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This page features brief excerpts of news 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.
Highlights
Breaking News
This page features brief excerpts of news 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. Because most of our readers read the NYT we usually do not include the paper's stories in HIGHLIGHTS.
Name of source: NYT
SOURCE: NYT (6-26-07)
People have continued to evolve since leaving the ancestral homeland in northeastern Africa some 50,000 years ago, both through the random process known as genetic drift and through natural selection. The genome bears many fingerprints in places where natural selection has recently remolded the human clay, researchers have found, as people in the various continents adapted to new diseases, climates, diets and, perhaps, behavioral demands.
A striking feature of many of these changes is that they are local. The genes under selective pressure found in one continent-based population or race are mostly different from those that occur in the others. These genes so far make up a small fraction of all human genes.
SOURCE: NYT (6-26-07)
[Now] new finds have filled in some of the yawning gaps in the fossil record. They have doubled the record’s time span from 3.5 million back almost to 7 million years ago and more than doubled the number of earliest known hominid species. The teeth and bone fragments suggest the form — the morphology — of these ancestors that lived presumably just this side of the human-ape split.
SOURCE: NYT (6-25-07)
From 1940 to 1975, thousands of reports like these were part of extensive files compiled by the F.B.I. while it carried out a clandestine surveillance campaign on the National Lawyers Guild, an organization founded in New York in 1937 and associated with the labor movement and liberal causes.
They are among a trove of documents that archivists are poring over for the first time. The files provide a detailed history of the lawyers guild and include memos to and from the office of J. Edgar Hoover, internal F.B.I. analysis of the organization, typed and handwritten reports from covert informants and papers identifying people used by the agency to spy on the guild and other groups.
SOURCE: NYT (6-27-07)
Archaeologists who conducted the research, to be announced formally today in Cairo, said this was the first mummy of an Egyptian ruler to be found and “positively identified” since King Tutankhamen’s tomb was opened in 1922.
Zahi Hawass, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Cairo, said Monday in a telephone interview that the mummy was found in 1903 in an obscure, undecorated tomb in the Valley of the Kings, across the Nile from modern Luxor, and had been largely overlooked for more than a century.
SOURCE: NYT (6-26-07)
Matthew Kalafat, his son-in-law, announced the death.
General Thi administered a huge swath of the northern part of South Vietnam when his chief rival in the ruling military junta, Air Vice Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky, the premier, persuaded eight generals in the 10-man junta to join him in ousting General Thi.
Buddhists, who made up a majority in South Vietnam, rose up in a rebellion that came to be called “the struggle movement.” Interpretations of the importance of the ouster of General Thi, a Buddhist, in starting the rioting and other civil disobedience vary.
American diplomats at first applauded his ouster and accused him of acting like a warlord. The New York Times reported that President Lyndon B. Johnson’s strong expression of support of Premier Ky at a meeting in Honolulu in February 1966 was a tacit license for the Vietnamese leader to act against General Thi.
By summer, government forces, with the aid of the United States military, had defeated the struggle movement. General Thi was dismissed from the army and sent to the United States for sinus treatment, which his son-in-law said he did not need. (The general said his only sinus problem was “the stink of corruption.”) It turned out to be a permanent exile.
SOURCE: NYT (6-22-07)
The Information Security Oversight Office, a unit of the National Archives, appealed the issue to the Justice Department, which has not yet ruled on the matter.
Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California and chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, disclosed Mr. Cheney’s effort to shut down the oversight office. Mr. Waxman, who has had a leading role in the stepped-up efforts by Democrats to investigate the Bush administration, outlined the matter in an eight-page letter sent Thursday to the vice president and posted, along with other documentation, on the committee’s Web site.
Name of source: AP
SOURCE: AP (6-22-07)
Dubbed "Glacier Girl" after being recovered, the P-38 left Teterboro Airport on Friday for another leg of a journey toward Duxford, England, where it's scheduled to land June 29.
Fighter pilot Brad McManus, the first member of his squadron to crash-land onto a glacier in Greenland, is now the only pilot still alive from the group to see one of their planes finally reach England - a flight he never expected any of the damaged aircraft to complete.
SOURCE: AP (6-22-07)
The Connecticut tribe has reclaimed the Mohegan Royal Burial Ground and is restoring it to pay homage to its famed Chief Uncas and his descendants, who were mythologized in James Fenimore Cooper's 1826 work.
