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: Los Angeles Times
March 8, 2007
SARK, Channel Islands — Here, on an island that might be called Camelot, the winds of democracy have blown in like the waft from a landfill.
This 3-mile-long stretch of granite crags, flowered meadows, neat cottages and well-behaved Guernsey cows 80 miles off Britain's coast in the English Channel is the last feudal outpost in Europe...
Sark has remained pretty much the same for 442 years, since Queen Elizabeth I declared it a noble fiefdom...
Landownershi
Source: AP
March 7, 2007
PHILADELPHIA -- An unknown number of new George Washington dollar coins were mistakenly struck without their edge inscriptions, including "In God We Trust," and made it past inspectors and into circulation, the U.S. Mint said Wednesday.
The properly struck dollar coins, bearing the likeness of George Washington, are inscribed along the edge with "In God We Trust," "E Pluribus Unum" and the year and mint mark. They went into circulation Feb. 15.
Source: New York Times
March 7, 2007
ALLENSWORTH, Calif. —- It is an unlikely place for a utopia: this cracked-earth landscape of two-lane roads in the Central Valley, so remote that the lilting staccato of freight trains can be heard from miles away.
Yet it was here, nearly a century ago, that Allen Allensworth, an escaped slave from Kentucky who became the nation’s highest-ranking black Army officer at the time, forged an idealistic community dedicated to Booker T. Washington’s principles of self-help and self-determ
Source: Times (UK)
March 5, 2007
What they didn't want you to know: A list of intriguing facts disinterred by the [UK] Freedom of Information Act.
*Ministers and MPs were claiming thousands of pounds on taxis as part of £5.9m in expenses for travel
*The Thatcher Government concocted a plan to search for the Loch Ness monster using a team of dolphins
*Foreign diplomats – who have diplomatic immunity – were accused of rapes, sexual assaults, child abuse and murders while working in Brita
Source: AP
March 7, 2007
THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- The director of a long-secret archive of Nazi records said Wednesday that preparations for allowing scholars access are moving faster than expected and the entire collection will be ready for research within a year.
But unless the 11 governing nations overcome legal hurdles, it could take years before the documents are actually released.
The United States is leading a campaign to hasten ratification of an agreement reached last year to unlock t
Source: Kyodo News
March 8, 2007
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe may order a reinvestigation into the wartime sex slaves -- a move that could lead to a revision of Tokyo's 1993 statement admitting the military's involvement in running frontline brothels across Asia for Imperial Japanese Army soldiers during the 1930s and 1940s, government and ruling bloc sources said Wednesday.
Abe, who last week unleashed a storm of criticism by claiming there is no evidence that the wartime army "coerced" women in Japanese-oc
Source: Radio Prague
March 6, 2007
Prague's Olsanske cemetery is by far the largest graveyard in the city. It is the final resting place of over a million people, including many of the leading figures of the Czech national revival and scholars and artists. You can also find there the graves of Czech legionaries from the First World War, as well as Commonwealth and Russian soldiers who lost their lives on Czechoslovak territory during the Second World War.
However, this burial ground is often the target of vandals and
Source: AP
March 6, 2007
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The Albright-Knox Art Gallery's planned sale of 200 mostly older works to strengthen its buying power for newer pieces will be either one of the most important steps the gallery ever undertakes, or a giant misstep, depending on whom you ask.
Headed for the Sotheby's auction block beginning later this month are Chinese ceramics dating to the 13th century B.C., Indian and Southeast Asian works from the second to 11th century, American Indian earthenware, and old maste
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
March 7, 2007
BERKELEY -- A UC Berkeley biology student was arrested today on suspicion of stealing the first Nobel Prize the university ever received from the Lawrence Hall of Science, campus police said.
Ian Michael Sanchez, 22, a senior who worked at the hands-on science museum, was taken into custody today and booked on suspicion of felony grand theft for allegedly stealing the 23-karat gold medal worth $4,200, UC Berkeley police said.
The prize, awarded to the late physicist Ern
Source: Live Science
March 7, 2007
A ship that was deliberately sunk might have blocked Napoleon from entering a Middle Eastern port on his quest to conquer the British Empire in Egypt and India, and sent the future emperor retreating back to France.
A new study of the ship's excavated cargo will help marine archaeologists analyze the role of sunken ship and reconstruct the 61-day battle between the British and Napoleon's army at the entry to the Israeli city Akko, known then as Acre, more than 200 years ago.
