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: NYT
December 16, 2006
Some of the world’s leading policy institutes announced Friday that they were breaking off relations with a group within the Iranian Foreign Ministry that organized a conference on the Holocaust in Tehran featuring discredited academics and Holocaust deniers.
In a statement, the leaders of the institutes said that the ministry’s Institute for Political and International Studies, which had served in the past “as a mainstream Iranian interface with foreign think tanks and research ins
Source: Columbia Journalism Review
December 14, 2006
It's that time of year again for the newsweeklies: Christ-as-Cover-Boy time.
Jesus, of course, is as reliably evergreen a cover subject as they come -- ever-mysterious, ever-controversial -- and one that, naturally, pops up annually on newsstands around Easter and/or Christmas. With the appearance this week of two visually similar Jesus Cover Stories (Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report), we wondered: How has the Jesus Cover Story been packaged over the years? How has it changed (o
Source: Newsletter of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
December 15, 2006
The bill was introduced by Congressman Robert Goodlatte (R-VA) and supported by eleven members of the Virginia Congressional delegation. The bill sought to authorize the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to make a grant contribution of an undisclosed amount at some future undisclosed date toward the establishment of the "Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library" in Staunton, Virginia.
This legislation was never subjected to the scrutiny of a congressional hear
Source: AP
December 15, 2006
A Japanese parliamentary committee approved a revised education law Thursday that would require schools to promote patriotism, part of the prime minister's efforts to distance Japan from its pacifist postwar system.
Critics have attacked the education reform as reminiscent of the pre-World War II system that encouraged children to sacrifice themselves for the emperor and nation.
The measure, a reform of Japan's 1947 education law, would call on schools to teach "
Source: AP
December 15, 2006
A group of Germans kicked out of Poland after World War II want restitution for lost property, arguing in a complaint that their human rights were violated when Eastern Europe's boundaries were redrawn and they were driven from their homes.
The case has put fresh strains on German-Polish ties -- a relationship still troubled by painful memories of Nazi brutalities.
The Prussian Claims Society complaint filed with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg in Nov
Source: Independent (UK)
December 15, 2006
The Government's case for going to war in Iraq has been torn apart by the publication of previously suppressed evidence that Tony Blair lied over Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction.
A devastating attack on Mr Blair's justification for military action by Carne Ross, Britain's key negotiator at the UN, has been kept under wraps until now because he was threatened with being charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act.
In the testimony revealed today Mr Ross
Source: Newsweek
December 9, 2006
Shopping for nativity scenes? At Macy’s you have two options to choose from: "The Vatican Edition" and "The Byzantine Edition." The first comes with a set of white figurines, including a red-headed Mary, a brown-haired Joseph and a blue-eyed baby Jesus. In the second, all three are black, as are the shepherd and three wise men. Both cost $10, and more than likely, both are historically inaccurate.
While we can never be exactly sure of what Jesus, Mary and Joseph
Source: NPR (audio)
December 14, 2006
Two Philadelphia museums are scrambling to raise $68 million, enough money to keep a local art treasure from slipping away. If they fail to reach their goal by a Dec. 26 deadline, "The Gross Clinic," Thomas Eakins' 1875 masterpiece, will be sold to museums in Washington, D.C., and Arkansas.
The painting depicts doctors performing surgery on a boy's leg -- an unusual subject for art at the time. Dr. Samuel Gross, a world-famous Philadelphia surgeon, stands, lecturing to stu
Source: Breitbart
December 14, 2006
Greece has asked the Louvre Museum in Paris to not show a disputed
4th century BC statue of Apollo on loan from a US museum, saying
it may have been illegally acquired, a culture ministry source
said."We do not want this work, attributed to the great sculptor Praxiteles, to
be presented at the Louvre because doing so would legitimize" its
acquisition by the Cleveland Museum in Ohio, the source told AFP,
requesting anonymity.
Source: Salon
December 14, 2006
Catherine Pollard, who became the Boy
Scouts of America's first female U.S. scoutmaster after a years-long legal
fight, died Wednesday. She was 88.
Pollard, who volunteered with the Scouts in Milford, died in Seminole,
Fla., said Shawn Smith of Smith Funeral Home in Milford, which is handling
arrangements.