The project has been dubbed "The Lasting of the Mohegans."
SOURCE: AP (6-26-07)
Lindberg, who died Sunday in Edina, Minn., spent years explaining that it was his patrol, not the one in the famous Associated Press photograph by Joe Rosenthal, that raised the first flag there.
On Feb. 23, 1945, Lindberg and five other Marines fought their way to the top of Iwo Jima’s Mount Suribachi. He was awarded the Silver Star for bravery.
“Two of our men found this big, long pipe there,” he said in 2003. “We tied the flag to it, took it to the highest spot we could find and we raised it. Down below, the troops started to cheer, the ship’s whistles went off - it was just something that you would never forget,” he said.
The moment was captured by Sgt. Lou Lowery, a photographer from the Marine Corps.
By Lindberg’s account, his commander ordered the first flag replaced and safeguarded because he worried that someone would take it as a souvenir. Lindberg was back in combat when six men raised the second, larger flag about four hours later.
Rosenthal’s photo of the second flag-raising became one of the most enduring images of the war and the model for the U.S. Marine Corps memorial.
SOURCE: AP (6-22-07)
The Mohegans operate one of the world's most successful casinos and are among about 50 tribes in the U.S. that have managed to reclaim burial grounds or other sacred sites, said Suzan Harjo, president of the Morning Star Institute, an Indian rights organization in Washington.
In recent years, the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes have preserved a massacre site in Colorado, while the Nez Perce have taken control of worship sites in Idaho, Harjo said. Several tribes in California who operate casinos also have reclaimed burial grounds, she said.
'More and more, the native people are using newfound wealth to purchase what should be theirs anyway,' Harjo said.
But several hundred burial grounds and other sacred sites remain threatened by development, according to Harjo.
Name of source: NPR
SOURCE: NPR (6-22-07)
The change was first discussed last summer. A decision will be made at the UNESCO conference at the end of June.
Related Links
Cliopatria blog
Name of source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
SOURCE: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH) (6-21-07)
The House Labor, HHS & Education Appropriations Subcommittee also provided $120 million for Teaching American History Grants when it adopted its version of the FY ‘08 appropriations bill on June 7. The House Appropriations Committee has yet to schedule its markup.
Name of source: http://www.inrich.com
SOURCE: http://www.inrich.com (6-25-07)
Yesterday, she came to that riverbank to pay homage to those who did survive. She was among the early arrivals at a Juneteenth celebration commemorating freedom from slavery.
An afternoon of ceremonies, speeches, music and dance preceded a torch-lit walk along the same trail that slaves walked in the years after colonization of Virginia.
Tracing her heritage to African, Cherokee and Dutch ancestors, Jackson-Bowens could claim kinship to all three groups represented at the ceremonies. So, when Upper Mattaponi Chief Kenneth F. Adams reflected on the English arrival in 1607 and its impact on blacks and Indians, "a lot of what he was saying speaks to me," she said.
Name of source: http://www.asahi.com
SOURCE: http://www.asahi.com (6-23-07)
"It is an undeniable truth that (mass suicides by Okinawa residents) would have never occurred without the involvement of the Imperial Japanese Army," the statement said.
A group of assembly members traveled to Tokyo to submit the request to the prime minister, the education minister and others.
The statement says the descriptions of the Imperial Japanese Army's involvement should be retained in the textbooks.
Name of source: CNSnews.com
SOURCE: CNSnews.com (6-26-07)
For more than 200 years, the Senate has opened each workday with a prayer usually delivered by the Senate Chaplain, currently Barry Black, a Seventh Day Adventist. It is common, however, for senators to recommend religious leaders from their home states to serve as guest chaplains.
Rajan Zed, a Hindu chaplain from Nevada, on will become the first Hindu to deliver the morning prayer. In a statement announcing his scheduled appearance, Zed called the occasion "an illustrious day for all Americans and a memorable day for us."
Name of source: PRNewswire
SOURCE: PRNewswire (6-26-07)
Name of source: Australian
SOURCE: Australian (6-27-07)
The draft for high school history, obtained by The Australian, also overlooks the achievements of the Hawke-Keating governments and the economic reforms of the past 25 years.
A four-member committee that includes controversial historian Geoffrey Blainey and social commentator Gerard Henderson will now review the curriculum for the federal Government, and develop a national Australian history curriculum for Years 9 and 10.
