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: Reuters
September 22, 2005
Move over, Mona Lisa. If Carlo Pedretti's hunch is right, the world may soon have another Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece to admire.
A stunningly beautiful painting called Mary Magdalene which the world-class art historian suspects may have been painted by Leonardo da Vinci together with one of his pupils will soon go on public view for the first time in more than half a century.The painting, measuring 58 cm by 45 cm, was believed to have been painted in 1515, fou
Source: LA Times
September 23, 2005
A court Thursday ordered the cancellation of a conference where Turkish academics were expected to challenge the official version of the events surrounding the mass deaths among this nation's Armenians during and after World War I.A court Thursday ordered the cancellation of a conference where Turkish academics were expected to challenge the official version of the events surrounding the mass deaths among this nation's Armenians during and after World War I.
The
Source: Independent (UK)
September 22, 2005
Simon Wiesenthal died this week, peacefully in his sleep, at the age of 96. Wiesenthal was one of that generation of European Jewry decimated by the "final solution" of Adolf Hitler in which 11 million people were exterminated, six million of them Jews. And if the horror of such genocide is blunted rather than sharpened by such huge numbers, consider this: Simon Wiesenthal lost 89 members of his family in the Holocaust. Among them were his mother, whom the young architect had watched b
Source: Seattle Times
September 22, 2005
A sea wall rising 16 feet above the glistening Gulf of Mexico stands as a reminder of the 1900 hurricane that killed 8,000 residents and destroyed this island, transforming it from booming ship port to a place where tourists remember the past.
A town that for so long has commemorated its destruction — the local "Great Storm" Theater regularly plays 30 minutes of images, writings and sounds of the 1900 hurricane, its aftermath and rebuilding — was preparing to relive it.
Source: AP
September 22, 2005
A new committee will oversee the creation of a monument honoring slaves kept by George Washington at the first presidential mansion in Philadelphia, just steps from where the Liberty Bell now hangs, officials announced Thursday.
The committee, made up of historians, community activists and representatives of congressional leaders, will seek public input for the memorial and select its final design. The project is expected to be completed by July 4, 2007."Th
Source: NYT
September 22, 2005
President Bush on Wednesday for the first time linked the American response to terrorism and its response to Hurricane Katrina, declaring that the United States is emerging a stronger nation from both challenges, and saying that terrorists look at the storm's devastation "and wish they had caused it."
Mr. Bush's speech, at a luncheon for the Republican Jewish Coalition, appeared to be part of a White House strategy to restore the luster of strong leadership that Mr. Bush e
Source: BBC
September 22, 2005
Award-winning and radical film director Ken Loach's latest film in production is about the Irish War of Independence and Civil War - and it is likely to ignite intense debate about a brutal period in Irish history.Loach has returned to Ireland to film The Wind that Shakes the Barley, a historical drama set in the Irish War of Independence and Civil War.
The period has filled plenty of history books in the 80 years since, and was given the blockbuster treatment
Source: Washington Post
September 22, 2005
The House voted Thursday to let Head Start centers consider religion when hiring workers, overshadowing its moves to strengthen the preschool program's academics and finances.
The Republican-led House approved a bill that lets churches and other faith-based preschool centers hire only people who share their religion, yet still receive federal tax dollars. Democrats blasted that idea as discriminatory.
Launched in the 1960s, the nearly $7 billion Head Start program provi
Source: zaman.com
September 22, 2005
The History Foundation is being accused of abandoning the historical buildings, which it took over control of in 1995 for 49 years, to decay.
The buildings where the palace artists served during the Ottoman era are said to be about to collapse because of neglect. Other allegations have surfaced about the Foundation as the buildings, including the transformer stations that provide electricity to museums in Topkapi Palace, are dangerous for both life and pro
Source: Washington Post
September 22, 2005
The Pentagon has no accurate knowledge of the cost of military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan or the fight against terrorism, limiting Congress's ability to oversee spending, the Government Accountability Office concluded in a report released yesterday.
