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)
April 1, 2009
Cristina Fernández Sánchez is more concerned with boyfriends and forging a career as a journalist than with dwelling on the past. At 22, she is part of the generation that grew up as Spain embraced democracy and threw off the shackles of nearly 40 years of dictatorship.
She was born after General Franco died in 1975, and to her the Spanish Civil War was just something she learnt about at school.
“We were taught Franco was a bad man and were only told the basics about
Source: Independent (UK)
April 1, 2009
Aristotle once suggested that the sex of a child was determined by the ardour of the man at the time of insemination, whereas other ancient Greek philosophers thought that it had something to do with the left and right sides of the body.
Two millennia later, an 18th-century French surgeon writing under the pseudonym of Procope Couteau took up the idea and advised men wishing to have baby boys to cut off their left testicle – a procedure no more painful than extracting a tooth, he sa
Source: McClatchy
April 1, 2009
Sen. John McCain and Rep. Peter King are hoping that they have a fighting chance of persuading the nation's first African-American president to pardon posthumously the world's first African-American heavyweight boxing champion.
McCain, R-Ariz., and King, R-N.Y., were to unveil a congressional resolution Wednesday afternoon calling on President Barack Obama to pardon Jack Johnson, who won the heavyweight title a century before Obama took the oath of office.
Johnson's 19
Source: AP
March 31, 2009
On June 12, 1933, more than a thousand of the world's top finance and government officials squeezed into London's stuffy Geological Museum to hear a speech from Britain's King George V - broadcast live by radio to underscore the gravity of the meeting - and set about trying to save the world from the Great Depression.
Six weeks later, the World Economic Conference gave up. Without any major agreements, it adjourned amid squabbling and finger-pointing between the world's democracies.
Source: The Jakarta Post (Indonesia)
April 1, 2009
The Mpu Purwa Historical Object Preservation Center in Malang, East Java, has recovered a 12th-century stone statue of Ganesha, believed to be the only one of its kind in Indonesia. It features a special trait not found on other Ganesha statues in Indonesia - the elephant-headed deity is seen riding atop a mouse.
"The mouse is apparently included as an animal used by Ganesha as a vehicle, but this type of statue has never been found in Indonesia before. Ganesha is usually seen
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 1, 2009
A Kremlin academic has predicted that the global economic crisis will pave the way for Vladimir Putin to rule over a reconstituted Soviet empire stretching from central Europe to the Canadian border within four years.
Igor Panarin, the dean of the Russian foreign ministry's diplomatic academy, gave fellow patriots the opportunity to indulge their wildest imperial fantasies with a startling projection of how geopolitics will change over the next decade.
In an interview
Source: BBC
April 1, 2009
One of Russia's most famous statues of Vladimir Lenin has been bombed, leaving the Bolshevik revolutionary with a gaping hole in his rear.
The bronze statue, in the city of St Petersburg, was badly damaged before dawn on Wednesday, when the blast blew a hole in Lenin's coat.
No-one was hurt in the attack, the motive for which was unknown.
The statue, outside the Finland Station, marks the Bolshevik leader's return from exile in April 1917.
Source: AP
April 1, 2009
The rusting wreck of the first American vessel sunk during World War II has been found off Australia's southeastern coast, ocean researchers said Thursday.
The MV City of Rayville, a freighter carrying a cargo of lead, wool and copper from Australia to New York, sank in the Bass Strait after striking a German mine on Nov. 8, 1940, a year before the United States entered the war.
One seaman drowned while trying to recover personal items from the sinking vessel but the 37
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 1, 2009
The event is to be held at the Argentine president's ambassador's official residence tomorrow evening - the anniversary of the date the war began.
Dr Cristina Kirchner, the president of Argentina, is also expected to make yet another demand for Britain to give up the island, according to The Sun.
It is officially described as a ceremony "to honour the veterans and fallen of the South Atlantic conflict", the newspaper reported.
President Kirchner
Source: BBC
April 1, 2009
He had suffered from pneumonia and lung cancer and last appeared in public in October, when the current president unveiled a bust in his honour.
A medical team had been tending to him at his home in Buenos Aires.
Mr Alfonsin was elected president in 1983, after the fall of the military regime which had held power since 1976.