Name of source: NYT Mag
SOURCE: NYT Mag (6-24-07)
Name of source: Baltimore Sun
SOURCE: Baltimore Sun (6-26-07)
It might seem an unlikely place for an archaeological project, just a short distance from Interstate 83 and a light rail stop. But it's where a team of archaeologists working with the Maryland State Highway Administration is unearthing the remnants of a small plantation where slaves, free blacks and European immigrants once labored side by side, an arrangement historians say was more common in Maryland than in other slave states.
Name of source: http://www.sj-r.com
SOURCE: http://www.sj-r.com (6-24-07)
His discovery will be featured in a PBS "History Detectives" episode that was partly filmed in Springfield and that will air nationwide Aug. 27. The show's fifth season begins Monday.
Joseph Skanks had been known by many around Tampa as the guy with the Abraham Lincoln letter. Maybe.
A few years ago, Skanks, a collector of old photos, swung by a modest estate sale near his home to pick up a stack the owners put aside for him.
His wife had been at the same sale earlier, trying to reserve a larger pile for him. But by the time he arrived, it had been sold. The owners, however, had uncovered a few more photos by then. They had been hidden out of view with some books and other materials.
Skanks stopped by on his way home from a 24-hour shift that ended at 8 a.m. Tired, he didn't bother to sift through the items.
"I gathered them all up and pushed them all together," Skanks said. "They asked for $8."
At home, Skanks began shuffling through his photos at the kitchen table as his wife and two daughters made breakfast. As he made his way through, he came upon an item that nearly stopped his heart.
"I was shocked at first," Skanks, 43, said. "I couldn't be that lucky."
It appeared to be a short letter written by Abraham Lincoln on Aug. 2, 1858, to Henry Clay Whitney, a political ally of Lincoln's and a fellow circuit court lawyer.
The short note simply reads:
"Yours of the 31st. is just received. I shall write to B.C. Cook at Ottawa and to Lovejoy himself on the subject you suggest.
"Pardon me for not writing a longer letter. I have a great many letters to write.
"I was at Monticello Thursday evening. Signs all very good. Your friend as ever A. Lincoln."
Name of source: Reuters
SOURCE: Reuters (6-26-07)
The CIA hauled the skeletons out of its closet by declassifying hundreds of pages of long-secret records that detail some of the agency's worst illegal abuses during about 25 years of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying and kidnapping.
CIA Director Michael Hayden released the documents to lift the veil of secrecy on the agency's past, even as the Bush administration faces criticism of being too secretive now.
Hayden told agency employees in a statement the trove included "reminders of some things the CIA should not have done" and a glimpse "of a very different era and a very different agency." The documents had been requested 15 years ago by a watchdog group.
SOURCE: Reuters (6-22-07)
Friday's resolution urging the government to scrap the textbook revision comes a day before the anniversary of the end of the 1945 Battle of Okinawa, a "Typhoon of Steel" that left some 200,000 dead -- soldiers, civilians, Japanese and Americans.
Many Okinawan civilians, often entire families, committed suicide rather than surrender to Americans, by some eyewitness accounts on the orders of fanatical Japanese soldiers.
Some conservative Japanese historians -- also eager to revise descriptions of wartime atrocities in China and other parts of Asia -- have called into question the eyewitness accounts, arguing the suicides were voluntary.
Name of source: CNN
SOURCE: CNN (6-26-07)
Cruise, also one of the film's producers, is a member of the Church of Scientology which the German government does not recognize as a church. Berlin says it masquerades as a religion to make money, a charge Scientology leaders reject...
The decision drew a sharp response from Cruise's film producing partner, Paula Wagner, chief executive of United Artists Entertainment, who said Cruise's "personal beliefs have absolutely no bearing on the movie's plot, themes or content."
The U.S. actor will portray Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, leader of the unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the Nazi dictator in July 1944 with a bomb hidden in a briefcase...
SOURCE: CNN (6-23-07)
Genaust is believed to have been killed in combat days after shooting the footage, and Bolus was disturbed to learn that his remains were never found. Despite having no connection to Genaust or his descendants, the businessman and one-time mayoral candidate from Scranton, Pennsylvania, decided he would bring the missing Marine home.
