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: http://www.telegraphindia.com
March 21, 2008
Two decades after it was felled, Charlie is still at the checkpoint where the Wall stood parting East from West, gloved, hatted and wrapped in an outmoded US army greatcoat, holding the Star-Spangled Banner aloft in the freezing wind.
There’s little for Charlie to check now, but he may still have a point. At a euro a shot for shutterbugs, his act on the sandbags earns him a healthy daily wage. And for five euros more, he’ll emboss your passport with all the visas you no more require
Source: Times (UK)
March 21, 2008
A 17th-century painting had to be withdrawn from a Christie’s auction after the Polish Embassy in London revealed that it had been looted by the Nazis.
Pieter de Grebber’s Study of a Reading Man will be returned to the family of Abe Gutnajer, an antiques dealer murdered in the Warsaw ghetto in 1942 by the Nazis, who confiscated his property.
Source: AP
March 20, 2008
Three Vermont Abenaki bands and some former members of a Governor's Commission on Native American Affairs said Thursday they were insulted by a proposed process for recognizing the Abenakis and didn't trust current commission members who would review their status.
An amendment being considered by the state Senate is intended to address problems with a 2006 law that recognized Abenakis as a minority population, but not as a tribe for the purposes of selling their crafts as Native Ame
Source: AP
March 21, 2008
The trial of a New Jersey man accused of attacking Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel (EL'-ee vee-ZEHL') in a San Francisco hotel is set to begin today.
Eric Hunt is charged with attempted kidnapping, false imprisonment, battery and elder abuse charges for allegedly accosting Wiesel on an elevator at the Argent Hotel in February of last year.
Shortly after the incident, Wiesel told police that Hunt had asked him for an interview, then dragged him off an elevator.
H
Source: USA Today
March 19, 2008
... Germany is offering ghetto workers such as [Gisela] Fischer who were denied pensions a one-time payment of 2,000 Euros, about $3,000.
Jewish organizations are alerting the estimated 20,000 survivors in the USA who worked in ghettos. The German government estimates that 50,000 people around the world are eligible for the Ghetto Labor Compensation Fund.
The U.S. Congress and Jewish organizations lobbied Germany after the country denied 90% of the pension applications
Source: NYT op ed
March 21, 2008
The National Archives and the William J. Clinton Presidential Library on Wednesday released more than 11,000 pages of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s public schedules for her eight years as first lady.
The long-awaited documents, released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request and a lawsuit, show her daily activities, from meeting with foreign dignitaries to designing the White House Christmas card.
In some ways, they provide support for her assertion tha
Source: NYT op ed
March 22, 2008
As early as six million years ago, apparently close to the beginning of the human lineage, an ancestral species had already developed the transforming ability for upright walking, scientists reported on Thursday.
A new, more detailed analysis of a fossil thigh bone found eight years ago in Kenya yielded strong evidence that the species Orrorin tugensis stood and walked on its hind limbs. The scientists said this was the earliest known example of bipedal locomotion.
Source: Haaretz
March 20, 2008
Germany's national Jewish body said Thursday it has filed suit against YouTube and its parent company Google, demanding a court order for the site to be permanently purged of anti-Semitic videos.
Stephan Kramer, secretary general of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said in Hamburg, "we charge Google with aiding and abetting racial hatred and discrimination on its YouTube video- platform subsidiary.
"We applied this week for an injunction from a court
Source: http://www.timesonline.com (PA)
March 21, 2008
Nearly 90 years after Harriet Key asked the U.S. government to mark the grave of her husband, Jonah Key, a tombstone may finally be in the works for the long-forgotten Civil War veteran.
Key, who served with the 4th Regiment of U.S. Colored Troops and was disabled by a Confederate bullet in 1864, lies in an unmarked grave at Freedom’s Oak Grove Cemetery.
That could soon change thanks to Ron Ciani and Pat Riley, two Beaver County men with an interest in history, but no t
Source: International Herald Tribune
March 20, 2008
The hillside cemetery here is unlike any other in South Korea. The graves have no headstones. Instead they have identical, meter-long, white wooden stakes, most of them reading "Anonymous" and revealing little else about those lying beneath.
