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: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 14, 2005
President Jacques Chirac has stepped into the row over French colonialism, promising an inquiry into how it is taught in schools and championing the creation of a day commemorating slavery.In a bid to appeal to people of African origins in the country's troubled housing estates, he also backed fighting discrimination by pressing employers to accept anonymous job applications.
Answering questions from readers of the daily tabloid newspaper Le Parisien, he again d
Source: Reuters
Dec 14, 2005
Relatives of four deceased South Koreans who were forced laborers at a steel mill in northern Japan during World War Two failed on Wednesday to overturn a Japanese court decision refusing compensation for unpaid wages.
The result, in line with most Japanese rulings on war-related compensation claims, comes at a time when Japan's ties with South Korea and China have been chilled by disputes stemming from Japan's past aggression in Asia.In Wednesday's case, Tokyo
Source: Guardian
Dec 14, 2005
Iran's president said today that the Holocaust was a "myth", prompting strong condemnation from Israel, Germany and the European Commission.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made the comments to thousands of people during a speech in Iran's south-eastern city of Zahedan.They follow the international outcry his remarks caused in October when he said that Israel should be "wiped off the map".
Germany's foreign minister warned that the "sho
Source: Chicago Tribune
Dec 14, 2005
Archeologists said Tuesday that they had uncovered the final portion of the earliest known Mayan mural ever found, declaring that the find--which dates to 100 B.C.--overturns what was previously known about the origins of Mayan art, writing and royalty.
"It's really breathtaking how beautiful this is," said William Saturno, an archeologist with the University of New Hampshire and the Harvard Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology who discovered the mural in Guatemala.
Source: EurActiv
Dec 14, 2005
Turkey's internationally acclaimed novelist Orhan Pamuk will be on trial in Istanbul on 16 December for insulting the Turkish state. He is charged under Article 301 of the country's recently revised penal code, with his other alleged crimes include insulting the government, the army and the memory of the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. According to Article 301, "a person who explicitly insults being a Turk, the republic or Turkish National Assembly" shall be imprisoned
Source: Xinhuanet
Dec 14, 2005
Mongolian long-tune folk songs have been approved of as representative of human oral and non-material heritage by both China and Mongolia.
Alxa Mongolian folk songs are more than 300 years old, according to Gerel, secretary of the Alxa Association of Folk Songs in the Alxa League, based in north China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region. "Since September 2003 when the association was reconvened, we have covered almost every corner of Alxa and visited hundred
Source: Science Daily
Dec 14, 2005
Thick-skinned bottle gourds widely used as containers by prehistoric peoples were likely brought to the Americas some 10,000 years ago by individuals who arrived from Asia, according to a new genetic comparison of modern bottle gourds with gourds found at archaeological sites in the Western Hemisphere. The finding solves a longstanding archaeological enigma by explaining how a domesticated variant of a species native to Africa ended up millennia ago in places as far removed as modern-day Florida
Source: Financial Times
Dec 14, 2005
Dick Cheney used to be portrayed in cartoons as the ventriloquist of the administration, his hand inserted into a George W. Bush puppet. Now the cartoons of the vice-president have a darker tone, with his hands controlling various instruments of torture.
Mr Cheney's advocacy, however, is best understood not as a defence of torture but as a key battle in the war over presidential power. His views of executive power were forged during the US retreat from Vietnam at a time of congressi
Source: Detroit News
Dec 13, 2005
Acting quickly on a re-election mandate to fix the city's finances, Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick on Tuesday announced the layoffs of 400 city workers, the closing of the Detroit Historical Museum and transfer of management of the Detroit Zoo.Combined with other budget cutbacks, the plan is expected save $40 million. But major parts of the mayor's overall plan to avoid a budget deficit -- including pay and benefit cuts for union-represented workers -- remain unresolved.
Source: AP
Dec 13, 2005
Benjamin Franklin was a passionate writer, especially in the cause of the democracy he helped found, but even such a prolific man of letters may have had second thoughts about posting too-hasty words, according to an exhibit for the 300th anniversary of Franklin's birth.Perhaps Franklin thought better of that letter because he never sent it. But it was preserved and is one of 75 items in the Library of Congress' exhibit, "Benjamin Franklin: In His Own Words." The d
Source: Press Release David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies,
Dec 13, 2005
America's journalism schools and newspaper publishers refused to help Jewish refugee journalists fleeing Hitler, according to research to be presented at a conference in Washington, D.C. later this month.Prof. Laurel Leff of Northeastern University will speak on "American Journalism and the Plight of Jewish Refugees from Nazi Germany," at the annual conference of the Association for Jewish Studies (AJS), the premier organization of Jewish scholars.