"How do we ignore him and leave him in a cave along with other military personnel who are MIA on the island also?" Bolus said Friday in a telephone interview. "He gave us a patriotic symbol that we see to this day. It's important."
Bolus hired experts, pored over documents and badgered military officials. Now his efforts are starting to bear fruit.
Based largely on Bolus' research, an American search team is looking for a cave on the Japanese island where Genaust, a 38-year-old combat photographer with the 28th Marines, might have been killed...
SOURCE: CNN (6-19-07)
Newton, who died 280 years ago, is known for laying much of the groundwork for modern physics, astronomy, math and optics. But in a new Jerusalem exhibit, he appears as a scholar of deep faith who also found time to write on Jewish law -- even penning a few phrases in careful Hebrew letters -- and combing the Old Testament's Book of Daniel for clues about the world's end.
The documents, purchased by a Jewish scholar at a Sotheby's auction in London in 1936, have been kept in safes at Israel's national library in Jerusalem since 1969. Available for decades only to a small number of scholars, they have never before been shown to the public.
In one manuscript from the early 1700s, Newton used the cryptic Book of Daniel to calculate the date for the apocalypse, reaching the conclusion that the world would end no earlier than 2060.
"It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner," Newton wrote. However, he added, "This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their predictions fail."...
Name of source: Newsweek
SOURCE: Newsweek (6-26-07)
Fifteen miles from Williamsburg, Va., in Charles City County, on a country road dominated by plantations turned bed-and-breakfasts, 4,000 ultra-conservative, largely home-schooling Christians gathered to correct a month-old mistake: to do Jamestown right. The women wore hoop skirts, bustles, bonnets and mob hats. The men wore tricorn, feathered "Musketeer" or top hats; they carried swords. "Maidens," that is, girls, wore aprons, while "heroes"—boys—donned armor or coonskin caps.
The Jamestown Quadricentennial: A Celebration of Our Providential History was organized by a Texas-based "historical home-school ministry," Vision Forum, and its president, Doug Phillips. Phillips, the son of Conservative Caucus and Constitution Party founder Howard Phillips, is a celebrity among home-schooling Christians. His San Antonio-based ministry, Vision Forum, functions primarily as a conservative publishing house with a distinct ideological bent: advocating stringent "biblical" family roles, with patriarch husbands, "home-working" wives and large broods of children. Another famous son was also in attendance: Jonathan Falwell, son of the late Jerry Falwell and (along with his brother, Jerry Jr.) heir to the Liberty Baptist empire, came to deliver his father's intended speech.
Name of source: Boston Globe
SOURCE: Boston Globe (6-26-07)
The resolution introduced by Japanese-American lawmaker Mike Honda was approved 39 to 2 by the U.S. House of Representatives International Relations Committee in a step that allows the nonbinding measure to move to the full house.
The symbolic statement of U.S. Congressional sentiment on the issue, which has caused political controversy in Japan, will have no bearing on U.S. policy toward its most important Asian ally.
Name of source: San Fransicso Chronicle
SOURCE: San Fransicso Chronicle (6-26-07)
The documents detail assassination plots against foreign leaders such as Fidel Castro, the testing of mind-altering drugs like LSD on unwitting citizens, wiretapping of U.S. journalists, spying on civil rights and anti-Vietnam war protesters, opening of mail between the United States and the Soviet Union and China and break-ins at the homes of ex-CIA employees and others.
The 693 pages, mostly drawn from the memories of active CIA officers in 1973, were turned over at that time to three different investigative panels — President Ford's Rockefeller Commission, the Senate's Church committee and the House's Pike committee.
The panels spent years investigating and amplifying on these documents. And their public reports in the mid-1970s filled tens of thousands of pages. The scandal sullied the reputation of the intelligence community and led to new rules for the CIA, FBI and other spy agencies and new permanent committees in Congress to oversee them.
Name of source: History Carnivals Aggregator (blog)
SOURCE: History Carnivals Aggregator (blog) (6-26-07)
- Carnival of Bad History, June 25
- Asian History Carnival, June 25
- Carnival of Genealogy, June 20
- Carnivalesque (Early Modern), June 20
- Military History Carnival, June 17
- Four Stone Hearth (archaeology and anthropology), June 7
- The History Carnival, June 1st.
Name of source: BBC
SOURCE: BBC (6-25-07)
The Nebra disc is emblazoned with symbols of the Sun, Moon and stars and said by some to be 3,600 years old.
