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
March 29, 2006
Even though Republicans control the White House and Congress, the Voting Rights Act seems in little danger of expiring. A multiyear campaign by civil rights leaders to reauthorize the act, parts of which expire in August 2007, appears to be on the verge of success.
Liberal supporters and conservative opponents say they expect it to be reauthorized and, probably, even strengthened in coming weeks, well ahead of the deadline.
Source: CNN
March 30, 2006
Edgar Ray Killen, the former Klansman convicted last year in the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers, has been moved from his prison cell to a Jackson hospital, officials and family said Wednesday.
His brother, Jerry Killen, told The Associated Press that the 81-year-old had been hospitalized for complications from a severe leg injury he sustained in a logging accident in 2005."He's in the hospital," Jerry Killen said in a telephone
Source: Wa Po
March 30, 2006
The shots came from the crowd outside the Washington Hilton that drizzly afternoon -- six shots that would show the nation once again how vulnerable to attack its presidents are.
President Ronald Reagan, then 70, a Washington newcomer in office two months, had paused to wave to the knot of people. At the sound of the shots, Secret Service agents shoved him into the presidential limousine and sped away, not realizing he had been hit. Three men lay wounded, one with blood dripping fro
Source: Chicago Tribune
March 30, 2006
Supporters of a proposal to commemorate slain Black Panther Party leader Fred Hampton with an honorary street sign staged a raucous demonstration at City Hall on Wednesday, even as an influential alderman hinted he may allow a vote on the controversial issue.Ald. Thomas Allen (38th), chairman of the City Council's Transportation Committee, strongly suggested last week that he would not allow a vote on the measure sponsored by Ald. Madeline Haithcock (2nd) that would make a s
Source: Washington Times
March 30, 2006
A Japanese court tossed out a lawsuit filed against the government and two companies by former World War II Chinese slave laborers. The laborers said they were forced by the Japanese government to work in mines there, the Kyodo News Agency reports.
Judge Keiji Suda of the Fukuoka Disrict Court dismissed the charges Wednesday because although it was illegal, the crimes took place during the Meiji authority and the current government is not responsible.
Source: WaPo
March 30, 2006
The South Korean government Thursday sharply denounced Japan for "whitewashing, distorting and glorifying" its militarist past after Japanese officials ordered a series of controversial new changes to high school textbooks.The unusually harsh protest centered on the disclosure this week that Japan's Education Ministry requested revisions to 55 textbooks in an effort to avoid student "misunderstandings." The revised books clearly label disputed territories
Source: NYT
March 29, 2006
On March 6, at the New School in New York, Michael Kimmelman, The Times's chief art critic, moderated a discussion about antiquities and their provenance. He opened by delving into the topic of the Euphronios krater, a 2,500-year-old Greek bowl that the Metropolitan Museum of Art has recently agreed to return to Italy.
For excerpts click on the Source link above.
Source: NYT
March 29, 2006
Georgia is about to become the first state to approve the use of the Bible as a textbook in public schools.
On Monday, the State Senate passed a bill providing money to high schools that offer elective classes in the Bible, and setting specific guidelines for those classes. The bill was approved by Georgia's House of Representatives last week.
Gov. Sonny Perdue is expected to sign the law.
Source: BBC News
March 28, 2006
Greek archaeologists say they have unearthed the remains of a 13th Century BC palace linked to the legendary warrior-king Ajax. In Homer's classic tale The Iliad the Achaean hero Ajax the Great fought duels with Hector in the Trojan War. The Mycenaean-era complex found on the small island of Salamis near Athens covers about 750 sq m (8,070 sq ft).
The chief archaeologist said it was a rare case where a palace could be attributed to a famous Homeric hero.
Source: LAT
March 29, 2006
The two unmarked metal bins sitting in a storage lot in Los Angeles' garment district hold artifacts from one of the most shocking events in modern American history: equipment and fixtures from the pantry where Robert F. Kennedy was fatally wounded June 5, 1968.
