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 8, 2007
MADISONVILLE, Ky. -- Harold Utley's got a big idea. It weighs about 2,000 tons, stands at least 275 feet tall and is at the heart of western Kentucky's economic history.
The dream sits off Kentucky 70, west of Madisonville, in the form of a dragline once used in coal strip mining that still towers over reclaimed fields.
"It's the largest land machine built in Hopkins County, ever," Utley, president of the Historical Society of Hopkins County and retiree of the
Source: Times (of London)
April 9, 2007
Hundreds of important journals dating back to the early 19th century have been thrown away by Europe’s largest psychiatry library, including volumes signed by the doctor who founded its parent institution.
More than 50 scientists and students at the Institute of Psychiatry in London have signed a petition calling for the reorganisation of its library to be suspended, after books that appear to have belonged to Sir Frederick Mott were rescued from a skip.
Another discarded book includ
Source: Telegraph
April 9, 2007
ROME -- A small mountain village in Umbria is fighting New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art for the ownership of a 2,600-year-old Etruscan war chariot.
The Met intends to make the carefully restored bronze war chariot, which dates from 530BC, the star attraction of its $155 million (£80 million) Leon Levy and Shelby White Court, part of a new wing which is due to open on April 20.
The villagers of Monteleone di Spoleto, population 651, are determined to claim it back.
Source: Telegraph
April 7, 2007
ROME -- The Pope shocked many Catholics last night with a dramatically revised version of the Stations of the Cross, one of the central rituals of the Easter ceremony...
The Pope carried the cross for the first and last of the 14 stops on a candle-lit procession around the Coliseum in Rome. However, this year the Pope chose to change both the route and the content of the ceremony...
One of the boldest changes came on the third stop, where Jesus is given up to Pontius Pi
Source: Telegraph
July 4, 2007
Victims of the Khmer Rouge's genocide in Cambodia are recording their accounts on video in the hope of being able to give evidence at the trials of their alleged persecutors, even if their testimony eventually is heard from beyond the grave.
Foot-dragging by the Cambodian government and legal wrangling pushed back the start of the UN-sponsored trials, which were agreed in 2003 but are now not expected to start until later this year. They are expected to last years, raising fears tha
Source: HNN Staff summary of report by IRNA (Islamic Republic News Agency, Tehran)
April 6, 2007
At the Paris Persian Gulf historical Atlas forum held last week Iranians argued in favor of the name Persian Gulf instead of Arabian Gulf, the name used by Nasser.
Source: Live Science
April 6, 2007
People who believe they have lived past lives as, say, Indian princesses or battlefield commanders are more likely to make certain types of memory errors, according to a new study.
The propensity to make these mistakes could, in part, explain why people cling to implausible reincarnation claims in the first place.
Researchers recruited people who, after undergoing hypnotic therapy, had come to believe that they had past lives.
People who are likely to make
Source: UPI
April 8, 2007
LONDON -- A wedding outfit worn by socialite Jemima Khan has been made the centerpiece of the British Library's exhibition of sacred texts.
The exhibition includes 230 of the world's most precious religious texts, including an fourth-century copy of the New Testament and an eighth-century Koran, The Sunday Telegraph reported. The exhibition has been titled "Sacred: Discover What We Share" and opens April 27.
But the main attraction of the show is supposed to b
Source: NYT
April 8, 2007
He was ousted, captured, tried and executed. But while the dictator may be gone, his legacy visibly lives on.
There may be no starker reminder of Saddam Hussein’s tyrannical rule than the potent symbols he left behind: scores of hubristic statues, murals, frescoes and other monuments he built all over Iraq to commemorate himself. While many were destroyed in the cathartic celebration and mob violence that followed the invasion, many others still remain, serving as a constant echo of
Source: NYT (subscribers only)
April 8, 2007
The mayor of Harrisburg, Pa., spent $7.8 million of public funds on items for an Old West museum he hoped to open.
[Now that his city government is in the red, he's having to sell off the archive.]
Source: Telegraph
April 7, 2007
The National Gallery has shelved plans for a major refurbishment because of fears that a number of works it holds on loan are to be sold on the open market.
