Breaking News
Follow Breaking News updates on RSS and Twitter
This page features brief excerpts of news 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.
Highlights
Breaking News
This page features brief excerpts of news 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. Because most of our readers read the NYT we usually do not include the paper's stories in HIGHLIGHTS.
Name of source: NYT
SOURCE: NYT (8-17-05)
Once, as the chief of the Department for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue, Mr. Qalamuddin, a Muslim cleric, was the notorious face of Taliban-era moral policing. It was his men who cruised through town ordering the floggings of women who did not cover themselves from head to toe, or of men who dared shave their beards.
SOURCE: NYT (8-16-05)
The high court upheld a decision by the Santiago Appeals Court in favour of the ailing ex-dictator, 89, who ruled with an iron fist from 1973-1990. But it is only one of dozens of investigations he faces.
SOURCE: NYT (8-17-05)
The main purpose of the inquiry is to explore the Canadian role in the case of Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian who has emerged as perhaps the most infamous example of the United States policy of rendition, the transfer of terrorism suspects to other nations for interrogations.
SOURCE: NYT (9-11-05)
"The balance of power is not being maintained in America today," said Mr. Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania. "The Supreme Court is interpreting the Constitution in derogation of Congressional authority."
The clash between a headstrong chairman of the Judiciary Committee and an assertive bench is just the kind of moment the museum might explore. Outside its walls, constitutional fissures are deep, growing and bound for public view as the Senate convenes its first hearings in 11 years on a Supreme Court nominee. And standing among the exhibits on fissures past, Mr. Specter announced a plan to make the hearings "a forum to, in effect, take on the court."
Agreeing to a reporter's request for a tour, Mr. Specter, who helped get $65 million in federal financing for the museum and whose wife, Joan, now works as a fund-raiser there, rang various constitutional alarms, including the treatment of foreign prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and the jailing of Judith Miller, a New York Times reporter he recently visited in Virginia, where she is serving a sentence for refusing to reveal a confidential source to a grand jury.
SOURCE: NYT (9-16-05)
Saturday is the first annual Constitution Day, and Mr. Byrd's law is focusing considerable attention on the document.
Millions of new copies have been printed, and readings and discussion are scheduled at the National Archives, thousands of schools and universities, and even many technical institutes unaccustomed to constitutional debate.
A massage school in Michigan will test students on the Constitution, and students at a cosmetology school in Philadelphia will watch a taped lecture by two Supreme Court justices.
Congress's decision to mandate lessons on the Constitution for every school, however, has also brought forth voices of dismay. The 10th Amendment leaves education to the states, and Congress has rarely dictated what the nation's schools must teach.
Some people fear that Mr. Byrd's initiative has opened the door for lawmakers to mandate other lesson plans, like requiring science teachers to include intelligent design alongside evolution.
SOURCE: NYT (9-15-05)
But salt itself is not preserved. Time and water wash it away, so solid archaeological evidence of salt production has rarely been discovered.
Now, researchers have found strong signs that salt was produced in central China in the first two millenniums B.C., during the dynastic period.
SOURCE: NYT (9-15-05)
But the line of questioning that Mr. Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is Judiciary Committee chairman, chose to pursue offered a window on the increasingly troubled relationship between the court and Congress, as well as on one of the most consequential developments of the Rehnquist court's later years.
SOURCE: NYT (9-15-05)
SOURCE: NYT (9-15-05)
The tendency to declare more disasters during election years is not limited to floods. President Bill Clinton set a record by declaring 73 major disasters in 35 states and the District of Columbia in 1996, the year he was up for re-election.
When George W. Bush faced re-election in 2004, he declared 61 major disasters in 36 states - 10 more than in 2003 and tied for the second highest number of major disaster declarations ever, according to data provided by FEMA.
The increase from 2003 to 2004 was particularly sharp in the 12 battleground states in which the election was decided by 5 percent or less; these states had 17 major disasters declared in 2004 but only 8 in 2003, and, therefore, accounted for 90 percent of the increase.
SOURCE: NYT (9-14-05)
The case was brought by the same atheist whose previous battle against the words ''under God'' was rejected last year by the Supreme Court on procedural grounds.
SOURCE: NYT (9-12-05)
SOURCE: NYT (9-13-05)
But the show, which runs through Jan. 8, goes further, challenging the version of history that ancient Greece, starting with Herodotus, bequeathed to the West. Put simply, in that version Greece heroically resisted the marauding barbarians from the east during the Persian wars of 490 B.C. to 479 B.C. Then, by defeating the Achaemenid empire, as it was also known, the "West" scored its first important victory over the "East."
It is this victors' account, then, that the British Museum has set out to "correct." By presenting some 450 ancient objects, from stone reliefs and lapis lazuli heads to gold statuettes and jewelry, it aims to blur the political fault lines that have long separated East and West and give ancient Persia its proper place - between Assyria and Babylon on the one hand and Greece and Rome on the other - in the chronology of early civilizations.
In that sense, "Forgotten Empire" is also highly topical.
SOURCE: NYT (9-13-05)
The book's author, Louise Borden, said in a telephone interview from Terrace Park, Ohio, that she first spotted a mention of the Reys' escape in Publishers Weekly. "But no one knew where they had gone from Paris, the roads they took, the dates of where they were, the details," she said.
Her account, intended for older children, is illustrated in whimsical European style by Allan Drummond, and includes photographs of the Reys and wartime Europe, as well as H. A. Rey's pocket diaries and transit documents.
SOURCE: NYT (9-10-05)
The hearing was called after Mr. Killen, who was granted bail after testifying that he was confined to a wheelchair, was seen up and walking by sheriff's deputies.
