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: AP
March 28, 2009
A Spanish court has agreed to consider opening a criminal case against six former Bush administration officials, including former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, over allegations they gave legal cover for torture at Guantanamo Bay, a lawyer in the case said Saturday.
Human rights lawyers brought the case before leading anti-terror judge Baltasar Garzon, who agreed to send it on to prosecutors to decide whether it had merit, Gonzalo Boye, one of the lawyers who brought the charges
Source: AP
March 31, 2009
The man accused of being the Khmer Rouge's chief torturer put down his prepared speech, removed his eyeglasses and gazed at the courtroom audience as he pleaded for forgiveness from the country he helped terrorize three decades ago.
"At the beginning I only prayed to ask for forgiveness from my parents, but later I prayed to ask forgiveness from the whole nation," Kaing Guek Eav — better known as Duch — recounted on the second day of his trial before Cambodia's genocide tr
Source: IHT
March 26, 2009
A member of the American team that negotiated to remove the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic from power in 1996 said that he was never promised immunity from prosecution as part of a deal to step down, contradicting several accounts cited in an article on Sunday in The New York Times.
Philip S. Goldberg, who was part of the team led by Richard C. Holbrooke, issued a statement saying that "at no time during the negotiations in Belgrade or elsewhere in the region was an immun
Source: United Press International
March 28, 2009
A 4,000-year-old male human skeleton has been discovered in Tajikistan, experts say.
The well-preserved skeleton was found by a group of local residents in the foothills near the Tajik village of Tudakavsh, ITAR-TASS reported Saturday.
The Russian news service reported that experts said the skeleton's face-down posture indicates the man was not buried, but likely died in battle.
Yusuf Yakubov of the Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnography of the N
Source: National Geograhpic News
March 30, 2009
A brass navigational instrument known as a chart divider is among artifacts recently recovered from a shipwreck thought to be the Queen Anne's Revenge, the ship of the infamous 18th-century pirate Blackbeard, archaeologists said in March 2009.
Some of the newfound relics add to evidence that the ship belonged to the pirate. ""We feel pretty comfortable that that's what this is," said Marke Wilde-Ramsing, director of the Queen Anne's Revenge project for the North Carol
Source: Brisbane Times (France)
March 31, 2009
Archaeologists in northern France have stumbled upon two mass graves dating back to the years of civil strife unleashed after the French Revolution of 1789, officials say.
Located in a park in the city of Le Mans, the graves contain the bodies of about 30 people, including several women, two male teenagers and a child, the INRA archaeology institute said on Monday.
All were identified as victims of a massacre on December 12 and 13, 1793, as republican forces repelled ro
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 31, 2009
Massacre survivor Dren Caka, photographed by the Telegraph in 1999, remembers the night his mother and sisters were murdered by Serbian police in one of the most notorious episodes of the war.
A decade on from the Kosovo War, that last great exercise in 20th-century European blood-letting, Dren Caka, 20, is a casualty still.
“I have nightmares a lot,” he says, looking out over Vancouver’s glistening waterfront. “I can’t sleep at night and feel constantly tired; I usual
Source: BBC
March 31, 2009
The oldest living person in the UK is celebrating her 113th birthday at a nursing home in Leeds.
Guinness World Record holder Florence Emily Baldwin, known as Florrie, was born in the city on 31 March 1896.
Mrs Baldwin, whose husband Clifford died in 1973, once met Queen Victoria in Leeds, was 16 when the Titanic sank and 73 when man landed on the moon.
Her only contact with the medical world had been a cataract operation when she was in her 80s.
Source: BBC
March 31, 2009
The German interior ministry has banned a far-right group for allegedly organising activities promoting racist and Nazi ideology among young children.
The Homeland-Faithful German Youth (HDJ) taught children as young as six that foreigners and Jews were a threat to the "German nation", officials said.
Police have also raided the offices and houses of the group's leaders in four states in connection with the ban.
The HDJ said it was a "youth
Source: BBC
March 31, 2009
The man who led Argentina out of the era of military dictatorship, Raul Alfonsin, is said to be very ill and to be having difficulty breathing.
