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: AP
March 26, 2009
Two Jewish groups have denounced a Pat Oliphant political cartoon on Gaza as anti-Semitic, likening its fanged Star of David to Nazi imagery before the Holocaust.
The syndicated cartoon published Wednesday in newspapers across the country depicts a goose-stepping uniformed figure wheeling the Jewish symbol as it menaces a small female figure labeled "Gaza."
The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish rights group with more than 400,000 members in t
Source: http://fredericksburg.com
March 19, 2009
Local support is building for a Wal-Mart Supercenter in the Wilderness area, but the company is lagging behind expectations from Orange County's Planning Department.
The county Economic Development Authority is the latest group to endorse the store. On Tuesday night, it unanimously passed a resolution that says Wal-Mart would provide "needed tax revenues for the county" and "convenient shopping opportunities" for residents who now must leave the county to buy cer
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 26, 2009
More than 77 million ancestry records, including the family histories of David Beckham, Britney Spears and JK Rowling, have been put online.
The London Historical Records 1500s-1900s features details of the capital's citizens such as Oliver Cromwell and William Blake.
Josh Hanna, senior vice president of Ancestry.co.uk, which is hosting the records, said: "We estimate that half of Brits will be able to find an ancestor in this collection, which pre-dates civil regi
Source: http://www.fredericknewspost.com
March 23, 2009
ANNAPOLIS -- A state committee will soon have the option to take up a bill that could prevent a proposed trash incinerator near the Monocacy National Battlefield.
The Senate Rules committee voted Friday to move forward the bill sponsored by Frederick County Sen. Alex Mooney.
Source: Evening Sun
March 23, 2009
For the first time since 2001, Gettysburg National Military Park has a budget that includes money for land acquisition - to the tune of $2.2 million.
And, if the pieces fall into place, some of those funds could potentially be used to purchase an easement to protect the Gettysburg Country Club from further development.
"At the moment our goal is to discuss an easement," said park spokeswoman Katie Lawhon. But the park might consider outright purchase if an easement
Source: nola.com
March 21, 2009
Armed with a site plan to guide his search, Plaquemines Parish historian Rod Lincoln recently led his latest expedition through Fort St. Philip in search of a bomb-proof hidden amid the historic fortification's 60 acres along the Mississippi River's east bank.
Likely built during the mid-1800s, the bunker-like structure where soldiers sought refuge during bombardments has been overtaken by brush and debris like much of the outpost.
"It's a shame," Lincoln said
Source: http://www.cathnews.com
March 25, 2009
International expert on church unity, Rev Günther Gassmann, a German Lutheran theologian, has urged the Catholic Church to declare officially that its excommunication of Martin Luther no longer applies.
Such a statement, "in these ecumenically less exciting times ... would be a remarkable step and a sign of hope and encouragement," said Rev Günther Gassmann, who was director of the World Council of Churches' Faith and Order Commission from 1984 to 1995, according to an Ekk
Source: AP
March 25, 2009
A book coming this fall will offer one of the ultimate inside takes on the economic crisis — from former Secretary of the Treasury Henry M. Paulson, Jr.
"I didn't come to Washington thinking I was going to leave and write a book, but this period was so significant and there are so many insights and so many lessons learned that I think an understanding of this extraordinary period is important," Paulson told The Associated Press during a telephone interview Wednesday from h
Source: BBC
March 26, 2009
Mikhail Gorbachev introduced many changes with his perestroika policy when he became Soviet leader in 1985 and one of the most important went under the banner of "democratisation".
This began in earnest in January 1987, but there was still no discussion of transition to a Western-style democracy.
The authorities considered that the USSR had no problems with its version of democracy, it just needed to be "widened and deepened", to use Mikhail Gorbac
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
March 25, 2009
In 12 months between 1940 and 1941, the plucky mutt combined all the inherited skills of uncertain parentage to rescue more than 100 victims of the Blitz from the air-raid ruins of London.
Then he carried on the good work for another four years until the end of the war.
But what made this tale of a shaggy dog so remarkable was that Rip was never trained for search and rescue - he simply attached himself to a Civil Defence team after being bombed out of his home. T
Source: Independent (UK)
March 26, 2009
The Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, angered critics of the Iraq war yesterday when he indicated that a long-awaited inquiry into the planning and execution of the conflict, promised by the Prime Minister, would be held behind closed doors.