Edgar Ray Killen waved Friday while being wheeled away from the Neshoba County Courthouse. A judge ordered him sent back to prison.
"That's incredible to me," the judge, Marcus Gordon, said. "I feel fraud has been committed on this court."
SOURCE: NYT (9-13-05)
Information about casualties in storms and floods is no longer routinely suppressed in China, as it was before the country opened its doors to the outside world a quarter century ago.
The new rules are unlikely to lead to the release of data that is not currently available in some form. But they may make it more difficult for local officials to cover up accidents on the grounds of protecting state secrets, as they have often done in the past.
As recently as this summer, officials were accused of providing a false death toll for a flash flood that wiped out a school and killed scores of children in the northern province of Heilongjiang.
In a commentary accompanying the announcement, the news agency said that the veil of secrecy hindered the response to disasters.
"To continue to see natural disaster death tolls as state secrets makes it difficult to adapt to practical needs of disaster relief work and is not in accordance with general international practices," the commentary said.
There was no immediate indication as to whether the easing of restrictions on information about natural disasters signals a broader easing of China's draconian rules on other secrets.
The Chinese authorities often cite violations of state secrets, broadly defined as anything that affects the security of the state, to punish journalists, lawyers, doctors, government officials, military personnel, or anyone who challenges the ruling Communist Party.
The secrets agency also did not define what kind of disaster is considered natural as opposed to human. It is unclear, for example, if a flood that followed a dam break or the collapse of a mine would be considered accidents in which the government retains the prerogative to suppress data.
It is also unclear whether the rules will apply retroactively to major disasters in China's past.
The government has never provided a clear accounting of the deaths from the largely policy-driven famine that occurred during the disastrous Great Leap Forward campaign, from 1958 to 1960, when Mao Zedong sold the country's scarce grain reserves abroad and forced peasants to produce steel in backyard furnaces.
Although historians say that about 30 million people may have starved to death in what is still referred to as the "three years of natural disaster," the number is a gross estimate and widely disputed.
The official death toll in the Tangshan earthquake in 1976, one of the largest in history, is still recorded as 250,000, but Chinese experts acknowledge that the real toll was three times that amount.
Name of source: Washington Post
SOURCE: Washington Post (8-17-05)
Girding for the toughest battle of his fledgling political career, the action-hero-turned-Republican politician came here -- the one major California city where his poll numbers have not plummeted -- and told a hand-picked crowd of 200: "I'm going to follow through with this. I'm not in here for three years. I'm in
SOURCE: Washington Post (8-17-05)
Some U.S. specialists have predicted an Asian Cold War or outright conflict as a newly muscular China gets ready to project power beyond its shores. But U.S. military planners in the region have a different interpretation of the Chinese challenge. The goal, they said in interviews, is to maximize U.S. forces here -- as demonstrated by the B-2 deployment. However, the planners also said the United States was seeking to build a network of contacts with the Chinese government and military through which the power overlap could be managed rather than fought over.
SOURCE: Washington Post (9-15-05)
The employee is prepared to testify next week before the Senate Judiciary Committee and was expected to name the person who ordered him to destroy the large volume of documents, said Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pa.
SOURCE: Washington Post (9-12-05)
Crumpton gained almost mythical fame after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- always anonymously. He is the mysterious "Henry" in the Sept. 11 commission report, which notes he persistently pressed the CIA to do more in Afghanistan before Osama bin Laden's terrorist spectaculars. Two key proposals to track al Qaeda were turned down.
Tapped to head the CIA's Afghan campaign after the attacks, Crumpton is "Hank" in Gary C. Schroen's "First In: An Insider's Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan" and Bob Woodward's "Bush at War." Both books recount how Crumpton crafted a strategy partnering elite intelligence and military officers in teams that worked with the Afghan opposition to oust the Taliban. The novel and initially controversial approach worked at limited cost in human life and materiel -- and avoided the kind of protracted U.S. ground war that the Soviet Union lost.
It also changed the way the United States fights terrorism.
"Hank was a tough, focused, brave operator and an excellent organizer. His work was invaluable," said Gen. Tommy Franks, now retired, who was in charge of Central Command during the Afghan war and the initial Iraq invasion.
Added John E. McLaughlin, former acting CIA director now at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, "He's a genuine American hero."
Now, after almost a quarter-century as a spy or station chief on at least four continents, Crumpton has emerged from undercover to take the job as State Department Coordinator for Counterterrorism -- with the very public rank of ambassador.
The move surprised colleagues. Crumpton says he had wanted to be a spy since childhood, when he first wrote to the CIA. "And they responded -- on letterhead. In a small rural community in Georgia, to get a letter from the CIA, that was pretty cool," he reflected in his first interview since taking the job.
After joining the agency in 1981, Crumpton cut his teeth in Liberia during its disintegration into tribal clashes. ...Most of his work since then is still secret, although Crumpton was deeply involved in probing the 1998 al Qaeda bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania as well as the 2000 boat bombing of the USS Cole off Yemen, colleagues say.
Name of source: San Jose Mercury News
SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News (9-16-05)
``Taking justice into your own hands is especially topical now,'' said McEnery, who first heard about the storming of the county jail from his father. ``Sure, it's grim stuff, but it's part of our heritage, and it cries out to be a movie.''
But which movie? And told by whom?
``Valley of the Heart's Delight,'' a loose, names-have-been-changed re-enactment, has just wrapped, with Oakland and San Francisco's Presidio as the backdrop for a city identified in the movie as San Jose. ``Night Without Justice,'' expanded from a short by San Jose filmmaker Michael Azzarello and taken from easily accessible FBI files, is in pre-production in L.A.
