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: WaPo
Feb 9, 2006
Nearly four years after New Jersey passed a state law mandating its schools teach black history, compliance is spotty and the lawmaker who was behind the legislation is frustrated. Even as Black History Month briefly draws attention to African-American heritage, New Jersey's effort shows how hard it can be to move from an idea to change in the classroom."We won't have to do February if in fact we teach this in the regular curriculum," said Payne.
New J
Source: Press Release -- International Campaign for Academic Freedom
Feb 9, 2006
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has announced today that after careful deliberation and consultation, they have decided to postpone the conference on academic boycotts and their relation to academic freedom, originally scheduled for February 13 - 17th in Bellagio, ItalyThe conference was originally sponsored by the Ford, Rockefeller and Nathan Cummings foundations. After the New York Sun published that more than a third of the conference participants
Source: BBC News
Feb 9, 2006
Two hundred years after Anglican reformers helped to abolish the slave trade, the Church of England has apologised for profiting from it.Last night the General Synod acknowledged complicity in the trade after hearing that the Church had run a slave plantation in the West Indies and that individual bishops had owned hundreds of slaves.
It voted unanimously to apologise to the descendents of the slaves after an emotional debate in which the Archbishop of Canterbur
Source: BBC News
Feb 9, 2006
Almost 100 years ago, on 18 April 1906, San Francisco was wrecked by a massive quake. Hundreds died. Click the Source link above to see.
Source: BBC News
Feb 9, 2006
A "lost" science manuscript from the 1600s found in a cupboard in a house during a routine valuation is expected to fetch more than £1m at auction. The hand-written document - penned by Dr Robert Hooke - contains the minutes of the Royal Society from 1661 to 1682, experts said.
It was found in a house in Hampshire, where it is thought to have lain hidden in a cupboard for about 50 years.
Source: Paradosis Blog
Feb 8, 2006
Gregory Pappy Boyington, a graduate of the Univeristy of Washington (went to High School in Tacoma), winner of the medal of honor, who shot down 28 enemy aircraft and was a prisoner of war for 20 months, has been refused a memorial by the student senate. Apparently he "is not the type of person we want to honor" and some even went so far as to liken his duty in WW2 to murder. One of the biggest antagonists of the proposal was apparently the leader of the student D
Source: Discovery Channel News
Feb 8, 2006
Italian researchers have recovered part of a lost ancient Greek treatise, the earliest cartography of the Greek-Roman era, and a sketchbook for ancient painters — all by piecing together 50 fragments of a first- century B.C. parchment used in a mummy's wrapping.Known as the papyrus of Artemidorus, the 2.5-meter- (eight-foot-) long and 32.5-centimeter- (13-inch-) wide parchment will go on display for the first time this week in Turin at the exhibition "The three lives of
Source: NYT
Feb 8, 2006
For decades, even as a renewed Berlin grew up around it, one large lot that might otherwise have been prime territory for development has lain vacant, and not surprisingly.During the Nazi era, from 1933 to 1945, the site was the headquarters of the Gestapo, perhaps the most dreaded of Hitler's secret police. What to do with the land, where such tides of suffering were put in motion, has long been a matter of uncertainty.
But now, after much discussion and
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Feb 8, 2006
A new generation of Northwestern University students is learning what many of their predecessors found out during their time in Evanston: A tenured member of the faculty is also a prominent Holocaust denier.
Arthur R. Butz, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, has been sharing his views about the Holocaust since the 1976, when he published The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry, shortly after
Source: Yahoo News
Feb 8, 2006
Due to a series of quirks in Italian history, the Interior ministry -- and not the Vatican or the Roman Catholic Church -- actually owns some 700 of Italy's most famous basilicas, cathedrals, churches and monasteries and all the masterpieces inside.Whenever Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu wants a respite from the rigours of protecting the country's borders and preventing terrorism, he can turn to master artists like Caravaggio or Giotto for solace.
