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: Daily Mail (UK)
February 18, 2009
The remains of about 400 British and Australian First World War soldiers will be dug up from a battlefield in northern France and given individual burials.
The excavation of six mass graves on the Somme will begin in May after archaeologists found human remains and fragments of kit and equipment. The work is expected to take up to six months.
The bodies will each be buried with full military honours in a new cemetery near the town of Fromelles.
Source: BBC
February 19, 2009
A French battleship sunk in 1917 by a German submarine has been discovered in remarkable condition on the floor of the Mediterranean Sea.
The Danton, with many of its gun turrets still intact, is sitting upright in over 1,000m of water.
It was found by the Fugro geosciences company during a survey for a gas pipeline between Algeria and Italy.
The Danton, which sank with 296 sailors still onboard, lies 35km southwest of the island of Sardinia.
Source: AP
February 18, 2009
Scientists are studying a huge cache of Ice Age fossil deposits recovered near the famous La Brea Tar Pits in the heart of the nation's second-largest city.
Among the finds is a near-intact mammoth skeleton, a skull of an American lion and bones of saber-toothed cats, dire wolves, bison, horses, ground sloths and other mammals.
Researchers discovered 16 fossil deposits under an old parking lot next to the tar pits in 2006 and began sifting through them last summer. The
Source: WaPo
February 18, 2009
Fifty years after his parents, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, traveled to India to study Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence, Martin Luther King III is in India to retrace his late father's footsteps.
"It is really a special mountaintop experience to be here," King said. "My parents had often shared with me how moving their experience in India was. My father said he came to many countries as a tourist, but he came to India as a pilgrim.
Source: NYT blog
February 18, 2009
First Lady Michelle Obama opened the doors of the White House to 180 sixth and seventh graders on Wednesday for a Black History Month celebration that included two pep talks and a rousing musical performance.
The students, who came from three local schools here, heard from Adm. Stephen W. Rochon, the chief usher, who runs the mansion and oversees everything from state dinners to redecorating. He is the first African-American to hold that position.
They also heard from M
Source: HNN Staff
February 18, 2009
While Bill Clinton was inside the San Diego Hyatt, gays were outside protesting the owner's support for California Prop 8, the anti-gay marriage amendment to the state constitution.
The hotel is the location of the next annual meeting of the American Historical Association.
In January the AHA was pressed by labor and gay members to join the gay boycott of the hotel. Instead, the AHA decided to sponsor a series of tea
Source: NYT
February 16, 2009
Great museums engender great debate, and there is no exception for Iraq. Officials here
are at odds over the reopening of Iraq’s National Museum, the renowned institution that was pillaged
after the American invasion in 2003 and has been closed to the public ever since.
Last week, Iraq’s state minister for tourism and antiquities announced that next Monday the museum
would reopen, an eagerly anticipated event seen as a milestone in the country’s recovery. In a
Source: Inside Higher Ed
February 18, 2009
It’s not exactly news that the Internet is a perfect tool for violating copyright. In book publishing, the big concern has been best sellers that can be scanned and uploaded, with the idea that there is a worldwide audience for the latest Harry Potter installment or Oprah recommendation. While most university press books don’t have quite that commercial appeal, they are finding that they can still be the targets of pirates.
Press officials don’t want to provide too many details abou
Source: Politico.com
February 17, 2009
In his first weeks in office, President Barack Obama shut down his predecessor’s system for reviewing regulations, realigned and expanded two key White House policymaking bodies and extended economic sanctions against parties to the conflict in the African nation of Cote D’Ivoire.
Despite the intense scrutiny a president gets just after the inauguration, Obama managed to take all these actions with nary a mention from the White House press corps.
The moves escaped notic
Source: NYT
February 18, 2009
Shea Stadium, the site of the Mets’ two World Series victories, their many seasons of futility and a few historic concerts, met the fate of Ebbets Field and the Polo Grounds on Wednesday morning. At 11:21 a.m., a demolition crew pulled down the final section, and what remained of old blue stadium was gone in a cloud of dust: the final collapse at Shea. It was 45.
Besides several months of work by a wrecking crew, what killed the stadium was the need for a sprawling parking lot for t
Source: Indystar
February 18, 2009
Tom Mattice said he was trying to promote a "healing environment" when he removed the old, yellowing wall decoration from a hallway at the VA hospital.
