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: NYT
March 10, 2006
SANTIAGO, Chile, March 9 — Not long after seizing power in 1973, Gen. Augusto Pinochet built an Altar of the Fatherland and had the remains of Bernardo O'Higgins, the hero of Chilean independence, moved there. Chilean democrats have been struggling ever since to wrest O'Higgins from the military and restore his legacy to the entire nation, and on Thursday they finally succeeded.In an emotional one-hour ceremony at a downtown square just off a boulevard named for
Source: History Today
March 10, 2006
The Public Sector Research Exploitation fund (PSRE) has awarded the Imperial War Museum a grant of just under £1million to digitise its collections over the next three years. The south London museum’s film and video archive, in particular, will benefit from the award. The collection includes documentary films such as the 1916 The Battle of the Somme (which is to be on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register), and Oscar-winning Second World War films Desert Victory and The True
Source: Press Release -- David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
March 10, 2006
In response to a petition by more than eighty leading journalists and journalism professors, the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) has publicly expressed regret at the failure of U.S. newspaper publishers to aid Jewish refugee journalists fleeing Nazi Germany. The NAA has also pledged to highlight the issue at its forthcoming national convention and board of directors meeting.The petition was organized by The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies and former Ne
Source: AlterNet
March 9, 2006
Gunmen have killed some 182 Iraqi university professors and academics since the U.S. invasion in early 2003 and a group representing Iraqi academia said on Thursday the killings constituted a war crime.
Another 85 senior academics have been kidnapped or survived assassination attempts, according to the Association of University Lecturers in Iraq.The attacks have led to an exodus of Iraqi academics who are vital to educating and rebuilding the war-damaged country
Source: Yahoo News
March 10, 2006
Nearly 500 years after the death of Christopher Columbus, a team of genetic researchers are using DNA to solve two nagging mysteries: Where was the explorer really born? And where the devil are his bones? Debate about origins and final resting place of Columbus has raged for over a century, with historians questioning the traditional theory that he hails from Genoa, Italy. Some say he was a Spanish Jew, a Greek, a Basque or Portuguese.
Even the location of his r
Source: Huffington Post (blog)
March 9, 2006
According to a blog post by Arianna Huffington, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld believes that the ignorance of history is of grave concern:"I think the biggest problem we've got in the country is people don't study history anymore. People who go to school in high schools and colleges, they tend to study current events and call it history... There are just too darn few people in our country who study history enough.""There's never been a popular war. You can't name a
Source: National Geographic News
March 9, 2006
New archaeological evidence suggests that Easter Island, mysterious home of titanic stone heads, was first settled around A.D. 1200, much later than previously thought. Once there, the colonizers quickly began erecting the famous statues for which the remote eastern South Pacific island (map) is famous. They also helped deplete the island's natural resources at a much faster rate than previously thought, the study says.
Source: The Irish Times
March 10, 2006
Poland's Catholic Church made its first formal apology yesterday for the collaboration of many priests with the feared communist secret police. The country's bishops made the apology after the archive housing the security service files claimed that one Polish priest in 10 had passed information to intelligence agents during Poland's five decades as a Soviet satellite.Under communism, "a system that crushed consciences, some men of the church also breached the trust plac
Source: BBC News
March 9, 2006
Overseen by Lord Nelson perched 56m above on his column, the square has become a place to worship sporting heroes, celebrate saints, shed tears for lost ones and chant beliefs.
It has always been a battleground for beliefs - ever since the Chartists' March of 1848.
But following a £25m project to transform it in 2003, almost 200 public events (excluding political rallies) have been staged there.
It has been the backdrop to key moments in London's sportin
Source: Reuters
March 9, 2006
Britain secretly supplied Israel with a small amount of plutonium in 1966 despite a warning from intelligence officials that it could help develop a nuclear bomb, BBC television reported on Thursday.Britain also made hundreds of shipments of restricted materials to Israel in the 1960s which could have aided a nuclear arms programme, the BBC said in a summary of a report to be shown on its Newsnight programme later in the evening.
