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: WaPo
March 29, 2010
The record price for a comic book, already broken twice this year, has been shattered again.
A copy of the 1938 edition of Action Comics No. 1 sold Monday for $1.5 million on the auction Web site ComicConnect.com. The issue, which features Superman's debut and originally sold for 10 cents, is widely considered the Holy Grail of comic books.
The same issue sold in February for $1 million, though that copy wasn't in as good condition as the issue that sold Monday. That nu
Source: BBC News
March 30, 2010
Serbia's parliament is debating a resolution condemning the Srebrenica massacre in 1995 - the worst incident of the Bosnian war.
The text apologises that Serbia did not do more to prevent the tragedy.
The killing of nearly 8,000 Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) was carried out by Bosnian Serb forces - allies of then-Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.
Meanwhile a Dutch court has rejected an attempt to hold the United Nations responsible for the massacre.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 29, 2010
The first known portrait of a freed slave by a British artist could be saved for the nation after the Government ordered a temporary export ban.
The work, by renowned 18th century portraitist William Hoare, was sold at Christie's in December for £555,000.
Now Margaret Hodge, the Culture Minister, has agreed to a Temporary Export Bar to see if funds can be raised to keep it in Britain.
The 1733 painting shows Ayuba Suleiman Diallo, a highly-born and educa
Source: AP
March 29, 2010
Rare antiques from the ancestral home of Diana, Princess of Wales — including a 12 million pound ($18 million) Rubens portrait from the 17th Century — will be offered for sale this summer, an auction house said Monday.
Christie's auction house said it will sell about 20 million pounds ($30 million) worth of artifacts from Althorp House, in Northamptonshire, central England.
Other lots include English and French furniture, a mid-17th Century painting by Giovanni Francesc
Source: CNN
March 29, 2010
For the family of Air Force Maj. Curtis Daniel Miller, missing in action since 1972, that nightmare may finally be over.
On Monday, Miller's remains, identified in 2008, were buried in the Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery. He received full military honors, including an Air Force flyover.
There are more than 1,700 military personnel from the Vietnam War still considered missing in action, according to the Pentagon's Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Officer un
Source: Providence Journal (RI)
March 29, 2010
If you seek to discern the soul of Rhode Island in this census year of 2010, a visit to the Old State House is a good beginning. Here in this 246-year-old building, the state’s forbears were engaged in spirited debate in 1790, the first year that the federal government took count of the American people.
The General Assembly was divided on whether Rhode Island should become the last of the 13 former colonies to ratify the United States Constitution. Supporters of a strong centraliz
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
March 29, 2010
Your poetry may be timeless, but as the name of a New Jersey Turnpike rest stop, your days may be numbered.
James Simpson, the new commissioner of the state Department of Transportation, is contemplating selling naming rights to the turnpike's rest stops as he scrambles for new revenue.
"The 'Nike Stop' . . . maybe that would be worth $10 million," Simpson said in a recent interview, pondering ways to wring more money out of turnpike concessions.
Source: Discovery News
March 29, 2010
The long-lost tomb of the 4,300-year-old Egyptian pharaoh Userkare may have been located.
The missing pyramid of an obscure pharaoh that ruled Egypt some 4,300 years ago could lie at the intersection of a series of invisible lines in South Saqqara, according to new astronomical and topographical research.
Connecting the funerary complexes raised by the kings of the 6th Dynasty between 2,322 B.C. and 2,151 B.C., these lines would have governed the sacred space of the Saq
Source: The Independent (UK)
March 29, 2010
A team of archaeologists have unearthed five chamber tombs at Ayia Sotira, a cemetery in the Nemea Valley in Greece, just a few hours walk from the ancient city of Mycenae. The tombs date from 1350 – 1200 BC, the era in which Mycenae thrived as a major centre of Greek civilization.
They contain the remains of 21 individuals who probably came from Tsoungiza, an agricultural settlement close to the ancient city. Despite the significant human remains, however, the team have found no e
Source: BBC
March 29, 2010
The Indian Supreme Court is currently considering whether a controversial tourist resort in the Andaman islands should close. The resort is near a forest reserve, which is home to the endangered Jarawa tribe. The BBC's Geeta Pandey, who has visited the area, reports from Delhi.
A handful of Jarawa tribesmen recently broke into a house in the village of Mathura in the Andaman islands. They left after taking away rice, sugar and coconut.