Source: Reuters
March 6, 2007
GENEVA -- A Turkish politician went on trial Tuesday in Switzerland for denying that the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War I amounted to genocide.
Dogu Perincek, head of the Turkish Workers' Party, called the Armenian genocide"an international lie" during a speech in the Swiss city of Lausanne in July 2005.
The state prosecutor has called for a six month prison term for violating a 1995 Swiss law that bans denying, belittling or justifying any genocide. The maxim
Source: AP
March 7, 2007
LONDON (-- Legislators took an unprecedented step Wednesday toward ending an age-old tradition of allowing Britain's non-elected elite to hold political power, backing proposals for an entirely elected House of Lords.
House of Commons lawmakers voted 337-224 in favor of developing laws to elect all members of Parliament's upper chamber -- potentially one of the most significant constitutional changes in British history.
The move, which requires new legislation, would br
Source: International Herald Tribune
March 6, 2007
Six of the Seven Wonders of the World have long since gone with the wind. The Giza pyramids of Egypt are the sole survivor — and now they are threatened by modern Cairo's rapidly spreading urban sprawl.
But the reliability of the original Seven Wonders list, drawn up by the architect Philon of Byzantium in about 200 B.C., was suspect anyway. Did the hanging gardens of Babylon ever exist? The Tower of Babel? The Colossus of Rhodes? No traces remain.
Philon kept within hi
Source: NYT
March 7, 2007
It’s all part of a Somali puzzle: how one area of the country, the northwest, also known as Somaliland, can seem so peaceful and functional — so normal, in fact — while the rest continues to be such a violent, chaotic mess.
This tale of two Somalias is especially striking now, as thousands of African Union peacekeepers prepare to rescue Mogadishu, the nation’s bloodstained capital, from itself. The internationally backed transitional government that seized Mogadishu in late December
Source: Zee News (India)
March 7, 2007
BEIJING -- China and Japan, holding divergent views about history, will jointly study the subject in an attempt to improve ties strained over the past, especially Japanese occupation of China during World War II.
China hopes the first-ever joint effort between the two countries on history can proceed well, foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang told reporters.
China and Japan have each appointed a 10-member team to conduct the research.
"I hope the expert
Source: Reuters
March 6, 2007
OKLAHOMA CITY -- Black Cherokee Indians said on Tuesday they will challenge a weekend vote to kick them out of the tribe that once owned their ancestors as slaves.
They threatened legal action to overturn the vote on Saturday in which 77 percent of those who cast ballots said they should no longer be Cherokees...
The vote would remove from tribal rolls 2,800 people who were mostly "freedmen," or descendants of slaves owned by the tribe before the U.S. Civil Wa
Source: UPI
March 7, 2007
PERUGIA, Italy -- An Italian expedition plans to retrace the route that Marco Polo took to China, using the same type of horses on the Silk Road.
"We'll face the same kind of challenges our illustrious predecessor did, traveling over extremely varied terrain: plains, valleys, high mountain tracks and deserts," Piero Lapiana, the expedition's leader, told the Italian news agency ANSA.
Veterinarians from Perugia University will be in the group to study how the h
Source: Radar Online
March 6, 2007
Just weeks before the April opening of a new Greek and Roman antiquities exhibit at New York's Metropolitan Museum, the author of a new tell-all has discovered that some of the prize pieces set for display in the new Leon Levy and Shelby White Court may have been pillaged from Greece and Italy and smuggled over borders.
The potential scandal, unearthed by Michael Gross during research for his forthcoming book about New York's storied art mecca, is already raising hackles among museu
Source: NYT
March 4, 2007
FALSE advertising is part of the problem, and it’s right there in the name: alternative minimum tax.
“Minimum,” when the tax was conceived, meant that even the wealthiest Americans, with their buffet of deductions, loopholes and shelters, would still pay some income tax.
“Alternative,” added to the name of the tax 21 years ago, suggests a choice, but it’s not much of one for one in four taxpayers this year who must pay using this calculation unless Congress comes up wit
Source: NYT
March 5, 2007
The Kern River oil field, discovered in 1899, was revived when Chevron engineers here started injecting high-pressured steam to pump out more oil. The field, whose production had slumped to 10,000 barrels a day in the 1960s, now has a daily output of 85,000 barrels....
In a wide-ranging study published in 2000, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that ultimately recoverable resources of conventional oil totaled about 3.3 trillion barrels, of which a third has already been produced.
