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: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
April 26, 2007
A court in the Netherlands on April 24 ordered the Dutch Defense Ministry to grant a widow of one of the 8,000 victims of the 1995 massacre in Srebrenica access to confidential files about the events surrounding the slaughter, international media reported the same day.
The report did not provide details of the files requested, but the case could reopen questions and sensitivities about the failure of Dutch peacekeepers to protect Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica, which was designated
Source: Press Release -- New-York Historical Society
April 25, 2007
The New-York Historical Society’s application to make alterations to its Central Park West building has received unanimous approval by the Landmarks Preservation Commission of the City of New York.
Endorsement of the new design, developed by architectural firm Platt Byard Dovell White, came yesterday with a vote by the Landmarks Preservation Commissioners at a meeting led by Chair Robert Tierney. The vote came after a year-long conversation between N-YHS, its neighbors, elected off
Source: Guardian
April 26, 2007
MADRID -- The chief architect working on the Sagrada Familia Cathedral in Barcelona yesterday condemned a plan to build a bullet-train tunnel less than two metres from Gaudi's unfinished masterpiece.
Backed by local civic groups, the advisers to Unesco in Spain, and architects and engineers from 50 universities around the world, Jordi Bonet i Armengol, who has worked on Gaudi's daring cathedral for 40 years, said yesterday: "I am astounded by this brutality. This is an attack o
Source: BBC News
April 26, 2007
Experts are "lost for words" to have found that a medieval prayer book has yielded yet another key ancient text buried within its parchment.
Works by mathematician Archimedes and the politician Hyperides had already been found buried within the book, known as the Archimedes Palimpsest.
But now advanced imaging technology has revealed a third text -- a commentary on the philosopher Aristotle.
Project director William Noel called it a "sensatio
Source: Times (of London)
April 26, 2007
BERLIN -- The beautiful women of the ancient world have always had a dangerous streak. The face of Helen of Troy launched a thousand warships, and now the exquisite Queen Nefertiti is at the heart of an imminent museum war between Germany and Egypt.
The 3,400-year-old bust of the wife of the Sun King Akhenaten has been in German hands since it was dug out of the desert by the archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt in 1912. It was smuggled out of Egypt and became a central part of Berlin’s m
Source: Independent (UK)
April 24, 2007
Picasso's Guernica, the painting that epitomises the horrors of modern warfare, has sparked a new battle after a request to return it to its spiritual home was denied by Spain's capital.
Residents of Guernica are furious that they cannot borrow the masterpiece that depicts the destruction of their town during the Spanish Civil War.Related Links
Guernica remembered: Picasso's l
Source: AP
April 25, 2007
TOKYO -- Japan's abhorrent practice of enslaving women to provide sex for its troops in World War II has a little-known sequel: After its surrender -- with tacit approval from the U.S. occupation authorities -- Japan set up a similar "comfort women" system for American GIs.
An Associated Press review of historical documents and records -- some never before translated into English -- shows American authorities permitted the official brothel system to operate despite interna
Source: Washington Post
April 26, 2007
MOSCOW -- In the two days since former president Boris Yeltsin died, his official standing here has undergone a strange and unlikely transformation. He has been lionized by a political establishment that spent the last six years demonizing what it views as the anarchy and humiliation of Russia during his rule in the 1990s.
Yeltsin "sincerely tried to do everything possible to make the lives of millions of Russians better," President Vladimir Putin said at a reception after
Source: Stars and Stripes, Mideast edition
April 26, 2007
In a rare “opinion piece” issued as a news release by the U.S. command in Afghanistan, a soldier has voiced a complaint against the order to put base flags at half-staff for the Virginia Tech shooting victims, but not for soldiers killed in combat.
Sgt. Jim Wilt, assigned to the Combined Joint Task Force-82 Public Affairs Office, wrote: “I find it ironic that the flags were flown at half-staff for the young men and women who were killed at VT, yet it is never lowered for the death o
Source: Daily Star (Cairo)
April 22, 2007
LUXOR, Egypt -- Remains of an ancient Egyptian wall used to prevent the leakage of the Nile flood waters from spreading over the Karnak temple in Luxor were discovered on Thursday at the temple’s eastern side, culture minister Farouk Hosni announced on Sunday.
