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: New YorK Times
April 10, 2009
Condoleezza Rice will be there. So will Karen Hughes and Dan Bartlett and Michael Gerson. And George W. Bush himself.
The old gang is getting back together next week in Dallas for a reunion of sorts, the Bush team’s first since leaving the White House. On tap is a dinner with the former president and a daylong discussion of the future George W. Bush Policy Institute.
Barely 80 days after turning the Oval Office over to President Obama, a tanned and rested Mr. Bush is em
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 10, 2009
Japan has been accused of rewriting its brutal wartime past in a controversial government-approved school history textbook.
Officials in South Korea claim the new book, which will be used in schools from next year, has whitewashed Japan's history of colonising Asian states before and during the Second World War.
The complaints centre on attempts to justify Japan's invasion of Asian states while playing down the brutal role of the army.
The textbook, publ
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 11, 2009
A remarkable set of photographs portraying life in China in the late Qing Dynasty is to go on public display for the first time.
Taken between 1870 and 1871 by the Scottish photographer John "China" Thomson, the images reveal with often startling intimacy a cast of characters from orphans and street gamblers, to beautiful peasant girls and their high-born ladies.
Hailed as a pioneer of photojournalism, Thomson spent two years travelling more than 5,000 miles
Source: BBC
April 11, 2009
The US state of California has returned three Renaissance paintings that were confiscated from Jewish art dealers in Nazi Germany during the 1930s.
The 16th-Century paintings were returned to the heirs of their former owners, Jakob and Rosa Oppenheimer, who died during the Holocaust.
After World War II, the paintings ended up in the collection of US newspaper tycoon, William Randolph Hearst.
They have been on display at a California museum for over 30 ye
Source: NYT
April 9, 2009
BOULDER, Colo. — A judge has yet to decide whether Ward L. Churchill, the controversial former University of Colorado professor, will get his job back, but on the campus here, some have already made up their minds.
“I don’t think he should come back,” said Marissa Jaross, a senior anthropology major. Though Ms. Jaross said she believed the university was looking for a way to get rid of him, she added: “I think he’s kind of a shoddy academic. I wouldn’t look at his work as great, or
Source: Deutsche Welle
April 9, 2009
A US judge has ruled that lawsuits seeking financial compensation can continue against five companies accused of aiding South Africa's former apartheid system of racial segregation.
US District Judge Shira A. Scheindlin rejected requests by several countries that the lawsuits should not go ahead to protect relations between the United States and South Africa.
The judge, who issued the decision in writing on Wednesday, allowed claims made by tens of thousands of South Af
Source: Deutsche Welle
April 10, 2009
"The CIA no longer operates detention facilities or black sites and has proposed a plan to decommission the remaining sites," CIA Director Leon Panetta said in a letter to staff that was released on the CIA's website.
"I have directed our agency personnel to take charge of the decommissioning process and have further directed that the contracts for site security be promptly terminated," he said.
Panetta said the CIA still reserved the right to hold
Source: Daily Camera
April 9, 2009
The University of Colorado will “vigorously challenge” Ward Churchill’s effort to get his job back in the school’s ethnic studies department, a CU spokesman said Thursday.
Ken McConnellogue, spokesman for the CU system, said the university is relying on its findings that Churchill engaged in repeated and flagrant academic misconduct to support its stance that having the controversial former professor back on the Boulder campus is a “bad idea.”
“CU’s reputation for acade
December 31, 2069
Federal-budget worrywarts (myself included) have been fretting for years about the arrival of the Dread Fiscal Year 2017, when Social Security was projected to start becoming a drag on federal finances.
Well, no need to worry about 2017 anymore. Thanks to the worst economic downturn since the 1930s, the moment of reckoning is already almost here: according to both the budget proposed by the White House in February and projections issued by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in March, S
Source: MSNBC
April 10, 2009
Scholars agree over some elements of his life, are hotly divided on others.
There are no "eyewitness" accounts written about Jesus during his lifetime, so historians have to rely on interpretations of the four main canonical gospel texts, mostly scrawled several decades after his death.