Writing in the journal Antiquity, a team casts doubt on the idea the disc was used by ancient astronomers as a precision tool for observing the sky.
They instead argue that the disc was used for shamanistic rituals.
Name of source: Time Magazine
SOURCE: Time Magazine (7-2-07)
As the U.S. once again finds itself in an endless war—this time against terror, or perhaps against fear itself—the question of Kennedy's true legacy seems particularly loaded. What is the best way for America to navigate through a world where its enemies seem everywhere and nowhere at the same time? What can we learn from the way Kennedy was trying to redefine the U.S. role in the world and to invite Americans to be part of that change? Who was the real John Fitzgerald Kennedy?
Name of source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
SOURCE: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists (6-26-07)
For two successive days, the White House press briefing was dominated by incredulous reporters who wondered how the Vice President could claim that he both was and was not part of the executive branch; why he complied with oversight reporting requirements in 2001 and 2002, and why he then ceased to comply; and how the Vice President's behavior can be consistent with the executive order when the Administration's own Information Security Oversight Office says that it is not.
"I'm not a legal scholar," said an exasperated Dana Perino, the White House spokeswoman."I'm not opining on his argument that his office is making."
The story became certifiably big news last night when it was the subject of a five minute satirical segment on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (where I had a microsecond cameo). See"Non-Executive Decision," June 25, 2007, under"most recent videos":
The Justice Department had said that the classification policy dispute was"under review" since Information Security Oversight Office director J. William Leonard asked the Attorney General in January 2007 to resolve the matter. But in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, the Justice Department revealed that no documents whatsoever had been generated by the purported review.
See"A New Cheney-Gonzales Mystery" by Michael Isikoff, Newsweek, July 2:
Congressional leaders are stirring the pot, warning that the Office of Vice President could suffer budget penalties if it does not comply with routine oversight procedures. See"Secrecy May Cost Cheney, Dems Warn" by Elana Schor and Mike Soraghan, The Hill, June 26:
To recap: The internal executive branch conflict over the Vice President's non-compliance with the executive order was triggered by a formal complaint filed with the Information Security Oversight Office in May 2006 by the Federation of American Scientists (following a report in the Chicago Tribune by Mike Silva).
The FAS complaint was accepted by ISOO Director William Leonard, and was forwarded to the Attorney General in January with his request for an official interpretation of the executive order. There the matter lay for five months until Congressman Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, raised the issue to stratospheric heights last week with a letter to the Vice President questioning his Office's conduct.
The Diane Rehm Show on National Public Radio devoted an hour to the topic yesterday with Congressman Waxman, Peter Baker of the Washington Post, former Justice Department lawyer David Rivkin, and myself. See"The Executive Branch and Classified Information," June 25:
The controversy is playing out against the backdrop of a massive four-part series in the Washington Post on Vice President Cheney's role and conduct written by Barton Gellman and Jo Becker. The story had been under development for many months and Ms. Becker has since left the Post to go work for the New York Times. In a weird and probably unprecedented coincidence, she had a byline in front page stories in both the Washington Post and the New York Times on June 25.
Name of source: CTV
SOURCE: CTV (6-24-07)
Jewish leaders and President Lech Kaczynski will break ground Tuesday for the Museum of the History of Polish Jews. It sits on a highly charged site -- next to the city's monument to the Jews who resisted the Nazis during the 1943 ghetto uprising, and just down the street from the rail siding where many were deported to their deaths.
The multimedia museum will have exhibits on the Holocaust, but organizers say its primary purpose is to remember the vibrant Jewish community that flourished in Poland for a thousand years despite varying degrees of anti-Semitism and discrimination.
"This will not be another Holocaust museum," said Marian Turski, one of the originators of the idea for the museum, and president of the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute in Poland. "It will be a museum of life."...
Name of source: Independent
SOURCE: Independent (6-24-07)
Alfred Wetzler, a Slovak Jew, was one of the tiny number of people to escape from Auschwitz-Birkenau, Europe's heart of darkness during the Second World War, where an estimated 1.1 million Jews arrived of whom scarcely 7,000 survived the onslaught of the Nazis.
