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
April 30, 2007
UNITED NATIONS -- An exhibit on the 1994 Rwandan genocide opened Monday at U.N. headquarters after organizers recast a section on the killings of 1 million Armenians in Turkey during World War I -- a reference that angered the Turks.
The exhibit, originally set to open April 9, was postponed after a Turkish diplomat complained about the mention of the Armenian killings. The section now uses the term "mass killings" instead of "murders," does not include the numbe
Source: Telegraph
May 1, 2007
An ex-RAF codebreaker and his composer son say they have deciphered a musical score hidden for nearly 600 years in the elaborate carvings on the walls of Rosslyn Chapel [in Scotland]...
Thomas Mitchell, 75, a music teacher, and his son Stuart, 41, a pianist and composer, say they became intrigued by the markings on the chapel's arches more than 20 years ago.
Thomas was particularly struck by the 213 carved cubes in the Lady Chapel...
"After scratching
Source: Independent
May 1, 2007
A statue of a Red Army Soldier, which has been at the heart of deadly riots in Estonia, gazed somberly over dozens of Russian war graves yesterday in its new location at a military cemetery in Tallinn.
Authorities re-erected the Bronze Soldier at the Defense Forces burial ground -- which also holds remains of British, Estonian and German troops - three days after removing it from a downtown square, provoking protests by ethnic Russians.
In the next step of its contentio
Source: Telegraph
May 1, 2007
ROME -- A chance discovery by archaeologists has brought to light a mosaic nearly 2,000 years old depicting what may have been a real-life version of the Roman combatant played by Russell Crowe in the film Gladiator.
The mosaic was found as Italian researchers carried out work on the spectacular Villa dei Quintili, south of Rome and home to the sports-loving Emperor Commodus.
Commodus...was known to enjoy gladiatorial combat and had a small amphitheatre in which
Source: AP
April 30, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Two fires ravaged historic sites in the nation's capital Monday, one gutting part of the 134-year-old Eastern Market and the other destroying irreplaceable documents and art at the Georgetown public library branch.
Fire Chief Dennis L. Rubin said there was absolutely no suspicion that the fires were related.
The first blaze tore through the southern half of the Eastern Market, a Capitol Hill landmark listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The
Source: UPI
April 30, 2007
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- World War I has been over 88 years but a tank from that era is at the center of a looming battle between opposing forces in West Virginia and Indiana.
The Renault FT-17 tank was displayed in Nitro, W.Va., from 1987 when Jack Moody acquired it from a VFW post in Virginia until his death in 2005, The Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette reported Monday. But his family apparently sold it to the Ropkey Armor Museum near Crawfordsville, Ind., the newspaper said.
N
Source: Telegraph
May 1, 2007
Jack Straw [leader of the House of Commons] was accused of "sheer hypocrisy" last night after calling for multi-racial Britain to unite under a new vision of national identity.
Historians said his idea to write a common "British story" that would reflect the major events and themes of the country's past was "too little, too late" following a decade in which the teaching of history in schools had become increasingly marginalised.
The comment
Source: Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, Armed Forces Journal
May 1, 2007
For the second time in a generation, the United States faces the prospect of defeat at the hands of an insurgency. In April 1975, the U.S. fled the Republic of Vietnam, abandoning our allies to their fate at the hands of North Vietnamese communists. In 2007, Iraq's grave and deteriorating condition offers diminishing hope for an American victory and portends risk of an even wider and more destructive regional war.
These debacles are not attributable to individual failures, but rathe
Source: AP
April 30, 2007
WASHINGTON —- German Chancellor Angela Merkel officially handed over to the United States on Monday a 500-year-old map that was the first to tell the world of a new land that it called America.
Library of Congress historians say the world map, completed by German-born cleric and cartographer Martin Waldseemueller in 1507, is the first known document to use the name America, the first to depict the Western Hemisphere and the first to show separate Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The New
Source: CNN
April 30, 2007
WASHINGTON -- In the period leading up to the Iraq war, the head of the CIA didn't speak out loudly enough about U.S. intelligence that said Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, said a former CIA officer Monday.
