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: AP
October 27, 2005
In the days before satellite imaging, wind speed gauges and The Weather Channel, hurricane tracking was the province of plantation owners and ship captains. Plantation diaries and Royal Navy ship logs, along with newspaper clippings and history books, are proving valuable to researchers looking to create a history of Atlantic Coast and Gulf Coast hurricanes that goes back as far as the American Revolution.A comprehensive, historical database could shed more light
Source: Swissinfo
October 27, 2005
In research findings published on Thursday, The Swiss National Science Foundation conlcuded that Switzerland considered trade freedom to be more important than human rights in its dealings with the apartheid regime in South Africa. Military, intelligence service, armaments industry and nuclear relations were closer than previously thought. The Swiss authorities at the time justified their involvement with Pretoria by arguing that South Africa was a bastion against communism. The government refus
Source: Press release issued by the Wyman Institute
October 27, 2005
The government of Jordan has agreed to cancel an antisemitic television series after receiving a letter of protest from 24 American rabbis who had met last month with Jordan's king.The protest was organized by The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies. "During the 1930s, too many Americans were silent in the face of rising antisemitism, with tragic results," said Wyman Institute director Dr. Rafael Medoff. "Our generation must not repeat that e
Source: BBC News
October 26, 2005
King Tutankhamun was a red wine drinker, according to scientists who have been studying residue left in wine pitchers in the ancient pharaoh's tomb. Wine was a luxury drink in ancient Egypt and bottles were labelled with the wine's name, year of harvest, source and even vine grower. Until now the colour of the wine was unknown, as it dried out over time.
Source: BBC
October 26, 2005
An ancient manuscript containing some of the earliest surviving examples of written Welsh is returning to Wales - but only in a digital format. Scholars are divided over whether the St Chad Gospels - or St Teilo Gospels - originated in England or Wales.
The book has been at Lichfield Cathedral for 1,000 years but some claim its rightful home is Llandeilo. The original manuscript is too fragile to be displayed but a digital version will go on permane
Source: CNN
October 26, 2005
A majority would vote for a Democrat over President Bush if an election were held this year, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll released Tuesday.
In the latest poll, 55 percent of the respondents said that they would vote for the Democratic candidate if Bush were again running for the presidency this year.Thirty-nine percent of those interviewed said they would vote for Bush in the hypothetical election.
The latest poll results, released Tuesd
Source: NYT
October 26, 2005
After more than 40 years of searching, an international manhunt for Aribert Heim, a notorious doctor from the Nazi concentration camps and one of the most wanted Nazi war criminals, has zeroed in on a stretch of the Mediterranean coast of Spain, according to Spanish police officials.
Mr. Heim, born in Austria 91 years ago, is accused of torturing and killing hundreds of prisoners at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria in 1941 and 1942. The crimes for which he is sought incl
Source: Wa Po
October 25, 2005
She was the perfect test-case plaintiff, a fact that activists realized only after she had been arrested. Hardworking, polite and morally upright, Parks had long seethed over the everyday indignities of segregation, from the menial rules of bus seating and store entrances to the mortal societal endorsement of lynching and imprisonment.
She was an activist already, secretary of the local chapter of the NAACP. A member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church all her life, Parks admi
Source: NYT
October 26, 2005
Quietly, somberly, people stepped up the stairs of an old bus here on Tuesday and tried to peer back into the life of Rosa Parks, a woman whose seemingly simple trip on the bus five decades ago had, they said, changed their own.
