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: BBC
March 20, 2008
A memorial event has been held to remember those who were killed and injured in the IRA bombing of Warrington town centre 15 years ago.
Tim Parry, 12, and Johnathan Ball, three, died and 56 people were hurt in the two explosions on 20 March 1993.
Survivors joined the boys' families, town leaders and community members to lay white lilies at the scene.
Among the dozens attending the ceremony was Tim's brother Dominic, 29, who took his six-month-old daughter Olivia.
Source: WaPo
March 20, 2008
Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in the White House with a schedule befitting a president, packed with policy sessions, meetings with senators and trips to promote an ambitious political agenda. But after the collapse of her health-care plan in 1994, she largely retreated to a more traditional first lady's calendar of school visits, hospital tours, photo ops and speeches on a narrower set of issues.
Source: LAT
March 20, 2008
Dysfunctional capital markets, frantic central banks, stressed-out consumers, fear and uncertainty -- all are alarming echoes of the global economic cataclysm of the 1930s.
Which raises the inevitable question: Could another Great Depression be lurking over the horizon?
TV news programs show grainy footage of Depression-era bankers as reporters tick off grim economic statistics. The Federal Reserve invokes powers it hasn't used since the 1930s. Critics of President Bush
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
March 20, 2008
A Defense Department-sponsored report that examined captured Iraqi
documents for indications of links between Saddam Hussein and terrorist
organizations is now available online.
The five-volume report affirmed that there was"no 'smoking gun' (i.e.,
direct connection) between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda." But it also said
there was"strong evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to
regional and global terrorism."
Although the report was publicly released on March 13, the D
Source: AP
March 18, 2008
Baghdad's National Museum, a treasure trove of antiquities from the stone age and Babylon to the
Assyrians and Islamic art, cannot open to the public despite the renovation of two of its galleries nearing completion, an Iraqi
official said Tuesday.
Source: National Security Archive
March 18, 2008
As if the sub-prime credit crisis was not enough, the U.S. Treasury Department today won the fourth annual Rosemary Award for the worst performance by a federal agency under the Freedom of Information Act.
Given annually by the Emmy- and George Polk Award-winning National Security Archive at George Washington University, the Rosemary recognizes outstandingly bad responsiveness to the public that flouts the letter and spirit of the Freedom of Information Act. The Award is named after
Source: Newsweek
March 19, 2008
The discovery of ancient artifacts is usually cause for celebration and public excitement. But this being Rome, excavation often brings more heartache than joy. Engineers digging up 38 sites in the Italian capital for the construction of much-needed third subway line seem stymied at every turn by some piece of history or another. A $4.7 billion project set to be complete in 2015, the 15-mile subway line is designed to carry 24,000 passengers an hour, hopefully decreasing above-ground traffic con
Source: Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs
March 19, 2008
A silver coin that was used to pay the half-shekel head tax to the Temple was found in what was the main drainage channel of Jerusalem in the Second Temple period.
Source: http://en.rian.ru
March 19, 2008
Archaeologists plan to resume excavations this summer in the southern Urals, where the remains of the last Russian tsar's children were allegedly found last July, a local archaeologist said Wednesday.
The remains of a boy and a young woman were exhumed near Yekaterinburg, where Tsar Nicholas II, his wife, their four daughters and son, and several servants, were shot by the Bolsheviks in 1918. They are believed to belong to Nicholas II's son and heir Alexis, and his daughter Maria.
Source: NYT op ed
March 19, 2008
A group made up of relatives of those killed aboard United Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001, announced Tuesday that it had agreed to buy a 903-acre tract to be part of a permanent memorial near Shanksville, Pa.
The land is owned by PBS Coals Inc., a company in Somerset, Pa., that previously mined the site. The company will also donate the 27 acres closest to the crash site. Both parcels will eventually be transferred to the National Park Service, which is overseeing the creation of the m
Source: CNN
March 19, 2008
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton got to work on health care reform within days of her arrival at the White House as first lady in 1993, newly released documents show.