Ex-CIA intelligence officer Larry Johnson responded to comments by former CIA Director George Tenet which aired on CBS' "60 Minutes" on Sunday. Tenet said the consensus in the U.S. intelligence community was that Iraq did possess WMD, which the
Source: Times (of London)
April 29, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Drawing on a trove of private papers from Hillary Clinton’s best friend, the legendary Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein is to publish a hard-hitting and intimate portrait of the 2008 presidential candidate, which will reveal a number of “discrepancies” in her official story.
Bernstein, who was played by Dustin Hoffman in the film All the President’s Men, has spent eight years researching the unauthorised 640-page biography, A Woman in Charge: The Life of Hillary Rod
Source: Times (of London)
April 30, 2007
Britons have a bewildering lack of knowledge about their country, a survey suggests.
Stonehenge was built by the Romans, and Hadrian’s Wall is in China –- these are two of the misconceptions in the poll of 3,000 people commissioned by UKTV History...
A quarter say that the Lost Gardens of Heligan, Cornwall, are among the Seven Wonders of the World, confusing them with the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. According to one in five, the Pennines are between France and Spain; an
Source: Virginia Tech press release
April 30, 2007
BLACKSBURG, Va. -- Virginia Tech's Center for Digital Discourse and Culture (CDDC) is pleased to announce the launch of the April 16 Archive
(www.april16archive.org). This new online archive assists artists, humanists, social scientists, and all other scholars who seek, today and in the future, to develop a better understanding of the violent events of April 16, 2007 at Virginia Tech.
It is also available to the general public of the
Commonwealth of Virginia, the United States of America
Source: German Press Agency
April 30, 2007
The opening of one of the world's most extensive archives dealing with Nazi concentration camps and forced labour may reveal the names of many previously unknown Holocaust victims, according to the archives chief, Reto Meister.The vast store of unique papers managed by the International Tracing Service (ITS) is kept in the German town of Bad Arolsen.
The ITS, an arm of the International Committee of the Red Cross, helps survivors of the camps and the press-gangs
Source: BBC News
April 29, 2007
A father and son team from Edinburgh think they have found a secret piece of music hidden in carvings at a famous medieval chapel in Midlothian.
Stuart Mitchell, 41 and his father Tommy, 75, said they had deciphered a musical code locked in the stones of Rosslyn Chapel [already famous for The Da Vinci Code] for more than 500 years.
They will reveal the music in May at a concert in the 15th century chapel...
Stuart Mitchell discovered a series of figures whi
Source: AAP (Australia)
April 20, 2007
It was the biggest museum theft in the nation's history, with more than 2,000 specimens, including a skull from the now-extinct Tasmanian tiger, stolen from Sydney's Australian Museum.
Former museum pest controller Hendrikus van Leeuwen, convicted of the theft, was today jailed for up to seven years for what a judge described as "enormous, incalculable harm".
Source: Telegraph
April 30, 2007
PARIS -- To the cheers of 30,000 supporters, Nicolas Sarkozy launched his final push for the presidency yesterday with a stinging attack on France's "cynical" and "immoral" Left, symbolised by his rival, the Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal.
The gathering in Paris appeared to be a final rallying cry from the centre-Right contender at what he called a defining moment in French history, when the country was plagued by "doubts"...
He summone
Source: Washington Post
April 30, 2007
Researchers have long debated what happened when the indigenous Neanderthals of Europe met "modern humans" arriving from Africa starting some 40,000 years ago. The end result was the disappearance of the Neanderthals, but what happened during the roughly 10,000 years that the two human species shared a land?
A new review of the fossil record from that period has come up with a provocative conclusion: The two groups saw each other as kindred spirits and, when conditions wer
Source: AP
April 29, 2007
NEW YORK -- The backlash has built up even before the official release of former CIA Director George Tenet's memoir, with criticism about his version of the run-up to the Iraq war, interrogation techniques and other events.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Sunday disputed Tenet's claim that the Bush administration, before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, never had a serious debate about whether Iraq posed an imminent threat or whether to tighten existing sanctions.
Source: ABC News
April 29, 2007
Fifteen years ago, Los Angeles -- and the entire nation -- watched in horror as rioters pulled Reginald Denny from his truck at the intersection of Florence and Normandie in south-central L.A. and beat him senseless in the street.
The beating happened just hours after four police officers accused of attacking black motorist Rodney King were acquitted in court, enraging many blacks who had long felt unfairly treated by the Los Angeles Police Department.
The mayhem at the