But in doing so, the hospital director has opened an old wound -- and spurred debate about political correctness, free speech and how to be true to history without being offensive.
At issue is a framed newspaper front page from an August 1945 Indianapolis Times. The headline: "Japs Surrender."
Source: http://minnesota.publicradio.org
February 17, 2009
A new survey of more than 700 principals in Minnesota finds nearly all of them are doubtful about meeting federal No Child Left Behind standards by 2014.
The group Minnesota 2020 asked the state's 1,600 school principals to fill out an online survey. More than 700 did and the results of one question particularly stand out.
When asked whether they think all schools will meet the federal standards by 2014, 97 percent said no. Another large majority also said they have alr
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
February 1, 2009
On the day the presidential records bill passed (January 7, 2009), the House of Representatives approved H.R. 36, the “Presidential Library Donation Reform Act of 2009,” by a vote of 388-31. H.R. 36 requires organizations fundraising for presidential libraries to disclose their donations while the president is in office and during the period before the federal government has taken possession of the library.
Since it is unlikely the bill will be passed by January 20, 2009, the disclo
Source: Times (UK)
February 18, 2009
There is one card that John Baxter will particularly treasure when he celebrates his 90th birthday tomorrow. It is from the Japanese guard who befriended him as a prisoner of war in Java during the Second World War.
On his release in 1945 Mr Baxter was little more than a living skeleton, his body ravaged by tropical diseases including malaria and dysentery. That he did survive was in part thanks to Hyato Hirano, one of the few guards who showed compassion to the prisoners.
Source: Deutsche Welle
February 18, 2009
Konrad Dannenberg's wife Jackie said he died Monday of natural causes, the Birmingham News reported on Tuesday, Feb. 17.
Dannenberg played a role in the Redstone, Jupiter and Saturn rockets. It was the Saturn V that put the first American astronaut on the moon.
In 1950, 118 German scientists came to Hunstville as part of Wernher von Braun's team. With Dannenberg's death, only six survive.
Born in 1912 in Weissenfels, Germany, Dannenberg earned his master's
Source: USA Today
February 16, 2009
The nation's new president has been compared to FDR. His economic views go by the catchy code word Obamanomics. The transition of power at the White House is always a big deal on Wall Street — but never more so than this year with the stock market, banking system and economy in the throes of the worst crisis since the 1930s.
Enter President Obama, a politician with JFK-like charisma and high approval ratings. Wall Street and Main Street are counting on him to be Mr. Fix-it.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 17, 2009
Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom apologised to Cuba on Tuesday for his country's having allowed the CIA to train exiles in the Central American country for the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.
"Today I want to ask Cuba's forgiveness for having offered our country, our territory, to prepare an invasion of Cuba. It wasn't us, but it was our territory," Mr Colom said during a speech at the University of Havana.
He added that he wished to apologise "as president and hea
Source: Foxnews
February 17, 2009
It's the stuff of legends: an elite secret society that includes what would become some of the most powerful men of the 20th century allegedly invading the grave of an Apache chief to steal his skull for fraternal rituals. It's also the stuff of a new lawsuit filed Tuesday by descendents of that Apache chief.
On the 100th anniversary of the death of Geronimo, 20 of his blood relatives have asked the courts to force Yale University and the school's secret organization, Skull and Bone
Source: NYT
February 16, 2009
For the first time in its history, every member of the United States Supreme Court is a former federal appeals court judge. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., in a lively and surprising talk a couple of weeks ago, said that development might be a good thing.
Over the life of the Supreme Court, its members were quite likely to be former governors, legislators, cabinet members, law professors and practicing lawyers. That mix of backgrounds and expertise might strike some as valuable,
Source: BBC
February 17, 2009
Kaing Guek Eav - better known as Duch - was head of a notorious prison camp and is accused of presiding over the murder and torture of at least 15,000 inmates.
The trial is the result of a decade of painstaking and often ill-tempered negotiations, a BBC correspondent says.
People queued for hours to attend the hearing and see the ex-prison chief.
For the survivors, the opening day of the hearing offered the first opportunity to see a leading figure in th