Wetzler and his companion Rudolf Vrba, also a Slovak Jew, were arrested by the Nazis in 1942 in Slovakia and sent to the death camp for slave labour. Wetzler was 24 and Vrba was just 18. Wetzler spent two years in the camp, witnessing some of the worst atrocities known to man. It was this experience that founded the basis for the memoirs he would later write: "It is incredible how tough human life can be, how quickly a person, even with a broken arm, a dislocated foot, a broken head and bitten by dogs, will do what is asked of him when over him hangs the cudgel waved by the goodwill of the Reich."
It was in the spring of 1944, with the assistance of other prisoners, that the pair managed to escape, initially by hiding under a huge woodpile for four days in the corner of the camp until the search for them was called off. The duo then escaped through a hole under a fence at nightfall. But it was what they did afterwards that was truly heroic. The two men had also smuggled out damning evidence - a ground plan of the camp, construction details of the gas chambers, crematoriums and, most convincingly, a label from a canister of Zyklon gas...
Name of source: International Herald Tribune
SOURCE: International Herald Tribune (6-23-07)
A new research paper published Friday takes another look at the remains of three people found in a bathhouse at the site — two male skeletons and a full head of women's hair, including two braids. They were long thought to have belonged to a family of Zealots, the fanatic Jewish rebels said to have killed themselves rather than fall into Roman slavery in the spring of 73 A.D., a story that became an important part of Israel's national mythology.
Along with other bodies found at Masada, the three were recognized as Jewish heroes by Israel's government in 1969 and given a state burial, complete with Israeli soldiers carrying flag-draped coffins.
But Israel might have mistakenly bestowed that posthumous honor on three Romans, according to a paper in the June issue of the journal Near Eastern Archaeology by anthropologist Joe Zias and forensics expert Azriel Gorski.
The remains of the three became a key part of the site's story when Masada was excavated in the 1960s. Yigael Yadin, the renowned Israeli archeologist in charge of the dig, thought they illustrated the historical account of Zealot men killing their wives and children and then themselves before the Roman legionnaires breached Masada's defenses...
Name of source: BBC News
SOURCE: BBC News (6-23-07)
The planes became buried under 300ft of ice but 15 years ago the remains of one, renamed Glacier Girl, were dug up. The aircraft is due to take part in an air show at Duxford, near Cambridge.
The plane is expected to land within the next few days to prepare for the Imperial War Museum annual Flying Legends weekend on 7 and 8 July.
It has previously flown at air shows in the United States.
A dedicated recovery team spent months working to retrieve the single P38 when the lost aircraft were re-discovered, immediately christening it Glacier Girl...
SOURCE: BBC News (6-23-07)
The Freedom Schooner Amistad will set sail from the US east coast and stop in Europe, Africa and the Caribbean.
In 1839, 53 slaves mutinied on board the Amistad. They were captured, but won freedom in a historic legal battle.
The story was depicted in the film Amistad directed by Steven Spielberg in 1997.
The replica of the Amistad, whose name in Spanish means "friendship", will set sail on its 16-month trip from New Haven, Connecticut, at 1800 GMT.
Name of source: Washington Post
SOURCE: Washington Post (6-23-07)
Today, with an orthodox Christian political party in the government for the first time, and with immigration anxieties fueling a national search for identity, the country that has been the world's most socially liberal political laboratory is rethinking its anything-goes policies. And suddenly, Kranendonk no longer seems so all alone.
"People in high political circles are saying it can't be good to have a society so liberal that everything is allowed," said Kranendonk, editor of Reformist Daily and an increasingly influential voice that resonates in the shifting mainstream of Dutch public opinion. "People are saying we should have values; people are asking for more and more rules in society."
In cities across the Netherlands, mayors and town councils are closing down shops where marijuana is sold, rolled and smoked. Municipalities are shuttering the brothels where prostitutes have been allowed to ply their trade legally. Parliament is considering a ban on the sale of hallucinogenic "magic mushrooms." Orthodox Christian members of parliament have introduced a bill that would allow civil officials with moral objections to refuse to perform gay marriages. And Dutch authorities are trying to curtail the activities of an abortion rights group that assists women in neighboring countries where abortions are illegal.
The effort to rein in the Netherlands' famed social liberties is not limited to the small, newly empowered Christian Union party, which holds two of the 16 ministries in the coalition government formed this year. Increasingly, politicians from the more center-left Labor Party are among the most outspoken proponents of closing some brothels and marijuana shops -- known here as "coffee shops."
