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: Times (UK)
May 22, 2009
The Vatican has authorised the publication of a limited-edition facsimile of the 1530 appeal by the Peers of England to Pope Clement VII asking for the annulment of Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon.
The 950 x 458mm parchment, bearing 81 red wax seals encased in tin caskets, is a key document in events leading to the schism between Rome and the Church in England. The reproduction, which is likely to cost €50,000 a copy, is being made by Scrinium, a Venice-based publisher
Source: PEW study
May 22, 2009
Use an interactive graphic at people-press.org to track trends in party affiliation going back to the Roosevelt administration.
Source: NYT
May 21, 2009
The border between Armenia and Turkey has been closed since 1993, a mini Iron Curtain that is in part a legacy of one of the world’s more rancorous conflicts, nearly a century old. Recent weeks have brought news of a possible thaw, with the two countries outlining a plan for establishing diplomatic ties and lifting barriers....
But first, most insisted, Turkey must address the past.
They said that before negotiations proceeded, the Turkish government must acknowledge th
Source: Foxnews
May 22, 2009
A FEMA official told a House panel Friday that the government will send Katrina survivors still living in temporary housing eviction notices starting June 1 and try to connect them to agencies that can help them.
The $5.6 billion housing assistance program that provided temporary trailers and hotel rooms to victims was supposed to end in 2007. But the deadline was extended by two years to May 1 of this year to help the more than 5,000 individuals and families still struggling to r
Source: CNN
May 22, 2009
Yesterday — as his former vice president and his successor both gave major national security speeches in Washington, DC — former President Bush was nearly 1,900 miles away, telling a high school audience how "liberating" it felt to get some distance between himself and the burdens of governance.
But Bush has been conspicuously silent on the president– and told prospective graduates Friday he was glad to be back to a lower-key existence, at a comfortable remove from the nat
Source: AP
May 20, 2009
Italian cultural authorities said Tuesday they had recovered two precious Byzantine-era frescos ripped from a church in southern Italy by looters 27 years ago that ended up at the home of a shipping heiress on a remote Greek island.
The Carabinieri art squad showed off the delicate frescos and other artifacts recovered by Italy as part of its crackdown on illicit antiquities trafficking. In all, police say they recovered more than euro3 million ($4 million) worth of stolen statues,
Source: Xinhua News Agency (China)
May 22, 2009
Newly discovered footprints of different sizes, apparently left by men, women and children, on an ancient military route, have helped recreate a war scene that occurred at least 2,000 years ago, an archaeologist said Friday.
The footprints, the smallest of which were believed to belong to children around six years old, were found last week along vehicle tracks on China's first interprovincial road, a 700-km dirt road built under the reign of the "First Emperor", said Zhang
Source: The Seattle Times
May 22, 2009
Saturday marks the 75th anniversary of the deaths of Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker. And decades later, we're still fascinated with Clyde, a hardhearted killer, and Bonnie, his more-than-willing accomplice.
Sure, Depression-era America was enamored with the love-struck outlaws, but Hollywood hype, intense media interest and time have ways of distorting reality.
Their life on the run, for the most part, was far from glamorous, historians say.
They were clums
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 22, 2009
Google has been accused of perpetuating Japan's social divisions by publishing ancient maps that identify districts as home to "filth."
Representatives of the country's untouchable caste have taken Google to task for using maps that date back to the feudal era on its Google Earth service.
Inhabitants of certain districts, of Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto, were known as burakumin, or "unclean" centuries ago. They had jobs working as grave-diggers, butchers
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 22, 2009
Former US president Ronald Reagan is set to be honoured with a statue in central London.
Westminster City Council granted planning permission for the sculpture to be erected outside the US embassy in Grosvenor Square.
To allow the statue to go ahead, the council has changed its usual policy of allowing memorials only to people who have been dead for 10 or more years.
Steve Summers, chairman of Westminster City Council's planning applications sub committee,
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 22, 2009
Old soldiers gathered beneath the craggy mountain redoubt of Monte Cassino in Italy on Friday to commemorate one of the forgotten battles of the Second World War.