The "Jesus" of history isn't a complete mystery to Biblical scholars, who often make a distinction between the man and the religious figure depicted in the scripture
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 9, 2009
Twenty-first century technology is enabling visitors to Hampton Court to view one of Henry VIII's tapestries in its "dazzling" original colours.
Scientists have managed to "virtually restore" the faded hues of his 28ft long tapestry using coloured light beams.
The Manchester University researchers looked at the back of the heavy wool and silk tapestry, which has been less affected by sunlight, to gauge what the original colours might have been.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
April 10, 2009
A respected archaeologist claims that pilgrims have been starting from the wrong end of Jerusalem and that the locations of two of the holiest sites on the route are 'completely wrong'.
Shimon Gibson, a Holy Land specialist, said the traditional start of the Via Dolorosa, north of the Old City, should be at the other end of the city.
Since medieval times, Christians have assumed that the Praetorium, the starting point of the route and the Roman headquarters mentioned
Source: MSNBC
April 10, 2009
Archaeologists have just identified the oldest evidence for humans in Scotland, a fairly sophisticated 14,000-year-old toolkit that may have been used to hunt and prepare big game from the region.
According to a report in the latest British Archaeology, the flint artifacts constitute the most northern evidence for the earliest people in Britain.
Source: BBC
April 9, 2009
Archaeologists have discovered the earliest evidence of human beings ever found in Scotland.
The flints were unearthed in a ploughed field near Biggar in South Lanarkshire.
They are similar to tools known to have been used in the Netherlands and northern Germany 14,000 years ago, or 12,000 BC.
They were probably used by hunters to kill reindeer, mammoth and giant elk and to cut up prey and prepare their skins.
The discovery conjures up a pi
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 10, 2009
New evidence suggests the Turin Shroud could have been the cloth in which Jesus was buried, as experiments that concluded it was a medieval fake were flawed.
Radio carbon dating carried out in 1988 was performed on an area of the relic that was repaired in the 16th century, according to Ray Rogers, who helped lead the Shroud of Turin Research Project (STRP).
At the time he argued firmly that the shroud, which bears a Christlike image, was a clever forgery.
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
April 9, 2009
The Valley Forge area, already bustling with hotels, conference centers, and traffic, learned yesterday that it will be home to Pennsylvania's 12th slots casino.
A group led by real estate titan Ira Lubert won approval for a casino of 500 slot machines in the Valley Forge Convention Center. The license was the first of two resort permits to be issued by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board, which intends to issue 14 of them. The resort license limits the casino to 500 slot machine
Source: AP
April 10, 2009
An immigration appeals board ruled Friday that retired autoworker John Demjanjuk can be deported to Germany to face charges that he served as a Nazi death camp guard during World War II.
Demjanjuk's son, John Demjanjuk Jr., said the family would appeal to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The court closed Friday without receiving a filing of appeal.
Source: Foxnews
April 10, 2009
Scores if not hundreds of anti-spending tea parties are expected to be held across the country on Wednesday. But so far, FOXNews.com has found only two members of Congress -- both Republicans -- who have committed to attending the demonstrations on the day income taxes are due.
If members of Congress are planning to attend the Tax Day Tea Party protests on April 15, they're keeping awfully quiet about it.
The tea party movement has garnered nationwide attention since
Source: AP
April 10, 2009
An immigration appeals board has denied an emergency stay of deportation requested by John Demjanjuk, who faces charges in Germany that he served as a Nazi death camp guard during World War II.
The 89-year-old suburban Cleveland man had filed a motion to the board in Falls Church, Va., saying he is in poor health and that being forced to travel to Germany would amount to torture.
The board rejected that argument Friday. Demjanjuk's son, John Demjanjuk Jr., said his fath
Source: CNN
April 10, 2009
It's Good Friday, the day that Christians believe Jesus was crucified. Jerusalem's Old City is crowded with the faithful, retracing the steps of Jesus along the Via Dolorosa -- the Way of Suffering -- to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where Christians believe he was crucified.
But they're all taking the wrong route, according to Israeli archaeologist Shimon Gibson. In a new book, titled "The Final Days of Jesus," Gibson says he has found the location of Jesus' trial, wh