Name of source: Air Force Link
SOURCE: Air Force Link (6-23-07)
Rich in personal detail, photographs, journals and letters, "The Great War" provides a virtual tour of some of the most compelling collections in the Veterans History Project archives and features stories of nearly two dozen men and women who served in WWI.
"In the Trenches" leads off the series of narratives and takes visitors to the front lines of the first mass war fought with modern weaponry. The second series, "Above and Beyond the Battlefield," takes viewers through an insider's examination of the experiences of aviators and others who served in support of the infantry.
Name of source: Europe Channel
SOURCE: Europe Channel (6-23-07)
History teacher Akos Peter Kosaras, 36, posted pictures of himself dressed in the uniform on the internet, although the pictures have now been removed.
The teacher at a school in the small settlement of Budakeszi just outside Budapest was supposedly playing the role of a "kind-hearted" SS officer during a historical game, the daily Nepszava said.
An MP for the ruling Hungarian Socialist Party, Gergely Barandy, condemned the teacher's actions and called for an investigation.
Istvan Szalma, head of the church's school authority, told MTI news agency that they were looking into the teacher's conduct while he was suspended.
However, the school's headmistress said that Kosaras was a "well- known preserver of traditions" and that there was nothing objectionable about his hobby...
Name of source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer
SOURCE: Seattle Post-Intelligencer (6-23-07)
The material, which comes from the Anne Frank archive in Basel, Switzerland, and from Anne's cousin, Buddy Elias, includes photos of Anne, her sister, Margot, her mother, Edith and her father, Otto, that have rarely or never been on public display.
The Netherlands NOS news reported Thursday that much of the material has been recently catalogued for the first time. Anne Frank Museum spokeswoman Patricia Bosboom confirmed the NOS report was accurate, but declined to comment further pending an announcement Monday.
Anne Frank wrote her diary while she and her family hid in a tiny annex to an Amsterdam warehouse for 25 months during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands...
Name of source: United Press International
SOURCE: United Press International (6-23-07)
The revelations, while more than 30 years old, carry with them a whiff of the current debate over the wiretapping of U.S. phone lines by the National Security Agency without court permission and the Pentagon's monitoring of anti-war groups.
The 1975 memorandum written by Associate Attorney General James Wilderrotter was obtained by the National Security Archive in Washington and raises the curtain on nearly 700 pages of documents known as the "family jewels," which detail the CIA's legally questionable activities from that era.
The memo details a meeting in which CIA Director William Colby outlined the "skeletons" in the CIA's closets, apparently in response to articles in the New York Times detailing some of those activities.
Among them was the admission that in 1963 the CIA tapped the phones of two columnists, Robert Allen and Paul Scott, in an attempt to learn the identity of one of their sources. He noted that the CIA reports called the wiretap "very productive" in that they heard conversations with 12 senators and six congressmen. The CIA, however, was unable to ascertain the identity of the leaker.
In 1972 the CIA conducted "personal surveillance" on Washington Post columnist Jack Anderson and his staff. They were followed, but their phones were not tapped. From 1971 to 1972 the CIA also followed Washington Post reporter Mike Getler.
Name of source: New York Sun
SOURCE: New York Sun (6-23-07)
The appeals are being brought under a variety of legal theories, and the court could arrive at opposite conclusions about whether the Vietnamese or American plaintiffs may go forward with their claims against the chemical companies that manufactured Agent Orange.
The arguments are set for June 18 before the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan. They represent the latest round of Agent Orange litigation in a series of battles that have spanned nearly three decades. In 1984, several producers of the defoliant agreed to pay $180 million to settle a class action suit brought by American veterans. But that money has long since been paid out, and veterans who were not part of that suit say their symptoms only became apparent in recent years.
Agent Orange contains the most toxic form of the compound dioxin. The defendants, which include Dow Chemical Company, Monsanto Company, and Hercules Incorporated, dispute allegations that Agent Orange is the cause of cancers, birth defects, and other illnesses in the plaintiffs...
Name of source: Independent (Ireland)
SOURCE: Independent (Ireland) (6-23-07)
A replica of the battleship 'Sea Stallion' (pictured) will make the journey across the North Sea from Denmark next month. Built in 1042, it was one of the greatest seaborne weapons used by Ireland's bloodthirsty Viking invaders to fight battles at home and abroad.