Instead of improving the lower galleries, trustees have decided to boost a fighting fund that will be used should any of up 40 famous paintings lent to the gallery be removed and put up for sale.
The collection, estimated to be worth up to £1 billion, is vulnerable because a number of private owners, who were previo
Source: AP
April 8, 2007
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson left Saturday with a delegation of past and present U.S. officials for North Korea, where he hopes to reclaim the remains of American soldiers killed in the Korean War...
As with many of Richardson's freelance diplomatic missions, this one benefits from fortunate timing. Endorsed by President George W. Bush's Republican administration, it comes days before a crucial deadline in a landmark nuclear accord the North agreed to in February, four months aft
Source: Telegraph
April 7, 2007
BERLIN -- Hubertus Knabe looks through his office window at the cluster of grey, socio-realist buildings outside. "This whole area did not officially exist 20 years ago; it was simply a white spot on the map," he says.
He is in Hohenschönhausen, a district in East Berlin once reserved for the top echelons of the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, or Stasi, the notorious secret service of the former German Democratic Republic. The district is widely known as Stasiville.
Source: New York Times
April 8, 2007
PRISTINA, Kosovo —- Ramush Haradinaj, a stocky ethnic Albanian former guerrilla commander and, briefly, Kosovo’s prime minister, is either one of the most impressive leaders to emerge in the Balkans in recent years or a vicious war criminal. Or perhaps both.
Mr. Haradinaj and two other men began to stand trial at the United Nations tribunal in The Hague in March, charged with killing 40 people in 1998, during the conflict between the Kosovo Liberation Army guerrilla group and Serbia
Source: Times (of London)
April 8, 2007
Shakespeare may not have intended Lady Macbeth to be quite so vindictive after all. A new edition of his works, to be published with official backing, is to make significant changes to the characters and elements of the plots of the plays.The RSC Shakespeare Complete Works, to be published this month, will break with the literary consensus of more than three centuries to produce a version that it claims will be closer to the playwright’s intentions.
It will use as
Source: AP
April 7, 2007
PHNOM PENH -- A senior U.S. official urged Cambodian and foreign lawyers on Saturday to put aside their squabble over legal fees and move forward with the much-delayed Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal.
"The Khmer Rouge tribunal is really the opportunity for Cambodia to show the international community how far it's advanced," said Eric G. John, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs.
"And it would be a shame not to be able
Source: Islamic Republic News Agencty (Tehran)
April 7, 2007
MADRID -- Iranian Ambassador to Madrid Seyed Davoud Salehi on Saturday thanked the Spanish government for paying attention to protection and reconstruction of historical Islamic monuments in the country.
He made the remark at a ceremony marking the auspicious birth anniversary of the holy Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) and Imam Jafar Sadeq (AS), which was attended by a number of Iranian expatriates residing in Spain.
"The special attention of Spain's government to safegua
Source: International Herald Tribune
April 5, 2007
PHNOM PENH -- Ever since his 1994 movie "Rice People" introduced a Cambodian voice to world cinema, the director Rithy Panh has become the conscience of a nation still haunted by the tragedy of its recent past. "From the beginning I knew my work would focus on the problems in my country," Panh said. "It's been 26 years since the fall of the Khmer Rouge, yet we still don't fully understand why we were forced to live through these horrors."
Having lost ma
Source: AP
April 7, 2007
BAGHDAD -- In the three years since he took over the Iraqi National Library, Saad Eskander has repaired the damage from theft and arson, played detective and advised his employees on staying alive.
He has transformed the library, burned and looted in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein's ouster in 2003, into a symbol of hope in a country mired in sectarian violence, crime and political bickering.
The three-story, tan-brick building has been restored, new furniture procured,
Source: Independent
April 7, 2007
Ministers are to open up the entire English coastline to the public in a historic and controversial extension of the "right to roam".
The move, which will make it possible to walk all 9,040 miles around the coast of Great Britain and create the first ever right of access to thousands of beaches, is provoking a bitter backlash from landowners and celebrities with expensive seaside properties, who will not be compensated.
It will also boost the profile of the fa
