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
March 26, 2007
WASHINGTON --An image of the Liberty Bell, an icon of American freedom and independence, will adorn the Postal Service's new forever stamp.
The design of the stamp was unveiled Monday at the National Postal Forum, a gathering of companies in the mailing industry.
The forever stamp goes on sale April 12 at 41 cents. The rate for first-class postage rises to 41 cents May 14.
The stamp, which will carry the word"Forever" instead of a price, will remain valid for sending a letter,
Source: Times (of London)
March 25, 2007
Brigitte Mohnhaupt, once a leader of the Baader-Meinhof gang and regarded as the most dangerous and evil woman in Germany, was released today after 25 years in prison for her involvement in some of the radical left-wing group’s most notorious murders.
Mohnhaupt, 57, was released from the Aichach prison in Bavaria and picked up by acquaintances, the prison director, Wolfgang Deuschl, said.
A Stuttgart court last month approved parole for Mohnhaupt, ruling that she could
Source: AFP
March 26, 2007
ATHENS -- The archaeological museum of the Greek Ionian Sea island of Cephalonia was closed on Monday after a weekend of seismic activity damaged the building and smashed items, the culture ministry said.
An undersea tremor measuring 5.9 points on the open-ended Richter scale on Sunday toppled a number of exhibits at Argostoli Museum, smashing three of them, the ministry said without offering further details.
The museum building itself sustained minor damage, with crack
Source: BBC News
March 26, 2007
The British government was advised against publicly criticising a report estimating that 655,000 Iraqis had died due to the war, the BBC has learnt.
Iraqi Health Ministry figures put the toll at less than 10% of the total in the survey, published in the Lancet.
But the [UK] Ministry of Defence's chief scientific adviser said the [Lancet] survey's methods were "close to best practice" and the study design was "robust". Another expert agreed the metho
Source: AP
March 26, 2007
KIEV, Ukraine -- An ad campaign featuring billboards and commercials with images of the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin exhorting people to pay their bills was pulled on Monday after protests from rights groups and nationalists.
The campaign in the eastern Ukraine town of Donetsk came after utility rates in Ukraine increased markedly last year and people stopped paying their bills.
Irina Taran, a spokeswoman for Donetsk governing council, said dozens of billboards featurin
Source: Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader
March 26, 2007
PETERSBURG, Ky. -- Tyrannosaurus rex was a strict vegetarian, and lived with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
There were dinosaurs of every kind aboard Noah's ark. Some dinosaurs managed to hang around until just a few hundred years ago. The legend of St. George slaying the dragon? That probably was a dinosaur.
Exhibits showing all this and more will be at the Creation Museum, a $27 million religious showcase nearing completion in Northern Kentucky.
The museum, in Boone Coun
Source: AP
March 26, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO -- It took seven years after the fighting had ended for the nation to dedicate the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. This time around, Americans aren't waiting for the shooting to stop.
On beaches and bases, town squares and veterans' clubs, they are building their monuments to America's fallen as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan grind on.
Vietnam, in one way or another, looms large over this impulse to memorialize the war dead in real time. Some ar
Source: AP
March 26, 2007
ATHENS -- A geological engineering company said Monday it has agreed to help in an archaeological project to find the island of Ithaca, homeland of Homer's legendary hero Odysseus.
It has long been thought that the island of Ithaki in the Ionian Sea was the island Homer used as a setting for the epic poem "The Odyssey," in which the king Odysseus makes a perilous 10-year journey home from the Trojan War.
But amateur British archaeologist Robert Bittlestone bel
Source: Washington Post
March 26, 2007
Lawrence M. Small, the banker who took over the Smithsonian Institution seven years ago, resigned under pressure, museum officials announced today.
Cristian Samper, a biologist who heads the National Museum of Natural History, was named acting secretary, according to an announcement by Roger Sant, head of the Smithsonian's executive committee.
Small's management of the Smithsonian has been sharply criticized by members of Congress, and his compensation and spending prac
Source: Vatican News Service
March 26, 2007
VATICAN CITY -- Europe’s rejection of its traditional Christian identity is leading to its imminent disappearance from the world stage, Pope Benedict XVI said in an address to a congress of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community (COMECE) on March 24.
"[I]n demographic terms, it must unfortunately be noted that Europe seems set on a path that could lead to its exit from history," Pope Benedict XVI stated at the event commemorating the 50th anni
Source: Derry Journal/Derry Today (Northern Ireland)
March 26, 2007
The Bloody Sunday Trust have described an attack on the Museum of Free Derry as a "major threat" to its future.
