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: Chronicle of Higher Education
January 13, 2006
MEXICO'S SUPREME COURT on Wednesday rejected prosecutors' latest attempt to try a former president for genocide in a 1968 massacre of student protesters. A panel of justices upheld a lower court's ruling that the prosecutors did not have enough evidence to justify a trial.
Source: WSJ
January 13, 2006
It is almost an article of religious faith among opponents of the Iraq War that Iraq became a terrorist destination only after the U.S. toppled Saddam Hussein. But what if that's false, and documents from Saddam's own regime show that his government trained thousands of Islamic terrorists at camps inside Iraq before the war?
Sounds like news to us, and that's exactly what is reported this week by Stephen Hayes in the Weekly Standard magazine. Yet the rest of the press has ignored th
Source: Wa Po
January 13, 2006
When the House speaker's job opened up in 1998, Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Calif.) -- a telegenic policy intellectual from the nation's most populous state -- seemed like a logical candidate. Cox certainly thought so. He brooded over his options and mused about a possible run on CNN.
But while Cox was in the studio, J. Dennis Hastert was winning the cloakroom. With powerful backing from Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), Hastert -- a decidedly untelegenic, nuts-and-bolts pol from small-town Illi
Source: Inside Higher Ed
January 13, 2006
In recent days, the public has learned volumes about a now-defunct university group called the Concerned Alumni of Princeton. Founded in 1972 by alumni who were disturbed that Princeton had started to admit women, some members also claimed that the university had lowered its standards to admit more minority students. The group’s membership roster reads like a who’s who of politics, including notables from across party lines.
Alito, a 1972 graduate of Princeton, listed his membership
Source: San Antonio Express-News
January 13, 2006
SAN ANTONIO A bitter dispute over the planned military flyover at Monday's Martin Luther King march has split peace activists, longtime march supporters and East Side community members, and could result in a smaller turnout for what has been the nation's largest MLK march.
Some opponents of the flyover are calling for a boycott of the march, while others plan to attend with bandanas over their mouths and black and yellow ribbons around their arms in a show of protest.
Source: Camille Jackson at tolerance.org
January 12, 2006
This week, as schools prepare to honor one of our country's greatest civil rights heroes, many students will undoubtedly conduct a Google search of Martin Luther King Jr. What they'll find is of the 33.7 million websites related to King, the third listing, martinlutherking.org, is a hate site targeting students and owned by a white supremacist.
Some will not be able to tell the site is full of hateful rhetoric aimed at discrediting King and his legacy, or that one of its goals is t
Source: cronaca.com
January 11, 2006
Greece announced yesterday that a German university intended to return a piece of the Parthenon, increasing pressure on the British Museum to do the same with the Elgin marbles.
According to the Greek culture ministry, Heidelberg University was "disposed" to give back the heel of a male depicted in the frieze which originally adorned the Parthenon.It said the assurance had been given to the Greek prime minister, Kostas Karamanlis, by the un
Source: cronaca.com
January 12, 2006
Mexico to pressure Austria over Aztec relic Mexico plans to press Austria once again to return a centuries old bejewelled feather headdress now in an Austrian museum, Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez said on Thursday.
President Vicente Fox will personally ask for its return at a summit of Latin American and European leaders in Vienna in May if there is no progress before then."If we are still without results at the time of the May meeting in Austria, w
Source: cronaca.com
January 13, 2006
Archaeologists excavating two American Indian burial sites in downtown Miami say they have found hundreds of remains piled in limestone fissures, some of the bones layered in limestone boxes.
"In terms of the rest of Florida, we've never seen anything that's been the same," said state archaeologist Ryan Wheeler. "It's a very unusual mode of burial". . .
The remains, about five centuries old, are likely those of ancestors of the Tequesta tribe that me
Source: BBC News
January 12, 2006
A diplomatic hideaway in the south of England, scene of decades of international deals, is marking its 60th anniversary - quietly. You won't find Wilton Park on a map. It has rarely made media headlines. Yet it can claim to have been a nerve centre for global diplomacy for 60 years.
Some would claim it has changed the course of history.
What is it? A country house in a rambling estate near Brighton on England's south-east coast.