Hosni revealed that the wall was accidentally found by Egyptian excavators during an archeological inspection of the site undertaken as part of a development project aimed at removing encroachments accumulated over the years o
Source: Aiken (S.C.) Standard
April 24, 2007
The principle burial ground for African-Americans in the City of Aiken was recently placed on the National Historic Register as Aiken Colored Cemetery...
The official name is now Pine Lawn Cemetery located on Florence Street and serves as the resting ground of slaves, prominent leaders, educators, doctors and ministers...
The cemetery was founded in 1852 with originally four acres of land that the City of Aiken purchased and later gave to five colored churches in the ar
Source: CBC News
April 24, 2007
A 10-metre section of a shipwreck, possibly from the 19th century, has washed up on the North Shore of Prince Edward Island.
A portion of a ship's timber hull washed up on a beach near Cavendish last week. Jean Ronahan, who lives in nearby French River, suspects it may have broken loose following erosion near a breakwater in Cavendish...
"Right along our whole coastline here there was a lot of shipwrecks; there was the Marco Polo and there was another from t
Source: AP
April 25, 2007
MOSCOW -- Set on a knoll overlooking an oxbow bend in the Moscow River, the hallowed ground of the Novodevichy Cemetery holds the remains of scores of engineers, artists and politicians who helped shape Russia's tormented past century.
They include the loved and the loathed, the tragic and the triumphant.
Boris Yeltsin, who was buried there Wednesday, was all of these.
He was laid to rest far from Lenin's Tomb in Red Square. Yeltsin's burial at the Kremlin
Source: AP
April 25, 2007
BUENOS AIRES -- A federal court threw out amnesties Wednesday for two leaders of Argentina's military dictatorship, saying they must serve their life terms in prison for crimes against humanity.
Former military President Jorge Videla and Navy chief Eduardo Massera were leading members of the 1976-1983 military junta that waged a "dirty war" against political opponents, seizing and killing about 9,000 people, according to official records. Human rights groups put the death
Source: Reuters
April 25, 2007
YEREVAN, Armenia -- Thousands of Armenians climbed a mountain in the country's capital on Tuesday to lay wreaths of remembrance for 1.5 million victims of what they call a genocide by Ottoman Turkey 92 years ago. Modern Turkey rejects the Armenian claim, though the issue has evolved into a festering source of tension to both Ankara's EU ambitions and its relations with the United States.
Clutching red tulips and carnations, local families mingled with members of Armenia's diaspora w
Source: AP
April 25, 2007
BEVERLY, Mass. -- The Beverly Historical Society has long touted the Balch House in the city as the oldest surviving wood-frame house in the nation...
Two scientists concluded in a long-awaited report that the house was built around 1679, and not 1636 as the historical society has claimed.
Beverly Historical Society director Stephen Hall said the organization will probably drop the claim...[but] said he was not disappointed by the revelation. "I’m never disappoint
Source: BBC News
April 24, 2007
Archaeologists are uncovering a huge prehistoric "lost country" hidden below the North Sea.
This lost landscape, where hunter-gatherer communities once lived, was swallowed by rising water levels at the end of the last ice age.
University of Birmingham researchers are heralding "stunning" findings as they map the "best-preserved prehistoric landscape in Europe"...
The Birmingham researchers have been using oil exploration techn
Source: IndyStar/Indianapolis Star
April 19, 2007
t's one of the most divisive emblems in American history, yet Carmel resident John Buckner is proud to hang it outside of his house -- even if it means buying a new one every other month.
The emblem? A Confederate battle flag.
Buckner, a 73-year-old Greensboro, N.C., native who moved to Indiana 30 years ago, said he's had the flag stolen from his house eight times since February 2006 and that Carmel police aren't doing enough to catch the culprits. He lives north of 106
Source: New York Times
April 25, 2007
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will have a hard act to follow when he makes his first trip as Japan’s leader to the United States this week.
President George W. Bush took his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, to Graceland in Memphis, where Mr. Koizumi put on Elvis Presley’s shades and played air guitar while mugging for the camera.
By contrast, Mr. Abe is expected to make a low-key visit ...
In his seven months in office, Mr. Abe has reassured Washington by smooth
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
April 24, 2007
The University of Virginia’s governing board passed a resolution this month in which it expressed “particular regret” for using slaves during the first half-century of its existence, until the end of the Civil War. The resolution, which passed unanimously, notes that “mostly anonymous laborers,” both slave and free, helped build the university. In the document, the board also “recommits itself to the principles of equal opportunity.” A news release accompanying the resolution states that it “is