And McEnery's ``Swift Justice,'' which unfolds in flashback with J. Edgar Hoover making a cameo, is now with the producer of ``Sahara'' and ``Ray.'' It's an adaptation of retired Mercury News reporter Harry Farrell's book, ``Swift Justice: Murder and Vengeance in a California Town.''
The book chronicles the Depression-era kidnapping and murder of department-store heir Brooke Hart. It details how Jack Holmes and Harold Thurmond kidnapped Hart in an alley outside the family store, how they tossed his weighted body from the San Mateo Bridge, how they were quickly apprehended and, 14 hours later, hanged by a mob of 75.
Name of source: WSJ
SOURCE: WSJ (9-12-05)
SOURCE: WSJ (9-14-05)
In addition, because many of the stranded students are black, holding classes for them at military bases, convention centers or other emergency housing sites could run afoul of racial desegregation plans still operating in some school districts.
Separate education for the evacuees is "unconscionable," says Barbara Duffield, policy director for the National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth. "Many states have worked extremely hard to comply with the law and give these kids a regular school experience. The federal Department of Education is seeking to undermine the law at a time when it is most needed."
Name of source: Reuters
SOURCE: Reuters (9-16-05)
They include Grossman's implicit criticism of the Soviets' lack of readiness for the Nazi onslaught, generals' petty preoccupation with medals and glory and the collaboration between German forces and Soviet citizens.
In his role as reporter for the Red Army's "Krasnaya Zvezda" (Red Star) newspaper, the Ukrainian Jew was a key witness to the brutal battle of Stalingrad, civilian suffering under occupation and what happened at the German concentration camps in Poland.
"It's amazing, in many ways, what he got away with," Beevor said in an interview to promote "A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army 1941-1945," which he edited with Russian researcher Lyubov Vinogradova.
"The other journalists didn't have their material messed around with so much, because they wrote politically correct cliches which were expected," he said.
"Obviously Grossman was treading a far more dangerous line."
Beevor, author of the best-selling "Stalingrad" history, said many of Grossman's facts were edited out of the printed articles, while his personal notes would have cost him his life had they been discovered.
"There were often references to heavy casualties (in his reports)," said Beevor. "And then later on, any reference to the suffering of Jews; that was why some of those articles were refused by Krasnaya Zvezda and had to be published elsewhere."
Name of source: Boston Globe
SOURCE: Boston Globe (9-16-05)
The proposed name spurred immediate controversy in theater circles. The legendary playwright Eugene O'Neill, who is considered the father of American drama, wrote and produced some of his seminal early work as a member of the Provincetown Players, a vital but short-lived (1916-1922) ensemble founded in Provincetown by playwright Susan Glaspell and her husband, George Cram Cook.
An early feminist and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, Glaspell remained fiercely protective of the company's legacy until her death in 1948, furiously opposing plans for resurrections of the theater company or its name. The Provincetown Players, Glaspell insisted, provided an alternative to Broadway at a crucial time, encouraging a creative outburst that produced the first original, noncommercial American drama. When O'Neill started an offshoot of the Provincetown Players in 1923 in the company's second home on MacDougal Street in New York, Glaspell insisted that the fledgling company come up with an original name, which the Experimental Theatre did.
Theater historians such as Gail Cohen and Zander Brietzke, president of the Eugene O'Neill Society, as well as biographers, academics, and descendants of members of the Provincetown Players, including Reuel Wilson, son of Edmund Wilson and Mary McCarthy, have bombarded the two theater companies and the Provincetown Banner newspaper with letters of protest and earnest pleas, urging the new entity to at least call itself the New Provincetown Players.
SOURCE: Boston Globe (9-14-05)
"It's more than just a disaster. It was the biggest story of the late 19th century," said Richard Burkert, executive director of the Johnstown Flood Museum.
In 1889, flooding wasn't anything new to the approximately 25,000 residents in this valley town about 60 miles east of Pittsburgh. But the heavy rains on May 31 brought on something much more catastrophic.
Fourteen miles away, the South Fork Dam burst on man-made Lake Conemaugh. The rock and clay dam, which held back 20 million tons of water, had been poorly maintained by an exclusive fishing and hunting club whose members included industrialists Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick.
The water barreled into Johnstown, tearing down nearly everything in its path. The city was left in ruins: buildings and homes were destroyed, stunned survivors were stranded on rooftops and fires broke out.
"Then there was nothing left. It was like a beach when it was over. We just stood there and watched it. Everyone was stunned. We didn't know what to do," survivor Elsie Frum, who was 6 years old in 1889, told The Associated Press for a story on the flood's centennial.
There were reports of looting, and some residents formed groups to deputize themselves before the state militia came in two weeks later and took control.
Blame centered on the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club because it had made changes to the dam. A screen to prevent game fish from escaping the lake trapped sediment, and lowering the dam to accommodate larger carriages proved to be a fatal mistake.
"People knew it was a bad dam. People talked every spring that it was going to break. They just didn't know what the consequences would be," Burkert said.
Most criticism on the club focused not on the dam but on the wealth of the club members. An editorial cartoon in the Chicago Herald showed members drinking champagne while the poor people in the city drowned beneath them.
"The Johnstown flood was not an act of God or nature. It was brought by human failure, human shortsightedness and selfishness," author David McCullough, who wrote a history of the flood in 1968, said in a 2003 interview.
Tales of death and survival, blame and disorder led to more than $3.7 million in donations from around the globe. Famed American musician John Philip Sousa held a benefit concert.
SOURCE: Boston Globe (9-14-05)
The book illuminates how closely the DFB cooperated with the Nazis from the moment they took power in 1933 and systematically forced out thousands of German Jews from all levels of soccer, from players to club owners and sponsors.