Doctors say Mr Alfonsin, 82, has pneumonia and lung cancer. His son Ricardo says he is "very fragile".
He was the first democratically-elected president after the military regime that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983.
Mr Alfonsin was president from 1983, when the generals lost power after British troops
Source: NYT
March 30, 2009
In the past, the United States government had briefly nationalized steel makers and tried to run the railroads, with little success. In the last nine months it has taken control of the American International Group insurance firm and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, firing their management as well, at a cost that dwarfs what is unfolding in Detroit.
But directing the fate of a vast manufacturing company, one that still looms over the Midwest, is an entirely different kind of enterprise. A
Source: Independent (UK)
March 31, 2009
Visitors to the Alhambra fortress-palace in Granada have for centuries fallen into a reverie before its intricately carved medieval walls, wondering at the meaning of the Arabic inscriptions that adorn them from floor to ceiling. The script that winds round the filigree arches and pillared courtyards is so stylised that it's often difficult to disentangle words from images, and few can decipher the classical Arabic in which they are written.
Now, the carvings have been logged and tr
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
April 3, 2009
Archaeologists and museum directors are paying close attention to a lawsuit in which the Peruvian government demands that Yale University return artifacts collected more than 90 years ago at Machu Picchu, the Andean redoubt that is believed to have been the last major settlement of the Inca empire. The university and Peru reached an agreement on the artifacts in 2007, but Peruvian activists and scholars objected to it so strongly that it fell apart.
Source: US News & World Report
March 26, 2009
First ladies are always the subject of fascination. Their experiences often illustrate the evolving roles of women in our society, and they are usually an essential part of the governing team at the White House. Most first ladies have taken on special projects that reflect their core values, such as highway beautification for Lady Bird Johnson and the promotion of reading for Laura Bush. Michelle Obama is emulating her predecessors, with a difference. Her signature initiative--improving the live
Source: NYT
March 25, 2009
If you’re interested in studying left-wing social movements like organized labor, civil rights or feminism, there are dozens of universities and colleges that have created special programs and research centers devoted to the subject. But hardly any similar institutions exist in academia for those looking for a place to study the right wing in America and abroad.
Now, with backing from an anonymous donor, the University of California, Berkeley, where ’60s-era students stood atop a po
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 30, 2009
A new museum charting the story of the ill-fated liner the Titanic could be built in Britain in time for the 100th anniversary of the sinking, it has been announced.
The £28 million project in Southampton, from where the liner set sail in 1912 on her maiden voyage, is set to feature a climb-aboard replica of the ship.
Many of the ship's crew also came from the city.
If successful, the city council's Civic Centre will be converted with the main exhibition h
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 30, 2009
British history has become "feminised" by female authors who concentrate on subjects like the six wives of Henry VIII rather than the king himself, Dr David Starkey has said.
Speaking shortly before the launch of a new Channel 4 series to mark the 500th anniversary of the Tudor monarch's accession to the throne, Dr Starkey said he found it "bizarre" that so much historical effort was now focused on the monarch's wives.
But he warned that the "s
Source: CNN
March 30, 2009
Susan Atkins is terminally ill; Charles "Tex" Watson is an ordained minister. They and other members of Charles Manson's murderous "family" now shun him.
After three decades behind bars, Manson family members Atkins, Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten have repeatedly been described as model prisoners who have accepted responsibility for their crimes.
Parole boards, however, continue to reject their bids for release, and a debate rage
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 29, 2009
The Grade II* country house in Stanmore, Middlesex, closed in May last year and its operations were moved to nearby RAF Northolt.
Perched on a hill commanding views across the whole of London to the South Downs beyond, the building is revered as the nerve centre of the Battle of Britain.
It is seen as the spiritual home of "the Few" – the World War II fighter pilots who fought off the German aerial invasion in 1940 against all the odds.
VSM Est
Source: BBC
March 30, 2009
After months of pre-trial hearings, the former prison chief known as Comrade Duch listened while a court official read out the charges against him.
He is accused of crimes against humanity, torture and premeditated murder for his alleged role in the deaths of more than 10,000 people.
The Khmer Rouge killed up to two million people in less than four years.