A mainly Danish crew of 65 - which includes Irish sailor Triona Nicholl (24) from Leixlip, Co Kildare - will sail the vessel.
Triona, a UCD archaeology student, has been in training for the voyage for the last two years and will embark on the unique voyage from July 1. No one has manned a ship like it in over 900 years. The crew ranges in age from 16 to 64. The ship was a masterpiece of shipbuilding design when it was first unveiled....
Name of source: Telegraph
SOURCE: Telegraph (6-23-07)
The Russian leader claimed that a generation of schoolchildren was learning a version of their past that had been deliberately skewed by historians in the pay of the West.
"Many of our textbooks are written by people on foreign grants," Mr Putin told history and science teachers at a conference outside Moscow.
"They are dancing a polka ordered by those who pay for it. This is undoubtedly an instrument for influencing our country."
In a warning that will send a chill through Russia's dwindling ranks of liberal academics, the president indicated that publishing houses that did not print more patriotic textbooks would face state censorship...
Name of source: Japan Times
SOURCE: Japan Times (6-23-07)
The two sides agreed to hold two more years of discussions and compile a report based on their talks, according to representatives from the two countries...
"We also agreed to hold the next plenary session on Nov. 24 in Seoul and to hold the meetings of the various subgroups as appropriate," Yasushi Toriumi, who heads the Japanese team, told a joint news conference after the one-day meeting in Tokyo.
The 34-member research committee, comprising 17 representatives from each country, basically discussed logistical matters in the inaugural session of the talks' second phase, such as how to proceed with their research. The members include university professors, history experts and researchers...
Name of source: Armenian News Network
SOURCE: Armenian News Network (6-22-07)
Republic of Turkey, independent correspondent Jean Eckian informs.
The complaint is based on the criminal investigation launched against him earlier this year under Turkish Penal Code Article 301, for
insulting "Turkishness" by having publicly used the term "genocide" to describe the mass murder of Armenians in 1915.
Despite its changed wording over time, Article 301 remains prominent among the many enduring obstacles in Turkey´s path to membership of
the European Union. The same law has in recent years been the basis for the prosecution of other leading Turkish intellectuals, writers, journalists and academics on similar grounds. The most notable victims of Article 301 include Nobel Prize winning novelist Orhan Pamuk, recently assassinated Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, and publisher Fatih Tas.
The Court, based in Strasbourg, France, enforces the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. It rules over private individuals´ complaints against human rights violations committed by signatory States. Turkey signed the Convention in 1954.
Name of source: Syndey Morning Herald
SOURCE: Syndey Morning Herald (6-22-07)
They are demanding the ministry's name - which they say sends a signal immigration is a "problem" - be changed and its extensive powers cut.
The petition, published in the left-wing daily Liberation, was signed by some of France's most illustrious historians as well as professors from the University of Sydney, Princeton and Harvard in the US, Cambridge in Britain and the University of Chuo in Tokyo, Japan.
Name of source: IHT
SOURCE: IHT (6-22-07)
"I am confident that our bilateral relations are unshakable," Abe said in an interview with Japanese media. "We have confirmed that Japan-U.S. relations are irreplaceable and unshakable."
Abe was responding to a question about the probable diplomatic impact of the passage, expected next Tuesday, of the resolution by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. The resolution is then expected to be sent to the full House.
The nonbinding resolution calls for Japan to "formally acknowledge, apologize and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner" for the women's ordeal. Tokyo objects to the resolution, saying it is not based on historical fact.
Name of source: NYT (subscribers only)
SOURCE: NYT (subscribers only) (6-22-07)
At a time when President Bush plans to chastise the Vietnamese leader about human rights abuses, a question confronts his own administration: Should we return the Vietnamese trophy skulls?
The importance of human remains has been highlighted over the past six years by the efforts to identify bits of bone and ash from the bodies of people who died in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. More than 1,000 cubic yards of dirt and other material from near ground zero are still being screened for bone fragments and other remains. Grieving families continue to inundate forensics experts from the World Trade Center site with old toothbrushes, licked stamps and razor blades that might provide a DNA sample and a genetic link to the bodies of their loved ones.
But what of the similar desires of a people 8,000 miles away? Many Vietnamese worship their ancestors as part of their religion. They believe that if a person’s bones cannot be found, his soul wanders aimlessly and cannot be cared for properly by his descendants.