Source: Yahoo News
Feb 8, 2006
A unique Anglo-Saxon gold coin, found by an amateur treasure hunter in 2001, was saved for the nation on Wednesday after the British Museum paid a record 357,852 pounds to the American owner. It is the highest amount ever paid for a British coin.
The acquisition of the 1,200-year-old coin, minted in the reign of Coenwulf who ruled Mercia from 796 to 821, turns a neat profit for American collector Allan Davisson who bought it at auction in October 2004 for
Source: BBC News
Feb 8, 2006
The last remaining merchant sailor from the First World War has died aged 107, his family have said. Nicholas Swarbrick died peacefully last Thursday at the nursing home in Grimsargh, Lancashire, where he spent his final years.
His death leaves just 11 soldiers, sailors and airmen from the Great War, said a National Archives spokesman.
Most of these live in the south of England, apart from two in Australia and one who lives in Derby.
Source: Breitbart.com
Feb 8, 2006
Scientists say they've found the earliest known tyrannosaur, shedding light on the lineage that produced the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex. The discovery comes with a puzzle: Why did this beast have a strange crest on its head?
Source: NY Sun
Feb 8, 2006
Three major New York-based foundations sponsoring an academic conference in Italy that was scheduled to begin Monday are now calling for its postponement after the conference came under criticism as a forum for critics of Israel and after one of the articles circulated in advance of the meeting was found to have been what executives of two of the foundations called "an anti-Semitic paper by a Holocaust denier."The New York Sun yesterday reported that ei
Source: BBC News
Feb 8, 2006
A French silver coin has been found embedded in the keel of a medieval ship uncovered on the banks of the river Usk in Newport three years ago. The discovery of the 15th Century coin is being interpreted as a sign that the ship came originally from France.
Experts believe the coin was new and was intended to be a good luck charm.
Project leader Kate Hunter said a colleague was shaking when she found the coin. She said: "We all understood imme
Source: United Jewish Council
Feb 8, 2006
The trial of a far-right German white supremacist accused of repeatedly denying the holocaust resumes on Thursday, when 66-year-old Ernst Zundel will face charges of incitment, libel and disparaging the dead. Zundel's trial at the Mannheim state court was halted in November, since when Iran has sought to cast doubt on the Nazi genocide and a debate has opened over the West's commitment to free speech.
German authorities accuse Zundel of decades of anti-Semitic a
Source: IPS
Feb 8, 2006
The Xeni Gwet'in First Nations in the western interior region of British Columbia are taking ancient myths into the courtroom as part of a nearly two decades-long battle with the Canadian government over the title to their land. "This case is well known and will set a precedent on aboriginal title based on earlier court decisions, as well as establishing the government's role in providing financial support to First Nations for legal costs," said Doug McArthur, a p
Source: The Age (Australia)
Feb 8, 2006
An American archaeological mission discovered a tomb in Luxor's Valley of the Kings next to the burial place of King Tut, Egyptian antiquities authorities have announced.An excavation team from the University of Memphis made the find five metres from Tutankhamun's tomb, while the mission was doing routine excavation work, said Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities.
Some three metres beneath the ground, the tomb contained five h
Source: Harut Sassounian in California Courier
Feb 7, 2006
PBS is planning to air immediately after the April 17 broadcast of Andrew Goldberg's "The Armenian Genocide" documentary, a 25-minute long panel discussion that includes two genocide deniers, Asbarez reported last week. A petition is now circulating to protest PBS's plan. Goldberg told this writer that he did not agree with the PBS decision to hold a panel discussion on the Armenian Genocide. &quo
Source: AP
Feb 7, 2006
Ten thousand mourners — including four U.S. presidents, numerous members of Congress and many gray-haired veterans of the civil rights movement — said goodbye to Coretta Scott King on Tuesday, with President Bush saluting her as “a woman who worked to make our nation whole.”The immense crowd filled the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church — a modern, arena-style megachurch in a suburban Atlanta county that was once a stronghold of the Ku Klux Klan but today has one of t
