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
February 5, 2007
STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- For centuries, readers thumbed through the crackling pages of Sweden's Post-och Inrikes Tidningar newspaper. No longer. The world's oldest paper still in circulation has dropped its paper edition and now exists only in cyberspace.
The newspaper, founded in 1645 by Sweden's Queen Kristina, became a Web-only publication on Jan. 1. It's a fate, many ink-stained writers and readers fear, that may await many of the world's most venerable journals...
Quee
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
February 4, 2007
As President Bush and Congress fight over his plan for a military surge in Iraq, they might do well to study the lessons of diplomacy from quagmires past.
Diplomats, historians and activists who have studied the wars in Vietnam and Lebanon say the history of negotiations in those conflicts can be instructive in finding a way out of Iraq.
"It's a silly argument to say you shouldn't talk to Iran and Syria," said Winston Lord, a top aide to U.S. National Security
Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com
February 3, 2007
The Canadian publisher of an acclaimed bestseller on the U.S. invasion of Iraq has halted shipments of the book after an Atlanta newspaper said its text contains numerous passages that should have been attributed to one of its writers.
Toronto author and Harper's magazine contributor Paul William Roberts has admitted that his 2004 book, A War Against Truth: An Intimate Account of the Invasion of Iraq, contains "elements [that] . . . closely resemble or are indistinguishable fro
Source: Guardian
February 5, 2007
Shakespeare, the world wars and algebra are "untouchable" parts of pupils' study, the education secretary will today tell a review of the secondary curriculum.
Alan Johnson will stress the importance of traditional topics as the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority publishes its plans for overhauling the subjects studied by 11- to 14-year-olds.
The proposals will give schools greater flexibility in deciding what to teach pupils, including dropping French an
Source: Telegraph
February 5, 2007
TALLINN, Estonia -- A Nazi state has been reborn within the European Union and its "blasphemous" leaders are bent on glorifying the Third Reich and insulting Russia. There is talk of sanctions and even of internal armed resistance.
That, at least, is the view from Moscow, where politicians from President Vladimir Putin on down have condemned the government in the tiny Baltic republic of Estonia.
On a snow swept square outside the medieval walls of Tallinn's ol
Source: Financial Express (Dhaka, Bangladesh)
February 3, 2007
TAIPEI -- Beijing has accused Taiwan of seeking to sever the priceless Chinese cultural treasures held in the National Palace Museum in Taipei from their national roots.
China's state media has denounced as "exceedingly dangerous" a planned revision of the charter of the museum, which is home to the most precious artefacts from Beijing's fabled imperial Forbidden City, accusing Taiwan of pursuing a policy of "de-Sinification"...
The Chinese complaint
Source: Guardian
February 5, 2007
British museums have become used to requests that foreign treasures be repatriated. Greece has persistently requested the return of the Parthenon marbles, while some administrators have agreed to return the remains of Australian Aborigines. Now the pressure is coming from closer to home.
British pagan groups are increasingly asking for human remains and grave goods from pre-Christian burials to be returned to them as well. The presence of what they see as their ancestors in dusty dr
Source: Independent
February 4, 2007
Shipwrecked and abandoned: the story of the slave Crusoes
In 1776, 57 years after Daniel Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe, eight people were rescued from a tiny, treeless island in the Indian Ocean. Seven of them, all women, had survived on the island for 15 years. The eighth, a baby boy, was born there.
The women were the remnants of a group of 60 people who were shipwrecked and then marooned on the scrap of coral and sand in 1761. They were abandoned, and then forgo
Source: Independent
February 4, 2007
Archaeologists have discovered that what had been thought to be a relatively small, down-market amphitheatre in Britain was in fact a top-of-the-range, though admittedly more intimate, version of Rome's famous gladiatorial arena.
Indeed, this British Colosseum -- in Chester -- may well have been built as a replica of the one in Rome, possibly on the orders of the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus, who was in Britain at the time.
Although it was much smaller than the Colos
Source: Telegraph
February 5, 2007
More than three decades after British islands in the Indian Ocean were depopulated to make way for an American base, the Government will ask the courts today to ban the inhabitants from ever returning home.
The Chagos Islands, forming the British Indian Ocean Territory, are one of the world's most isolated archipelagos, found some 2,200 miles east of Mombasa on the Kenyan coast.