"She showed me that maybe you can change the world, maybe I can change the world," said Tyrone Ashe, one in a stream of visitors to the Henry Ford Museum, where officials say they have on display the very city bus, No. 2857 from Montgomery, Ala., i
Source: Reuters
October 26, 2005
From his cramped studio in a Johannesburg cottage, Nic Buchanan is leading five young African artists to produce a nine-part series of comic books on Mandela's life "to help young people rediscover the correct and proud history of South Africa." Mandela is due to launch the first of the "Madiba Legacy Series" in Johannesburg on Friday. Some 1 million copies of the first book, sponsored by mining group Anglo American, are being shipped to schools and newspapers for free distri
Source: AP
October 25, 2005
The death of Rosa Parks underscores that the generation responsible for the key victories of the civil rights movement is fading into history, leaving its survivors with the challenge of keeping the movement's memory and work alive even as today's youth often seem disengaged."As people get older and people pass, it becomes more and more difficult to have that sort of firsthand knowledge" of the fight for integration, said U.S. Rep. John Lewis (news, bio
Source: OneWorld
October 25, 2005
Leading civil rights groups in the United States are urging legislators not to make any retrogressive changes in the law that protects minorities' right to vote and prohibits discriminatory practices in the electoral process.
Their call comes amid a series of hearings being held by the U.S. Congress this week on the future of the historic Voting Rights Act that is due to expire a year before the next presidential election takes place in 2008. Codified by legisla
Source: NYT
October 25, 2005
They agree on the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s place in history. They agree on his important connection to their town, one of the first places he uttered the words "I have a dream."
What the residents of Rocky Mount, N.C., cannot seem to agree on is the shape of Dr. King's ears or the size of his feet.The town, 50 miles east of Raleigh, has already taken down one $56,000 statute of Dr. King and may soon vote to jettison one by a differ
Source: Detroit Free Press
October 25, 2005
This mild-mannered black woman refused to give up her seat on a city bus so a white man could sit down.
Jim Crow laws had met their match.
Parks' refusal infused 50,000 blacks in Montgomery with the will to walk rather than risk daily humiliation on the city's buses. In one of her last lengthy interviews with the Detroit Free Press in 1995, she spoke of what she would like people to say about her after she passed away.
"I'
Source: BBC
October 25, 2005
Academics are involved in a major translation project which could shed new light on the history of Ireland in the 17th century. The scholars from the University of Ulster's Magee campus in Londonderry are translating a record of life in Ireland in the 1640s from Latin into modern English.
It has been compiled from the correspondence of Catholic clergyman Giovanni Baptist Rinuccini, who was sent to Ireland as the representative of Pope Innocent X. Ac
Source: CNN
October 25, 2005
A body believed to be that of a World War II airman, found frozen in the Sierra Nevada, arrived Monday in Hawaii for identification, officials said.
The body in an Army uniform was discovered earlier this month mostly encased in a glacier in Kings Canyon National Park.
Source: Ananova
October 25, 2005
Brothels along Hamburg's famous Reeperbahn had to be evacuated when construction workers dug up a 277 pound WWII bomb.
Hundreds of prostitutes and their clients were forced to leave the area which was cordoned off by German police after a digger driver unearthed the explosive during construction work. One disappointed client reportedly asked police: "Can you not just wait a couple of minutes?"
Source: AP
October 25, 2005
Risking a possible clash with the Senate, President Bush insisted Monday he will not turn over documents detailing the private advice that Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers has given him while serving in the White House.
With Miers' nomination facing continued opposition from conservatives, Bush sidestepped a question of whether the White House was working on a contingency plan for her withdrawal. At the same time, he was emphatic about not turning over papers relating to the &quo
Source: NYT
October 24, 2005
Rosa Parks, a black seamstress whose refusal to relinquish her seat to a white man on a city bus in Montgomery, Ala., almost 50 years ago grew into a mythic event that helped touch off the civil rights movement of the 1950's and 1960's, died yesterday in Detroit. She was 92 years old.
Her death was confirmed by Dennis W. Archer, the former mayor of Detroit.
For her act of defiance, Mrs. Parks was arrested, convicted of violating the segregation laws and fined $10. In r
Source: Irish Times
October 24, 2005
EU relations with Poland may be heading for difficulty after the conservative, EU-critical mayor of Warsaw, Lech Kaczynski, came from behind to be elected president last night.
His campaign turned dirty last week as he cranked up anti-German rhetoric in an attempt to win votes of older Poles with memories of the second World War. Mr Kaczynski published a report claiming that the Nazis caused damage worth at least EUR 45 billion during the occupation and destruction of the Polish capital.
