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: Guardian
March 26, 2007
MADRID -- Up to a billion dollars worth of gold and silver on a sunken 17th-century English warship may soon be recovered following an agreement with Spanish authorities.
Professional marine treasure hunters working with the British government have reportedly been given the go-ahead to recover gold and silver pieces from what is thought to be the wreck of the HMS Sussex, which took 560 sailors to a watery grave off Gibraltar in 1694.
Although the Spanish government had
Source: BBC News
March 26, 2007
It was an Easter Sunday on 26 March 1967. At around 3pm that day Jim Thompson, already well known as the "Thai Silk King", walked out of Moonlight Cottage where he was holidaying with friends in Malaysia's Cameron Highlands and was never seen again.
It was not simply Thompson's fame and wealth that guaranteed his disappearance would become one of South East Asia's greatest modern mysteries -- it was his past.
He had spent World War II with the OSS, the US inte
Source: Independent
March 26, 2007
For centuries, two paintings in the Royal Collection lay in the dusty storerooms of Hampton Court after experts dismissed them as worthless imitations of Caravaggio's masterpieces.
The experts were wrong. This week, those works will emerge out of storage where they were obscured by varnish and dirt, to be triumphantly displayed to the public. [A spokeswoman for the Royal Collection said the two Caravaggios would appear in public for the first time since confirmation of their authent
Source: Independent
March 26, 2007
At 10 o'clock on a hot and humid Kenyan morning, as the sun rises above the Rabai hills that slope down towards the port of Mombasa, Frederick Omondi finds himself peering underneath a train carriage. "It is OK," he says. "It is only a burst pipe."
The Nairobi-Mombasa train left the cool of Kenya's capital 15 hours ago. It was supposed to arrive in Mombasa at 8 o'clock this morning but three breakdowns -- make that four now there is a burst pipe -- have delayed i
Source: Navy Times
March 25, 2007
NAVAL STATION MAYPORT, Fla. -— And then she was gone.
After nearly 39 years of service, the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy was decommissioned the morning of March 23 at Naval Station Mayport.
"In my judgment, the legacy of this ship is the role she played in winning the Cold War,” said Adm. John B. Nathman, commander of the Navy’s Fleet Forces Command and himself a naval aviator. “This ship sent a powerful message to the Soviet Union and made them quit..."
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
March 25, 2007
State Rep. Al Williams (D-Midway) sparked a fierce public debate this month when he announced that he would introduce a resolution that would ask Georgia to express "contrition" for its role in African-American slavery.
The resolution has been framed as a political issue, but it also raises a moral question that's divided people in countries as diverse as Japan and Australia: Should people apologize for something their ancestors did?
Similar debates are taking
Source: Live Science
March 23, 2007
Only in science could the discovery of something old and crusty be exciting.
And researchers are very excited about finding chunks of Earth's outer crust that are 3.8 billion years old. Most stuff that old has been folded back into the planet and lost forever or spat back out after being melted into unrecognizable magma.
The discovery, detailed in today's issue of the journal Science, provides solid evidence that Earth had crustal plates way back then that were banging
Source: NYT
March 25, 2007
THE words, as always, come easier than the resolve. “We don’t negotiate with terrorists,” Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesman told reporters on Thursday. “We don’t advise others to do so as well.”
He was denouncing the swap Italy made last week with the Taliban: five Taliban prisoners held in Afghan jails for an Italian reporter kidnapped in southern Afghanistan. The trade, officials around the globe warned, was wrong all around: It rewarded terror and encouraged more abduc
Source: NYT
March 25, 2007
IT is not easy to think of Spain as Poland. Stroll around this southern city at dusk, beneath the palms, beside the handsome bridges on the Guadalquivir River, past the chic boutiques and the Häagen-Dazs outlet, the Gothic cathedral and the Moorish palace, and it is scarcely Warsaw that comes to mind.
But, insisted Adam Michnik, the Polish writer, “Poland is the new Spain, absolutely.” He continued: “Spain was a poor country when it joined the European Union 21 years ago. It
Source: Washington Times
March 25, 2007
John Bruton, former prime minister of Ireland, has been the European Union ambassador to the United States since November 2004. He spoke last week with reporter David R. Sands at the EU's Washington headquarters about the bloc's past, present and future.
