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: Independent (UK)
June 26, 2008
New Zealand took a momentous step to address the historic grievances of its original Maori inhabitants yesterday, handing back nearly half a million acres of Crown forestry land in a settlement worth NZ$418m (£160m).
Hundreds of Maori, some wearing traditional feather cloaks, descended on the capital, Wellington, to watch the agreement being signed in parliament by the government and tribal leaders. Some wept during the ceremony, while others chanted, sang and blew conch shells.
Source: Yahoo News
June 19, 2008
Behind a thicket of weeds and broken window panes, one of the former Soviet Union's dark secrets is the laboratory where captured German scientists worked to build an atomic bomb for Josef Stalin.
The Sukhumi Institute still exists, in a state of limbo. Limping along under semi-siege in Abkhazia, a breakaway region of Georgia whose existence the rest of the world does not recognize, its Cold War past has been all but forgotten.
Once, around 250 German specialists lived
Source: Ap
June 24, 2008
Ohio Historical Society officials are considering the possible transfer of a 2,000-year-old American Indian earthworks site in central Ohio to the National Park Service because more money is needed to maintain and manage the site.
On Friday, the society's Board of Trustees will meet to decide whether to authorize a study by the National Park Service on the benefits and costs involved in transferring ownership of the Newark Earthworks. The Columbus-based society owns the site that in
Source: Reuters
June 25, 2008
- Only World War III would prompt Republican presidential candidate John McCain to bring back the military draft, McCain said on Tuesday.
Many Americans are fearful the U.S. government will be forced to reinstitute the draft given the prolonged Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Asked about that possibility by a potential voter in Florida during a telephone "town hall meeting," McCain said: "I don't know what would make a draft happen unless we were in an all-ou
Source: AP
June 20, 2008
The expansion of a limestone quarry at one of the nation's most endangered Civil War battlefields threatens a mecca for re-enactors of a key Union victory, the National Trust for Historic Preservation warns.
The Cedar Creek Civil War battlefield each year attracts thousands of history enthusiasts for one of the largest battle re-enactments in the nation. The battlefield is located in the northwest corner of Virginia near Middletown.
The National Park Service owns 3,50
Source: WaPo
June 24, 2008
Four major Washington institutions are jointly pursuing an extensive collection of materials related to Abraham Lincoln and his times with hopes of bringing it to the capital.
The Library of Congress, the National Museum of American History, Ford's Theatre and President Lincoln's Cottage have formed a partnership to obtain the collection of the privately owned Lincoln Museum in Fort Wayne, Ind. The museum is closing next week after 77 years of operation.
The Fort Wayne
Source: NYT
June 25, 2008
TOMSK, Russia — The building at 32 Kartashov Street had had enough. It once served as home to a 19th-century merchant, a little log masterpiece with ornate doors and shutters carved like doilies and a structural swagger that said, “Look at me!”
But after the Soviet years, when the place became a woebegone flophouse, it was nearly dead. An engineer might have noted that its roof had wilted and that rot was chomping at its beams. The neglect, though, seemed to go deeper, as if the bui
Source: NYT
June 24, 2008
At Angkor Wat, the dancers’ feet are crumbling.
The palatial 12th-century Hindu temple, shrouded in the jungles of Cambodia, has played host to a thriving community of cyanobacteria ever since unsightly lichens were cleaned off its walls nearly 20 years ago. The microbes have not been good guests.
These bacteria (Gloeocapsa) not only stain the stone black, they also increase the water absorbed by the shale in morning monsoon rains and the heat absorbed when the sun come
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 25, 2008
More than sixty years after Nazi soldiers committed one of France's worst wartime atrocities, orphans of the country's "forgotten massacre" hope that justice will finally be done when German investigators arrive next month.
On August 25 1944, when most of France rejoiced in the Allied liberation of Paris, Serge Martin's 10-year-old world was torn apart.
One of the 600 inhabitants of Maillé, 25 miles south of Tours in the Loire valley, he had spent the day in a
Source: Times (UK)
June 25, 2008
Lech Walesa, the Polish shipyard worker with the trademark droopy moustache, is regarded as one of the heroes of modern Europe: the leader of the revolution that brought communist rule crashing down.
Now Poland is in uproar over an intriguing riddle: was communism actually destroyed by a communist agent? If so, why?
