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: World Science
Dec 17, 2005
Some 64 centuries ago, a prehistoric people of obscure origins farmed an area along Egypt’s Nile River. Barely out of the Stone Age, they produced simple but well-made pottery, jewelry and stone tools, and carefully buried their dead with ritual objects in apparent preparation for an afterlife. These items often included doll-like female figurines with exaggerated sexual features, thought to possibly symbolize rebirth.
Despite the simplicity of their possessions, a new study suggest
Source: WaPo
Dec 17, 2005
As a great maritime and colonial power in centuries past, France relished its role in taking its culture to the far corners of the globe -- French schools, language, trade, modern medicine and various other trappings of its civilization.
But people in those places were not always happy with what accompanied the French largess, including war, slavery, torture and the eradication of their cultures.
Those competing views of history have set off an emotional debate in Franc
Source: CNN
Dec 17, 2005
Remains of a U.S. Navy sailor who was listed as missing in action after Japan's 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor have been identified and will be returned to his family, the Department of Defense said.Seaman 2nd Class Warren P. Hickok of Kalamazoo, Michigan, was assigned to the USS Sicard when Japanese aircraft attacked the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, the Defense Department's POW/Missing Personnel Office said Friday.
Hickok was
Source: chron.com
Dec 17, 2005
A "King Tut is back and he's still black" placard drew the gaze of visitors making their way to view the acclaimed exhibit at the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale Saturday.
Across from the entrance, about 25 demonstrators donning T-shirts marked with various pro-black slogans held up the placards.
Waving the red, black and green African flag, at times moving to the beat of drums, they asked drivers in passing cars to honk in support of their goal: reminding pe
Source: Guardian (UK)
Dec 17, 2005
Turkey's prime minister accused the European Union on Saturday of trying to pressure Turkish courts in the trial of the country's best-known novelist.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his Cabinet will discuss Monday whether a court should press ahead with the trial of Orhan Pamuk, a case that has raised questions about Turkey's commitment to free speech. On Friday, the first day of the trial, a judge halted the proceeding and insisted the Justice Ministry first approve
Source: Financial Times (London, England)
Dec 17, 2005
They were born Robert LeRoy Parker and Harry Alonzo Longabaugh respectively. One picked up his nickname after working as a butcher and the other after serving an 18-month jail term for robbery in Sundance, Wyoming.
And their tale went on to be adapted for the 1969 box office smash, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford, which turned the tale of the Wild Bunch outlaws who fled to South America with USDollars 1,000 rewards on their heads into the
Source: AHA Perspectives (Dec. 2005)
Dec 17, 2005
Historian Jesse Lemisch is questioning the American Historical Association's decision not to take a stand on Armenian genocide. Lemisch, Professor Emeritus of History, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, says that the AHA should forthrightly state that Armenians were massacred in World War I just as the organization has stated in the past that millions of Jews were killed in the Holocaust. In short, the AHA should either condemn both genocides or neither. In response AHA President James Shee
Source: Guardian
Dec 17, 2005
The trial of one of the world's leading novelists, Orhan Pamuk, Turkey's most important free-speech test case for years, was adjourned for seven weeks yesterday.
Amid scenes of mayhem and abuse at an Istanbul courthouse, the case was put back to February 7, while the Turkish government was handed the hot political potato of deciding whether to prosecute the author or drop the case.Armed riot police in body armour and white helmets thronged the narrow corri
Source: nationaltrust.org
Dec 16, 2005
After a protracted battle, a monument to one of America's oldest fraternal organizations may soon be demolished to restore an even older, more sacred resource: a tribal burial ground.
In August, a state commission decreed that the 1928 Masonic Temple in Norwich, Conn.,—a massive neoclassical building with fluted columns and elaborate details—could come down so that the Mohegan Nation can reclaim land it has long considered desecrated. The tribe's 17th-century leader, Uncas, and oth
Source: CNN
Dec 16, 2005
Widely condemned remarks by Iran's president about Israel and the Holocaust were "misunderstood" by Western governments, the country's interior minister has said.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad provoked international outrage on Wednesday when he described the Holocaust as "a myth" and suggested that Israel be moved to Europe, the United States, Canada or Alaska.