Q. What do you consider the EU's biggest achievement in its first 50 years?
A. It's important to say at the outset that the European Union was conceived as a political project. The founders of the organization
Source: Discovery News
March 16, 2007
Either the ancient Greeks loved grape juice, or they were making wine nearly 6,500 years ago, according to a new study that describes what could be the world’s earliest evidence of crushed grapes.
If the charred 2,460 grape seeds and 300 empty grape skins were used to make wine, as the researchers suspect, the remains might have belonged to the second oldest known grape wine in the world, edged out only by a residue-covered Iranian wine jug dating to the sixth millennium B.C.
Source: Times (of London)
March 25, 2007
Israel's finance minister is to be questioned this week by police investigating the funding of an annual march at Auschwitz in memory of Holocaust victims.
The police have already interviewed Abraham Hirchson, one of the most senior members of the cabinet, under caution over allegations in the Israeli press that £662,000 was embezzled from Nili, a nonprofit wing of the National Workers Union that he once headed. They talked to him for seven hours last week.
As the inves
Source: Guardian
March 25, 2007
Mao Anqing lived through the most tumultuous era in the history of modern China. But he spent his last years as an unknown recluse.
He was the reclusive, mentally ill son of one of the most powerful and feared figures of the 20th century, and his 84-year life echoed one of the deepest traumas of modern history.
Yesterday a brief notice in the China News Service recorded the death of Mao Anqing, who survived his father to live on into a new China that the dictator would
Source: Independent
March 25, 2007
Nelson Mandela has boycotted plans to commemorate the bicentennial of the Act abolishing the slave trade in Bristol after hearing of bitter divisions within the community and accusations of racism and intolerance.
Mr Mandela had been invited to Bristol, once one of the busiest slave ports in Britain, by the Lord Mayor, councillor Peter Abraham, for a service of remembrance due to take place today.
But South Africa's former president declined the invitation after local b
Source: Independent
March 24, 2007
Tony McNally is still haunted by the day, 25 years ago, when his missiles malfunctioned and he watched his comrades die aboard the stricken 'Sir Galahad' in the Falklands. Paul Bignell reports
Published: 25 March 2007
Time has passed, but the memories will never fade for Tony McNally. There are "Bogies incoming", Argentine jets in attack formation sweeping across San Carlos Bay. There are the nights spent shivering in trenches, hoping the enemy will not attack. And
Source: AP
March 22, 2007
WASHINGTON - The Senate on Thursday approved freezing a proposed $17 million increase in funding for the Smithsonian Institution, citing excessive compensation and spending by its top official.
The budgetary amendment from Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, was unanimously approved on a voice vote.
The measure is not binding and still must be approved during the House-Senate budget process. But Grassley said it sends a message to Smithsonian Secretary Lawrence M. Small, who
Source: New York Times
March 25, 2007
When confronted with the prickly question of whether to disclose their illnesses, Presidents Calvin Coolidge, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy divined a simple strategy, historians say. They dissembled. They lied. They covered up or simply kept their mouths shut to keep Americans in the dark.
One can only imagine that those presidents would be rubbing their eyes in disbelief this week.
Not only at the sight of John Edwards, the North Carolina De
Source: AP
March 23, 2007
ROME -- British historian David Irving, who was jailed in Austria for questioning the Holocaust, visited the Auschwitz death camp and renewed his claim that there was no proof it had gas chambers during an Italian TV program aired Friday.
In the Sky TG24 documentary program "Controcorrente" (Countercurrent), Irving is filmed walking down the remains of railroad tracks in the former death camp in southern Poland as he insists that engineering techniques back his claims that
Source: AP
March 23, 2007
Mel Gibson exchanged angry words with a university professor who challenged the accuracy of his film "Apocalypto" at an on-campus screening.
Gibson was answering questions from the crowd at California State University, Northridge, Thursday night when Alicia Estrada, an assistant professor of Central American studies, accused the actor-director of misrepresenting the Mayan culture in the movie.
Gibson directed an expletive at the woman, who was removed from the
Source: Reuters
March 24, 2007
NEW YORK -- Debris that may have contained bits of bone from victims of the World Trade Center attacks was used to fill potholes and pave city roads, according to court papers filed on Friday.
The charge was made in an affidavit filed in Manhattan federal court in an ongoing case filed in 2005 by family members of those killed in the attacks against the city. They say the city did not do enough to search for remains, denying victims a proper burial.