Pollard ran a Milford troop from 1973 to 1975 when no men volunteered. But
her application for a leadership position was denied when the Boy Scouts
contended a woman was not
Source: Reuters
December 14, 2006
A top German court rejected on Thursday restitution
claims by relatives of a Nazi doctor for art confiscated by Soviet
occupiers after the war in a ruling which could set a precedent for a host
of similar cases.
Gustav Schuster, a gynecologist who worked in Nazi courts which ordered
the sterilization of handicapped women as part of Adolf Hitler's drive to
create a 'master race', had collected hundreds of paintings, graphics and
etchings.
The paintings, among them a work by Germ
Source: Reuters
December 14, 2006
Greece's top religious leader asked Pope Benedict
on Thursday to return a piece of the Parthenon in the Vatican Museums,
Greek officials said.
Christodoulos, Orthodox archbishop of Athens and of all Greece, made the
request during a visit when he and the Pope signed a joint declaration on
issues of common concern, such as the defense of life.
According to spokesmen for Christodoulos, the Pope was a bit perplexed by
the request, perhaps not knowing that the vast museums he techni
Source: Press Release -- Thomas B. Fordham Foundation
December 12, 2006
Doubling the time that schools devote to math and reading in response to state and federal testing requirements won’t truly prepare young Americans for life in the 21st century. It probably won’t even boost reading and math scores long term, concluded a conference of policymakers, business leaders, and educators today.
At the event, hosted by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and supported by the Louis Calder Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, scholars and education
Source: Press Release -- The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
December 15, 2006
The author of a recent book about President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust has admitted that he wrongly portrayed two Holocaust rescue activists as draft-dodgers.
South Carolina attorney Robert N. Rosen, author of Saving the Jews: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Holocaust, has admitted that he was wrong to claim that Yitshaq Ben-Ami and Dr. Alexander Rafaeli, two leaders of the activist Bergson Group, "sat out the war in America, preferring to agitate for the overthrow o
Source: WaPo
December 15, 2006
He led the United States into war and saw his popularity plummet, yet some 60 years later his reputation has never been higher: It's small wonder Harry S. Truman seems to hold a special fascination for President Bush these days.
That interest came into focus recently after Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) went public with an account of a meeting last Friday in which he said the president seemed to be comparing his situation to that of Truman in the late 1940s. According to Durbin's a
Source: AP
December 14, 2006
LOS GATOS, Calif. -- It was called Holy City, but it was not exactly a model of Christian piety. It was, rather, a commune and tourist trap created in the 1920s by a white-supremacist huckster.
Now, decades after Holy City fell into ruin, the 142-acre site is a prime piece of real estate in the hills outside booming Silicon Valley, and it is up for sale for $11 million.
"Bad, good or indifferent, there is a history here, and my hope is that somebody will take tha
Source: AP
December 14, 2006
Parliament on Thursday began debating a law that seeks reparations for victims of Spain's 1936-39 Civil War and the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco.
The bill, proposed by the Socialist government in July, would also ban symbols and references to the Franco regime in public buildings and asks local and regional governments to rename streets or plazas that are named after Franco or refer to his regime.
Source: National Geographic News
December 14, 2006
Humans first moved out of Africa about 70,000 years ago, but 30,000 years later some of them moved back.
That's according to a new study based on DNA evidence from ancient human remains found in Africa. The findings are reported in tomorrow's issue of the journal Science.
Source: Economist
December 13, 2006
THE iPod is five years old this autumn. It already has its own biography*, by the journalist Steven Levy, who considers the gizmo an icon of modern times. Its birthday generated glowing tributes in newspapers from India to Egypt to Brunei. And this is just one of the many anniversaries that the computer industry has seen fit to celebrate this year.
Last month the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California hosted a symposium commemorating the 35th anniversary of Intel's 400
Source: Guardian
December 14, 2006
History seems to be in a hurry to judge Donald H. Rumsfeld.
And despite his half century in public service, a defense secretary who served three presidents and oversaw two wars is being sized up not by the long reach of his career but by its ending - the body slam of Iraq.
With an eye on his legacy, Rumsfeld asked to be judged by the extraordinary nature of today's threat, like none that has come before.
``There's no road map, no guidebook,'' he said. ``The