Critics point out that he failed to stave off a deep economic crisis but his political achievement was summed up by current Preside
Source: Time Magazine
March 31, 2009
For his first major overseas trip as president, Barack Obama has a G-20 meeting, a NATO summit and a roundtable discussion in a Muslim country on the itinerary. But at a morning briefing the day before his departure — as reporters focused on the ouster of General Motors CEO Rick Wagoner — Press Secretary Robert Gibbs didn't field a single question about the President's trip. It was a sign of how ubiquitous and rote presidential foreign travel has become.
Think back to when a Presid
Source: Boston Globe
March 29, 2009
The Dorchester Historical Society has seen it happen time and time again: An old Victorian is purchased by a developer; it gets torn down and replaced by condominiums.
It's a scene that plays out all too often in Boston's biggest neighborhood, according to preservationists who say a glut of older Dorchester homes have fallen victim to the recent boom of condo construction.
"These old buildings are very well-constructed . . . they've lasted for over 100 years,"
Source: Virginia Pilot
March 30, 2009
Soon after the U.S. Marines seized the ancient Iraqi city of Babylon in 2003, Iraqi treasure hunters were picking through the ruins of a 2,600-year-old palace.
Capt. Emilio Marrero Jr., a Navy chaplain, watched from atop a fortress wall with a few Marines and two Iraqi guides.
An Iraqi host whispered, "Ali Baba." Thieves.
Armed with little more than indignation and the cross on his left collar, Marrero hollered down in his Bronx accent at the loot
Source: LAT
March 28, 2009
In a cultural war that has pitted Old South against New, defenders of the Confederate legacy have opened a fresh front in their campaign to polish an image tarnished, they say, by people who do not respect Southern values.
With the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War coming up in 2011, efforts are underway in statehouses, small towns and counties across the South to push for proclamations or legislation promoting Confederate history.
Alabama, Virginia, Missi
Source: Anasa
March 27, 2009
The Vatican on Friday rapped the teachings of a medieval Christian mystic cited three times by Barack Obama as someone who wanted a better world.
''Few of those who expound on Gioacchino da Fiore (Joachim of Fiore, 1130-1202 AD) on the Internet know, or go to the trouble of finding out, what this character really said,'' said Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the Pontifical Household.
According to the most ''vogueish'' interpretations, Cantalmessa said, the utopi
Source: NYT
March 30, 2009
For those who want instant information, there is no shortage of outlets, from cable news to Twitter posts. For the long view, it was said, try a book.
But as the metabolism of the culture has sped up in the digital age, pockets of the publishing industry are prodding themselves out of their Paleolithic ways and joining the rush, with more books on current events coming out faster than ever before.
For generations the publishing industry has worked on a fairly standard s
Source: Boston Globe
March 30, 2009
e National Catholic Reporter says it has obtained documents showing that American bishops and the Vatican were warned of the dangers of clergy sexual abuse in the 1950s, decades before the phenomenon became public. An excerpt from the NCR story:
As early as the mid-1950s, decades before the clergy sexual-abuse crisis broke publicly across the U.S. Catholic landscape, the founder of a religious order that dealt regularly with priest sex abusers was so convinced of their inabili
Source: McClatchy
March 30, 2009
Marylena Bustamante traveled 24 hours on a bus from Mexico City for a new chance at finding information about her brother, who disappeared 27 years ago during Guatemala's civil war.
Guatemalan human rights authorities recently opened a vast archive of police records that could contain information about Bustamante's brother, Emil, and thousands of other victims of state repression during the country's 36-year civil war.
"Like every family member of a detained/disapp
Source: NYT
March 28, 2009
Looking for something to celebrate? How about the commemoration of New York’s 400th birthday beginning next Saturday?
On April 4, 1609, the English navigator Henry Hudson left Amsterdam harbor to search for a shortcut to Asia. Hudson’s instructions from the Dutch East India Company were to sail east, as he had on two earlier voyages that were thwarted by Arctic ice.
Instead, inspired by insights gleaned from other explorers, Hudson steered his triple-masted ship toward
Source: NYT
March 28, 2009
Republicans are in a tizzy because Democrats are threatening to use the budgetary procedure known as reconciliation — it reconciles policy with fiscal guidelines — to overhaul the health care system, possibly enact climate change legislation and rewrite education policy.
They have good reason to fret: If Democrats successfully invoke reconciliation, such major bills could pass by a simple majority vote, denying Republicans the filibuster, their sole remaining weapon to influence fed
