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: Pittsburgh Tribune
March 12, 2006
An archaeological dig at Westinghouse Park in Point Breeze has unearthed the ruins of what once was a nerve center of scientific innovation. The finds show entrepreneur and engineer George Westinghouse at his zenith in the late 1800s, when his rivalry with Thomas Edison fueled a kinetic exploration of energy that shaped American life for generations.
He crafted a power network that sent electricity surging into his three-story villa, making it perhaps the first
Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch
March 12, 2006
An 18th-century stone fort discovered in St. Charles and rebuilt in Defiance could be one of the biggest historical finds in Missouri in the last 50 years, experts say, but until recently, almost no one knew it existed."Does it make a lot of noise, and is it flashy?" asks C.W. Stewart, director of the Daniel Boone Home and Boonesfield Village in Defiance. "No, but it's a real find. How many 1793 buildings are we going to find that weren't known?"
Source: Yahoo News
March 12, 2006
A team of German archeologists has unearthed 17 statues of the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet during restoration work at an ancient temple in the southern city of Luxor, Culture Minister Faruq Hosni announced. The team found the statues of the war goddess near the same site where six similar statues were unearthed last week, on the location of the 18th dynasty (1580-1314 BC) temple of pharaoh Amenhotep III on the west bank of the Nile, Hosni added in a statement received
Source: Asia News Network
March 12, 2006
Archaeologists have discovered artefacts at a village in Narsingdi, east of Dhaka, that resembles traits of the Chalcolithic culture, which is around 4,000 years old, and believe the finds are the earliest signs of settlement in the region.The Chalcolithic Age, also known as the Aeneolithic or Copper Age, is a phase in the development of human culture in which the use of early metal tools appeared alongside the use of stone tools.
The excavators led
Source: Timesonline (UK)
March 12, 2006
UP TO four tons of ancient Afghan artefacts have been seized in Britain after an unprecedented wave of looting from archeological sites in Afghanistan that has exceeded the plundering of treasures in Iraq. “All the attention has been on Iraq but this is a far, far bigger problem,” said Detective Sergeant Vernon Rapley, who heads the art and antiques unit of the Metropolitan police. “Afghanistan is the main source of unprovenanced antiquities into Britain. It’s coming in by a
Source: Nina Totenberg on NPR
March 10, 2006
She told an audience at Georgetown University that Republican proposals, and their sometimes uncivil tone, pose a danger to the independence of the judiciary, and the freedoms of all Americans.In an unusually forceful and forthright speech, O'Connor said that attacks on the judiciary by some Republican leaders pose a direct threat to our constitutional freedoms. O'Connor began by conceding that courts do have the power to make presidents or the Congress or governors, a
Source: Washington Times
March 12, 2006
The first significant exhibition of Pablo Picasso's work in South Africa has provoked a furious row after a senior government official accused him of stealing the work of African artists to boost his "flagging talent." The Picasso and Africa exhibition, which has been drawing capacity crowds at Johannesburg's Standard Bank Gallery, contains 84 original works by Picasso along with 29 African sculptures similar to those in the artist's own collection, and is d
Source: Israel National News
March 10, 2006
At the initiative of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a state-run Iranian university held a Holocaust-denial conference this week. The conference, reported by Iran's official IRIB radio, was held at Isfahan University. It was entitled Holocaust: myth or reality, and was attended by students and faculty. According to the report, it was organized by Khamenei's Isfahan office.