The first people to successfully
Source: The Boston Globe
March 29, 2010
It is where the government has hidden the most secret information: plans to relocate Congress if Washington were attacked, dossiers on double agents, case files about high-profile mob figures and their politician friends, and a disturbing number of reports about the possible smuggling of atomic bombs into the United States.
It is also where the bureau stowed documents considered more embarrassing than classified, including its history of illegal spying on domestic political organiza
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 29, 2010
Dr Ulrich Habsburg-Lothringen is barred from running for Austria's presidency by his country's republican constitution, drawn up when the last Habsburg Emperor Charles I was forced to abdicate power in 1918.
The 68-year old forester uses the name Lothringen, for the Lorraine branch of the imperial dynasty, when signing official documents.
Dr Habsburg, who has three children and six grandchildren, is angry that he and his descendants are discriminated against while can
Source: CTV (Canada)
March 26, 2010
A Montreal store has come under fire from Jewish groups for selling Nazi memorabilia, including a bar of soap that is rumoured to be made from the remains of Holocaust victims.
Inside a cramped collectibles shop on St. Laurent Blvd., Abraham Botines claims he bought the bar of soap off a Canadian soldier who found it in a concentration camp.
Described as yellowish and adorned with a swastika, his son, Ivan, who owns the store, said its ingredients are uncertain, but pot
Source: AP
March 29, 2010
Archaeologists have unearthed a 3,500-year-old door to the afterlife from the tomb of a high-ranking Egyptian official near Karnak temple in Luxor, the Egyptian antiquities authority said Monday.
These recessed niches found in nearly all ancient Egyptian tombs were meant to take the spirits of the dead to and from the afterworld. The nearly six-foot- tall slab of pink granite was covered with religious texts.
The door came from the tomb of User, the chief minister of Q
Source: CS Monitor
March 27, 2010
Welcome to the austere – and increasingly embraced – message of Calvinism. Five centuries ago, John Calvin's teachings reconceived Christianity; midwifed Western ideas about capitalism, democracy, and religious liberty; and nursed the Puritan values that later cast the character of America.
Today, his theology is making a surprising comeback, challenging the me-centered prosperity gospel of much of modern evangelicalism with a God-first immersion in Scripture. In an age of materiali
Source: BBC
March 29, 2010
Efforts to restore a castle in the Western Isles built in 1847 for a rich opium trader have secured £240,000 from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF).
A further £2.6m of lottery funds could be awarded to Lews Castle if the restoration project's trust can produce detailed proposals within two years.
Lews Castle in Stornoway was constructed for James Matheson, who made his fortune from the opium trade.
Opium exported from China and India was often mixed with to
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 28, 2010
One of the last unspoilt quarters of traditional Beijing is facing demolition under a £500m "restoration" plan.
Conservationists argue that the plans will irrevocably damage one of the Chinese capital's social and architectural jewels.
The 30-acre development around the ancient Drum and Bell Towers, which were used to tell the time in the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, will see traditional crooked courtyard houses and winding alleyways replaced with a themed
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 28, 2010
Having battled Islamic extremists, Irish Republican terrorists and Russian spies, some of the veteran intelligence officers of MI5 are encountering a foe they cannot master: information technology.
The Security Service is launching an unprecedented round of redundancies to improve the overall level of computer skills among its staff.
Despite an expanding budget, MI5 is laying off employees in order to hire new intelligence officers and support staff with better comman
Source: AP
March 29, 2010
Forensic tests will be conducted on what two searchers believe are the remains of photographer Sean Flynn, son of Hollywood star Errol Flynn, who disappeared during the Cambodian War 40 years ago.
At least 37 journalists were killed or are listed as missing from the 1970-75 war, which pitted the U.S.-backed Lon Nol government against the North Vietnamese-supported Khmer Rouge.
Freelance "bone hunters" have also taken up the search for both missing journalists
Source: The Boston Globe
March 28, 2010
Later this spring, a team of scholars at Germany’s Berlin-Brandenberg Academy of Sciences will complete the first phase of what will ultimately be an unprecedented, two-decade effort to throw light on the origins of the Koran.
The project, called the Corpus Coranicum, will be something that scholars of the Koran have long yearned for: a central repository of imagery, information, and analysis about the Muslim holy book. Modern research into Islam’s origin and early years has been ha
