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 3, 2009
The White House released a statement by President Obama proclaiming March Women's History Month. March was selected as a time to honor American women in 1978, when a Women's History Week was initiated; the time-period was expanded to a month in 1987. Obama's proclamation follows:
With passion and courage, women have taught us that when we band together to advocate for our highest ideals, we can advance our common well-being and strengthen the fabric of our Nation. Each year during W
Source: National Security Archive
March 6, 2009
In a break in one of Guatemala's most notorious human rights crimes, a Guatemalan police officer has been arrested in connection with the abduction and disappearance 25 years ago of labor activist Edgar Fernando García. The arrest yesterday of Héctor Roderico Ramírez Ríos is the result of an investigation of García's case by Guatemala's Human Rights Prosecutor using records found recently among the massive archives of the former National Police.
García was kidnapped by police agents
Source: http://www.patrick.af.mil
March 5, 2009
PATRICK AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. -- This year, we are honoring the women who have led the way in saving our planet. The National Women's History Project has elected to feature Rachel Carson as "the iconic model of the theme." She is but one of many women with a passion to do what it takes, to overcome obstacles in order to preserve what is entrusted to us.
Rachel Carson attempted to define the impact people have had on this beautiful blue planet in her book Silent Spring. She
Source: China View
March 6, 2009
China will establish a national protection center for ancient murals in June in the northwestern province of Gansu to improve the protection for the heritage, a researcher said Friday.
A total of 34 million yuan (about 4.9 million U.S. dollars) will be poured into the project based at Dunhuang Academy, an institute specializing in the protection of grottoes and the restoration of murals and cultural relics, said Wang Xudong, the academy's deputy chief.
The investment
Source: VOA
March 5, 2009
Russia has issued the first of three volumes of documents on the Soviet Union's catastrophic famine of the early 1930s. Russian officials claim the widespread starvation was the result misguided Kremlin policies, but in Ukraine the famine is considered an act of genocide.
The first of three volumes on the Soviet famine of the early 1930s consists of about 6,000 documents, many recently declassified by Russian authorities. The publication follows decades when the very mention of the
Source: Persian Journal
March 5, 2009
Iranian archeologists have unearthed an ancient cylinder seal dating to at least 3,500 years ago in Iran's northern Mazandaran Province. Archeological excavations at the Kelar Mound in the north of Iran have resulted in the discovery of a cylinder seal which dates back to the Neolithic Era; it is decorated with a drawing of a goat.
Further excavations and Carbon-14 studies on the relic are expected to reveal more precise information. Oxford scientists have determined exact dates of
Source: US News & World Report
March 5, 2009
It's not a perfect measure, but it's a useful one—the 100-day standard for gauging presidential effectiveness. The underlying truth is that presidents tend to be most effective when they first take office, when their leadership style seems fresh and new, when the aura of victory is still powerful, and when their impact on Congress is usually at its height. There is nothing magic about the number, and many presidential aides over the years have complained that it is an artificial yardstick. But i
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 6, 2009
With a business empire built on alcohol and a reputation for being the 'King of Good Times', Vijay Mallya's life couldn't be further removed from that of Mahatma Gandhi.
But he was hailed a hero in India after vowing to donate the independence leader's spectacles, sandals and watch to the nation after buying them for $1.8 million (£1.3m) at a New York auction.
The owner of United Breweries, whose flagship brand in Kingfisher beer, and Kingfisher Airlines said that he
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 6, 2009
Sir Isaac Newton's death mask, funeral effigies from the South Pacific and the body maps of HIV sufferers are featured in an exhibition.
The collection at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge explores how people around the world have viewed the human body throughout history.
The museum claims it will be the most ambitious show in its 125 years.
Source: AP
March 6, 2009
William Ayers, the former Weather Underground radical whose past made him a lightning rod in the 2008 presidential campaign, said Thursday that fired Colorado professor Ward Churchill became the victim of a "witch hunt" after comparing Sept. 11 victims to a Nazi.