Pro
Source: History Today
Dec 13, 2005
Torrential rain in Rome has caused authorities to close the emperor Nero’s palace. Culture Minister Rocco Buttiglione stated: ‘Safety is no longer guaranteed’; the Domus Aurea (House of Gold) could be shut for up to two years as the rain threatened to damage the ancient building’s plaster and masonry. Following a fire in AD64, Nero ordered the rebuilding of much of the city and the opulent palace was finished in AD68, the year of the emperor’s suicide. The palace was shut for 18 years until 1999
Source: NYT
Dec 13, 2005
Harvard University and Georgetown University each announced yesterday that they had received $20 million donations from Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz Alsaud, a Saudi businessman and member of the Saudi royal family, to finance Islamic studies.
Harvard said it would create a universitywide program on Islamic studies, recruit new faculty members in the field, provide more support for graduate students and convert rare Islamic textual sources into digital formats to make the
Source: NYT
Dec 13, 2005
For more than a century, the young reporters from City News have delivered just-the-facts accounts of Chicago's biggest and, more often, smallest news events.
But City News Service, where flowery prose was mocked and accuracy about the tiniest of factual detail was demanded, is closing. The demise of the wire service, which opened in 1890 as a cooperative deal among Chicago newspapers, signifies many ends.It is the close of a pre-Internet age, when news outlets
Source: NYT & White House website
Dec 13, 2005
In speeches in Philadelphia President Bush and war critic Rep. John Murtha used dueling lessons from the Revolutionary War in support of their positions yesterday. Speakling at a meeting held by the World Affairs Council, Mr. Bush said:
A few blocks from here stands Independence Hall, where our Declaration of Independence was signed and our Constitution was debated. From the perspective of more than two centuries, the success of America's democratic exp
Source: Radio Free Europe
Dec 13, 2005
The kidnapping of a German archeologist in late November highlighted both the historical wealth of Iraq and the perils of exploring that history. In much of the country, archeologists have all but abandoned their work because of security concerns. But officials in Kurdish-administered northern Iraq say the region is secure enough for excavations. The region is rich in potential sites, and only a fraction of them have been researched. One of the most dramatic is in the heart of Irbil, the capital
Source: AP
Dec 13, 2005
Prosecutors said Tuesday they were preparing charges against the nation's last communist leader, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, for his imposition of martial law, as Poles marked the 24th anniversary of the clampdown.
Prosecutors argued that Jaruzelski violated the constitution when he imposed martial law in 1981, said Ewa Koj, a prosecutor with the National Remembrance Institute, which pursues communist-era crimes.Jaruzelski, 82, also could face charges for harassme
Source: History Today
Dec 12, 2005
The museums documentation association is supporting a project to establish a ‘virtual museum’ dedicated to gay and lesbian history. The MDA museums watchdog is backing the Proud Heritage campaign asking archives and museums across the UK to list the artefacts and documents in their collections relating to homosexuality. The group Proud Heritage has just sent out a survey this week hoping to compile these records into a national database; its director Jack Gilbert commented:
Source: Bloomberg News
Dec 12, 2005
Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi won't ``own up'' to his country's history of violence in Asia, making him the cause of a rift in relations with China and a breakdown in talks between the neighbors, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said at a regional meeting in Malaysia.
Wen canceled an annual trilateral summit with Koizumi and South Korea's President Roh Moo-Hyun during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations meeting in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur because of Koizumi's
Source: Wa Po
Dec 12, 2005
Inside the box at Ford's Theatre where President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, most of the furnishings are carefully chosen replicas: the heavy gold drapes and tassels, the red, gold and white floral carpet, the presidential rocker.
But last week, the National Park Service got hold of the real thing. A carved-back, cane-seat parlor chair that was in the presidential box the night Lincoln was shot by actor John Wilkes Booth -- perhaps the one Mary Todd Lincoln was sitting in --
