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: Guardian
September 11, 2007
For centuries the ruins in the swamps of southern Panama have been testament to Scottish folly, an attempt to create a tropical empire to rival those of the Spanish and Portuguese.
The five ships which sailed from Leith in the summer of 1698 carried the hopes of a nation. Success in Darien, a central American wilderness chosen as Scotland's gateway to the new world, would bring riches and power and guarantee independence.
Instead it brought disaster. In folklore, the Sc
Source: HNN Staff (Click here to read Mr. Nowrasteh's op ed in the WSJ)
September 11, 2007
The screenwriter and producer of the $40 million ABC docudrama, The Path to 9/11 (2006), complains in the Wall Street Journal today that the network is sitting on the DVD version of the production, which was criticized by liberals for insinuating that Bill Clinton was guilty of negligence.
Writes Cyrus Nowrasteh:
The current battle against the DVD version is not taking place in a frenzy of unfounded accusations, but in silence. The normal time frame from b
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE)
September 14, 2007
Scholarly Paris will change in 2009 when a sizable portion of the French National Archives moves from the center of Paris to outlying Seine Saint-Denis. While documents from the ancien régime will remain downtown in the Marais, collections dating from the 1789 revolution through the Fourth Republic will be housed in this northeastern suburb, one of the many sites of youth rioting in 2005.
The suburbs (banlieues) of Paris can refer to anything from the luxury townships to the west of
Source: NYT
September 11, 2007
Valencia M. McClatchey thought she was doing the right thing when she gave the F.B.I. a copy of her photo of the mushroom-shaped cloud that rose over the hill outside her home after United Flight 93 crashed in a field here on Sept. 11, 2001.
And, after it became apparent that hers was the only known picture of that ominous gray cloud — and the first taken after Flight 93 crashed — Mrs. McClatchey thought she was still doing the right thing when she gave copies to people who asked fo
Source: NYT
September 10, 2007
Efforts by preservationists and history enthusiasts to save an Art Deco building in Dayton where a secret program broke Nazi codes have failed to stop plans to relocate some architectural flourishes and raze the rest.
Contractors are scheduled to begin removing the building’s crown molding, limestone window sills, stone lintels and bricks on Monday. What is left will be demolished next year to make way for a 50-acre redevelopment on land bought in 2005 by the University of Dayton.
Source: BBC
September 11, 2007
One of literature's great conspiracy theories has new impetus with Sir Derek Jacobi questioning whether William Shakespeare of Stratford really wrote the works associated with him. So what are the arguments for and against this man really being the Bard?
A formal "declaration of reasonable doubt" about the authorship of Shakespeare's plays and poems has been launched by Sir Derek and Mark Rylance, the former artistic director of the new Globe Theatre.
No new e
Source: BBC
September 11, 2007
Scotland's most treasured literary artefacts escaped largely unscathed after a sprinkler system flooded the country's largest library. Five floors of the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh were affected when a sprinkler pipe was broken during renovation work.
Lothian and Borders Fire and Rescue said the accident happened at about 2328 BST on Monday.
A spokeswoman said there was no major damage to the collections.
The library had been closed for refur
Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch
September 11, 2007
A flap over a Confederate flag is breaking out at the Virginia Capitol.
The dispute isn't over whether to display a Confederate flag -- it's over which Confederate flag to display.
Despite the concerns of Confederate-heritage enthusiasts, officials are not returning a battle flag -- the "Stars and Bars" -- to the Old House Chamber, where it stood for years a short distance from the spot where Gen. Robert E. Lee accepted command of Virginia's armed forces at th
Source: Press Release--Survival International
September 11, 2007
Twenty-two years of intensive debate and negotiations climax this week in New York, as the UN General Assembly votes on whether to approve the declaration on indigenous peoples' rights.
Canada, the USA, Australia, New Zealand and the Russian Federation (all of whom have large indigenous populations) have been vigorously opposing the declaration's approval. Their actions have provoked outrage amongst tribal peoples worldwide.
Source: http://www.boingboing.net
September 11, 2007
Lucy, the famed fossilized skeleton of one of the oldest human ancestors, is coming to visit the US from Ethiopia where Donald Johansen and his colleagues discovered her in 1974. Surprisingly, Lucy won't be on display at two of the premier natural history museums in the country, the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Why? Those are just two of the museums who refused the exhibition, arguing that the fragile bones should r
Source: BBC
September 10, 2007
Archaeologists in Jerusalem say they have found an underground drainage channel that was used by Jews to escape from the Romans in 70 AD.
