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: CNN
June 12, 2006
After almost 48 years in the Senate, Robert Byrd is still working. On Monday, the West Virginia Democrat passed the late GOP Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina as the longest serving senator in history.And Byrd is not finished.
Slowed by age and grief-stricken over the recent death of Erma, his wife of almost 69 years, Byrd still is running for an unprecedented ninth term. At 88, he uses two canes as he slowly makes his way around the Capitol. Yet he can thun
Source: ynetnews.com
June 11, 2006
A boycott of Israeli academics declared by a UK teachers' union in May was cancelled on Sunday after the union's merger with a larger body whose delegates oppose the motion.The boycott was also partially lifted because of a campaign against the move by academics in Israel, Britain and the United States.
Israeli academics, however, remain pessimistic.
The University and College Lecturers' Union (NATFHE) voted for a motion that urged its member
Source: NYT
June 11, 2006
This weekend Hawaii celebrates the birthday of the king who united the islands nearly 200 years ago. But as the colorful flower leis were draped over a towering golden statue of the warrior king on Friday, the people of the state remained divided over whether the federal government should grant recognition to Hawaii's native people.
The issue was dealt what may turn out to be a fatal blow by the Senate on Thursday, when a bill giving Native Hawaiians the same legal standing as Ameri
Source: Seattle PI
June 10, 2006
ST. JOHNSBURY, Vt. -- It was his work that drew protests when the national intelligence director spoke at a commencement, but it's his history lesson that has raised eyebrows.
John Negroponte spoke at commencement at the St. Johnsbury Academy, where his son was graduating, and commented during his speech that the town and the academy were named for St. John.
Actually, Revolutionary War hero Ethan Allen named St. Johnsbury for Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur, a French auth
Source: CNN
June 10, 2006
SHARPSBURG, Maryland (AP) -- Members of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups rallied Saturday at the Antietam National Battlefield, believed to be the first time a group was given permission to demonstrate at the site of the bloodiest day of the Civil War.
About 30 people, some in white robes and others in the military-style clothing and swastika armbands of the National Socialist Movement of America, stood next to a farmhouse on the battlefield. Some delivered speech
Source: BBC
June 10, 2006
Thirty years ago rioting broke out in the South African township of Soweto and set off a wave of disturbances in other townships in a country still firmly in the grip of apartheid. Hamilton Wende, a pupil in a white South African school at the time, says this uprising proved to be a significant step along the road to democracy.
Source: NYT
June 11, 2006
The Japanese government is now moving toward revising the Fundamental Law of Education, which was drafted in 1947 during the American occupation to prevent a revival of prewar nationalism. The revision proposed by the governing Liberal Democratic Party would emphasize patriotism, tradition and morality, and hand greater control over schools to politicians.
The occupation-era law replaced the prewar Imperial Rescript on Education, which had instructed children to sacrifice themselves
Source: NYT
June 11, 2006
Presidents have historically used the social powers of the office to build goodwill at the Capitol. Lyndon B. Johnson was a master at it; Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were especially good. But Mr. Bush, with his early-to-bed, early-to-rise habits, has shown little interest in the social networking that characterizes so much of Washington political life, said James A. Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University.
"If you had
Source: WSJ
April 10, 2006
1. "Churchill: A Study in Greatness" by Geoffrey Best (Hambledon & London, 2001).
2. "Jefferson and His Time" by Dumas Malone (Little, Brown, 1948-81).
3. "Herndon's Lincoln" by William Henry Herndon and Jesse W. Weik (Belford, Clarke, 1889).
4. "Profiles in Courage" by John F. Kennedy (Harper, 1956).
5. "President Reagan" by Richard Reeves (Simon & Schuster, 2006).
Source: Channel 19 News (ABC affiliate) Indiana
June 7, 2006
BLOOMINGTON -- A new home owner in Bloomington was shocked to find over the weekend her home had 30 skulls in the attic.
Kathleen Hollonbeck of Rochelle, Illinois bought the Bloomington home in November.
She was cleaning out her attic over the weekend when she made the discovery.
Police saod the previous owner was a dentist who collected Native American artifacts.
The discovery was made at this home at the 500 block of Florence Avenue.