Source: Haaretz
January 13, 2006
It will be the most important Jewish history museum in Europe, and it will be located in the most sensitive spot: The museum for the history of Polish Jewry will be built where the Warsaw Ghetto used to stand.Three weeks ago, the project director, Jerzy Halbersztadt, sent the master plan for the museum to a group of historians. The recipients undertook, in writing, not to share it with anyone.
On Thursday, they all gathered at Tel Aviv University: Halbersztadt a
Source: NYT
January 13, 2006
President Bush's ordering the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants contradicts a long evolution toward the secrecy of communications. Centuries ago, people in England, France and the German states fought for the right to send letters without their being opened by the "black chambers" of absolutist monarchs. Martin Luther, whose letters had been opened by the Duke of Saxony, raged that "a thief is a thief, whether he is a money thief or a letter thief
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 13, 2006
A plan to build a motorway beside the hill where ancient Celtic kings were crowned has been challenged in court as campaigners fight to save a monument described by W B Yeats as the "most consecrated spot in Ireland".
The Irish government's proposal to build a new commuter route for Dublin through the valley containing the Hill of Tara has infuriated archaeologists, historians and conservationists.The battle, which has been depicted as a conflict betwe
Source: Watertown Tab and Press (Watertown, MA)
January 13, 2006
A concerned group of Armenian-Americans has filed a motion to intervene in a lawsuit concerning the state's curriculum and teaching of the
1915 deportation and murder of 1.5 million Armenians from Turkey during World War I.
Controversy swirls around the event as people argue whether or not it constitutes genocide.The maternal 98-year-old grandmother of Geri Lyn Ajemian, director of Instructional Services at Marlborough Public Schools, is a descendant of t
Source: KTVN Reno
January 13, 2006
Eighty-One members of the so-called Donner Party got trapped in the Sierra Nevada during the brutal winter of 1846. Some of them did resort to cannibalism to stay alive, but new research concludes none of the actual members of the two Donner families ate any human flesh. They were among 21 people who were stuck six miles away because of a broken wagon axle.
A report at a California conference of the Society for Historical Archaeology says no cooked human bones were found at the site
Source: PR Newswire
January 13, 2006
The automobile celebrates its 120th birthday on January 29. On this date in 1886, Karl Benz applied for a patent for his "vehicle with gas engine operation." Patent DRP 37435 for the
Benz Patent Motor Car granted in November of the same year is regarded as the birth certificate of the automobile. In later years the Benz organization and the company formed by fellow automotive pioneer Gottlieb Daimler would merge to form Daimler-Benz. Karl Benz is, therefore, credited as co-found
Source: CNN
January 13, 2006
They both painted a black, working-class woman named Fanny Eaton, making her one of the most painted black women of the Victorian period. The portraits are all on display at the Manchester Art Gallery where the Black Victorians exhibition explores the presence of people of African descent in 19th century British art, opening a fresh perspective on what it was like to be black at the time. With more than 100 works of art in a wide range of media from paintings to sculpture, p
Source: Dominion Post (New Zealand)
January 13, 2006
A decade after nuclear testing ended at Fangataufa and Mururoa atolls, the French cone of silence remains firmly in place, as Polynesian politician Tea Hirshon has found. "They are traditionally non-cooperative, and they are also covering up some stuff."
As head of a commission of inquiry set up to examine the effects of nuclear testing, Ms Hirshon will formally table its report in the Territorial Assembly in Papeete on January 26. She says the report does not make any rad
Source: Reuters
January 12, 2006
Mehmet Ali Agca, the man who shot and wounded Pope John Paul II in 1981, was released from a Turkish jail on Thursday after serving more than a quarter of a century behind bars. "Agca is now a free man. After 26 years Agca is now getting wet in the rain," his lawyer Mustafa Demirbag told Reuters.But Turkish Justice Minister Cemil Cicek said he would appeal Agca's release and the 48-year-old former right-wing gangster could be jailed again for the 1979 murder of lib
Source: Sports Illustrated
January 12, 2006
Having previously laid dubious claims to being the birthplace of soccer and the Japanese martial art of judo, the Chinese have now added golf to their list of inventions.
Scotland has always been considered as the traditional home of golf since the 15th century but now, according to The Scotsman, a Chinese academic has claimed that golf was played among the noble classes in China some 500 years earlier. Professor Ling Hongling of Lanzhou University says he has u