Many Jews, including former leading national team player Julius Hirsch, went on to die in Nazi death camps.
"Julius Hirsch had been a national hero but from one day to the next (he) was treated like an insect," said Theo Zwanziger, the present DFB co-president. "We want to come to terms with our past and not just brush over all this."
"It took far too long for this book to be written," Otto Schily, Germany's minister for sport, told a news conference on Tuesday. "But it also took a long time for Germany as a nation to be able to look clearly at what happened in the Nazi era."
Schily said the DFB deserved a share of the blame for the decades-long cover-up of its collaboration with the Nazis.
Name of source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists.
SOURCE: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists. (9-16-05)
"I find that the conditions caused by Hurricane Katrina constitute a 'national emergency' within the meaning of section 3147 of title 40, United States Code," President Bush declared on September 8 as he removed the Davis Bacon Act wage supports for workers in Louisiana, and portions of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
But this emergency statute was one of numerous authorities that were rendered dormant by the National Emergencies Act of 1976, and that can only be activated by certain procedural formalities that were absent in this case.
In particular, the President must formally declare a national emergency under the National Emergencies Act, and he must specify which standby legal authorities he proposes to activate so as to permit congressional restraint of emergency powers.
Strangely, however, President Bush proceeded as if the National Emergencies Act did not exist.
The September 8 presidential declaration was "an anomaly,"
according to a new Congressional Research Service assessment, and it did not follow "the historical pattern of declaring a national emergency to activate the suspension authority."
"The propriety of the President's action in this case may be ultimately determined in the courts," the CRS report stated delicately.
The newly updated CRS report, written by Harold C. Relyea, traces the evolution of emergency powers and includes a tabulation of declared national emergencies from 1976-2005.
See "National Emergency Powers," Congressional Research Service, updated September 15, 2005 (esp. pp. 18-19):
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/98-505.pdf
The President's September 8 proclamation is here:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/09/20050908-5.html
Why would the President deviate from established practice in this way?
One subject matter expert consulted by Secrecy News rejected the idea that there was any self-interested motive at work, and noted that the President had properly invoked the National Emergencies Act in previous cases.
"I think it's just poor staff work at the White House," he said.
But if it was an innocent mistake, that doesn't mean it is an inconsequential one.
"The hell-to-pay could come if a union or some affected worker decides this [wage cut] was improperly done" and files a lawsuit to challenge it, a possibility implicitly raised by the CRS above.
Meanwhile, taking the President's proclamation at face value, Rep.
George Miller and several dozen other members of Congress introduced a bill to undo what the President has proposed.
H.R. 3763, introduced on September 14, would "reinstate the application of the wage requirements of the Davis-Bacon Act to Federal contracts in areas affected by Hurricane Katrina."
Name of source: Balt Sun
SOURCE: Balt Sun (9-16-05)
Tomorrow is Constitution Day - the 218th anniversary - and because it falls on a weekend, schools across the nation will either commemorate it today or next week.
In Maryland, teaching about the Constitution has been a voluntary part of school curriculum for several years, said Bill Reinhard, a spokesman for the state Department of Education. He said the federal law merely mandates that it be done around the time of the Constitution's anniversary.
Byrd boasts that he keeps a copy of the document in his pocket and reads it often. In July, he met with a group of federal employees and asked how many had watched Desperate Housewives. In a show of hands, the television show thoroughly trounced the Constitution.
Byrd maintains that ignorance of the Constitution is "ultimately the worst enemy of a people who want to be free."
But two Harford County school board members have a problem with the new law.
Mark M. Wolkow said Harford County is already teaching the Constitution and that it is a bad idea for the federal government to order curricula be taught at the local level. He added that requiring something be taught on a specific day causes disruption for teachers.
"If Congress doesn't have anything better to do then they need to go home," said Robert B. Thomas Jr., a school board member and former school board president. He is "very against any mandates coming from the federal level to the state or local level that take away local authority to make those decisions."
Name of source: Independent (UK)
SOURCE: Independent (UK) (9-16-05)
The 2000 survey noted that "the range of choices... continues to grow exponentially". It listed 156 courses. By 2004 there were 289 on offer, while this year the magazine - evidently feeling that too much valuable space was being demanded - discontinued individual listings but noted the wide range of options available in some institutions, with both Birkbeck College, London, and Glasgow offering 13 different courses.
Proliferation is equally in evidence at institutional level. Barry Doyle, leader of the MA programmes at Teesside University, says: "We had courses in the 1980s, but they fizzled out in the 1990s. We started bringing them back in 2000 because there was clearly a demand."
Sian Nicholas, director of postgraduate studies in the department of history and Welsh history at Aberystwyth University, says : "Five years ago we had maybe three programmes. Now we have nine or 10 separate pathways. We introduced media history last year and this year are bringing in Celtic history, historians in the making of history - which is a historiographical programme - and early modern Britain."
It recalls the dramatic growth in the late 1980s and early 1990s of Master in business administration courses, with hardly a week seeming to pass without the announcement of some fresh variation on the MBA theme, each with its unique selling proposition.
Like that expansion, the growth in history Masters reflects pressure on both the supply and demand sides. But where MBA growth was largely generated in the private sector, with fast-expanding consultancies and merchant banks offering employment to the newly credentialed, the drive for historians is largely rooted in changes in academic life.
