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: Telegraph (UK)
March 21, 2010
Grave robbers in Cyprus have attacked the tombs of three archbishops in a case which echoed one targeting a former president's remains last December.
Cyprus police on Sunday arrested a Romanian man suspected of vandalising the tombs of three archbishops who led the church in the late 19th and early 20th century, a police spokesman said.
The graveyard in central Nicosia is a burial ground for several senior clerics of Cyprus's Orthodox Church, an ancient institution tr
Source: The Daily Maverick (South Africa)
March 21, 2010
Sunday, 21 March, leaves a five decade-mark on a timeline that started with the massacre that shocked the world and proved beyond doubt the inherent monstrosity of the apartheid system. It may have taken another 30 years for it to fall, but it was Sharpeville that first made its ultimate destruction inevitable.
Some years ago, in the company of one of its designers, this writer had the opportunity to visit the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, just before it was opened to the public
Source: Discovery News
March 18, 2010
Non-avian dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago, and now researchers have proven that this die-off didn't happen over a long period of time.
A detailed look at dinosaur bones, tracks and eggs located at 29 archaeological sites located in the Catalan Pyrenees reveals that there was a large diversity of dinosaur species living there just before the fatal K-T extinction event, which many scientists believe was caused by several large meteors hitting Earth.
Dinosau
Source: Discovery News
March 19, 2010
Art experts find what they believe is the earliest signature of the master Raphael, hidden within a painting's arabesque decorations.
Hidden beneath arabesque decorations, art experts have found what they believe is the earliest signature placed on a painting by the Renaissance master Raphael (1483-1520), who at the time was a 16-year-old boy.
Featuring the words "RAPHAEL SANT" -- Santi was Raphael's real surname -- the signature has been detected in an obscur
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 20, 2010
The Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War could take an explosive new twist after it emerged that leading figures in George Bush's administration have been asked to give evidence to it.
Sources in Washington said the inquiry sent out emails "about three weeks ago" to senior officials in Mr Bush's government including, it is believed, the former president himself.
Other requests are understood to have been made to Dick Cheney, Mr Bush's vice-president, Condoleezz
Source: CNN
March 20, 2010
Liz Carpenter, a Texas journalist who became a presidential press aide in the Lyndon Johnson White House, died Saturday at the age of 89, according to the Johnson family.
Carpenter served as an aide and press spokesman to Johnson when he was vice president, but she was named press secretary to Lady Bird Johnson when she became the first lady.
Carpenter died at an Austin, Texas hospital of natural causes Saturday, according to Tom Johnson, the former CNN chairman who s
Source: CNN
March 20, 2010
Stewart Udall, the last surviving member of John F. Kennedy's presidential cabinet, died Saturday of natural causes, according to a statement released by the Udall family. He was 90 years old.
Udall served as the Interior Secretary for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson from 1961-1969. Before that, he represented Arizona's second congressional district for four terms in the House of Representatives.
Source: New York Times
March 19, 2010
The social studies curriculum recently approved by the Texas Board of Education, which will put a conservative stamp on textbooks, was received less as a pedagogical document than as the latest provocation in America’s seemingly endless culture wars.
“Why Is Texas Afraid of Thomas Jefferson?” the History News Network asked, referring to the board’s recommendation that Jefferson, who coined the expression “separation of church and state,” be struck from the list of world thinkers wh
Source: BBC
March 20, 2010
A military historian has called for a memorial to soldiers who fought the Jacobites at the Battle of Culloden.
Trevor Royle said the government army has no equivalent to the markers on the battlefield which recall their foes.
Writing in the National Trust for Scotland's magazine, he said little was known of those who served in the red coat regiments on 16 April 1746.
The site where fallen government soldiers were buried was only recently identified by arc
Source: BBC
March 19, 2010
A US judge says a proposed $657m (£437m) deal for people who worked at New York's Ground Zero following the 9/11 terror attacks is too small.
Some 10,000 rescue workers and police officers are suing New York City, saying they suffered health problems working in the dust and debris.
Federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein said that he did not think the agreement represented a sufficient sum of money.
He said further negotiations were needed for a fair deal.
Source: AP
March 20, 2010
Girija Prasad Koirala, Nepal's former prime minister who led mass protests that ended the king's authoritarian rule and helped deliver a peace deal to end 10 years of communist revolt, died Saturday. He was 86.