Her first meeting on the subject came on January 23, 1993, only three days after her husband Bill Clinton's inauguration as president, and dozens of related events followed.
Despite her efforts, the Clinton health care reform foundered in Congress.
The National Archives on Wednesday released more t
Source: International Herald Tribune
March 18, 2008
Atop the globe, the icy surface of the Arctic Ocean has remained relatively peaceful. But its depths have boiled with intrigue, no more so than in the Cold War.
Although the superpowers planned to turn those depths into an inferno of exploding torpedoes and rising missiles, the brotherhood of submariners - the silent service, both Russian and American - has worked hard over the decades to keep the particulars of those plans hush-hush.
Now, a few secrets are spilling thr
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 18, 2008
The world's most famous statue, Michelangelo's statue of David, has dodgy legs.
The results have come from a new method for analysing stress which has been applied to scans of the Renaissance masterpiece, a marble statue sculpted between 1501 to 1504.
Although the stress points in the magnificent symbol of strength and beauty have been charted before, this is a proof of principle for a computer-based method that is simpler, faster and more accurate than those used befor
Source: Guardian
March 19, 2008
On the day that dozens of US cruise missiles rained down on Serbia in an attempt to punish Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic for the country's onslaught against ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo, first lady Hillary Clinton was far from the White House war room: instead she was touring ancient Egyptian ruins, including King Tut's tomb and the temple of Hatshepsut. And on the day before the signing of the Good Friday agreement in Belfast she was at an event called "Hats on for Bella&q
Source: Deutsche Welle
March 19, 2008
Chancellor Merkel's government gave the go-ahead on Wednesday, March 19, for a controversial documentation center in Berlin recalling the expulsions of millions of Germans from central Europe after World War II.The center, to be built in Berlin at a cost of around 30 million euros ($46 million) is intended as a "visible symbol against flight and expulsions," according to the government. It will be located near Berlin's famous Potsdamer Platz and will be part of the
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
March 18, 2008
The Civil War Preservation Trust (CWPT) recently unveiled its annual report on the status of the nation’s historic battlegrounds. The report, entitled History Under Siege: A Guide to America’s Most Endangered Civil War Battlefields, identifies the most threatened Civil War sites in the United States and what can be done to rescue them.
Source: Forbes.com
March 18, 2008
To stand in the shadow of the past is a feeling unlike any other. That's why each year millions travel thousands of miles to see the world's most historic sites.
A monument like the Kremlin--where Peter the Great stored weapons used to fight Napoleon and Ivan the Great built a cathedral to serve as the seat of the Russian Orthodox Church--is a prime example of how historic structures provide a unique glimpse into a culture's evolution.
Machu Picchu is another. A testame
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 19, 2008
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has told Israel that her nation is "filled with shame" over the Nazi holocaust and that she bows before its victims.
Mrs Merkel delivered the speech, in German, on the last day of a three-day visit to the Middle Eastern country. Speaking to the Knesset, or parliament, the chancellor praised the warm ties between the two nations, and said that Germany would always stand by Israel's side.
She singled out Iran as the greatest
Source: Yorkshire Post
March 17, 2008
HULL will today remember its war dead as residents join VIPs to pay tribute to those whose suffering was kept secret from the rest of Britain as their city was reduced to rubble.
The site of one of the last bombs to be dropped on Hull during the Second World War will be the focal point for a commemorative service to remember the hundreds of civilians killed in the 1941 Blitz.
During the fighting, the strategic importance of Hull's docks meant it suffered devastating air
Source: AP
March 15, 2008
The smuggling of stolen antiquities from Iraq's rich cultural heritage is helping finance Iraqi extremist groups, says the U.S. investigator who led the initial probe into the looting of Baghdad's National Museum.
Marine Reserve Col. Matthew Bogdanos claimed both Sunni insurgents such as al-Qaida in Iraq and Shiite militias are receiving funding from the trafficking.
Bogdanos, a New York assistant district attorney, noted that kidnappings and extortion remain the insurg