Vandals caused substantial damage to the waterproof covering on the roof of the Bogside museum sometime late on Wednesday night.
A spokesperson for the Trust said..."The damage caused could run into thousands of pounds to repair and, while there is no way that anyone can get into the museum through the roof...rain has been pouring through the ho
Source: Forbes
March 26, 2007
In yet another sign of trouble for the ailing newspaper industry, Time Warner's Time Inc. said Monday that it will shutter Life magazine next month, citing an increasingly tough environment for papers...
Life will continue to have an online presence where Time plans to push ahead with its plans to post the magazine's entire collection of 10 million photographs online by the end of the year.
Life became a magazine icon during its first incarnation as a weekly magazine fr
Source: Kathimerini (Athens)
March 26, 2007
About 30 members of the extreme right-wing group Chryssi Avgi (Golden Dawn) burned copies of a primary school history book outside Parliament on Saturday because they said its narrative favors the Turks.
Militants yelled anti-Turk slogans and distributed pamphlets urging resistance to closer ties between Greece and Turkey. Riot police eventually broke up the demonstration.
Chryssi Avgi’s protest also coincided with a student march in Athens on Saturday marking Greece’s
Source: BBC
March 26, 2007
Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has apologized in parliament for the country's use of women as sex slaves during World War II.The apology comes after Mr Abe was criticized by Asian neighbors for previous comments casting doubt on whether the women were coerced.
Mr Abe told parliament: "I apologies here and now as prime minister."
This appears to be part of a concerted bid to reduce the fall-out of earlier comments, a BBC correspondent sa
Source: UPI
March 25, 2007
CHICAGO -- A U.S. researcher's new translation of a controversial section of the Koran pertaining to women has been met with strong criticism by fundamentalists.
Laleh Bakhtiar, a woman of Iranian-American descent, told the New York Times she has been strongly criticized by Islamists who claim her translation of the word"draba" from the Koran is wholly inaccurate.
The word is used in a section of the Koran that details how a rebellious woman should be treated and most experts have tr
Source: Telegraph
March 26, 2007
Institutions that profited from the slave trade should make amends -- possibly financially, the Archbishop of Canterbury says today.
Following emancipation in 1833, the government of the day compensated all slave owners for loss of property and revenue to the tune of about £20 million.
In a radio interview on BBC Radio 4 today, Dr Rowan Williams suggests that organisations which received compensation in the 1830s were still"living off the historical legacy" and had a responsibility t
Source: Times (of London)
March 26, 2007
Mites that eat llama dung are providing scientists with critical new clues to the rise and fall of the Inca empire and the civilisations that preceded it.
The soil invertebrates are allowing researchers to trace the growth and decline of the peoples of the Andes several centuries before the Spanish conquest in 1532 brought written records to the region for the first time.
The evidence gleaned from fossilised mites, preserved in sediments at a lake about 50km (30 miles)
Source: Times (of London)
March 25, 2007
They are barely old enough to remember the cold war. Deep in the jungles and mountains of the Philippines, thousands of young communists fight a battle begun by their grandfathers. By Andrew Marshall
Comrade Giegie is getting married. Her wedding will be held in a jungle clearing, which she will enter through an archway of raised assault rifles. The bride and groom will make their vows draped in a red flag bearing the spear and Kalashnikov of the 7,500-strong New People's Arm
Source: Times (of London)
March 26, 2007
SUDELEY CASTLE, England -- The christening gown worn by the future Queen Elizabeth I nearly 500 years ago has been [re]discovered during a clear-out at a stately home.
The gown was found at Sudeley Castle in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, recently the setting for Liz Hurley’s wedding. [Story includes photo.]
In the 1880s experts authenticated the garment, worn by Henry VIII’s daughter at her baptism at Greenwich in 1533, but it was then left in a box of textiles and forgo
Source: BBC News
March 25, 2007
A [Stanford] university professor has won the right to quote letters between Irish writer James Joyce and his daughter in a book after settling a court case.
Joyce's estate has agreed not to sue Carol Schloss if her research is only made available in the US.
The Joyce estate said it wanted to"protect the privacy and memory" of Lucia, who was mentally ill. [Lucia died in 1982.]
Ms Schloss's book, Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake, says she was Joyce's