At America's request, Britain cleared the islands of all 2,000 of their inhabitants –- refer
Source: Telegraph
February 5, 2007
British police and troops were prepared for an airport shoot-out with President Idi Amin and 250 supporters if he tried to attend a meeting for Commonwealth heads of government in London, according to files released at the National Archive yesterday.
The secret security plans included snipers in the airport terminal, explosives experts and armoured ambulances to recover the wounded from the tarmac.
The files have been revealed along with a contingency plan in case the U
Source: Novinite (Sofia News Agency)
February 4, 2007
A rightist leader criticized the statements of Bulgarian President trying, in his words, to rehabilitate a shameful page in the history of post-communism socialists.
The events of February 4, 1997 is the "late Prague spring" of Bulgaria, Union of Democratic Forces leader Petar Stoyanov said on the same day ten years later.
"There is nothing heroic in returning a government mandate when the people is ready to kill you with stones," he said.
Source: http://www.gazetteandherald.co.uk
February 1, 2007
DRUIDS are demanding the re-burial of a child's skeleton displayed in the stone circle museum in Avebury.
On Tuesday the Council of British Druids backed up their request with a small ceremony at the Alexander Keiller Museum.
The child's skeleton was discovered during excavations at the North Ditch at Windmill Hill in 1929. Dubbed Charlie or Charlotte, is one of the most popular exhibits in the museum.
Now the Order of Druids, the group that celebrates moth
Source: CNN
February 2, 2007
Nearly 150 years ago it was no more than a concept by a visionary scientist, but researchers have now created a minuscule motor that could lead to the creation of microscopic nanomachines.
Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell first imagined an atom-size device dubbed Maxwell's Demon in 1867. Scientists at the University of Edinburgh have made it a reality.
"We have a new motor mechanism for a nanomachine," said David Leigh, a professor of chemistry at the Un
Source: Times (of London)
February 3, 2007
Birmingham’s most senior Muslim leader yesterday compared the political situation in Britain to that of Nazi Germany.
Mohammad Naseem, chairman of the Birmingham Central Mosque, said that Muslims were being labelled as a threat like the Jews were under Hitler.
Speaking outside the mosque before Friday prayers, Dr Naseem said that Britain was turning into a police state, and accused the Government of “picking on” the Muslim community to pursue a political goal. “The Ge
Source: AP
February 3, 2007
More than five years after the fall of the Taliban regime, the plundering of Afghanistan's archaeological sites and museums not only continues but has evolved into a sophisticated trade that could be financing the country's warlords and insurgents, experts say.
The International Council of Museums, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the conservation of the world's natural and cultural heritage, on Friday published a "red list" of Afghan antiquities at risk, urging colle
Source: The Independent
February 4, 2007
The Gibraltar chamber had the innocuous name of the "Stay Behind" Cave. But this was no game. This was a top-secret wartime mission, code-named Operation Tracer, in which six men volunteered to be buried alive in the cave if the Rock were captured by the Germans, so they could continue to monitor enemy movements.
More than 60 years after the end of the Second World War, a retired doctor from Preston has been named as the chamber's last survivor, as researchers struggle to
Source: The Observer
February 4, 2007
Thousands of old photographs, exam papers, magazines and books unearthed from the cellars of some of the country's leading girls' schools have revealed a remarkable picture of school life in Victorian and Edwardian Britain.
File after file emerged after school heads were encouraged by the Girls' Schools Association to scour their buildings for historic documents. Among them were stories of girls taught to be dutiful housewives who could wash shirt cuffs properly and control househol
Source: The Observer
February 4, 2007
'Dr. Livingstone, I presume.' Four words that made the explorer Henry Morton Stanley enduringly famous. They have been repeated in history books and entered into common speech. Unfortunately it looks as if he never said them.
An exhaustive study of Stanley's life to be published next month contains new evidence about the first meeting in Africa between the lost missionary, Dr. David Livingstone, and Stanley, the adventurer who had spent two years looking for him...
They
Source: Frog In A Well: Japan (blog)
February 4, 2007
The 11th edition of the Asian History Carnival has been published. This edition covers almost two months of blogging about Asian history, from the Near East to Japan.
