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: Globe and Mail
September 29, 2005
Danish archeologists have found the well-preserved skeletal remains of an Iron Age woman while excavating a 1,600-year-old grave in a suburb of Copenhagen. The woman, believed to be between 20 and 40 when she died, probably lived around the year AD 400, Tom Giersing of the Kroppedal Museum in Taastrup said Wednesday in announcing the find.
Source: Los Angeles Times
September 27, 2005
It happened in secret, details of what was destroyed have not been made public, and the initial reaction of Protestant unionists showed that huge elements of doubt and distrust remain.
But an independent international commission and two clergymen certified Monday that the Irish Republican Army had turned over the bullets, guns, blasting caps, bombs and plastic explosives that kept much of Britain on edge for more than 35 years.It happened in secret, details of w
Source: Jerusalem Post
September 28, 2005
A First-Temple period seal has been discovered amidst piles of rubble from Jerusalem's Temple Mount, an Israeli archaeologist said Tuesday, in what could prove to be an historic find.
The small - less than 1 cm - seal impression, or bulla, discovered Tuesday by Bar-Ilan University archaeologist Dr. Gabriel Barkay amidst piles of rubble from the Temple Mount would mark the first time that an written artifact was found from the Temple Mount dating back to the First Temple period.
Source: CNN
September 28, 2005
State legislators across the country are increasingly directing their schools to teach students more about the struggles and triumphs of different races and ethnic groups -- a move critics say amounts to politically correct meddling.In the latest such example, a new commission in New York will examine whether the "physical and psychological terrorism" against Africans in the slave trade is being adequately taught in schools. The commission is named for the sl
Source: Secrecy News, the newsletter written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists
September 28, 2005
Bipartisan legislation introduced in the Senate this week would permit television coverage of open sessions of the U.S. Supreme Court."The purpose of this legislation is to open the Supreme Court doors so that more Americans can see the process by which the Court reaches critical decisions of law that affect this country and everyday Americans," said Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
"Justice Felix Frankf
Source: NYT
September 28, 2005
Senator Robert C. Byrd, a Democrat whose political career has spanned seven decades, announced on Tuesday that he would seek a record ninth term.
"I have the best job in America because I represent you, the people of West Virginia. And I want to keep this job," Mr. Byrd, 87, told several hundred supporters who packed the Capitol Rotunda.Mr. Byrd served three terms in the House before winning his Senate seat in 1958. He will turn 88 in Novem
Source: Wa Po
September 28, 2005
In many ways, today's scandals echo many of the issues that Democrats ran into prior to the GOP revolution of 1994. Corruption and scandal engulfed Democrats, leading to the demise of the party that year. Dan Rostenkowski was indicted on corruption charges and later resigned his chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee. Five years earlier, House Speaker Jim Wright resigned in an ethics scandal. That same year, another powerful congressman, Tony Coehlo of California, resigned amid allegations
Source: NYT
September 28, 2005
Frozen in time, hidden for hundreds of years beneath one church, and then another, are what Egyptian antiquity officials say are the oldest monastic cells ever discovered, dating to the fourth century. They are so well preserved it is as if someone just lifted off the roof. The discovery was made by Father Maximous, a Coptic monk, who for 27 years has made his home inside the walls of St. Anthony's Monastery, a fortress of Christianity 100 miles southeast of Cairo that
Source: LAT
September 25, 2005
NO MATTER WHAT ALL the politicians and activists want, African Americans and impoverished white Cajuns will not be first in line to rebuild the Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast and New Orleans. Latino immigrants, many of them undocumented, will. And when they're done, they're going to stay, making New Orleans look like Los Angeles. It's the federal government that will have made the transformation possible, further exposing the hollowness of the immigration debate.President
Source: Wa Po
September 25, 2005
For decades, scholars have sought to answer this bloody question: Why has the murder rate been disproportionally high in the South for more than a century? Some argue it's the weather -- hot, steamy conditions setting tempers on edge and provoking deadly violence. Others blame widespread poverty and illiteracy. Still others fault a so-called southern "code of honor" that requires any slight to be avenged.
