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: BBC
March 6, 2009
The Chinese government has denied any involvement in bidding at an auction in Paris for two bronze artworks which it says were looted from Beijing in 1860.
A Chinese collector bought the heads of a rabbit and a rat for 15m euros ($19m; £13m) each, when fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent's collection was sold.
The buyer, Cai Mingchao, has refused to pay, as an "act of patriotism".
The official Xinhua news agency quoted an official as saying wha
Source: Reuters
March 6, 2009
The son of an expert on the Dead Sea Scrolls impersonated other experts in order to further his father's views on the 2000-year-old documents, New York prosecutors said.
During a six-month period in 2008, Raphael Haim Golb, whose father Norman Golb is a University of Chicago professor of Jewish history, created dozens of Internet aliases in the names of individuals who were active in Dead Sea Scrolls scholarship.
Norman Golb has taken the position the scrolls were pro
Source: AP
March 5, 2009
CAIRO -- A team of Egyptian and European archaeologists has discovered two large statues of an ancient pharaoh who ruled Egypt some 3,400 years ago, the country's archaeology chief said Thursday.
The two statues of Amenhotep III were found while the excavation team was clearing out a temple dedicated to him on the west bank of the Nile in the southern city of Luxor, according to a statement by Zahi Hawass, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.
Hawass said one stat
Source: Library of Congress Blog
February 26, 2009
A number of news outlets have been focusing on a statement by President Obama in support of the automobile industry in his State of the Union Address: “I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it.” (One example is here.)A number of them are citing the Library of Congress as having definitively asserted that the car was actually invented
Source: WaPo
March 3, 2009
The CIA got rid of 92 videotapes depicting the harsh interrogations and confinement of "high value" al-Qaeda suspects, government lawyers disclosed yesterday, as a long-running criminal probe of the tapes' destruction inched toward a conclusion that is not expected to result in charges against CIA operations employees, three sources said.
Then-directorate of operations chief Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. gave an order to destroy the recordings in November 2005, as scrutiny of the
Source: AP
March 5, 2009
People and horses have trekked together through at least 5,500 years of history, according to an international team of researchers reporting in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
New evidence, corralled in Kazakhstan, indicates the Botai culture used horses as beasts of burden — and as a source of meat and milk — about 1,000 years earlier than had been widely believed, according to the team led by Alan Outram of England's University of Exeter.
"This is signif
Source: TPM (Liberal blog)
March 5, 2009
Quite a few readers [of Talking Points Memo] have written in recent days with questions about the Republicans' ability to filibuster the $410 billion spending bill that's currently on the Senate floor, which is expected to come to a final vote late tonight or tomorrow morning.Can you filibuster this spending bill? Yes -- because it's not a budget resolution,
Source: International Herald Tribune
March 5, 2009
NEW YORK -- After intense protests from the Indian government and press, Mohandas Gandhi's eyeglasses and some of his other belongings were sold Thursday afternoon for $1.8 million after last-minute attempts to halt the auction of the items.
The buyer was identified as Vijay Mallya, an Indian liquor and airline executive who owns the company that makes Kingfisher beer. A representative for Mallya, Tony Bedhi, did the bidding and later announced that the belongings would be returned
Source: Foxnews
March 5, 2009
A Vatican-backed conference on evolution is under attack from people who weren't invited to participate: those espousing creationism and intelligent design.
The Discovery Institute, the main organization supporting intelligent design research, says it was shut out from presenting its views because the meeting was funded in part by the John Templeton Foundation, a major U.S. nonprofit that has criticized the intelligent design movement.
Organizers of the five-day confere
Source: Chicago Tribune
March 4, 2009
Legal experts said Tuesday they were taken aback by the claim in the latest batch of secret Bush-era memos that the president alone had the power to set the rules during the war on terrorism.
Yale law professor Jack Balkin called this a "theory of presidential dictatorship. They say the battlefield is everywhere. And the president can do anything he wants, so long as it involves the military and the enemy."
The criticism was not limited to liberals. &q
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
March 5, 2009
A new national survey of faculty members shows that the proportion of professors who believe it is very important to teach undergraduates to become"agents of social change" is substantially larger than the proportion who believe it is important to teach students the classic works of Western civilization.
