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 17, 2007
COMMERCE CITY, Colo. -- After an absence of more than a century, wild bison were returned to Colorado's Front Range on Saturday in full view of Denver's skyline.
Sixteen buffalo from the National Bison Range in northwestern Montana were released in an enclosed 1,400-acre section of a wildlife refuge that formerly was the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, where nerve gas and other chemical weapons were manufactured...
The 17,000-acre arsenal is being cleaned up and transformed fro
Source: AP
March 17, 2007
KABUL, Afghanistan -- More than 1,400 artifacts -- protected from looters and the Taliban since 1999 at a museum-in-exile in Switzerland -- were returned to the National Museum of Afghanistan on Saturday.
The collection, which includes a piece from a foundation stone that was "touched by Alexander the Great" and several items thousands of years old, was assembled in Switzerland by Afghans who wanted to save their cultural heritage after decades of war.
The old
Source: International Herald Tribune
March 17, 2007
SANJIAZI, China -- Seated cross-legged in her farmhouse on the kang, a brick sleeping platform warmed by a fire below, Meng Shujing lifted her chin and sang a lullaby in Manchu, softly but clearly...
Meng is one of 18 residents of this isolated village in northeastern China, all older than 80, who, according to Chinese linguists and historians, are the last native speakers of Manchu.
Descendants of seminomadic tribesmen who conquered China in the 17th century, they are
Source: AP
March 17, 2007
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- A Confederate flag hanging from a noose on a 13-foot (4-meter) gallows will remain on display despite protests from the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who call it an affront to Southern heritage.
"The Proper Way to Hang a Confederate Flag" by black artist John Sims is "offensive, objectionable and tasteless," Robert Hurst, commander of the local camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, said Friday.
But the Mary Brogan Museum of A
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
March 17, 2007
For four decades there have been rumours that Marilyn Monroe's death was not a simple suicide. Now a Los Angeles-based Australian writer and director, Philippe Mora, has uncovered an FBI document that throws up a chilling new scenario.
Bobby Kennedy's affair with the screen idol Marilyn Monroe has been documented, but a secret FBI file suggests the late US attorney-general was aware of -- and perhaps even a participant in -- a plan"to induce" her suicide.
The detailed three-page repo
Source: Reuters
March 17, 2007
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- The trials of surviving Khmer Rouge leaders moved a big step closer on Friday as international and Cambodian judges said they had finally agreed on the rules of the tribunal.
"The review committee discussed in exhaustive detail many points and resolved all remaining disagreements, although some fine tuning remains to be done," they said in a statement at the end of 10 days of talks.
Disagreements which had held up the start of the tribu
Source: Washington Post
March 17, 2007
Poetic justice is not so easily meted out, as a distinguished gaggle of lawyers and psychiatrists found out when gathered on Thursday night to consider the sanity of Hamlet.
After two hours of mock-trial arguments at the Kennedy Center -- presided over by no less a jurist than Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy -- a jury of Washingtonians deliberated over whether Hamlet was in his right mind when he stabbed Polonius to death. In elegant tribute to Shakespeare's enigmatic maste
Source: Washington Post
March 17, 2007
The Maryland Senate agreed to express "profound regret" for the state's role in the slave trade with unanimous approval of a resolution that acknowledges the responsibility the state had in maintaining "the institution of slavery and its attendant evils."...
The Maryland resolution, which appears likely to win approval in the House as well, says slavery "fostered a climate of oppression" not just for slaves and their descendants but for other people of
Source: Los Angeles Times
March 17, 2007
An ancient Indian sculpture quietly consigned for sale in a New York gallery by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will be returned to the museum, LACMA Director Michael Govan said, as the museum reconsiders policies on the perpetually controversial issue of such "de-accessions."
"I'm very conservative on de-accessioning," Govan said in a telephone interview Thursday. "LACMA's existing policies are standard. You may see those policies change in the future
Source: Reuters
March 16, 2007
TOKYO -- A diplomatic furore over Japan's wartime brothels looked unlikely to fade after Tokyo said on Friday a 14-year-old study had found no evidence the government or military officials had kidnapped women to act as prostitutes.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's latest statement -- which was issued in response to an opposition lawmaker's query and which also reiterated that Japan stood by a 1993 apology -- came as the U.S. ambassador to Japan said he believed the women were forced to a
Source: Times (of London)
March 17, 2007
Musicians have always sought to replicate the divine sounds that Frédéric Chopin made on the piano at the height of his powers. Now they have a chance to do exactly that, after the discovery of the composer’s own grand piano, which he brought to England in 1848 for the last great concert tour of his life.