Now three sociologists have found an additional explanation: lynchin
Source: NYT
September 27, 2005
The $5 million exhibition, "Slavery in New York," will open to the public on Oct. 7. The show is potentially controversial. Steven H. Jaffe, a former senior projects historian at the society who worked on plans for a show on slavery beginning in 2001 but was later dismissed with other staff members, said the society had"gotten really fine scholars on this subject as advisers." He added:"But the question is how the black communities in and around New York are going to respond when an in
Source: NYT
September 27, 2005
Two TV networks are preparing films about Pope John Paul II. ABC's stars a German; CBS's features Jon Voight. As it happens, two American television networks - ABC and CBS - had the same idea about the same time. Both movies are planned for this season, although no broadcast dates have yet been announced. ABC's "Have No Fear: The Life of John Paul II" will run two hours; CBS's mini-series version, with Mr. Voight, has the working title of "Pope John Paul II" and will run four
Source: David McNeill, Tokyo-based journalist,, writing for Japan Focus
September 24, 2005
Nagase Takashi tortured British POWs during the building of the Thai-Burma railway. He has spent his life since trying to make amends and wants the railway declared a UN World Heritage Site before he dies. Nagase Takashi still breaks down when he remembers the young British man he helped torture. “I couldn’t bear his pain,” he says, choking back tears. “He was crying Mother! Mother! And I thought: what she would feel if she could see her son like this. I still dream ab
Source: Newsletter of the American Revolution Round Table
September 27, 2005
This summer, a story in the Style Section of the Washington Post reported on Christa Allen, who was trying to sell two hairs supposedly snipped from the dead George Washington's head. But so far: no sale. Secured under glass in a gold locket, the hairs were left to her by her father, a Philadelphia lawyer. Unfortunately, he had no proof that the hairs belonged to the father of the country. A desperate search of their ancestral home in Langhorne, Pa, finally produced documen
Source: Christian Science Monitor
September 27, 2005
Teams of archivists are rushing to the Gulf Coast on an urgent mission to recover priceless records damaged by Katrina.When two feet of water flooded the basement of the New Orleans courthouse a month ago, archivist Stephen Bruno faced a huge problem. All the books on the bottom shelves were wet. He knew the soggy volumes, containing important public records, must be put in freezers to halt the growth of mold until they could be dried out.
"I ma
Source: Scotsman
September 27, 2005
Archaeologists in Austria have discovered the bodies of two Ice Age babies, estimated to be 27,000 years old. Buried in 18ft of earth, the preservation of the skeletons is said to be "near perfect". They were buried beneath the shoulder blade of a hairy mammoth on a hillside overlooking the Danube, in northern Austria, near Krems. It is the first time that a grave of babies from the Ice Age has been discovered, according to Christine Neugebauer-Maresch, the dig leader.
Source: Reuters
September 26, 2005
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told a group of Japanese business leaders in Beijing on Monday that Japan should study history more, Kyodo news agency said, comments that come at a time of chilly bilateral ties. Despite growing economic links, Sino-Japanese relations have been frayed in recent years by a host of issues, at the core of which are disputes stemming from what China perceives as Japan's failure to atone for its wartime past.
Wen, however, made no r
Source: NYT
September 27, 2005
Just 45 minutes from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, half an hour from the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton and two blocks from the Inventors Hall of Fame in this city's downtown is an attraction like no other. Where else but at the Archives of the History of American Psychology can visitors see the uniforms and billy clubs used in the Stanford Prison Experiment, in which students ended up acting the role of guards all too realistically; watch a home movie of Freud bat
Source: Salon
September 27, 2005
Kennedys don't cry -- that was dynasty founder Joe Kennedy's famous dictum. Nor do they spill their guts. For more than four decades, family members have maintained a stoic front through assassinations, scandals, fatal accidents and the other ordeals collectively known as the Kennedy Curse. There was something heroic in the Kennedys' stony embrace of their fate, particularly in this age of compulsive confessionalism. But over the years it has also trapped the family in a bell jar of morbid celeb
Source: USA Today
September 27, 2005
The fort that protected the swift-flowing St. Lawrence River through three of America's pivotal early wars is again engaged in battle. This time the struggle is between the world's largest oil company, Exxon-Mobil, and a local non-profit group that says it has been stalled and stymied for more than four years in its attempt to build a life-size replica of the Abbe Francois Picquet's 1749 Fort LaPresentation on Lighthouse Point. The 26-acre site is heavily contami