The Maoist former rebel leader called Koirala's death an "irreparable loss" to the ongoing peace process, which has been stalled since political parties have not been able to decide on the fate of the thousands of Maoist former rebel fighters who have been confined
Source: AP
March 20, 2010
Tokyo subway workers observed a moment of silence Saturday to mark the 15th anniversary of a nerve gas attack by a religious cult, Japan's deadliest act of domestic terrorism.
About 20 employees at Kasumigaseki station in Tokyo's government district bowed their heads in silent prayer at 8 a.m., when members of the cult released sarin nerve gas in rush-hour trains on March 20, 1995. The five coordinated attacks killed 13 people and sickened 6,300 others.
Japanese Prime M
Source: Times Online (UK)
March 19, 2010
British soldiers are to march in Red Square with Russian troops for the first time in a Victory Day parade to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.
A detachment of the 1st Battalion Welsh Guards and the Central Band of the Royal Air Force will march past the Kremlin in the military parade on May 9. French and American troops will also join the parade to commemorate the allied alliance with the Soviet Union that defeated Nazi Germany.
A spoke
Source: Spiegel
March 18, 2010
NASACalifornia has named the remains of the Apollo 11 mission a state historical resource -- to the delight of the young profession of space archaeologists. They fear that the trash and equipment left behind by the United States' journeys to the moon could someday wind up for sale on eBay if they aren't protected.
There is an unwritten law in America's national parks: Carry out what you bring in.
When they visited the moon, though, the Americans weren't nearly as consid
Source: AP
March 19, 2010
A collection of ancient Greek silverware dating to the third century B.C. is going on display in Rome after being returned by the Metropolitan Museum in New York, officials said Friday.
The 16 pieces of silverware with gold detail were returned as part of Italy's aggressive campaign against illegal trafficking in antiquities. They include two large bowls, a cup with two handles, plates and drinking utensils.
Italian art officials said the pieces form one of the most i
Source: University of Chicago Magazine
April 1, 2010
On April 13, 2003, Donny George Youkhanna walked into the Iraq Museum. It was George’s first visit since fleeing the museum five days earlier, when the U.S. Army had entered Baghdad. Iraqi looters had broken down the museum’s doors and smashed windows to get in, dragging out gold, clay, and bronze pieces, and even stripping the museum of electrical wire and office chairs. Staircases were chipped as the looters heaved large antiquities from upper floors. United States military tanks had sat outsi
Source: Washington Post
March 17, 2010
Presidential hanky-panky is as old as the nation itself. But no one can bring it to life quite like Larry Flynt. Now the publisher of Hustler is teaming up with Columbia University lecturer David Eisenbach to write “One Nation Under Sex: How the Private Lives of Presidents and First Ladies Shaped America,” due in 2011 from Palgrave. “It’s not just a book about who slept with whom,” says Flynt’s agent, Andrew Stuart.
“It’s a much larger and sweeping account of how the sex lives of A
Source: Downtown Express
March 19, 2010
Over its 200-year history, Castle Williams has been a military fortress, a prison for Confederate soldiers, a pig grazing pen and a teen center.
Now, the National Park Service hopes to turn the red sandstone fort on Governors Island into a museum. The full plans will take 20 years and $60 million to realize, but the N.P.S. recently started cleaning and stabilizing the three-story, doughnut-shaped building using a $6.4 million federal grant.
“Every layer of its use — as
Source: BBC News
March 19, 2010
For more than 1,000 years the high crosses at Monasterboice have stood watch over the landscape of County Louth.
Erected in the 10th Century a conservation study has now listed them as being at immense risk.
Their future at the religious site is the subject of public consultation which could result in them being moved.
Weather, vandalism and visitors are cited as the causes for the declining state of the monuments in a report on the future of the site.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 19, 2010
A former American general blamed "open homosexuality" in the Dutch army for the failure to prevent the Srebrenica massacre in 1995.
The Dutch government condemned the comments by Gen John Sheehan, a former Nato commander and senior marine officer, as outrageous.
Gen Sheehan made the remarks at a Senate hearing where he argued against plans by President Barack Obama to end a ban on allowing gays to serve openly in the US military.
Gen Sheehan said