But speaking at an Athens conference on immigration on Friday, Mostafa Pourmohammadi told The Associ
Source: BBC News
Dec 16, 2005
A piper who played the bagpipes as the troops went ashore during the D-Day Landings has been honoured in song. Scot Bill Millin, who is now 82, has lived in Dawlish, Devon, for 40 years.
Inspired by his musical past, north Devon folk singer Sheelagh Allen has written a tune for him called The Highland Piper.
Source: NYT
Dec 16, 2005
According to a long-secret Israeli government document, the Kopel Report, which was made public this year, members of the Israeli Olympic delegation sent to Munich in 1972 talked among themselves about the obvious lack of security at the athletes' living quarters.
In "Striking Back," a blunt, angry book incorporating some of the Kopel Report's findings, Aaron J. Klein analyzes this massacre and the acts of retaliation it prompted. Mr. Klein, a former Israeli intelligence
Source: NYT
Dec 16, 2005
With a toast of Champagne and a lunch of roast pheasant (shot by the host himself), George Ramsden, a British bookseller in a pinstripe suit, signed a $2.6 million agreement to sell the 2,600-volume Edith Wharton library to the custodians of the Mount, the writer's estate in Lenox, Mass., which she designed, built and finally left forever in 1911 as her marriage unraveled.
"It is the most important acquisition we could possibly make," Stephanie Copeland, head of the Mount'
Source: NYT
Dec 16, 2005
A gene that is responsible for the pale skin of Europeans and the dark skin of Africans has been discovered by scientists at Pennsylvania State University.
The gene comes in two versions, one of which is found in 99 percent of Europeans and the other in 93 to 100 percent of Africans, the researchers report in today's issue of Science. The new gene falls into the same category as the Duffy gene, and it may shed light on the evolutionary pressures to w
Source: Herald (Glasgow)
Dec 16, 2005
HE left clues as well as bodies but now it is hoped a breakthrough in DNA technology will lead to the true identity of Jack the Ripper being revealed, more than 100 years after he committed his crimes.
Professor Ian Findlay, a Scottish-born scientist, is attempting to build up a genetic "fingerprint" of the serial killer by taking samples of saliva on the back of envelopes sent to police at the time of the killings.Once his DNA is known, it can
Source: Boston Globe
Dec 16, 2005
The European Union official overseeing Turkey's admission to the 25-nation bloc warned yesterday that Turkey's prosecution of a bestselling author for insulting "Turkishness" could damage the country's chances of joining the EU."It is not Orhan Pamuk who will stand trial, but Turkey," EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said in an unusually blunt statement released in Brussels. "This is a litmus test of whether Turkey is seriously commi
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
Dec 16, 2005
In an effort to create a forum for discussion of a recurrent problem among their country's foreign students, two Australian scholars have started a journal devoted largely to the issue of plagiarism. The International Journal for Educational Integrity, a freely accessible online publication that made its debut last week, will cover matters of academic rectitude, including soft marking, fraud, and other forms of academic dishonesty, as well as plagiarism.
Source: Chicago Tribune
Dec 16, 2005
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" summons visions of racial brutality in another place and time. But Uncle Tom's Cabin stands today in Rockville, Md., and the property is for sale.
Its owner, Hildegarde Mallet-Prevost, died in September at 100, and her family is selling the three-bedroom colonial with the attached log cabin that was once home to Josiah Henson, the slave whose 1849 autobiography was the model for Harriet Beecher Stowe's classic novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
Source: EduGeek
Dec 16, 2005
One of the extraordinary stories of the Internet age is that of Wikipedia, a free online encyclopaedia that anyone can edit. This radical and rapidly growing publication, which includes close to 4 million entries, is now a much-used resource. But it is also controversial: if anyone can edit entries, how do users know if Wikipedia is as accurate as established sources such as Encyclopaedia Britannica?
Several recent cases have highlighted the potential problems. One article was revea
Source: Log Cabin Democrat
Dec 16, 2005
Construction crews remodeling an old five-and-dime store uncovered a relic found most often in museums and history books: the words "WHITE" and "COLORED" painted over the spots where water fountains once hung."Well, I was pretty amazed," said Charles Moenning, the head of construction on a project to turn the old S.H. Kress store into loft apartments and retail space. "I have never seen anything like that in my life, in person,
