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
Mar 28, 2006
Caspar Weinberger was the powerhouse behind the huge expansion of US military strength during the presidency of Ronald Reagan.
A confident Cold War warrior, he was defence secretary from the start of Reagan's presidency in January 1981 until he resigned in November 1987. He got Congress to approve major defence spending increases that financed the modernisation of US forces with new missiles - including the Trident D5 - and aircraft.
H
Source: Yahoo
Mar 28, 2006
A federal appeals court has affirmed a lower court ruling revoking the naturalized U.S. citizenship of a Massachusetts man based on his service during World War II in a Nazi unit that participated in the destruction of the Warsaw Jewish Ghetto in 1943, Assistant Attorney General Alice S. Fisher of the Criminal Division announced today.A 20-page opinion issued yesterday by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, in Boston, unanimously affirmed a January 2005 ru
Source: CBC.ca
Mar 28, 2006
The British Museum says it will repatriate two bundles of aboriginal human remains back to Australia after they were taken more than 160 years ago."It will be a very joyous occasion when we've got two stolen remains back to Tasmania,” said Trudy Maluga of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre. "These two bundles are the only two known to exist today so it's very special to us."
Maluga said aboriginal representatives will travel to Britain so
Source: BBC News
Mar 28, 2006
Britain's oldest World War I veteran Henry Allingham is "stable and doing fine" after being admitted to hospital with a chest infection.
Mr Allingham, who is 109, was admitted to Eastbourne District General in East Sussex on Sunday but is expected to be discharged within the next four days. He had to pull out of a ceremony on Tuesday night when he was to have been given the freedom of his home town.
Eastbourne Borough Council said
Source: Wired News/AP
Mar 27, 2006
The site of the village where Jamestown leader Capt. John Smith met the powerful Indian chief Powhatan and where Smith said the chief's daughter, Pocahontas, saved his life has been approved for listing on the National Register of Historic Places, officials said Monday.Werowocomoco, on Purtan Bay along the York River in Gloucester County, was Powhatan's headquarters when Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America, was founded in 1607. Powhatan ruled o
Source: Boston Globe
Mar 27, 2006
Those who hope they can stop the Dakota Sioux language from dying have hit on the perfect word: Scrabble.
A special Scrabble tournament in the language made its debut Friday, pitting teams from Sioux reservation schools in North Dakota, South Dakota and Manitoba.
The game is part of the tribe's campaign to revitalize the Dakota language, now spoken fluently by a dwindling number of elders. One survey predicted the last fluent Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota speaker would die i
Source: NYT
Mar 27, 2006
The Supreme Court's announcement four months ago that it would rule on the validity of the military commission by which the Bush administration wants to try Osama bin Laden's former driver, on charges of conspiracy to commit terrorism, appeared to mark a resumption of a struggle for supremacy between the court and the White House.In the face of a measure that Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in late December to strip the federal courts of jurisdiction
Source: Wa Po
Mar 27, 2006
At the end of Bettis Road, across a padlocked gate and up a grassy hillside lane, generations of James Jordan's ancestors lie buried atop a wooded knoll -- for now.
A rusty fence encircles the cemetery, and tilted headstones point skyward amid the leaves. Walking among the locust trees, Jordan points out graves of long-dead kin, including the Chandler family matriarch who left instructions and money for preserving the cemetery.Throughout the South, f
Source: Knox News
Mar 27, 2006
For years, Terry Smith knew that he was distantly related to Abraham Lincoln. But he didn't know about the illness that ran in his family -- what relatives called "Lincoln's Disease." Now, researchers at the University of Minnesota have uncovered a genetic secret that has plagued the Lincoln family for at least 11 generations: a mutation that causes a form of ataxia, a crippling neurological disease.
The discovery could shed new light on the cau
Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch
Mar 27, 2006
Archaeologists will launch one of the biggest investigations of its kind in Virginia history when they begin to explore thousands of acres on the Middle Peninsula this summer.The complex of sites promises such a rich potential for discoveries that one archaeologist likens it to a research park.