According to the survey, 57.8 percent of professors believe it is important to encourage undergraduates to be
Source: Salon
March 4, 2009
The Senate Judiciary Committee has been holding hearings Wednesday on whether to proceed with the idea of a different kind of committee -- a truth commission, to be exact, one that would investigate the activities of the Bush administration. And the Republican senators on the committee have been giving us a pretty good preview of the kind of opposition to the idea that we can expect to see coming from that side of the aisle.
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the ranking member of the Judic
Source: NYT
March 4, 2009
Well, that didn’t take long. Just 44 days into the job, and President Obama is going gray.
It happens to all of them, of course — Bill Clinton still had about half a head of brown hair when he took office but was a silver fox two years later, and George W. Bush went from salt and pepper to just salt in what seemed like a blink of an eye.
But so soon? “I started noticing it toward the end of the campaign and leading up to inauguration,” says Deborah Willis, who, as co-au
Source: NYT
March 4, 2009
Signs of simmering resistance abound: Just last week, many of China’s six million Tibetans chose not to celebrate Losar, the Tibetan New Year, in order to mourn Tibetans who suffered during last year’s clashes. Monks have held rallies in parts of Qinghai and Sichuan Provinces. Last Friday, a monk from Kirti Monastery in Sichuan lighted himself on fire in a market, prompting security officers to shoot at him, according to Tibetan advocacy groups. Local officials deny the shooting.
Ch
Source: International Herald Tribune
March 5, 2009
PERPIGNAN, France: In the courtyard of an ancient convent here, the Wall of the Disappeared lists the names of about 2,700 "pieds-noirs" - black feet, as the white French colonists in Algeria were called.
Pieds-noirs - the term's origins are obscure, but perhaps had something to do with black boots - emigrated to Algeria mostly from Spain, Italy, Germany, Malta and other European countries, often as laborers and farmers. They became French citizens during the 130-odd years
Source: http://blogs.cqpolitics.com
March 3, 2009
Evidently $30 million and 10 years wasn't enough to finish the job of declassifying records on the involvement of U.S. intelligence agencies with Nazi and Japanese war criminals.
Congress has just budgeted another $650,000 to finish the job - really, they're serious this time -- of poring through some 8 million postwar pages.
"There's a million pages of Army and CIA documents left" to read and catalog, said Miriam Kleiman, a spokeswoman for the National Archiv
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 5, 2009
The Russian government is to outlaw criticism of Soviet military tactics during the Second World War in the latest example of its heavy-handed approach to dissent.
The controversial plan comes after a television documentary exposed the scale of human losses during one of the conflict's bloodiest battles.
The programme stirred deep emotions in a country that has traditionally glorified the heroic exploits of ordinary soldiers during the 'Great Patriotic War' but has oft
Source: BBC
March 5, 2009
A 4,000-year-old axe, two World War II helmets and a 19th Century boat have been found on the Olympic Park site.
Archaeologists have examined findings at the 500-acre site as building work continues for the 2012 Games.
Medieval pottery, a Roman coin and four prehistoric skeletons were also uncovered at the east London site.
The Museum of London is documenting the discoveries. Senior archaeologist Kieron Tyler said they revealed a "previously unknown
Source: BBC
March 4, 2009
So many Japanese people are living longer that the government is reducing the size of silver cups presented to those who turn 100 years old.
More than 20,000 people are expected to reach their 100th birthday this year.
The Japanese have one of the longest life expectancies of any nation, but there are concerns about the burden on society of paying for care of the aged.
UN projections suggest there will be about one million Japanese over the age of 100 by
Source: BBC
March 5, 2009
The Indian government says it will do everything possible to bring back the personal effects of Mahatma Gandhi which are to be auctioned in New York.
Culture Minister Ambika Soni said the government would bid for the items if they were unable to stop the auction.
Antiquorum Auctioneers are to sell Gandhi's iconic round glasses, a pocket watch, leather sandals and some other items in a few hours time.
The planned auction has led to an uproar in India.
