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
June 16, 2006
PORTLAND, Me., June 11 — Forget Paris. The curious are now flocking here for a Mona Lisa mystery.
A painting that bears a striking resemblance to the "Mona Lisa" is on display at the Portland Museum of Art, attracting residents, amateur art sleuths and tourists.
May was the busiest month on record for the museum. Staff members are not sure whether to credit the painting, which went on display a day before "The Da Vinci Code" opened in movie theaters
Source: NYT
June 16, 2006
PHILIPSTOWN, N.Y. — A fight is brewing here over a house where George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette plotted their defense of the Hudson River.
Robert M. Perry in Philipstown, N.Y., outside Mandeville House, where George Washington and a parade of historic figures sometimes gathered.
The house, named Mandeville House, was left in trust by Margaret Allan Gething, a character actress and an interior designer, with the intent that it become a museum. But more than thre
Source: The Australian
June 15, 2006
A rare Roman coin celebrating the murder of Julius Caesar has been returned to Greece after an operation by British Customs.The 1st-century-BC Brutus coin, which portrays the Roman politician's assassination of Julius Caesar as a patriotic act, was excavated illegally and brought to London by two Greek citizens.
European law on stolen cultural items was used for the first time in Britain to secure its recovery.
The Greek Government took the unpreced
Source: Christian Science Monitor
June 15, 2006
A French court ruling has reopened the country's wartime record and revived a question that has shadowed it for years: Who should be held responsible for the mistreatment and deportation of French Jews during World War II?An administrative tribunal in Toulouse, France, ruled last week that the state-owned railroad, the SNCF, was liable for its part in transporting some 76,000 Jews to transit centers in France and then on to Nazi concentration camps.
The railroad
Source: USA Today
June 15, 2006
A new wave of books critical of the Bush administration's war on terror will hit bookstores this summer, reminiscent of the flood of titles bashing the president during the 2004 campaign.
Two years ago, Against All Enemies by former anti-terrorism chief Richard Clark and The Price of Loyalty, Ron Suskind's account of the disillusionment of former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, hit the top of the best-seller list.
This year, books on Iraq and the war on terror haven't
Source: Inside Higher Ed
June 15, 2006
Scholarly groups line up against open access legislation, but
anthropologists ask whether researchers' views are being
represented.
Source: MSNBC
June 14, 2006
Thousands of years before screen idols began beautifying themselves with cosmetic dentistry ancient Mexicans were getting ceremonial dentures.
Researchers report Wednesday that they found a 4,500-year-old burial in Mexico that had the oldest known example of dental work in the Americas.
The upper front teeth of the remains had been ground down so they could be mounted with animal teeth, possibly wolf or panther teeth, for ceremonial purposes, according to researchers le
Source: NYT
June 15, 2006
James Cameron, who survived an attempted lynching by a white mob and went on to found America's Black Holocaust Museum, died here on Sunday. He was 92.
He had battled lymphoma for about five years, said Marissa Weaver, chairwoman of the museum's board.
In 1930, in Marion, Ind., Mr. Cameron, then 16, and two friends were arrested and accused of killing a white man during a robbery and raping the man's companion. A mob broke them out of the local jail and hanged Mr. Camer
Source: CBS
June 11, 2006
If flags could talk, these banners would have stories to tell — witnesses to the war that created America.
"They represented the soul of the regiment," says Dave Redden of Sotheby's auction house. "They represented the cause for which they were fighting."
Now, more than two centuries later, the battle flags are up for auction at Sotheby's in New York.British warrior Banastre Tarleton captured them and sent them to his home in E
Source: NYT
June 15, 2006
An American poet, John Balaban, who first came to Vietnam as a conscientious objector during the war and who has nurtured a love affair with the country ever since, is leading a drive to revive Nom, which was banned in 1920 by the French colonial government and officially replaced by script based on the Roman alphabet that Alexander de Rhodes, a French missionary, devised in the 17th century.
