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: Times (of London)
March 24, 2007
Japan’s most respected elder statesman was forced yesterday to contradict an autobiographical account suggesting that as an officer during the Second World War he forced women to serve as military sex slaves.
Yasuhiro Nakasone, a former prime minister, admitted that Japanese forces forced women to serve on “comfort stations”, the euphemism for military brothels. He denied allegations, based on an account he wrote 29 years ago, that he organised brothels as a military logistics offic
Source: AP
March 23, 2007
SALT LAKE CITY -- Russell Martin Harris celebrated his 86th birthday Friday by giving a gift to the Mormon church -- a leather wallet carried by his great-great-grandfather in the 1830s.
That's better than it first sounds. It was that ancestor, Martin Harris, who mortgaged his farm to get the $3,000 needed to print the first 5,000 copies of the Book of Mormon, the central text of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
Family folklore holds that the soft, caram
Source: Chicago Tribune
March 22, 2007
Four years after the looting of the Iraqi National Museum during the fall of Baghdad, frustrated antiquities experts say untold thousands of Mesopotamian artifacts have been stolen from other vulnerable historical sites across the nation.
Though the museum is now safe--its doors bricked shut and collections entombed behind welded cellar doors--the country's 12,000 archeological sites are mostly unprotected and the Iraqi government is hard-pressed to stop their plunder....
Source: HNN Staff summary of New Yorker article
March 26, 2007
Seymour Hersh reports in this week's New Yorker Magazine that in 1972 President Richard Nixon told National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger he wanted the Air Force to begin the all-out bombing of Surface to Air Missile (SAM) sites in North Vietnam. The rules of engagement previously permitted bombing the sites in response to attack. Nixon can be heard on a newly-released White House tape saying he wanted the SAM sites bombed whether attacks were launched from them or not. When Secretary of
Source: Reuters
March 23, 2007
HAVANA -- Almost half a century of communist rule has saved Havana's eclectic architecture from the urban developer's bulldozer, but a lack of repair has taken a ruinous toll on its neo-Baroque and Art Deco gems.
Dozens of colonial buildings and beautiful squares in Old Havana have been restored since the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO designated it a world heritage site in 1982. But the rest of the city of 2.2 million people is falling into decay.
"The situation has
Source: Independent
March 23, 2007
HNN editor's note: This week marks 200 years since Parliament voted to abolish the transatlantic slave trade. Following is a portion of the Independent's"Big Question" column.
Should Britain be proud of its role in abolishing slavery?
Yes...
* Slave trading was a highly profitable business, abolished when Britain was embroiled in a war with France
* Abolitionists such as Wilberforce had nothing to gain from the campaign; most were motivated by religion
* Bri
Source: Reuters
March 23, 2007
LONDON -- What many believe to be the only painting of Jane Austen will be auctioned in New York in April by Christie's, a relation of the English author and owner of the picture said.
But Henry Rice, a"sixth generation descendant" of the writer of classics such as"Emma,""Sense and Sensibility" and"Pride and Prejudice," believes the sale of a picture that has divided experts will not be without controversy.
In 1948, a leading Austen scholar dismissed the authenticity of the portrait,
Source: Reuters
March 23, 2007
One of the last surviving communities built by freed slaves after the U.S. Civil War is on the verge of disappearing, despite long efforts to save it.The old buildings of Freedmen's Town in Houston are being bulldozed to make way for new homes in a transformation that preservationists say is wiping out an important piece of history.
The loss of Freedmen's Town is particularly significant because historians believe it was the largest of the freed slave settlement
Source: International Herald Tribune
March 7, 2007
HARGEYSA, Somalia -- When the sun rises over the craggy hills of Hargeysa, it sheds light on a different kind of Somalia.
Ice cream trucks hit the streets. Money changers, unarmed and unguarded, push cash through the market in wheelbarrows. Politicians from three distinct parties get ready for another day of debate, which recently included animated discussion on registering nomadic voters.
It is all part of a Somali puzzle: how one area of the country, the northwest, al
Source: UPI
March 23, 2007
BRIDGEPORT, Conn. -- A volunteer safecracker opened a 450-pound, Victorian-era safe in front of Connecticut news crews, but the treasure inside wasn't quite headline-grabbing.
"Like we need this now," laughed Nancy Zorena, president of the Monroe Historical Society, as she held up a slip of paper with the combination to the safe, the Connecticut Post reported.
