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.
August 9, 2005
The American Political Science Association has announced that it will relocate its 2006 meeting to Philadelphia to avoid a labor dispute affecting hotels in San Francisco. The same labor problem has prompted other scholarly groups -- including the American Educational Research Association just last week -- to move their meetings as well.
"The current and future labor disputes compromise the association's ability to do the advanced planning needed for the 2006 meeting," ac
August 8, 2005
David Meir Levy, a historian interviewed by Israel National Radio’s Tovia Singer, says that competition between Catholic France and Protestant Britain for influence in the Middle East, beginning around the time of Napoleon, ultimately gave Zionism a foothold in Israel that led to the creation of the Jewish State.http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=87335
August 8, 2005
As thousands prepare to gather in Hiroshima today to remember the 60th anniversary of the nuclear destruction of that city, one memorial to the atomic bomb is increasingly forgotten.
The Hiroshima murals, a series of folding-screen panels depicting victims of the bomb painted over 30 years, are drawing fewer and fewer visitors.
The Maruki gallery that houses the horrific artwork, painted by a couple who visited Hiroshima immediately after the attack, has fallen on hard
August 8, 2005
Author Kenzaburo Oe and publishing firm Iwanami Shoten were sued for libel Friday over a passage in a book Oe wrote and in two other books that said two officers in the Imperial Japanese Army ordered residents in Okinawa Prefecture to commit mass suicide during World War II.
The suit was filed with the Osaka District Court by Yutaka Umezawa, 88, a former major in the Imperial Japanese Army, and the 72-year-old younger brother of Yoshitsugu Akamatsu, a deceased former captain in the
August 8, 2005
No one at Hanford Engineer Works knew they were making history.
There were signs, but all told them to keep quiet. They were told they were serving their country and furthering the war effort.
But they were curious.
Why were they -- thousands of men and women -- converting an isolated Central Washington farming community into a bustling industrial complex, virtually overnight? Where were trucks and railcars filled with tons of precious steel and aluminum
August 8, 2005
IT was a national scandal, the first of its kind. A senior C.I.A. officer was exposed in the United States press by a "high official source." The story shot from newspaper to newspaper. The officer lost his job and went into hiding.
Six days later, with a conservative Republican leading the charge, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee grilled the secretary of defense, demanding a point-by-point refutation of the anonymous charges against the officer in the news media. Th
August 8, 2005
Thousands of people marched down Martin Luther King Jr. Drive on Saturday to mark the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, in an event organized by the Rev. Jesse Jackson and attended by lawmakers and celebrities, including Stevie Wonder, Willie Nelson and Harry Belafonte.
But the mood was more cautionary than celebratory, with speaker after speaker warning in a rally after the march that the law may not be renewed by Congress when some of its critical provisions expire in 20
August 8, 2005
HIROSHIMA, Japan, Aug. 6 - At 8:15 a.m. Saturday, as tens of thousands of Japanese bowed their heads here to mark the instant when an atomic bomb fell 60 years ago, only the loud, telltale buzz of the summer cicadas broke the respectful silence.
In an hourlong ceremony at the Peace Memorial Park, participants, as in previous years, laid wreaths, burned incense, prayed for the souls of the dead, and gave impassioned pleas for world peace and the abolition of nuclear arms. Few in Hiro
August 8, 2005
ONE soldier fought off scores of elite Iraqi troops in a fierce defense of his outnumbered Army unit, saving dozens of American lives before he himself was killed. Another soldier helped lead a team that killed 27 insurgents who had ambushed her convoy. And then there was the marine who, after being shot, managed to tuck an enemy grenade under his stomach to save the men in his unit, dying in the process.
Their names are Sgt. First Class Paul R. Smith, Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester and Sgt.
August 6, 2005
Hiroshima wasn't uniquely wicked. It was part of a policy for the mass killing of civilians, writes
Geoffrey Wheatcroft in the Guardian.