Name of source: Newsletter of the National Coalition for History
SOURCE: Newsletter of the National Coalition for History (9-15-05)
As reports continue to be logged in by the American Association of Museums (see http://www.aam-us.org/aamlatest/news/HurricaneFirstReports.cfm ) it appears that in spite of individual horror stories, historic sites in New Orleans, since they generally were constructed on higher land, have been incredibly lucky. Staff members of the Historic New Orleans Collection were able to enter the French Quarter with an escort of state police. Their buildings and collections were “high and dry” and much of the material has been moved to institutions elsewhere in Louisiana. At the present time, it has been reported that while the city’s archives was spared from flooding, concerns remain about documents left exposed to the humidity which may result in their destruction from mold.
The American Association for State and Local History (AASLH) has set up a Historical Resources Recovery Fund, which can be viewed at http://www.aaslh.org/katrina.htm . Organizations that are going to need financial support in this recovery effort include the New Orleans Public Library, which houses a number of un-microfilmed records of the city’s civil, criminal, and probate courts and the University of New Orleans, which houses the records of the state’s Supreme Court. While all of the aquatic life at the city’s aquarium was lost, the majority of animals at the zoo were quickly transported to other facilities across the country. Reports also indicate that the New Orleans Notarial Records have been packed into freezer trucks to ensure their preservation. And despite seemingly overwhelming odds, Dillard University president Marvalene Hughes remains determined that her campus, viewed by many as a cultural and historical jewel in its own right, will ultimately recover from the devastation.
Reports are also coming in from other areas along the Gulf Coast. At the present time, no fewer than 20 Mississippi libraries have endangered collections and continue to be without power. The public libraries in Biloxi and Pascagoula apparently have been completely destroyed. By contrast, archives and records centers in Florida have been reported as surviving the storm satisfactorily.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is reaching out to the history and cultural communities and is now working closely with the State Historic Preservation Offices (SHPOs) to gather as much information as possible about all of the cultural institutions and specifically determine which have been directly affected by Katrina. FEMA is hiring 15-20 Historic Preservation Specialists for the purpose of providing technical assistance to the disaster programs to fulfill the necessary legal responsibilities under various historic preservation laws. In addition, the specialists will assist FEMA in integrating historic preservation considerations into the development and review of projects proposed for funding. For interested parties, additional information regarding the job description and contact information can be found at: http://www.planetizen.com/node/17342 .
In an effort to help with the prompt recovery of historic places, collections, and records in the future, the National Park Service (NPS) has created the Historic Preservation Learning Portal, which can be viewed at www.historicpreservation.gov . Working in collaboration with FEMA, the United States Coast Guard, the Department of Homeland Security, and 15 additional Federal agencies, the Historic Preservation Leaning Portal is a powerful new tool to provide a direct link to all historic preservation information on the Internet. Individuals can quickly find Federal agency sites, the sites of historical preservation offices, state historic preservation offices, and the sites of non-profit and professional historical organizations. The system does not require keywords and will allow for a specific question to be asked, resulting in a range of information on the particular subject. There are currently over 1,000 historic preservation sites that have been indexed by the portal.
In response to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Academy of Certified Archivists (ACA) has joined with the Society of American Archivists (SAA) and the National Association for Government Archivists and Records Administration (NAGARA) in issuing a joint statement recognizing the tragic losses and offering continued support as the region rebuilds. To this end, the ACA has offered their members who live in the affected regions easier ways to retain their CA status. Membership dues will be waived for one year for any CA in the affected area; any impacted CA who is due to recertify in 2006-2007 will have a 2 year extension time; and a waiver on the one-time ACA membership fee will be granted to new CA’s who passed the exam in 2005. The statement can be viewed at http://www.certifiedarchivists.org/html/newsarch.html .
SOURCE: Newsletter of the National Coalition for History (9-15-05)
Reading between the lines, the article suggests that Roberts has a tremendous respect for the history of the Supreme Court as an institution. Furthermore, his training as a historian is reflected in how he examines case law, analyzes statutes, and probes for weaknesses in arguments. There is no question he values legal precedent.
The article focuses on the historical role that Supreme Court specialists have played in the operations of the court. To that end Roberts central conclusion is that “oral argument is terribly, terribly important.” He compares these court specialists to medieval stonemasons who spent months carving intricate gargoyles in high cathedrals where practically nobody would see their work: “The stone masons did it because they were carving for the eye of God,” wrote Roberts. Similarly, “the advocate who stands before the Supreme Court also needs to infuse his craft with a higher purpose. He must appreciate that what happens here, in case after mundane case, is extraordinary – the vindication of the rule of law…the higher purpose will steel him for the long and lonely work of preparation…and will forge a special bond with his colleagues at the Supreme Court bar.”
Name of source: Chosunilbo
SOURCE: Chosunilbo (9-11-05)
Some 4,000 members of progressive groups who had gathered in Sungeui Stadium in Incheon's Nam-gu started marching on the park at 1 p.m. to demand the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Korea and the removal of the monument to the U.S. general from Freedom Park. They arrived at the park around 4 p.m.
The demonstration started off peacefully with singing, dancing and a speech by Democratic Labor Party central committee member Lee Jeong-mi, but turned violent after the reading of a declaration calling for 2005 to become the first year of the exit of U.S. forces from the peninsula.
Participants tried to approach the statue wielding metal pipes and long bamboo poles and throwing eggs at riot police who had sealed off the area. When the protesters started slinging mud, police fought back brandishing shields, clubs and fire extinguishers. The clash soon descended into chaos, with both sides hurling stones that left many injured.
Name of source: Respectful Insolence
SOURCE: Respectful Insolence (9-15-05)
Name of source: Washington Times
SOURCE: Washington Times (9-15-05)
The National Anthem Project comes after a nationwide poll found that two out of three American adults don't know all of the words to "The Star-Spangled Banner" -- and many more don't know which song is the national anthem or why it was written.