Monte Cassino's sixth century monastery was wrested from its stubborn German defenders in May 1944 after five months of savage fighting, but two weeks later the bloody victory was eclipsed by the success of the D-Day landings.
Sixty five years on, the dwindling band of British and Allied survivors of the camp
Source: BBC
May 22, 2009
Canada has completed its first war-crimes trial - convicting a Rwandan man of atrocities carried out during Rwanda's genocidal conflict in 1994.
The trial of Desire Munyaneza, 42, heard from 66 witnesses over two years.
He was accused of leading a militia who raped and killed dozens of Tutsis, and orchestrating a massacre of 300 to 400 Tutsis in a church.
Munyaneza, who faces a life sentence, is the first person to be convicted under Canada's 2000 War Cri
Source: LiveScience
May 20, 2009
You know science has made it big when the Google homepage logo is changed to celebrate a fossil finding and the mayor of New York shows up at a press conference to unveil it.
A new 47-million year old primate fossil unveiled to the world Tuesday has made waves among scientists and non-scientists. Google responded by working an image of the fossil into the logo of its search page.
The discovery was presented with much fanfare at a press conference at the American Museum
Source: AP
May 21, 2009
A marble sculpture stolen in Albania 18 years ago and taken to Italy has been returned to the country.
The bust of Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine, was snatched from Albania's Butrinti Archaeological museum and recovered by Italian police from a private home in 2004.
Source: McClatchy
May 21, 2009
Former Vice President Dick Cheney's defense Thursday of the Bush administration's policies for interrogating suspected terrorists contained omissions, exaggerations and misstatements.
In his address to the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative policy organization in Washington, Cheney said that the techniques the Bush administration approved, including waterboarding — simulated drowning that's considered a form of torture — forced nakedness and sleep deprivation, were "
Source: NYT
May 21, 2009
The city of Philadelphia, Miss., where members of the Ku Klux Klan killed three civil rights workers in 1964 in one of the era’s most infamous acts, on Tuesday elected its first black mayor.
James A. Young, a Pentecostal minister and former county supervisor, narrowly beat the incumbent, Rayburn Waddell, in the Democratic primary. There is no Republican challenger.
The results, announced Wednesday night, were a turning point for a mostly white city of 7,300 people in ea
Source: NYT
May 21, 2009
On April 30, the cellphones of the 32,630 students at Peking University, a genteel institution widely regarded as one of China’s top universities, buzzed with a text message from the school administration. It warned students to “pay attention to your speech and behavior” on Youth Day because of a “particularly complex” situation.
Few students had to puzzle over the meaning. Youth Day, on May 4, commemorates a 1919 student protest against foreign imperialism and China’s weakness in r
Source: Spiegel Online
May 21, 2009
Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Poland's former prime minister, has seemed lackluster of late. He has only seldom thrown himself into the ongoing campaign ahead of European Parliament elections in two weeks. Instead of delivering his accustomed tirades against the European Union, he has meekly called on his fellow citizens to go to the polls on June 6. It seemed that he was short on issues.
This week, though, Kaczynski has found his old form again -- with the unexpected help of SPIEGEL."The Ger
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
May 22, 2009
For the captured British troops held in German prisoner of war camps, life was truly harsh.
Some who survived time in the stalags and officers' camps such as Colditz spoke of torture, forced route marches, meagre daily rations of bread and soup...
In contrast, daily life for Germans held in PoW camps in Britain seems to have been almost relaxed, if these astonishing images are anything to go by.
One shows a group in white dinner jackets, playing clarinet
Source: Independent (UK)
May 22, 2009
Margaret Thatcher is to travel to Rome for a private meeting with Pope Benedict XVI next week, The Independent has learnt. The former Prime Minister will fly to Italy today with her daughter Carol and her week-long stay will include a private audience with the pontiff next Wednesday.
The 83-year-old will make a brief protocol visit to the Vatican and has been afforded time to see the Pope face to face. She did not seek the private audience, but agreed to its being arranged by her ol