He told MPs that the inquiry would be approved "as soon as practicable" once most British combat troops had returned home at the end of July. He admitted there were "important lessons to be learnt" from how the campaign was
Source: Times (UK)
March 26, 2009
Flowers are placed in front of the Freedom monument in Riga, the Latvian capital, right, to commemorate the people who were deported to Siberia in 1949.
On the 60th anniversary of the start of the mass deportations carried out by the Soviet Union under Stalin, memorial services were held in the Baltic republics to commemorate tens of thousands sent to Siberia in an effort to eradicate opposition to the communist takeover of their countries.
The repression, launched on
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 25, 2009
MEPs have moved to prevent the 80-year-old French National Front leader from presiding over the opening of the first session of the new European Parliament on July 14 as the doyen of the house.
Officials have also indicated that he could face disciplinary action for "bringing the parliament into disrepute" by using his immunity as an MEP to avoid criminal prosecution for Holocaust denial.
Mr Le Pen on Wednesday caused a storm in the parliament by defiantly hit
Source: Deutsche Welle
March 25, 2009
A Munich court ruled on Wednesday that a British publisher's popular history series called Zeitungszeugen, or Witness Reports would be allowed to reprint old Nazi newspapers printed before 1939. The court based its decision on a copyright law, which says that reproduction rights can be exercised after a seventy year period.
Germany's state of Bavaria controls the copyright to most Nazi era newspapers as well as Adolf Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf and forbids their reproduction.
Source: BBC
March 26, 2009
Arthur West scrambled down the rope of a rescue boat to give his wife and two daughters a flask of hot milk before returning to the deck, and his fate.
The 36-year-old's act of bravery was revealed in an account written by his wife, Ada, which is being auctioned next month with the flask and letters.
The items could fetch up to £60,000 at the sale in Devizes, Wiltshire.
The luxury liner struck an iceberg and sank on 15 April 1912, killing 1,517 people.
Source: AP
March 25, 2009
JERUSALEM –- The Israel Antiquities Authority says archaeologists have discovered a Byzantine-era bathhouse in the south of the country dating back more than 1,500 years.
Archaeologist Gregory Serai headed the excavation and says the impressive size of bathhouse, 20 by 20 yards (meters), showed the area between Beersheba and Gaza was more heavily populated in the Byzantine era then previously thought.
Serai added in Wednesday's statement that the evidence found at the s
Source: BBC
February 25, 2009
The US historian John Hope Franklin, a pioneering scholar of black American history, has died at the age of 94.
His 1947 book From Slavery to Freedom is regarded as a landmark volume of black American history, and remains on US school syllabuses.
Mr Franklin, born and raised in an all-black community in Oklahoma, helped in the 1954 Brown vs Board of Education case against racial segregation.
He was also the first black president of the American Historica
Source: Foxnews
February 25, 2009
A milk flask now represents the final few moments between a heroic husband and his wife as they attempted to flee the sinking Titanic liner in 1912.
It forms part of an untold tragedy which has only just emerged after a collection of artifacts and letters came to light almost a century after the disaster.
Shop worker Arthur West, then 36, thrust the flask into his wife Ada West's hands as the rescue boat she and the couple's two children were aboard was lowered into the
Source: CNN
February 25, 2009
One of the earliest photographs in existence is expected to fetch as much as $70,000 when it is auctioned off later this month at Sotheby's auction house in New York.
A half-plate daguerreotype dating from 1848 shows a country estate in Manhattan on what was then known as old Bloomingdale Road and referred to as "a continuation of Broadway."
In the foreground of the 5.5-by-4-inch, black and white daguerreotype, a dirt road leads to an entry gate that surrounds
Source: AP
March 25, 2009
John Hope Franklin, a revered Duke University historian and scholar of life in the South and the African-American experience in the United States, died Wednesday. He was 94.
Duke spokesman David Jarmul said Franklin died of congestive heart failure at the university's hospital in Durham.
Born and raised in an all-black community in Oklahoma where he was often subjected to humiliating incidents of racism, he was later instrumental in bringing down the legal and historic