And, in contrast to the Korean tradition of aligning graves toward the south, those here, arranged in neat rows, all face north. In other words, they all look homeward.
Decades after they fell in combat during the 1950-53
Source: AP
March 20, 2008
Germany's justice minister solemnly noted the upcoming 75th anniversary of a key milestone in the Nazi seizure of power — a pressured vote in parliament that allowed Adolf Hitler to become dictator.
Brigitte Zypries said the so-called Enabling Act — passed by Germany's parliament on March 23, 1933 — signaled the legislative body's own demise.
"With the passage of the Enabling Act, the parliament disempowered itself — the abandonment of the division of power destroy
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 21, 2008
One in three primary school pupils believe that Sir Winston Churchill was the first man to walk on the moon, according to a survey.
The children, aged between four and ten-years-old, confused the war time Prime Minister with the American astronaut Neil Armstrong, despite the fact they were born in different centuries and different countries.
But their lack of knowledge comes as little surprise. Last month a similar poll of British teenagers revealed a quarter think that
Source: WaPo
March 21, 2008
Perhaps the Maestro composed some discordant notes after all.
The record of longtime Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan -- worshipped by business leaders and dubbed "Maestro" in a 2000 biography by The Post's Bob Woodward -- is getting a critical look as his successor Ben S. Bernanke wrestles with problems that began on the Maestro's watch.
Many economists blame Greenspan for lax bank supervision and for keeping interest rates too low, too long from mid-2
Source: WaPo
March 21, 2008
State Department employees snooped through the passport files of three presidential candidates _ Sens. Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton and John McCain _ and the department's inspector general is investigating.
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the violations of McCain and Clinton's passport files were not discovered until Friday, after officials were made aware of the unauthorized access of Obama's records and a separate search was conducted.
The incid
Source: Gateway Pundit (Click here to view charts.)
March 19, 2008
Iraq War (5 years)-- 3,990
Batan Death March (one week)-- 10,000
Battle of Guadalcanal (186 days)-- 7,099
Battle of Guam (20 Days)-- 3,000
Operation Market Garden (9 days)-- 3,664
Battle of the Bulge (41 days)-- 19,276
Battle of Iwo Jima (39 days)-- 6,821
Battle of Pusan Perimeter (61 days-Korea)-- 6,706
Source: Live Science
March 20, 2008
A recent molecular analysis of ancestry across Latin America has revealed a marked differentiation between regions and demonstrated a "genetic continuity" between pre-and post Columbian populations. This study provides the first broad description of how the genome diversity of populations from Latin America has been shaped by the colonial history of the region.The researchers examined genetic markers across the human genome, in hundreds of individuals drawn from 13
Source: Hartford Courant
March 21, 2008
After more than 300 years, the Connecticut residents accused of witchcraft finally might be vindicated thanks to what began as a school project.State legislators took up the issue Thursday of Connecticut's witch trials, the result of efforts by 14-year-old Addie Avery and her mother, Debra Avery, descendants of a Hartford woman accused of witchcraft and probably hanged. The judiciary committee discussed a resolution that would absolve the approximately 40 residents accused o
Source: BBC
March 20, 2008
It started life as the emblem of the British anti-nuclear movement but it has become an international sign for peace, and arguably the most widely used protest symbol in the world. It has also been adapted, attacked and commercialized.
It had its first public outing 50 years ago on a chilly Good Friday as thousands of British anti-nuclear campaigners set off from London’s Trafalgar Square on a 50-mile march to the weapons factory at Aldermaston.
The demonstration had be
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 20, 2008
Children should not be taught to remember key historical dates such as the Battle of Hastings but should instead learn "life skills", teachers have claimed.
A new curriculum should place greater emphasis on broad skills such as team working and interpreting evidence rather than learning dates by rote, said the Association of Teachers and Lecturers.
Mary Bousted, general secretary, also said that excessive school tests were making children mentally ill.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 20, 2008
A memorial service has been held for a Russian princess who fled her homeland to marry a British soldier.
Princess Helena Davidovna Palavandova was 27 when she died a year after following her husband, the Somme veteran Lendon Fitz Payne, to Britain.
Descendants of the princess's late husband found that she lay in an unmarked grave. They have now travelled from far and wide to commemorate her and mark her plot.