The song includes four stanzas, but only the first usually is sung. Critics repeatedly have tried to get the nation to change the anthem because of the violence portrayed in some of the stanzas.
The campaign to reteach to the United States "The Star-Spangled Banner" began in March and is led by the National Association for Music Education, the largest arts-education association and the only one that addresses all facets of music education. First lady Laura Bush serves as honorary chairperson of the program.
Name of source: AP
SOURCE: AP (9-14-05)
It was addressed to W.J. Krotz of nearby Poole, about 120 miles west of Lincoln.
Mathis placed an announcement and picture of the letter in the Ravenna News, hoping someone might know the family.
Louise Kisling said she heard about her brother's letter through word of mouth. Clinton Krotz, an infantry soldier in France during the war, was killed in action on May 8, 1944. The letter was the last one he sent home.
In the letter, her brother thanked his parents for a wristwatch they had sent as a birthday gift, as well as some candy and nuts.
Kisling said her only disappointment was that her parents never got the chance to see the letter. An envelope within the letter was postmarked by the Poole post office, Kisling said. She was not sure how it ended up in Kansas.
Mystery aside, Kisling is grateful.
SOURCE: AP (9-15-05)
The current county historian, Dale Storms, says the records pertain to Smith's arrests for "glass looking," a 19th-century term for treasure hunting.
In 1830, Smith founded what became known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. That was ten years after he claimed to have seen a vision of God and Jesus while praying in the woods near his home in Palmyra in western New York.
Smith was killed in 1844 by an anti-Mormon mob in Illinois.
SOURCE: AP (9-15-05)
Seventy years after it was rushed into print, a history book beloved by readers of all ages around the world is finally coming out in English.
Unemployed at the time, he worked hard on his tour of the ages through the eyes of a child: He set a goal of doing a chapter a day, read passages aloud to his wife, Ilse, and tapped into the narrative voice he had recently developed when he tried to explain his doctoral thesis to the daughter of family friends.
What seemed like a rush job was treated by reviewers and the general public as an admirable, accessible summary. "A Little History of the World" was an instant success and has been translated into 18 languages, selling hundreds of thousands of copies.
But for decades there was no English translation, even though Gombrich spent much of his life in London and wrote his other books in English. During those years, he was busy with other projects and thought "A Little History" more of interest to European readers. Only late in life did he get around to the English text.
"All stories begin with, `Once upon a time,'" is how the book begins. "And that's just what this story is all about, what happened, once upon a time."
"A Little History" is under 300 pages and its 40 chapters move quickly from Earth's formation to the Cold War era, touching upon ancient Greece and Rome, the rise of Christianity, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, technology and world wars.
The book is meant to inform and to raise questions. The Nazis banned "A Little History" because they thought it was too pacifist; Gombrich questions the meaning of war, and champions what he calls the principles of the Enlightenment: "tolerance, reason and humanity."
Gombrich attempts to address the violence of history without unduly upsetting his readers. "If I wished, I could write many more chapters on the wars between the Catholics and the Protestants," he writes of the 17th-century religious conflicts. "But I won't."
SOURCE: AP (9-14-05)
In 1889, flooding wasn't anything new to the approximately 25,000 residents in this valley town about 60 miles east of Pittsburgh. But the heavy rains on May 31 brought on something much more catastrophic.
Fourteen miles away, the South Fork Dam burst on man-made Lake Conemaugh. The rock and clay dam, which held back 20 million tons of water, had been poorly maintained by an exclusive fishing and hunting club whose members included industrialists Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick.
The water barreled into Johnstown, tearing down nearly everything in its path. The city was left in ruins: buildings and homes were destroyed, stunned survivors were stranded on rooftops and fires broke out.
"Then there was nothing left. It was like a beach when it was over. We just stood there and watched it. Everyone was stunned. We didn't know what to do," survivor Elsie Frum, who was 6 years old in 1889, told The Associated Press for a story on the flood's centennial.
There were reports of looting, and some residents formed groups to deputize themselves before the state militia came in two weeks later and took control.
Name of source: Helsingin Sanomat (Finland)
SOURCE: Helsingin Sanomat (Finland) (9-15-05)
A new book claims that contrary to suspicions in Western countries, the tough line was not based on any secret agreements between Finland and the Soviet Union, but rather a policy that was unilaterally implemented by President Urho Kekkonen after he took office in 1956.
Nevertheless, according to the book Ei armoa Suomen selkänahasta ("No mercy at Finland’s expense"), not every defector was sent back.
From 1945 to 1981 there were a total of 153 cases of Soviet citizens trying to defect to the West via Finland. In his fresh study, historian Juha Pohjonen says that nearly one in four - a total of 36 - were allowed to stay in Finland, or move on to another country.
Jussi Pekkarinen, a researcher at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, and co-writer of the book, focuses in his section on the extradition of prisoners of war, members of Finno-Ugric nations who fought alongside Finland, and hundreds of civilians between 1944 and 1955.
Immediately after the war more than 100,000 people were sent from Finland to the Soviet Union. The book does not reveal what their fate was, but there is an extensive study underway at the Finnish National Archive to learn more of what happened to Soviet citizens who lived in Finland during the war and who were sent back when it was over.
Only one of the defectors who escaped to Finland is known to have been executed. He was Arthur Lööke, an Estonian who was sent back in 1949. His friend, who suffered from ill health, died while he was in Finland.
Name of source: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/14/politics/14terror.html
SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/14/politics/14terror.html (9-14-05)
Name of source: Rocky Mountain News
SOURCE: Rocky Mountain News (9-10-05)
The allegations, including charges of plagiarism, misuse of others' work, misrepresenting his sources and fabrication of material he presented as fact, could lead to the tenured ethnic studies professor's firing.