Alireza Soltanshahi, a representative of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinej
Source: Timesonline (UK)
March 12, 2006
EVER since Mehmet Ali Agca, a Turkish gunman, shot the late Pope John Paul II on May 13, 1981 in St Peter’s Square in Rome, investigators have tried to solve one of the 20th century’s greatest mysteries: did Agca act alone or was he obeying communist orders? This week an Italian parliamentary commission will officially conclude that Agca was part of a huge conspiracy masterminded by the GRU, the Soviet military secret service, on the orders of the politburo and Leonid Brezhnev, general secretary
Source: NYT
March 12, 2006
A high school geography teacher in Aurora who compared a speech by President Bush to language used by Hitler and sparked an uproar in the Denver region will return to the classroom on Monday after an investigation by school officials. The teacher, Jay Bennish, who had been on paid leave from Overland High School, said he was trying to make students think in a lecture on Feb. 1 that a student recorded. The State Board of Education split on Thursday, four Republicans vs. four
Source: NYT
March 12, 2006
The sudden death of the news media tycoon Robert Maxwell by drowning almost 15 years ago was as dramatic and mysterious as his life. Those who believe that it was not an accident — that perhaps he jumped, rather than fell, from his yacht into the Atlantic in November 1991 — have generally based their theory on the troubles overwhelming his vast business empire, which collapsed soon after he died. But business was not the only thing potentially troubling Mr. Maxwell in the la
Source: NYT
March 12, 2006
John Profumo, whose highflying political career in Britain ended in a cold war scandal of sex and espionage that gave way to a lifetime of atonement, died about midnight on Thursday. He was 91.For a land that has since become renowned for ministerial misbehavior, Mr. Profumo's imbroglio in 1963 set a standard, and became known in newspaper headlines as the Scandal of the Century.
It helped bring down the Conservative government to which Mr. Profumo belonge
Source: NYT
March 12, 2006
To the last, a solitary death yesterday in a United Nations cell near an international court he derided, Slobodan Milosevic clung to the notion that all the Balkan destruction he ignited and presided over was no more than a response to aggression against his long-suffering Serbian people. My aim is to present the truth, and that takes time," the former Serbian president told the tribunal in The Hague, a prelude to painstaking circumlocutions that sought over more than f
Source: NYT
March 12, 2006
As American warplanes streaked overhead two weeks after the invasion began, Lt. Gen. Raad Majid al-Hamdani drove to Baghdad for a crucial meeting with Iraqi leaders. He pleaded for reinforcements to stiffen the capital's defenses and permission to blow up the Euphrates River bridge south of the city to block the American advance.
But Saddam Hussein and his small circle of aides had their own ideas of how to fight the war. Convinced that the main danger to his government came from w
Source: NYT
March 12, 2006
A court's decision this week to put a confessed cannibal's privacy above the public's right to view a movie about him may have been right or wrong. What it certainly reflected in this country, whose Nazi past is always quietly present, is one of Germany's most conspicuous features: an intense and abiding desire for the moral high ground, to do the right thing.Germany is a place where, a couple of years ago, a big city police chief was cashiered because he threate
Source: Wa Po
March 11, 2006
BOSTON, March 11 -- They were talking about a guerrilla war in Asia. Or, fairly often, more than one.
"You cannot win against an insurgency that springs from the population," said Jack Valenti, former special assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson. "There's never been an insurgency that doesn't prevail against a mighty power.""How much reform can you do," former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger wondered later, "sim
Source: Boston Globe
March 11, 2006
--Former Nixon adviser Alexander Haig said Saturday military leaders in Iraq are repeating a mistake made in Vietnam by not applying the full force of the military to win the war."Every asset of the nation must be applied to the conflict to bring about a quick and successful outcome, or don't do it," Haig said. "We're in the midst of another struggle where it appears to me we haven't learned very much."
The comments by Haig, Nixon's chi
Source: BBC
March 11, 2006
A mental health charity has defended a statue it commissioned of Sir Winston Churchill in a straitjacket. `The statue has been criticised as "absurd and pathetic" by his grandson, Tory MP Nicholas Soames.
Charity Rethink commissioned the 9ft high sculpture, unveiled in Norwich, to highlight the stigma of mental health.
Rethink said the image of Churchill - who suffered bouts of depression - was designed to "portray a more positive i
Source: Times (UK)
March 10, 2006
Dan Brown's mistake over the Crusades could prove a weapon in his defence against plagiarism.DAN BROWN got a date wrong in The Da Vinci Code. The error may well prove to his advantage.
According to him the Priory of Sion, alleged keeper of the secret of Christ’s wife and children, was founded in Jerusalem during the Second Crusade in the reign of Baldwin II. But according to the authors of The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, who are suing Brown for stealing thei
Source: JFK Library
March 10, 2006
Due to the overwhelming public response, the conference is now closed as we have reached capacity.
On March 10 and 11, 2006, the National Archives and the nation’s Presidential Libraries are hosting an unprecedented two-day conference examining the history of the Vietnam War and the American presidency. The conference is being held at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.