Chopin’s French-made piano disappeared into obscurity after his death, but more than 150 years later it has been tracked down to an English country house.
Two decades
Source: AP
March 9, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO -- A bronze bust of the first openly gay man to hold a prominent elected office in the United States is going up in City Hall, more than 28 years after he was assassinated.
Harvey Milk was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977 and shot to death a year later, along with Mayor George Moscone, by fellow supervisor Dan White. White was convicted of manslaughter, and served a little more than three years in prison before committing suicide.
The bronze scu
Source: Times (of London)
March 10, 2007
They were known to sailors as"the isles at the edge of the world" but, more than 75 years after the last inhabitants were evacuated, the story of St Kilda is being taken this June to four European countries in a £1.8 million Gaelic opera.
The language may be spoken by only 1.2 per cent of the population in Scotland, but this has not stopped the producers of St Kilda: A European Opera from seeking, in local-language productions, to introduce its sounds and rhythms to audiences in Fra
Source: AP
March 11, 2007
PITTSBURGH -- Adolf Hitler used the theory of eugenics in his quest to create a master race, legitimizing the murder of thousands deemed unfit for the German race and culminating in the genocide of 6 million Jews.
But the idea behind eugenics —- improving a population's health through genetics — was hardly unique to Germany, as shown by a traveling exhibit developed by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and on display at The Andy Warhol Museum.
Source: Turkish Daily News (Ankara)
March 10, 2007
ISTANBUL -- The Darphane-i Amire Building, which was given in 1995 to the History Foundation (Tarih Vakfı) for 49 years with the aim of founding an Istanbul city museum, was sealed due to risk of collapse.
The building has been a subject of dispute between the History Foundation and Culture Ministry. Based on a report from last year citing the building was seriously damaged, orders were given for the building to be evacuated by Feb. 22...
History Foundation Ch
Source: Xinhua/ChinaView
March 8, 2007
BEIJING -- The Forbidden City -- once off-limits to ordinary citizens and foreigners - [is hosting] a British history exhibition...
The exhibition named "Britain Meets the World 1714-1830" [is being] held at the Forbidden City, also known as the Palace Museum, in Beijing...to June 10.
The exhibition will explore Britain's engagement with the world during the Georgian period when the nation was emerging as an international power.
The three-month ex
Source: National Geographic News
March 16, 2007
Gruesome evidence found in ancient burial chambers reveals a period of violence and instability in Stone Age Britain, according to archaeologists.
Signs of bloody massacres and fractured societies are emerging from research that used new dating techniques to age prehistoric skeletons and burial sites in southern England.
The sites include Wayland's Smithy in Oxfordshire, where the remains of 14 people show evidence of an ancient massacre, according to a team led by the
Source: AP
March 16, 2007
ATLANTA -- Georgia's top Republican state senator said Friday he expects that the state will follow Virginia's lead and apologize for its role in slavery.
State Senate President Pro Tem Eric Johnson said he has been meeting with prominent black leaders in Georgia to craft a strategy and believed something could pass before the legislative session concludes in mid-April...
Johnson has been meeting with [state Rep. Al] Williams, D-Midway, Rep. Tyrone Brooks, D-Atlanta and
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
March 16, 2007
Scholars differ on much about the life of St. Patrick, but they tend to agree that his mission of walking the Emerald Isle to spread the gospel of Christ fits squarely into the 5th century A.D.
But now comes a challenge from a Patrick sleuth at UC Berkeley, Daniel Melia, a professor of rhetoric and Celtic studies -- and incidentally a former "Jeopardy" champion who won a quarter of a million dollars and a silver Corvette he still drives.
Melia has studied ling
Source: NYT
March 16, 2007
Frustrated by their own government’s timidity but encouraged by recent court rulings in Argentina and Chile, Brazilian human rights groups are seeking to overturn an amnesty for human rights abuses that went into effect in 1979, when a right-wing military dictatorship ruled this nation.
A family of five jailed earlier in the 1970s has filed a civil action against Col. Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, who was then the commander of Center for Operations for Internal Defense here. A jud