Name of source: Korea.net
SOURCE: Korea.net (9-14-05)
Experts expect the handwritten document, made up of some 100 palm-sized sheets of mulberry paper, will provide a more accurate account of the stone pagoda's history.
The document was first discovered in 1966 along with Mugujeonggwang Daedaranigyeong (Pure Light Dharani Sutra), the world's oldest woodblock printing plate, when historians disassembled the pagoda for restoration purposes. It has since been in possession of the museum.
According to Yi Young-hoon, the museum's director of curatorial affairs, the pages of the document were stuck together when first found. They remained in this state until 1997, when researchers came across the forgotten document and started separating them, a process that took over a year.
“Though further study on the document needs to be done, what we know for sure at this point is when and why it was written,” he said.
The museum said the Chinese name of the era specified in the record indicates that it was written sometime during the 11th or 12th century and the use of the word “chungsugi,” or restoration record, shows why it was written.
Yi said the museum, which is waiting for the Oct. 28 reopening of its new home in Yongsan, will start a thorough examination of the text early next year.
Name of source: Scoop
SOURCE: Scoop (9-14-05)
Huang Jing, president of Chengming International Auction Company, said these relics, held previously by a Taiwan collector, are all from Tibet and most of them are connected with Tibetan Buddhism.
Experts say these relics are of high historical and artistic value. One of the relics, a jade piece dubbed "Seven Treasures", is said to be worth an estimated 800,000 yuan (about US$98,800) to 1.2 million yuan (about US$148,300).
According to the history books, the sixth Panchen Lama went to the Chengde Mountain Resort in Hebei Province to present gifts to Qing Emperor Qianlong on the occasion of the emperor's 70th birthday in 1781. In return, the emperor gave Panchen Lama the "Seven Treasures".
Huang said that the relics are worth a total of about 50 million yuan (about US$6.2 million). According to the auction law and cultural relics protection law of the People's Republic of China, the relics, because they were retrieved from Taiwan, may be bought by foreign merchants and taken out of the country again.
Name of source: Parkersburg News and Sentinel
SOURCE: Parkersburg News and Sentinel (9-14-05)
Byrd, a history buff known for keeping a copy of the Constitution in his pocket at all times, sought to focus attention on a little known date in American history - Sept. 17, 1787, the day the Constitution was signed.
Since the holiday this year would fall on a Saturday, schools were given a two-week window in which to observe Constitution Day.
Name of source: Guardian (UK)
SOURCE: Guardian (UK) (9-13-05)
"It'll be the most beautiful, the most modern, the most elegant in Europe", enthused the report's author, Giuseppe Renzetti. "The project is said to have met with the ardent approval of the Führer."
Renzetti, Italy's consul in Berlin, told his superiors that already, in mid-1940, the Nazis were preparing their capital for the tourist boom they expected would follow victory. He understood "a manager has already been found for the nightclub and that it had been decided to restrict entry to foreigners, the diplomatic corps and the members of Berlin [high] society."
Extracts from the report, dated July 23 1940, were published in Corriere della Sera yesterday. Italy's former consul was as close as any foreigner to Hitler; Goebbels wrote that Renzetti could almost be seen as a Nazi. To compile his report the diplomat interviewed top officials including the SS leader, Heinrich Himmler.
But Renzetti found the Germans split over what to do with Britain. Some argued it should be "destroyed". Some wanted "an understanding". The Führer, he said, was with the doves. "Hitler has wanted to take into account the wishes of a large mass of the Germans who feel themselves to be related to the British [and] fear others could profit more than them from the British empire's destruction." He said Hitler also felt British and German industry could find a way to coexist.
Renzetti said the Nazis were anticipating a post-war Europe in which they would be "feared and respected".
SOURCE: Guardian (UK) (9-10-05)
In 1732, Laura Bassi was awarded a doctorate in natural philosophy from the University of Bologna; a few months later she was appointed to a professorship there. For 45 years she taught philosophy, mathematics and Newtonian physics. She received two further professorships and corresponded with leading scientists across Europe - all this while producing eight children, five of whom survived infancy.
To her many admirers, Bassi was an icon of female achievement, but she was by no means alone. Between 1730 and 1770 the Bologna Academy of the Institute for Sciences admitted many well-known women scientists and mathematicians, including Maria Agnesi, author of an influential mathematics textbook, and Voltaire's mistress Emilie de Châtelet, translator and commentator on Newton's Principia Mathematica, notorious for her daring conciliation of Newtonian physics with the metaphysics of Leibniz. "She was a great man," Voltaire wrote of his brilliant lover, "whose only fault was in being a woman."
But new research reveals a very different picture. Enlightenment has been democratised. No longer the prerogative of a few, mostly French theorists, historians now portray it as a broad, multi-faceted movement crammed with intellectual innovators of all sorts, from novelists, poets, theologians and artists, to booksellers, teachers, journalists, and even pornographers. In place of a frozen philosophical canon we see a living world with women clearly visible, as originators and purveyors of enlightened ideas, and as the subject of intensive investigation and debate. Throughout the 18th century, from Edinburgh to Naples, Paris to Philadelphia, enlightened minds of both sexes challenged conventional assumptions about women's nature and entitlements, and imagined new modes of relating between the sexes. Luminaries of female learning such as Bassi were celebrated in their own right and as symbols of women's intellectual capability.
Name of source: Sydney Morning Herald
SOURCE: Sydney Morning Herald (9-13-05)
However, in a tribute to the sensitivities of post-Saddam Iraq, the revised version of history is, on some subjects, as partial and shot through with gaps as the old.
