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: WTOP (Washington D.C.)
Feb 6, 2006
The German Historical Museum said on Monday it was being sued to return a valuable poster collection seized by the Nazis from collector Hans Sachs to his son, who lives in the United States.The museum, situated in the former East Berlin, said it was surprised at the claim by Peter Sachs as the West German authorities had paid his father "considerable" compensation for the collection in the 1960s.
Hans Sachs, a Jewish dentist, was the leadin
Source: Washington Times
Feb 6, 2006
Many scholars are divided on whether President Bush has gone too far in the exercise of wartime powers. Presidents have often asserted disputed powers in the name of national security. Abraham Lincoln, citing a necessity to suppress support for the Confederacy, suspended habeas corpus, the right of suspects to challenge charges against them, in the Civil War.
Eighty years later, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt
Source: Guardian
Feb 5, 2006
Some of the world's most precious archaeological treasures - the ancient Egyptian tombs and temples at Luxor - are being devastated by salt water that is eating their foundations, scientists have discovered.The temples of Amun, Luxor and Karnak, designated World Heritage Sites, have survived 4,000 years of arid desert heat but are now being destroyed by rising ground water.
The threat has been uncovered by American Egyptologists, who have warned that urgent acti
Source: BBC News
Feb 5, 2006
Hopes that a ship built on the River Wear could return to the north-east of England after almost 140 years have finally been scuppered. The City of Adelaide was built in 1864 by a Sunderland shipyard. It is the oldest surviving clipper in the world - the only other is the Cutty Sark.
Source: NYT
Feb 5, 2006
The trail led from New York to Geneva. Geneva to Zurich. Zurich to Rome. Rome to Beirut. Beirut to an Italian village. And back to New York.
The cast of characters read like a list from "The Maltese Falcon" or a novel by Eric Ambler.There was an art dealer of dubious reputation, a Levantine of unreliable memory, Italian grave robbers known as tombaroli, and the illustrious curators and museum directors who seemed above suspicion.
At
Source: Secrecy News, the newsletter written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists
Feb 5, 2006
Congressional Research Service (CRS) analyses of the Bush Administration's domestic surveillance activity have been exceptionally influential, and their influence has been magnified by media coverage that has sometimes overstated the rather nuanced conclusions of CRS analysts.
But now the CRS faces a backlash from Republican leaders in Congress who apparently resent the agency's high profile and independent judgment, and seek to rein it in.There has probab
Source: NYT
Feb 5, 2006
Betty Friedan, the feminist crusader and author whose searing first book, "The Feminine Mystique," ignited the contemporary women's movement in 1963 and as a result permanently transformed the social fabric of the United States and countries around the world, died yesterday, her 85th birthday, at her home in Washington.
Source: NYT
Feb 5, 2006
It is up to Congress to decide when the Mall is full. And although in 2003 it declared that no future construction would take place on the land, it can also make exceptions, as it did last week for the new African-American museum, which has been in the works since the early 1900's.Already, in fact, there are two other projects that have been approved — a visitors' center linked to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and a memorial to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to be loca
Source: Associated Press
Feb 4, 2006
An intense debate erupted during the Ford administration over the president's powers to eavesdrop without warrants to gather foreign intelligence, according to newly disclosed government documents. George H.W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney are cited in the documents.The roughly 200 pages of historic records obtained by The Associated Press reflect a remarkably similar dispute between the White House and Congress fully three decades before President Bush's ackno
Source: Baltimore Sun
Feb 4, 2006
If this were a telegram, we'd say: TLGRM DED.But this is a newspaper, so we'll say this: Western Union sent its final telegram last week, bringing to a close 150 years of shooting messages around the world, of those square message cards, of messenger boys (and later girls) on bikes and in radio cars fanning out across the country to announce births, deaths and everything in between.
Source: BBC
Feb 4, 2006
In a dramatic re-enactment Robert the Bruce will plunge his dagger into the 'Red' Comyn, nobleman John Comyn, at the town's Midsteeple. Hundreds of spectators are expected to watch the recreation of the slaying, which is said to have set Scotland on the road to independent nationhood.