The safe, discovered behind a Monroe church furnace in December, also contained some newspaper clippi
Source: Mary K. Miller, Smithsonian Magazine
March 1, 2007
A thin beam of X-rays scans the writings of the legendary Greek scientist and mathematician Archimedes, a hidden text that may be the most important ancient scientific document discovered since the Renaissance. As faint lines emerge on a large computer monitor at Stanford's Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, I can just barely make out the ghostly image of the Greek letter lambda.
As a Webcast producer for the Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco, I have been documenting this experi
Source: New York Times
March 23, 2007
BRNO, Czech Republic -- From the outside, the Tugendhat House doesn’t look like one of the most important residential buildings of the 20th century: it’s just two white stucco cubes separated by an opening through which a few spiky treetops protrude. But as a tour guide led a group of 10 through this modern home in the Czech Republic’s second-largest city in early March, it was clear that there was much more to the house, the bulk of which is built on the steep hillside that drops away from the
Source: Reuters
March 22, 2007
BUNCE ISLAND, Sierra Leone -- The ivy-clad ruins perched on a strip of mud in the Sierra Leone river hide a dark past, but have become an unlikely symbol of hope for many African Americans seeking slave forbears.
As a departure point for thousands of Africans on the perilous crossing to the New World, the once proud castle on Bunce Island is a crumbling monument to the horrors of the Transatlantic slave trade.
"There are probably tens of thousands of African Americ
Source: Times (of London)
March 23, 2007
ROSLIN, Scotland -- The medieval chapel which had a starring role in The Da Vinci Code has been awarded a multimillion-pound restoration grant.
The 15th-century Rosslyn Chapel in Midlothian has been given £4.5 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund and £2.68 million from Historic Scotland. [The total is about $14.1 million.]
Since featuring in Dan Brown’s bestseller and the subsequent film, visitor numbers have increased from 30,000 a year in 2000 to 120,000 in 2006.
Source: Telegraph
March 23, 2007
Kew Palace slotted an important piece of its royal history back into place yesterday when it unveiled a cabinet of jigsaw maps used to teach King George III's children.
This jigsaw map of Scotland used to teach geography to King George III's children, on show at Kew Palace
This jigsaw map of Scotland is one of many used to teach geography to King George III's children
The mahogany cabinet houses a collection of dissected maps –- precursors of the jigsaw puzzle –-
Source: AP
March 22, 2007
TAIPEI -- The white, palacelike Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall with its gleaming, blue-tiled octagonal roof stands out as one of the few examples of classic Chinese architecture in Taiwan's capital, Taipei.
But the legacy of the late Chiang —- who formerly led China's once-dominant Nationalist Party but fled to Taiwan with his followers after his defeat on the mainland by Communist forces —- is under attack by the Taiwanese government, making the massive monument an object of controv
Source: BBC News
March 22, 2007
BBC Rome correspondent David Willey covered the signing of the Treaty of Rome as a Reuters trainee. Here he looks back at the Europe of half a century ago.
I was actually there in the huge room frescoed with scenes from ancient Roman battles, when the six frock-coated founders of the Europe of the Six appended their signatures to the Treaty.
Crowded into the room were members of parliament, city authorities and, I seem to remember, a single red-hatted cardinal fr
Source: International Herald Tribune
March 23, 2007
GURNA, Egypt -- The Egyptian authorities have evicted hundreds of peasants from this village in southern Egypt because their mud-brick houses, which have sat atop some of the world's most treasured and ancient tombs for centuries, were leaking sewage onto priceless antiquities.
The families have been resettled in a nearby planned community with running water and telephones. But 80 families are holding out, saying they want more from a government so far reluctant to use brute force.
Source: Independent
March 23, 2007
ROME -- Carabinieri sealed off one of the grandest houses in the ancient city of Pompeii yesterday after a tall column was found smashed into seven pieces. Officials at the site fear that the destruction is a sign that Mafia gangs are trying to intimidate them.
Pompeii is Italy's most popular tourist destination, drawing 2.5 million visitors every year. And the house of Obellio Firmo is one of its most important. The villa's owner was a leading figure in the city's political life: a
Source: AP
March 22, 2007
CHARLESTON, S.C. -- The story of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley, the first sub to sink an enemy warship, is leading back to the Old World as researchers plan to spend weeks trying to discover the roots of four European crewmen.
Scientists also said Thursday they have recovered a second coin from the hand-cranked sub — a silver dime to go along with a $20 gold piece recovered in 2001.
With a mint date of 1841, the dime shows Lady Liberty seated in robes, surround