"Nom keeps a flavor of a culture washed away with the language of the Roman alphabet,
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
June 14, 2006
A James Joyce scholar is suing the Irish author's estate, claiming that it is abusing copyright law to prevent her from disseminating research findings that the estate wants to cover up. The case may clarify how much control copyright holders can exert over scholars seeking to take advantage of the law's fair-use exemption. Researchers in several disciplines rely on the exemption, which permits scholars and students to use copyrighted material for scholarly and educational p
Source: Rocky Mountain News
June 13, 2006
A majority of the University of Colorado committee leading an inquiry into Ward Churchill recommended today that the ethnic studies professor be fired. Of the 10 voting members, six said he should be fired. One said he should be suspended without pay for two years, while two others recommended a five-year suspension without pay. Another member of the committee was absent, and the panel's chairman is a non-voting member.
In a 22-page report, the committee — made up of nine CU facult
Source: http://www.nsarchive.org
June 14, 2006
The National Security Archive today filed suit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), challenging the Agency's recent practice of charging Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) fees to journalists pursuing news. The FOIA says that "representatives of the news media" can be charged only copying fees since they help to carry out the mission of the law by disseminating government information; but the CIA last year began
Source: OAH
June 14, 2006
Nearly a century ago, representatives of seven state historical societies gathered in Lincoln, hoping to organize a new historical association to encourage collaboration, improve professional standards, and highlight our regional and national histories. Little did they know that the organization they founded, the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, and the new historical journal they eventually created, The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, would outgrow the Midwest, take on national
Source: cronaca.com
June 14, 2006
The John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, in collaboration with the Rhode Island Rochambeau Commission, will host a symposium and historical re-enactment on Saturday, June 17, 2006, in commemoration of the 225th anniversary of the historic march to Yorktown, Va. The symposium, titled France and the American Revolution, will be followed by a horse-led procession from The College Green to the Rhode Island State House for a military review and ceremony. The public is invited to take part i
Source: cronaca.com citing story in Time
June 13, 2006
For more than 17,000 years, the bestiary of the Lascaux cave in southwestern France survived the ravages of history, unseen and undiscovered. . . But despite its robust longevity, Lascaux is surprisingly fragile. Five years ago, after the ill-conceived installation of new climatic equipment, Lascaux suffered a fungal infection that threatened to destroy in a few years what thousands of years had left largely unscathed. The cave's custodians are still struggling to eradicate this scourge, a nasty
Source: cronaca.com citing the Guardian
June 13, 2006
The manager of a Turkish museum's storehouse was arrested Tuesday after 545 ancient coins were switched with fakes on his watch, officials said Tuesday. The Culture Ministry, already embarrassed by the revelation last month that at least two pieces in a separate museum - from the 6th century B.C. treasure of King Croesus - were also fakes, had pressed for the manager's arrest. . .
The 545 silver coins were dated to the 4th century B.C. and were changed with fakes in 1998, Anatolia s
Source: Independent (UK)
June 13, 2006
The invention of the world's first bows and arrows may have played a part in the eventual colonisation of much of the world by Homo sapiens.
In a groundbreaking paper published yesterday, Paul Mellars, one of Britain's leading archaeologists and a Cambridge professor, suggests Homo sapiens' dominance of much of the world was triggered by a technological revolution which caused a demographic explosion between 60,000 and 80,000 years ago. As a result, the population of one particular
Source: http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co
June 13, 2006
ANKARA, Turkey -- Turkey's Islamic-rooted government has ordered a 500-year old Latin inscription believed to have been carved by the Knights of St. John erased from an old castle, newspaper reports said Tuesday.
In the written order, the Culture Minister told museum officials to scrape away the inscription "Inde deus abest," or "Where God does not exist," carved at the entrance to the dungeon of the Castle of St. Peter in the Aegean resort of Bodrum, Hurriyet, S
Source: Times (UK)
June 14, 2006
Menachem Begin, the late Israeli Prime Minister, actively encouraged a plot to blow up Konrad Adenauer, the first Chancellor of West Germany, according to disclosures today.The dramatic claim by the author and researcher Henning Sietz is sure to stoke resentment on the German far Right and send shockwaves through the always delicate relationship between Germany and Israel.
The details of the 1952 parcel bomb attack, in which a policeman died, have been kep