The Labour government under Prim
Source: KMOV4 (St. Louis, MO)
March 9, 2006
A study that could add about 2,000 miles of land and water routes to the Trail of Tears National Historic Trail through eastern Tennessee and portions of eight other states, including Missouri, is gaining support in Congress.The U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday approved a bill requiring the proposed $175,000 study, which is backed by both of Tennessee's senators — Lamar Alexander and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist — and the National Park Ser
Source: Times (London)
March 9, 2006
A group of German priests and parishioners have begun a politically sensitive fundraising campaign to save the country’s last Nazi-era church.The Martin Luther Memorial Church in Berlin has embarrassed the authorities for six decades.
The image of a Nazi storm trooper side by side with Jesus Christ has been carved into the pulpit, the entrance is lit by a chandelier in the shape of an iron cross and the organ was used to stir the spirits at a torch-lit Nuremberg
Source: International Herald Tribune
March 9, 2006
Not long after seizing power here in 1973, General Augusto Pinochet ordered construction of an "Altar of the Fatherland" and an eternal "Flame of Liberty" and had the remains of Bernardo O'Higgins, the hero of Chilean independence, moved to that site. Ever since, Chilean democrats have been struggling to wrest O'Higgins away from the military and restore his legacy to the entire nation. On Thursday, they finally succeeded.In an emotional one-hour ceremony
Source: cronaca.com
March 9, 2006
A hoard of Roman coins unearthed in a Suffolk field is the largest discovery of its kind ever made in Britain, an inquest heard yesterdayJohn Newman, from Suffolk County Council's Archaeological Service, told the treasure inquest in Bury St Edmunds that the coins, which were originally adorned with a silver wash, were minted during the reign of the so-called usurper emperor Carausius (287-293 AD), who set himself up in opposition to Rome, and his successor Allectus (293-296
Source: Golf Digest
March 9, 2006
There are few subjects capable of inspiring obsessive examination like Civil War battles. The genealogy of generals is plotted to cousins twice removed. Battle plans are scrutinized and criticized. The deadly dance of each regiment can be recreated -- and often is -- like a production of "Swan Lake" by professors and dentists dressed up in blue wool or butternut gray.
Golf just might be the only other subject on earth that can withstand, or demand, the same level of analy
Source: Yahoo
March 8, 2006
It is praised for its culinary and health properties by any cook worth his salt, but long before olive oil made it into the Mediterranean diet Cypriots used it as fuel to melt copper, archaeologists say. Italian researchers have discovered that environmentally friendly olive oil was used in furnaces at a site in southern Cyprus up to 4,000 years ago, instead of the fume-belching charcoal used in industry for hundreds of years since.
Described as "liq
Source: Discovery News
March 7, 2006
King Tut's case is closed, top Egyptologist Dr. Zahi Hawass has told Discovery News. Other, new exciting findings are waiting to be uncovered from the Egyptian sands. The mystery of his life still eludes us — the shadows move, but the dark is never quite dispersed." was how Howard Carter, the British archaeologist who discovered the tomb of King Tutankhamun in 1922, described his fascination with the 3,300-year-old boy pharaoh.
In an exclusive interv
Source: Yahoo
March 9, 2006
US museums have come under fire over the way they acquire antiquities after Greece, Italy and Peru have demanded the return of ancient pieces from American institutions. European museums have usually been the ones needing to answer over their acquisitions of artifacts collected during colonial days, but American institutions have faced demands for the return of allegedly looted antiquities.
To improve the transparency of acquisitions, the Association of Art Muse
Source: Rediff
March 8, 2006
In the first direct comment on the reason for rejection of a civilian nuclear deal for Pakistan on the lines of the historic Indo-US agreeement, the US on Wednesday said it was because of that country's "proliferation history.""Well, obviously, the Pakistanis want to continue to have a good relationship with us. It's not going to be possible for us to have a civil nuclear relationship with Pakistan of the type that we've just announced with India. Because of h
Source: USA Today
March 8, 2006
TEL AVIV, Israel -- Lt. Col. Zeev Raz tightened his grip on the controls of his F-16 and nosed the fighter jet into a dive. He patiently locked his bombsights on the dome of Iraq's nuclear reactor.The setting sun, at Raz's back, illuminated the reactor as if by spotlight. Raz flipped a switch with his index finger and released two 2,000-pound bombs. Seven other Israeli fighter jets flying with him did the same.
In one bold action on June 7, 1981, Israel's
