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: Wa Po
Feb 7, 2006
On a map, the churches are separated only by a few miles of gray interstate highway. But in reality, New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in suburban Lithonia and Ebenezer Baptist Church in the historic Sweet Auburn section of Atlanta are worlds apart.Ebenezer, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was eulogized in 1968, is surrounded by a sickly cluster of rib shacks, barber shops and billiard halls that time seemingly forgot. The area is nothing like the thriving blac
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists
Feb 7, 2006
Last week, Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) lashed out at the Congressional Research Service for asserting that the Bush Administration may have had a legal responsibility to notify more than just eight members of Congress regarding the NSA surveillance activity.Rep. Hoekstra, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, did not merely suggest that the CRS might be wrong; he claimed that the agency was actually biased against Bush Administration policy (Secrecy News,
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists
Feb 7, 2006
After nearly a decade of pressure from openness advocates inside and outside of government, the Department of Energy has finally released its landmark history of the production of highly enriched uranium (HEU)."The effort was commissioned [in 1996] to facilitate discussions of HEU storage, safety, and security with stakeholders, to encourage other nations to declassify and release similar data, and to support the national policy on transparency of nuclear material
Source: National Geographic News
Feb 7, 2006
The ashes of an ancient chief or priest who lived three centuries before the legendary founding of Rome have been unearthed in the heart of the city, archaeologists report. The remains were discovered late January inside a funerary urn at the bottom of a deep pit, along with bowls and jars, all encased in a hutlike box.
The artifacts date to about 1000 B.C. The size and richness of the tomb suggest that the ashes are the remains of a high-ranking individu
Source: LAT
Feb 7, 2006
In shantytowns scattered around the imposing Israeli Embassy here, thousands of self-described Ethiopian Jews wait idly, hoping one day to make it to the Promised Land. Many are suspected of feigning Jewish roots to trade an often impoverished existence for a more comfortable, government-subsidized life in Israel. Others simply won't qualify under eligibility rules, which require them to have relatives living in Israel.Israel's ambitious resettlement efforts have relocated m
Source: Richmond Times Dispatch
Feb 7, 2006
According to a survey conducted by the Virginia Council of Higher Education last fall, 42 percent of students said there had been at least one semester where they couldn't afford to buy their books. The survey recommended several measures that are now part of legislation to make textbooks more affordable.Virginia House Bill 1478 unanimously passed the House of Delegates in late January and will go to the Senate on Feb. 15.
The bill was proposed by Del. Glenn Ode
Source: The Australian
Feb 7, 2006
Iran's biggest-selling newspaper announced yesterday that it was holding a contest for cartoons of the Holocaust in response to the publication in European papers of caricatures of the prophet Mohammed. "It will be an international cartoon contest about the Holocaust," said the graphics editor of Hamshahri, Farid Mortazavi.
The aim was to turn the tables on the Western assertion that newspapers could print offensive material in the name of a free
Source: Haaretz
Feb 7, 2006
Archeologists uncovered dozens of ancient tombs at the Highway 6 construction site near Kiryat Gat, the Itim news agency reported Tuesday. The find yielded a trove of artifacts, including mint-condition pottery, statues, jewelry and the remains of sacrifices offered to the religious deities the inhabitants believed in.Peter Fabian, who is conducting the dig at the behest of the company building the highway, said they discovered cave drawings depicting deer that used to roam
Source: PennLive/AP
Feb 7, 2006
A director at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum was named to head the museum that will commemorate the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.Alice M. Greenwald will oversee the creation of the World Trade Center Memorial Museum, an underground gallery of exhibits planned next to the memorial that marks the destroyed twin towers' footprints. Groundbreaking is scheduled for next month; the museum and memorial are slated to open in 2009.
The museum "will honor in
Source: The Australian
Feb 7, 2006
Japanese leaders have renewed demands that Russia return four islands seized in 1945. Japan has yet to sign a peace treaty ending World War II with Russia due to the dragging dispute over the four Kuril islands off its northern coast, which Tokyo calls the Northern Territories."The government has the consistent opinion to try to sign a peace treaty as soon as possible after solving the territorial dispute," Foreign Minister Taro Aso told a rally of 1600 people in t
Source: BBC News
Feb 6, 2006
A French caver has discovered prehistoric cave art believed to date back 27,000 years - older than the famous Lascaux paintings. Gerard Jourdy, 63, said he found human and animal remains in the chamber in the Vilhonneur forest, in caves once used to dispose of animal carcasses.