The thinly settled patchwork of fields and forests abounds with stone tools and other traces left by centuries of Indian inhabitants at places that could be
Source: Reuters
Mar 27, 2006
A manuscript charting the birth of modern science, lost for more than 200 years, goes on sale on Tuesday with a price tag in excess of one million pounds. Hailed as "science's missing link," the journal of Robert Hooke contains details of experiments he conducted as curator at the Royal Society from 1662 and his correspondence as its secretary from 1677.
It was found by chance in a cupboard at a private house in Hampshire by experts from auctione
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mar 27, 2006
All that's left of the historic marker at the site where Atlanta surrendered to Union Gen. William T. Sherman's army is a broken post that bows toward the ground.
The actual marker was knocked off the post by a truck last summer, and the state doesn't have $300 to fix it."The problem is we don't have a marker shop to repair or replace it," said Linda Moye, who oversees monuments and signs at the state Department of Natural Resources. "
Source: BBC
Mar 27, 2006
Defence Secretary John Reid is to reconsider granting a posthumous pardon to a soldier who was executed during World War I for cowardice.
The Ministry of Defence said he would do so after Private Harry Farr's daughter launched a High Court appeal against an earlier refusal. Pte Farr, then 25, of Kensington, west London, was shot at dawn in 1916 after refusing to return to the front line.
His family argue he was suffering from shell shock.
Source: Arizona Daily Sun/CSM
Mar 27, 2006
The Georgia legislature seems poised to endorse a course on Biblical history to be taught in high schools. Though students in many states enroll in classes related to the Bible, Georgia would become the first to require its Department of Education to put in place a curriculum to teach the history and literature of the Bible. Schools would use the book itself as the classroom textbook. Specifically the bill would establish electives on both the New and Old Testaments.It has o
Source: BBC
Mar 27, 2006
A long-lost royal charter has been discovered by historians at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire.The document grants the manor of Maisemore from King Henry I to St Peter's Abbey in Gloucester.Although not dated, experts know the charter was made on 3 September 1101, more than 900 years ago, and have confirmed that it is original.
The castle's owner John Berkeley said it had lost its seal, but was in all other ways authentic.
"I'm amazed that s
Source: BBC
Mar 27, 2006
Two rare Tudor portraits have been unveiled at Hever Castle in Kent, the childhood home of Henry VIII's second wife Anne Boleyn.The most rare is a portrait of Henry's older brother Arthur, Prince of Wales, painted in 1500, the year before his marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
The other is of the brothers' father, King Henry VII, painted in about 1506, towards the end of his life.
The portraits were unveiled on Monday by writer and historian David Sta
Source: NYT
Mar 27, 2006
The difference between Shiites and Sunnis is sometimes explained simply as a disagreement over who should have become the leader of the Muslim community after the Prophet Muhammad died nearly 1,400 years ago.But in Iraq, the divide goes beyond that, partly because of geography and partly because of history. With sectarian tensions rising, Iraqis are paying more attention to the little things that signal whether someone is Shiite or Sunni. None of the indicators are foo
Source: INLA Website
Mar 26, 2006
Iraqi National Library and Archives has opened a website.
Immediately after the collapse of the Saddam regime and in the middle of the ensuing chaotic situation (9-12 April 2003), some arsonists set fire to various parts of the INLA’s main building, causing considerable structural damages. Almost all the equipments were destroyed or carried away. Most importantly, serious damages were inflicted upon the INLA’s collections of book, journals, files, records, photographs and maps. The
Source: Wa Po
Mar 26, 2006
Desmond T. Doss Sr., 87, an Army medic on Okinawa during World War II who saved more than 75 wounded soldiers at great personal peril and became the first conscientious objector to the receive the Medal of Honor, died March 23 at his home in Piedmont, Ala. He had a respiratory ailment.
Mr. Doss was one of only two conscientious objectors to receive the Medal of Honor. Thomas W. Bennett, who was an Army corporal and medical aidman during the Vietnam War, also received the medal, acco
Source: eurekaalert.org
Mar 26, 2006
Microscopic specs of lead are offering clues about the enormous cultural changes that swept across northern Africa a thousand years ago.
At The University of Arizona in Tucson, a young archaeologist is analyzing lead traces in artifacts to shed light on the relatively little-understood archaeology of Africa, especially the period marked by the spread of the new religion of Islam.Thomas R. Fenn, a doctoral student in the UA anthropology department, is