During the recent Kosovo "war", a French officer asked bitterly if this was to be the first war in history in which only civilians were killed, and yet we had long since begun to go down just that road. It is sobering to compare the 300,000 British uniformed servicemen who died in 1939-45 with the 600,000 German civilians killed
August 6, 2005
On Aug. 8, 1945 -- a week before Japan's surrender in World War II -- 1.5 million Soviet troops launched a massive surprise attack against Japanese occupation forces in northern China and Korea, an area the size of Western Europe. Within days, Tokyo's million-man army in the region had collapsed in one of the greatest military defeats in history.
''It was a massive campaign and a crushing blow for Japan which was already in a bad way after fighting for almost four years in the Pacif
August 5, 2005
A clamor always seems to accompany any mention in Memphis, the city where ML KIng Jr. was shot and killed, of Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, the cavalryman whose outnumbered men whipped the Yankees at Brice's Crossroads in northern Mississippi.
He was not just any Confederate hero. After the war, he returned to Memphis and, in 1867, became the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
Today, Memphis is a city on the move. It has a new downtown basketball arena and minor-lea
August 5, 2005
A few months ago, a team of Iran's Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization (ICHTO) who were studying documents from Iranian churches for international registration, discovered some skeletons in Saint Stepanos Church, located in the northeastern province of East Azarbaijan.
Following the recent discovery, Iran's Armenian Archbishop talked of the possibility of their belonging to John the Baptist. "Most probably the discovered remains are of great historical value," said
August 5, 2005
The rusty iron coffin stubbornly resisted hammer and chisel as researchers in a warm Smithsonian laboratory tried to get a glimpse of an American who lived more than 150 years ago. An electric drill finally freed the lid.
"This is a person and we want to tell this person's story. She is our primary obligation," anthropologist Doug Owsley said as the lid was lifted on a young body wrapped in a brown shroud.
The scientists hope to identify the remains so they ca
August 5, 2005
Bob Dylan's song Like a Rolling Stone has topped a poll of rock and film stars to find the music, movies, TV shows and books that changed the world.
The 1965 single beat Elvis Presley's Heartbreak Hotel into second place in the survey for Uncut magazine. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/4747739.stm
August 5, 2005
Thousands of Croats in the town of Knin have celebrated the 10th anniversary of a Croatian offensive which crushed a breakaway Serb republic in the region.
Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader, attending a military parade, said the Operation Storm offensive in 1995 was magnificent and liberating.
But Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic said the anniversary was tragic and should not be celebrated.
August 5, 2005
A "mummy" that duped archaeologists and nearly sparked a diplomatic row between Pakistan and Iran is finally being laid to rest.
Discovered in a wooden sarcophagus in October 2000, the mummy was thought to be Persian and date to about 600BC.
Iran laid claim to the sarcophagus and Pakistani provinces squabbled over it until tests showed the "mummy" was a fake only a few decades old.
August 5, 2005
The Japanese city of Hiroshima is preparing to mark the anniversary of the atomic bomb explosion above the city 60 years ago on Saturday.
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will attend the annual commemoration in the city's Peace Park, to mark the moment the bomb fell.
Around 140,000 people were killed by the blast and its aftermath.
Many commentators believe the attack helped bring an early end to World War II in the Pacific.
Hirosh
August 5, 2005
In 1857, Indian soldiers turned on their British rulers in a mutiny that led to an unprecedented wave of violence across the country. Is it really a good subject for a musical?
"For too long, we have rusted in the service of foreign masters. All it takes is a bit of grease to remind us who we are." So declares Mangal Pandey in The Rising, an epic new film about the so-called Indian Mutiny of 1857. Mangal is a sepoy , a private in the British army. New Enfield rifles have j
August 5, 2005
Scientists love to dig up old bones and medical records to reassess the health of historical figures. At the University of Maryland School of Medicine's annual Clinicopathological Conference, docs have proposed diagnoses for everyone from Alexander the Great (typhoid fever complicated by Guillain-Barre syndrome) to Beethoven (syphilis), Christopher Columbus (severe arthritis caused by an infection) and Florence Nightingale (bipolar and posttraumatic stress disorders).
There isn't al