Baghdad no longer wins the Iran-Iraq war nor confronts the evil of Zionism alone. Primary schools will not have to teach reading with phrases such as "I love Saddam".
In fact, Saddam is rarely mentioned by name and his rule is left unanalysed, a compromise intended to placate those who see him as a tyrant and those nostalgic for the old regime.
Previously his picture appeared on the first page of every book. Since the fall of his regime in March 2003 schools have continued using old textbooks but with the most Saddamist pages ripped out and some paragraphs blacked over. Teachers complained they were forced to teach syllabuses that failed to acknowledge half a century's history.
There is no mention of the 1991 Gulf war, about which it was previously taught that "brave Iraqis forced the Americans to stop firing". The events of 2003 are described only as a "major shake-up" of Iraq.
Name of source: History Today
SOURCE: History Today (9-6-05)
In the Second World War the security services uncovered plots including an exploding chocolate bar, shaving brush detonators and bombs disguised as coal. False copies of the London Evening Standard were produced by the British, intended to cover-up reports of RAF fatalities. One Nazi propaganda leaflet stated: "Germany wants to live in peace with England. This has always been the political line followed by Adolf Hitler ... Why should England try to prevent this and let herself be dragged into a war for Polish ambitions?" Another read: "Shakespeare is more played in Germany than in England". Amphetamine drugs were also considered for use on German POWs and MI5 agents even took them first to test their efficacy. An MI5 memo from American intelligence states: "It enables the British service to get information voluntarily without undue coercion. It takes 10 minutes for this to become effective and a 'talking spell' lasts for about half an hour."
Name of source: Ottawa Citizen
SOURCE: Ottawa Citizen (9-13-05)
For a dozen years, since Brian Mulroney left politics and returned to Montreal, he has tried to recast his record and rehabilitate his reputation. He has had the time and space that former leaders need to put between themselves and their people and their prejudices.
...
Leaders who may have been unpopular when they left office, such as Pierre Elliott Trudeau, often grow in stature. A man detested is now a man revered; when he died five years ago, Canadians grieved. Mr. Trudeau has become a national icon. Lester Pearson, his predecessor, could never win a majority in four elections. He was seen as plodding, innocuous and ineffective in 1968. Today the lisping, bow-tied Mr. Pearson is remembered as a conciliator and a reformer who gave Canada a new flag, universal healthcare and international respect.
...
Unlike Mr. Trudeau, Mr. Mulroney cared what people thought, which was his undoing. As prime minister, he devoured forests of newspaper commentary about his government, courted journalists shamelessly and took criticism badly. He was known to press a transistor radio to his ear for the late-night news. "So, what are the boys saying?" he would ask his press secretary.
When he left Ottawa in 1993, he decided that he would not write his memoirs immediately, as had Mr. Pearson and others; he would wait for his image to improve. He began looking for an historian to help him, but delayed the project.
His caution was prudent. Few leaders were reviled as he was in his last years in office. His Conservatives were destroyed and national politics re-aligned. There were even reports -- perhaps apocryphal in genteel Canada -- that Mr. Mulroney was booed when he entered restaurants.
...
At least that seemed possible until yesterday, when excerpts from Peter C. Newman's new book, The Secret Mulroney Tapes: Unguarded Confessions of a Prime Minister, were published. It is perhaps the most explosive book on a Canadian politician since Mr. Newman's portrait of John Diefenbaker in 1963.
What makes it incendiary isn't its research, analysis or prose. It is the words of the subject himself. The book is a stream of consciousness flowing from the mouth that roared. Mulroney does in himself -- and the reputation he has tried to restore over the last 12 years -- with the kind of crudeness, vainglory, egotism, indiscretion, pomposity and hyperbole that have been the hallmark of his public life.
His acidic comments on Pierre Trudeau, Kim Campbell, Clyde Wells, Joe Clark, Jean Chretien and others lay bare the insecurity, anger and resentment that have come to define him. For those who remember Mr. Mulroney, the book is a sad reminder of why they disliked and distrusted him.
Name of source: The New Zealand Herald
SOURCE: The New Zealand Herald (9-13-05)
Labour elder stateswoman Whetu Tirikatene-Sullivan is urging voters to protect the Maori seats by voting for the Maori Party.
Warning of "an uprising" if National abolishes the seats, Mrs Tirikatene-Sullivan, the Labour MP for Southern Maori for 29 years, said Parliament "is the lion's den in Maori, te ana raiona, and we need our gladiators in there".
"I would expect Maoridom to come out with even stronger protests than the seabed and foreshore hikoi [in 2004]," said Mrs Tirikatene-Sullivan.
"It would be tragic for one of the very few nations in the world that has recognised a tangata whenua people to remove their right to have dedicated advocates in Parliament."
Mrs Tirikatene-Sullivan would not say how she would vote, but said she endorsed a widespread Maori view that "anyone who holds Maori identity as their number one priority should give two ticks to the Maori Party. I believe that is valid".
...
All parties except National and Act say that abolition of the Maori seats, created in 1867, must be a decision made by Maori. The policy can pass if endorsed by 61 of Parliament's 120 members.
Historian Ranginui Walker is horrified by National's plan and said he would not be surprised if there were huge protests.
"National are going back to the colonial patriarchy, and if they pull this off, who's to know where it will stop?" Professor Walker said.
Te Atiawa iwi spokesman Peter Love said the seats were now a "hugely significant taonga", or treasure.
"Gifts have such huge importance in Maoridom and these seats were a gift to our people. They have become part of our inheritance ...
"Taking them away is like giving someone a gift of a car, then coming down the driveway and taking it back."