Source: NY Daily News
June 9, 2006
The co-author of Deep Throat's book will lash out at The New York Times this Sunday for hiring Richard Nixon counsel John Dean to review it.
John O'Connor, who helped Mark Felt write "A G-Man's Life: The FBI, Being 'Deep Throat,' and the Struggle for Honor in Washington," based upon manuscripts written by Felt before he began showing signs of dementia, shot off a letter blasting Dean.
"It would be hard to imagine a reviewer more biased than Dean," O'
Source: NYT
June 9, 2006
After years of trying to sell the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s archives to a library or university, the King family will instead put them up for auction on June 30, Sotheby's announced Thursday.
The sale, expected to bring $15 million to $30 million, will take place exactly five months after the death of Coretta Scott King, Dr. King's widow, who was keenly interested in finding an institutional home for the papers.
The buyer will determine the future accessibilit
Source: BBC
June 9, 2006
SECTIONS of the King’s Table, a symbol of royal power until it was smashed by Oliver Cromwell, have been found beneath the floor of the Palace of Westminster. The elaborately carved stone table was used by kings and queens from the 13th century for coronation feasts and state banquets but disappeared under Puritan rule.
It represented the power and authority of the monarch in the same way as the King’s Bench, a court, and the King’s Privy Wardrobe, also known as the Jewel Tower.
Source: Yahoo News
June 9, 2006
SALT LAKE CITY - Government-funded archaeologists are making a push to survey ancient sites across a remote stretch of southern Utah before looters can scoop up the last artifacts.
One team is recovering treasures before they disappear from the ground along Comb Ridge, an 80-mile monocline that Native Americans worship as the very spine of the earth. Another is shoring up the crumbling walls of ancient dwellings at 10 sites in the same region, about 300 miles southeast of Salt Lake
Source: Boston Globe
June 9, 2006
They were lost to history, six Union soldiers from Massachusetts killed in battle just days before the famous First Battle of Bull Run in 1861. Found in shallow graves in woods in Centreville, Va., the men's remains were traced to the First Massachusetts Infantry, after a decade of painstaking research.Tomorrow, they will be buried at the National Veterans Cemetery in Bourne with an honor guard and a three-volley salute with Civil War-era rifles.
But
Source: BBC
June 9, 2006
Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej has called for national unity during colourful celebrations in the capital to mark his 60 years on the throne. The king, who is the world's longest-serving monarch, addressed a cheering crowd of hundreds of thousands of people in Bangkok's Royal Plaza.
Speaking from the palace balcony, King Bhumibol, 78, said that unity would bring prosperity to Thailand.
Source: ABC Science online
June 8, 2006
Researchers say they have found "compelling" new evidence of the earliest known forms of life on Earth in ancient rock in Australia.
Australian and Canadian scientists say they have found new varieties of stromatolites, rock formations left 3.43 billion years ago in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.
If the researchers are right, and the stromatolites represent the fossilised remains of early microbes, this could cause scientists to revise estimates of w
Source: Caleb McDaniel at HNN blog Cliopatria
June 7, 2006
Early in 2005, as you may recall, there was a ripple of press interest in nineteenth-century author Emma Dunham Kelley Hawkins.
For years, Hawkins had been considered an African American author, and her novels were spotlighted in the Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. But on February 20, 2005, Holly Jackson, a graduate student at Brandeis University, published an article in the Boston Globe revealing that Hawkins never iden
Source: Editor & Publisher
June 6, 2006
Controversy in the press surrounding "Da Vinci Code" author Dan Brown, just beginning to fade, will likely revive later this week when the July issue of Vanity Fair hits the stands. According to an advance copy, the magazine's contributing editor Seth Mnookin alleges -- in a massive article titled "DaVinci Clone?" -- two new instances of possible plagiarism in Brown's past. Two textual analysis experts also tell him they believe Brown borrowed the plot for his book from Lewi
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists
June 7, 2006
Some 27,000 pages of Central Intelligence Agency records regarding operational relationships between the CIA and former Nazis following World War II were disclosed yesterday at the National Archives.
The release was announced by the Interagency Working Group (IWG) on Nazi War Crimes, which was created by a 1998 law. The IWG, which has previously overseen the declassification of eight million war crimes-related records, is chaired by former Information Security Oversight Office Dire