The 29 items from the now-demolished Ambassador Hotel, including chandelier lights, wainscoting and the ice machine behind which assassin Sirhan Sirhan may have hid, face an uncertain fate.Are the
Source: cronaca.com
March 29, 2006
Kurt Werner Schaechter is attempting to pressure the French national railway to acknowledge its role in shipping Jews to Nazi death camps. He's meeting resistance (sorry for the pun).
Source: BBC
March 28, 2006
Caspar Weinberger was the powerhouse behind the huge expansion of US military strength during the presidency of Ronald Reagan.
A confident Cold War warrior, he was defence secretary from the start of Reagan's presidency in January 1981 until he resigned in November 1987. He got Congress to approve major defence spending increases that financed the modernisation of US forces with new missiles - including the Trident D5 - and aircraft.
H
Source: Der Spiegel
March 29, 2006
For years, the factory which manufactured the Auschwitz ovens has been sinking into disrepair. Now, though, a movement is afoot to save the site. It's a battle against time, vandalism and entropy.The factory, just 15 minutes by foot from the city center of Erfurt in former East Germany, used to belong to the company Topf & Söhne. but for almost 10 years now, it has been left to the skaters, to the sprayers, and to the elements. Walls have collapsed, roofs have cave
Source: NYT
March 28, 2006
Flu researchers know the epidemic of 1918 all too well.
It was the worst infectious disease epidemic ever, killing more Americans in just a few months than died in World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam Wars combined. Unlike most flu strains, which kill predominantly the very old and the very young, this one — a bird flu, as it turns out — struck young adults in their 20's, 30's and 40's, leaving children orphaned and families without wage earners.
Source: NYT
March 28, 2006
Lyn Nofziger, the cigar-chomping former newspaperman who served as spokesman and strategist for Ronald Reagan in Sacramento and Washington, died of cancer on Monday at his home in Falls Church, Va. He was 81.Nancy Reagan, the former first lady, said: "Lyn was with us from the gubernatorial campaign in 1965 through the early White House days, and Ronnie valued his advice — and good humor — as much as anyone's. I spoke with him just days ago and even though he knew
Source: NYT
March 28, 2006
Last week, Warner Home Video brought out a superb set of Busby Berkeley musicals from the 1930's; this week, Synapse Films is re-releasing in a slightly upgraded version its edition of Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will," by far the most notorious Nazi propaganda film. The coincidence is too suggestive to ignore. Ever since Susan Sontag linked Riefenstahl's Nazi "documentaries" (the films were, in fact, as carefully staged as any Hollywood feature) w
Source: Jewish United Fund Chicago
March 28, 2006
The recent uproar in Latvia over a proposed march by Latvian veterans of the Nazi SS highlighted the ambivalent relationship the Baltic nation has with its World War II behavior. After last year's march -- during which protesters, dressed in striped concentration camp outfits, tried to stop the procession, but were arrested instead -- Latvia received condemnation from the international community --
especially Russia and Israel.
Condemning the march
Source: NYT
March 28, 2006
American intelligence agencies and presidential commissions long ago concluded that Saddam Hussein had no unconventional weapons and no substantive ties to Al Qaeda before the 2003 invasion.
But now, an unusual experiment in public access is giving anyone with a computer a chance to play intelligence analyst and second-guess the government. Under pressure from Congressional Republicans, the director of national intelligence has begun a yearlong proce
Source: NYT
March 28, 2006
A work of prodigious research, "Cobra II" will likely become the benchmark by which other histories of the Iraq invasion are measured. Note the word invasion. Cobra II was the name United States commanders gave the operation to depose Saddam Hussein's regime. It is the story of the planning, execution and immediate aftermath of that invasion that is related by Michael R. Gordon, The New York Times's chief military correspondent, and Bernard E. Trainor, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant
Source: NYT
March 28, 2006
Seattle has a number of older neon signs, including for a car wash and the Post-Intelligencer newspaper. But the giant Wonder Bread sign in the Central area, atop a bakery scheduled for demolition, is one that some residents fear may be sold piecemeal. "These battles over saving something old are proxy battles," said David Brewster, the founder of Town Hall, Seattle's cultural center, who is writing a history of the city since the 1962 World's Fair here. &quo