Two writers claim that Mr Walesa — the founder of the Solidarity movement, Nobel Peace prizewinner, former President of Poland - was a stooge of the communi
Source: Breitbart
June 24, 2008
London Mayor Boris Johnson poured scorn Tuesday on a "ludicrous" police investigation into how he came into possession of a cigar case belonging to former Iraqi deputy premier Tariq Aziz.
Johnson, who took office last month as the opposition Conservatives' most powerful politician, accused the governing Labour Party of triggering the probe, which he jokingly likened to a "war crime".
The former journalist admitted to having found the red leather ciga
Source: Boston Globe
June 24, 2008
Last year England lavishly celebrated the 200th anniversary of the abolishment of the slave trade. Although the system of purchasing human beings for money ended, slavery continued in British colonies. The country marked the bicentennial with a service at Westminster Abbey attended by the queen. The city of Liverpool, a former slave trading capital, opened the International Slavery Museum. Another British city, Bristol, spent almost $800,000 to commemorate the end of this lucrative business.
Source: FoxNews.com
June 24, 2008
NEW YORK — A black Columbia University professor who made headlines after a noose was found hanging on her door was suspended indefinitely for plagiarism and likely will be fired.
The termination of Madonna Constantine, a psychology professor with a focus in racial issues at Columbia’s Teachers College, is effective Dec. 31, 2008, pending an appeal.
"I can confirm that Madonna Constantine has been terminated subject to a hearing before a faculty committee," T
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 24, 2008
Adolf Hitler took time out from running Nazi Germany to make jokes at the expense of his henchmen, a new book claims.
The dictator would often break from the serious nature of waging his campaign to "pull the legs" of his entourage of generals and hangers on.
His favourite victim was the Luftwaffe chief Herman Goering, who was notoriously fond of awarding himself medals and decorations.
According to the book by the last surviving member of his bun
Source: NYT
June 24, 2008
Although a majority of Americans say religion is very important to them, nearly three-quarters of them say they believe that many faiths besides their own can lead to salvation, according to a survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
The report, the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey, reveals a broad trend toward tolerance and an ability among many Americans to hold beliefs that might contradict the doctrines of their professed faiths.
For example, 70 percent o
Source: International Herald Tribune
June 23, 2008
BREST, Belarus: Russian President Dmitry Medvedev condemned on Sunday what he described as attempts to rewrite wartime history -- an attack the Kremlin said was aimed at Ukraine and the three Baltic states.
In a joint declaration marking the 1941 Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Medvedev and Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko denounced a "politicised approach to history".
Their countries "strongly condemn any attempt at rewriting history and rev
Source: Civil War News
June 23, 2008
By Kathryn Jorgensen
FORT WAYNE, Ind. – The Lincoln Financial Foundation will determine how to donate its extensive Lincoln Museum collection by the end of the year. In the meantime, the Fort Wayne museum will close on June 30.
A foundation spokesman said more than 30 organizations attended an April meeting to discuss disposition of the collection. Those interested in receiving the collection will submit proposals by June 16. The foundation will chose those that will c
Source: AP
June 23, 2008
CENTREVILLE, Md. (AP) — For four centuries, they were the ultimate pack rats. Now a Maryland family's massive collection of letters, maps and printed bills has surfaced in the attic of a former plantation, providing a firsthand account of life from the 1660s through World War II.
"Historians are used to dealing with political records and military documents," said Adam Goodheart, a history professor at nearby Washington College. "But what they aren't used to is politic
Source: Times (UK)
June 24, 2008
The body of the first female soldier to be killed in Afghanistan was returned to British soil poignantly draped in a Union flag.
In a moving repatriation ceremony six members of Corporal Sarah Bryant's unit struggled to contain their emotions as they slowly shouldered her coffin from a Hercules transport aircraft on to the sun lit runway at RAF Lyneham in Wiltshire.
The bodies of three SAS reservists, who died with the 26-year-old last week, also made their final journe
Source: AP
June 23, 2008
AMMAN, Jordan (AP) — Jordan turned over Sunday nearly 2,500 stolen Iraqi artifacts to Iraq's top antiquities official, in the latest effort to recover the war-torn nation's stolen heritage.
In the chaos following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, looters snatched some 15,000 priceless artifacts and smuggled them out of the country. In the last few months, Jordanian authorities seized 2,466 items as they were being taken across the border.
Samples of the silver coin