"There's no doubt in my mind he was persecuted because of his politics," Ayers said before appearing with Churchill at a student rally on academic freedom at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Source: AP
March 5, 2009
A concerned George H.W. Bush saluted Houston surgeons and thanked his fellow presidents for their calls Thursday after former first lady Barbara Bush underwent successful open heart surgery to replace her aortic valve.
"I've been a nervous wreck about it," the former president said, choking back tears a day after his wife spent 2 1/2 hours getting a replacement valve from a pig at Houston's Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center.
Source: Chicago Tribune
March 6, 2009
After word spread around campus that St. Xavier University associate professor Graham Peck had discovered an unknown sliver of history, a student proclaimed Peck himself part of history. Colleagues were stopping to pat him on the back.
The response surprised him because Peck's historic discovery amounted to noticing a newspaper article. But he was keen enough to recognize that the article is a doozy.
Published Oct. 6, 1854, in the Missouri Republican, it is a staggerin
Source: JTA
March 5, 2009
The Vatican has produced another document to bolster its assertion that Pope Pius XII worked behind the scenes to save Jews during World War II.
Vatican Radio on Wednesday said a 1943 document found in a convent in Rome listed the names of 24 people who were to be sheltered by the nuns there in accordance with the pope's desire.
"The Holy Father wants to save his children, also the Jews, and orders that hospitality be given to these persecuted [people] in the monas
Source: The Age (Australia)
March 7, 2009
CHARLES Robert Darwin is immortal. The more that new-wave creationists condemn his theory of evolution, the more oxygen the 200-year-old is given, and the more life is breathed into his On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, now 150 years old. For years, publishers have commissioned and authors have written Darwin books, from brilliant biographies to garden-variety expositions of evolution. I'm not alone in needing to re-organise the bookshelves periodically: move along for more
Source: Bloomberg
March 5, 2009
The German government said it will help Cologne to recover and restore documents damaged when the building housing the municipal archives collapsed on March 3.
Emergency services are seeking two people still missing after the collapse, which may have been caused by building work on the city’s subway. Treasures in the archives included medieval housing records and certificates, and manuscripts from writers including Heinrich Boell and composers such as Jacques Offenbach, German press
Source: AP
March 5, 2009
A bomb exploded Thursday at the mausoleum of a 17th century Sufi poet in northwestern Pakistan, underscoring the gulf between hard-line Muslims and those in the region who follow a traditional, mystical brand of Islam.
A letter delivered three days before the attack to the management of the mausoleum of Sufi poet Rehman Baba on the outskirts of Peshawar warned against its promotion of "shrine culture," said Sahibzada Mohammad Anees, a top government official in the city.
Source: BBC
March 6, 2009
The last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, has given some of his strongest criticism yet of the politics of modern Russia.
He says the United Russia party of the current Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, behaves like the old-style Communists.
He also said Russia's judicial system was not properly constitutional and dismissed members of its parliament as not truly independent.
Mr Gorbachev was speaking as the countries of Eastern and Central Eu
Source: BBC
March 4, 2009
So-called "Boche babies" - the illegitimate offspring of occupying enemy troops - are speaking openly for the first time about their family secret and hunting for long-lost German fathers.
Spurred by a 2004 investigative book, Enfants Maudits (Accursed Children), and a television documentary that came out at the same time, hundreds of men and women in their 60s have contacted the army archives department in Berlin to find out more about their lost parents.
T
Source: NYT
March 6, 2009
The job market is getting ever closer to the depths that it reached in 1982.
Since the start of 2008, the economy has lost jobs at a steeper rate than at any other point in 50 years. That hadn’t been true until today’s report. But the 651,000 job losses in February — together with 161,000 additional job losses in previous months, a result of Labor Department revisions announced today — means that the decline is worse than it was at any point during the deep recessions of the mid-197
Source: Australia Network News
March 5, 2009
Malaysian archaeologists say they have found the site of an an ancient kingdom in northern Kedah state, which predates Cambodia's Angkor temples and may be one of the oldest civilisations in Asia.
Lead researcher Professor Mokhtar Saidin says the discovery could lead to the rewriting of history books on the region.
He says buildings found in two palm oil plantations in northern Kedah last month appear to have been part of the ancient Hindu kingdom of Bujang, which exist