The event, on 11 February, is to mark the 700th anniversary of the murder.
Bruce needed Comyn's support if he were to be King, but when this did not come
Source: The Age (Australia)
Feb 4, 2006
A disbanded police unit specialising in war crimes has been reformed to look into the backgrounds of British residents suspected of committing atrocities in World War II.Eight officers from Scotland Yard's anti-terrorism branch have been seconded to the War Crimes Unit to focus on former members of the 14th Waffen SS Galizien division that operated in eastern Europe, The Guardian said today.
Some of those who served with the Galizien division, which was active i
Source: Hartford Courant
Feb 3, 2006
Cuban academics hoping to attend a gathering of Latin America experts in Puerto Rico were denied visas by the American government, marking the latest in the current U.S. administration's trend of shutting out Cubans. Some 55 philosophers, economists, and historians were told last week they'd be unable to travel to this month's Latin American Studies Association congress in San Juan. Visa requests for four academics were still pending, said Sheryl Lutjens, an American politic
Source: Nashville Business Journal
Feb 3, 2006
In the waning days of 1864 and the Civil War, Franklin hosted one of the conflict's bloodiest battles. More than 140 years later, that battle is again pitting neighbor against neighbor.
At issue is the effort to reclaim portions of the battlefield, most of which now house commercial ventures. On one side, preservationists and battlefield boosters point out the hard economic advantages of creating a battlefield park, as Civil War buffs pump tourist dollars into the town.
Source: Tolerance.org
Feb 3, 2006
Twenty U.S. soldiers received Medals of Honor for their actions in the Wounded Knee massacre. Trying to correct history, Native Americans want the medals rescinded. On Dec. 29, 1890, American soldiers slaughtered more than 350 Lakota men, women and children in an event known to history books as the Battle at Wounded Knee.
Twenty of those soldiers were awarded Medals of Honor later renamed the Congressional Medals of Honor for their actions.
One hu
Source: BBC News
Feb 3, 2006
Oetzi, the prehistoric man frozen in a glacier for 5,300 years, could have been infertile, a new study suggests. Genetic research, published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, also confirms that his roots probably lie in Central Europe.
Oetzi's body was found in the melting ice of the Schnalstal glacier in the Italian Alps in 1991.
Examination of his remains has already revealed the Copper Age man almost certainly died as a re
Source: NYT
Feb 3, 2006
Reversing a position it has held for more than 30 years, the Metropolitan Museum of Art said yesterday that it would relinquish ownership of a 2,500-year-old Greek vase, considered one of the world's finest, to Italy. The Italians have long contended that the vase was stolen from an Etruscan tomb near Rome and smuggled from the country.
In documents delivered yesterday in Rome by the Met's lawyers after weeks of negotiations, the museum pledged to return the vas
Source: South China Morning Post
Feb 3, 2006
The archaeological site in Jinsha Village, in the western suburbs of Chengdu in Sichuan province, has shown the world that a stable and religious civilisation flourished there some 3,500 years ago, modifying previous assumptions about the origins of Chinese civilisation. The site, discovered in 2001 by a housing development company, continues to yield a stream of art works and religious symbols.Jade and gold artefacts resembling finds at the nearby site of Sanxin
Source: Delaware News Journal
Feb 3, 2006
Come Feb. 27, Buck O'Neil and other historically significant Negro League baseball players may receive their own plaques in Cooperstown. A four-year historical study, funded by a $250,000 grant from Major League Baseball, has resulted in a list of 39 Negro League players and executives who will be considered for induction in a special election.Twelve historians will meet Feb. 25-27 in Tampa, Fla., to discuss the merit of each candidate, including O'Neil, one of two living pl
Source: The Kansan
Feb 3, 2006
Archivists have released tens of thousands of pages of documents from Dwight Eisenhower's administration that could refine historians' understanding of the president's positions on civil rights and national security.The Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kan., announced Thursday that 40,000 pages of previously classified documents on a variety of subjects were being made public. That follows the library's recent release of 7,000 pages specifically related to the Eis