The channel was buried under the rubble of the Second Temple, which was destroyed by Roman conquerors in the Siege of Jerusalem.
Scores of people are thought to have sheltered and lived in the tunnel until they were able to flee the city.
Several parts of the tunnel have been preserved intact.
Source: HNN Staff
September 9, 2007
Everett Ellis Briggs, the United States ambassador to Panama from 1982 to 1986, claims in a prominently placed op ed in the NYT that the Justice Department was to blame for the failure to stop Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega when it was still possible to do so. He says that he told Attorney General Edwin Meese in 1985 that Noriega, then just a general, was becoming a menace. Meese promised to stop the general, who was involved in drug trafficking, among other crimes. But the US government
Source: Time
September 10, 2007
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno is an unlikely place to launch a bid to become
leader of the free world, but the former Tennessee senator and Law and Order
star Fred Thompson isn't the first 2008 presidential candidate to kick off his
or her campaign in a non-traditional setting.
Rudy Giuliani announced his candidacy on Larry King Live; Mike Huckabee did it
on Meet the Press; Hillary Clinton formally threw her hat in the ring via a
short web video; and John Edwards made his intent
Source: CNN
September 8, 2007
Museum-goers gasped at the well-preserved mummy of an Inca maiden that is on display for the first time, a serene gaze etched on her face hundreds of years ago when she was sacrificed and froze to death in the Andes.
Hundreds of people packed a museum in Salta, Argentina, to see "la Doncella" -- Spanish for "the Maiden" -- a 15-year-old girl whose remains were found in 1999 in an icy pit on Llullaillaco volcano, along with a 6-year-old girl and a 7-year-old boy.
Source: Washington Times
September 9, 2007
A Confederate battle flag that hung for decades in Virginia's House of Delegates prior to the Capitol's $105 million makeover will be replaced by a later Civil War-era flag and relocated to a new exhibit gallery near the building's front entrance.
The decision announced yesterday by House Speaker William J. Howell quells a long-running debate with a Confederate heritage group that objected to the 1861 battle flag's omission from the renovated chamber.
In making the deci
Source: Washington Times
September 9, 2007
Newport News, VA The swashbuckling sea captain who helped found America's first permanent English settlement lost his right arm in battle nearly two decades before bringing the colonists to Jamestown 400 years ago.
But you wouldn't know it to look at a 24-foot bronze statue of Christopher Newport, with all his limbs intact, that stands at the edge of the campus of the university named for him.
Some annoyed alumni and history buffs want the monument to get the hook — as
Source: Reuters
September 10, 2007
Archaeologists exhumed the body of a Viking queen on Monday, hoping to solve
a riddle about whether a woman buried with her 1,200 years ago was a servant
killed to be a companion into the afterlife.
As a less gruesome alternative, the two women in the grass-covered Oseberg
mound in south Norway might be a royal mother and daughter who died of the
same disease and were buried together in 834.
"We will do DNA tests to try to find out. I don't know of any Viking
skeletons that h
Source: National Security Archive
September 10, 2007
A collection of recently declassified NSC and State Department documents published today by the National Security Archive sheds new light on Algerian-Chinese nuclear relations and Beijing's role in U.S. nonproliferation efforts during the George H.W. Bush administration. The discovery of a Chinese-supplied nuclear reactor project in Algeria stimulated a controversy over whether Algiers sought a weapons capability and the extent to which Beijing was abetting nuclear proliferation.
A
Source: AP
September 10, 2007
Millions of descendants of Confucius are being listed in an international updating of the Chinese philosopher's more than 2,500-year-old family tree, a Taiwanese newspaper reported Monday.
The laborious task — being conducted in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and several other Asian countries — will include an estimated 3 million descendants when it is completed by 2009, the Liberty Times said.
It said the project was being coordinated in Hong Kong, but did not provide furthe
Source: The Age (Australia)
September 10, 2007
History teachers claim the Federal Government has shut them out of the development of a national Australian history curriculum for high schools, alleging the politically sensitive document is being "drafted in backrooms".The History Teachers Association of Australia has written to federal Education Minister Julie Bishop and Opposition education spokesman Stephen Smith, claiming it was "increasingly concerned" about what was happening with the proposed nat
