal its expected mummy, but egyptologists remained bent on cracking the mystery of "KV 63."
Three thousand year-old flowers and royal necklaces were the only things Egypt's chief archeologist Zahi Hawass saw when he lifted the lid off the last of seven coffins found in the tomb.
"It's superb but there is no room for a mummy," said Otto Schaden, the America archeologist who uncovered
Source: Washington Times
Jun 28, 2006
BERLIN -- Spectacular artifacts from two lost cities of ancient Egypt, rescued from the sea after more than 1,300 years, have taken the breath away from more than 1 million visitors to the Martin-Gropius Building in Berlin. They have even ignited religious debate -- nonviolent so far -- in Egypt.
French archaeological adventurer Franck Goddio and his team of divers, armed with robotic equipment, swim masks and flippers, pulled the treasures from the depths at the ancient Egyptian har
Source: NYT
Jun 28, 2006
LOS ANGELES, June 22 — When one of the country's premier collections of American Indian artifacts joined forces three years ago with the collectibles of the Singing Cowboy, Gene Autry, the move was officially billed as a merger of equals.
This being Hollywood, however, the storyline was reduced to something simpler: the cowboys were once again battling the Indians.
Guess which side won.
Instead of celebrating the 100th anniversary of its founding next year
Source: Al Jazeera
Jun 27, 2006
The photograph on the Jazeera web site shows quite clearly that it has been destroyed right down to the base. I doubt whether it would be simple to restore.The minaret of 'Ana is commonly attributed to the Uqaylids and the 5th/11th century, though its niches are nearly identical to those of the Baghdad Gate at Raqqa, and thus more probably of the 6th/12th century. It was situated on the island at 'Ana and belonged to the fourth phase of the congregational mosque. When
Source: NYT
Jun 27, 2006
WITH the wind at its stern and two fireboats to welcome it, the Godspeed sailed into the South Street Seaport yesterday as part of the 400th anniversary commemoration of the nation's first permanent English settlement, in Jamestown, Va.
The 88-foot, three-mast square rigger is a new replica of the original Godspeed, which carried 39 settlers and 13 crew members during the more than four-month crossing from England ending in 1607. The new Godspeed, which is visiting cities that were
Source: NYT
Jun 27, 2006
CONCORD, Mass., June 26 — "The life of a man happily married cannot fail to be influenced by the character and conduct of his wife," Julian Hawthorne wrote of his father, Nathaniel, in 1884. "Nathaniel Hawthorne was particularly susceptible to influences of this kind."
To describe Hawthorne or his career as an author without mentioning his wife, the former Sophia Peabody, would be like imagining, Julian wrote, "a sun without heat, or a day without a sun.&quo
Source: NYT
Jun 27, 2006
ATLANTA It was in a short conversation over dinner, devoid of bargaining, that Mayor Shirley Franklin took the first step toward ensuring that a significant chunk of this city's patrimony would be returned here for good.
"She said, 'How much?' I told her the price, and she said, 'O.K.,' " recalled Phillip Jones, a King family representative who met with the mayor that day, June 18, to discuss the impending auction of the bulk of the papers belonging to the Rev. Dr. Martin