The Defense Department has reported spending $191 billion to fight terrorism from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks through May 2005, with the annual sum ballooning from $11 billion in fiscal 2002 to a projected $71 billion in fiscal 2005
Source: Inside Higher Ed
September 22, 2005
Three years ago,The Harvard Crimson broke a story about a troubling series of events that had occurred on campus ... more than 80 years earlier. After months of effort, student reporters had received access to a set of documents cataloged in the university archives under the intriguingly vague heading “Secret Court Files, 1920.” The dossier was massive and, even after so many years, shocking. It contained 500 pages of correspondence and memoranda from an inquiry conducted to investigate a gay so
Source: Campus Watch
September 22, 2005
Alyssa A. Lappen, writing for Campus Watch, argues in a new article that the Macarthur Foundation has given millions of dollars to scholars with an anti-Israel bias.Her article:In its 2004 annual report, the John T. and Catherine D. MacArthur Foundation notes that it has"invested more than $400 million in pursuing a more secure world." After the Cold War, the foundation
Source: Baltimore Sun
September 22, 2005
In his eloquent autobiography, Olaudah Equiano describes in gripping detail his boyhood in Africa, his capture by slave traders and the hellish Middle Passage voyage in a slave ship across the Atlantic. The book became a sensation in 18th-century Britain and greatly aided that nation's abolition movement. But now a book written by a scholar at the University of Maryland, College Park says Equiano was almost certainly born in South Carolina, not Africa. And the vivid account of Equiano's boyhood
Source: NYT
September 22, 2005
The International Freedom Center, a proposed museum that is facing expulsion from ground zero under pressure from angry relatives of 9/11 victims, will make a forceful new appeal today to stay at the World Trade Center site.
The museum's decision to stand firm would force the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and Gov. George E. Pataki to make a tough choice. They could either infuriate hundreds of impassioned relatives of those who died, or alienate influential cultural, acade
Source: USA Today
September 21, 2005
The grandsons of World War II leaders Josef Stalin, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill will debate global politics 60 years after their grandfathers' historic meeting at the Yalta Conference.The debate is set for Oct. 1 to mark the opening of a graduate studies program in governance at the University of Maastricht, organizers said Wednesday.
At the Yalta Conference, held in the resort town of then-Soviet Ukraine in February 1945
Source: NYT
September 21, 2005
The Pentagon said Tuesday that it had blocked several military officers and intelligence analysts from testifying at an open Congressional hearing about a highly classified intelligence program that, the officers have said, identified a ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks as a potential terrorist a year before the attacks.
The officers and intelligence analysts had been scheduled to testify on Wednesday about the program, known as Able Danger, at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Com
Source: NYT
September 21, 2005
Angry over other Anglican churches' tolerance of homosexuality, the Anglican Church of Nigeria has deleted from its Constitution all references to "the See of Canterbury," the British "mother" church that links Anglican churches worldwide into a global communion.
Source: Washington Post
September 21, 2005
The chief prosecutor for the U.N. tribunal for Balkans war crimes has said that a Roman Catholic monastery in Croatia is sheltering a fugitive Croatian general charged with atrocities against Serb civilians and that the Vatican has refused pleas to help find him.
Carla Del Ponte of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia told Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper that she did not know the name of the monastery that she believes is giving refuge to the fugitive, A
Source: Washington Post
September 21, 2005
Conservatives on Tuesday honored former Sen. Jesse Helms as a role model whose departure from elected office left a void in Washington.
"You are missed here in this town every single day," Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association said at the event in Arlington, Va.
Helms, a Republican from North Carolina who will turn 84 next month, retired from the Senate in 2003 after serving five terms. He released his memoirs, "Here's Where I Stand,"
Source: Telegraph (UK)
September 17, 2005
With a cry of "Mazeltov" and a Rabbi's congratulatory handshake, hundreds of tribal people from India's north-east were formally converted to Judaism this week after being recognised as descendants of the 10 Lost Tribes exiled from Israel 2,700 years ago.
A rabbinical court, dispatched with the blessing of Israel's Chief Rabbi, travelled 3,500 miles to Mizoram on India's border with Burma to perform the conversions using a Mikvah - ritual bath - built specially for the pur