The paintings included a hand in cobalt blue, he told AFP news agency.
The discovery was made in November, but kept secret while initial examinations were carried out.
Source: BBC News
Feb 6, 2006
The information superhighway owes its very existence to fibre optics.
With a very thin tube, light and some engineering know-how you have the components for speeding information around the world.
The communication revolution was set in motion 40 years ago, when a landmark paper was revealed to the engineering community. In 1966, Dr Charles Kuen Kao and George Hockham, both young research engineers from the Standard Telecommunications L
Source: NYT
Feb 6, 2006
The quarrel between Tokyo and Beijing over Japan's colonial and wartime history spilled over to the sensitive topic of Taiwan over the weekend, after Japan's foreign minister praised his country's past rule over the island.The minister, Taro Aso, said in a speech on Saturday that Taiwan's present high educational standards resulted from Japanese colonial policies. China, which ceded Taiwan after losing a war to Japan in 1895 and considers the island a renegade province
Source: National History Coalition
Feb 6, 2006
In the funding proposal the president asserts that “the number of quality applications for assistance under this program in recent
years does not justify the current level of funding ($121 million). He therefore recommends that it be reduced to $50 million. The reduced cost reflects “the anticipated number of high-scoring applicants” and would generate about 52 new awards.”As for the budget numbers for agencies of particular interest to the history and archive
Source: BBC News
Feb 6, 2006
The Dutch state is to return 202 famous paintings worth millions of euros to the family of a Jewish art collector who died while fleeing the Nazis. Jacques Goudstikker's collection was seized by the Nazi German authorities after their troops occupied the Netherlands in 1940.
The collection includes works by 17th-Century Dutch and Italian masters.
A Dutch junior minister said no compensation would be paid to the museums currently housing them.
Source: NYT
Feb 6, 2006
As the Senate prepares to hold hearings on Monday on domestic eavesdropping by the National Security Agency, old Washington hands see a striking similarity to a drama that unfolded three decades ago in the capital.
In 1975, a Senate committee led by Senator Frank Church of Idaho revealed that the N.S.A. had intercepted the phone calls and telegrams of Americans. Then, as now, intelligence officials insisted that only international communications of
Source: BBC News
Feb 6, 2006
Demonstrators in a seaside suburb of Essex have staged a five month long protest to angry at plans to widen a road over the burial site of a Saxon king dubbed the King of Bling.Local resident Ant Bailey, 39, co-founded the camp five months ago with local environmental campaigner Shaun Qureshi.
Several different things inspired him to set it up, he said, including "the trees, the park, the burial site" he thinks are at risk from Southend B
Source: NYT
Feb 6, 2006
The quarrel between Tokyo and Beijing over Japan's colonial and wartime history spilled over to the sensitive topic of Taiwan over the weekend, after Japan's foreign minister praised his country's past rule over the island.The minister, Taro Aso, said in a speech on Saturday that Taiwan's present high educational standards resulted from Japanese colonial policies. China, which ceded Taiwan after losing a war to Japan in 1895 and considers the island a renegade province, cond
Source: Las Vegas Review Journal
Feb 6, 2006
At first, Richard Johnston thought nothing of an online auction house's offer to sell a letter written in 1900 by a member of Butch Cassidy's infamous Wild Bunch for $5,999. It was only later that the Old West history buff from Reno made a surprising discovery: The two-page letter from outlaw Willard E. Christiansen to Utah Gov. Heber Wells was stolen from the Utah State Archives."I checked my files and discovered that I had seen the letter there in 1976," Johnston
Source: Louisville Courier Journal
Feb 6, 2006
A Middletown Kentucky historian is leading a team that is uncovering an escaped slave's past, along with the rest of Kentucky's slave history. The group includes scholars in Oldham, Henry, Trimble and Jefferson counties, as well as other states. What they find could lead to the first national trail following the course of an escaped slave, starting in New Castle, Kentucky and twisting up into Canada. Bibb, who was born between September 1813 and August 1814 just south of New
