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 14, 2007
Only one of Henry VIII’s wives had no life portrait taken, and she is the most famous of them all, Anne Boleyn...
Now, 30 years after a [c. 1530] Holbein portrait in the Royal Collection was demoted to the status of an unknown lady from the court of Henry VIII, new research has reinstated it as a contemporary depiction of the king’s second wife... [Image online
here.]
Academics have now tra
Source: AP
March 14, 2007
DENVER -- Mary and Ray Smith can't make heads or tails of a new presidential dollar coin they found last week [in two rolls they bought]. It doesn't have either. A week after the revelation that some of the coins slipped out of the U.S. Mint without"In God We Trust" stamped on the edge, the Smiths said Tuesday they found one with nothing stamped on either flat side.
It does have"In God We Trust" on the edge. What's missing is the image of George Washington on the front and the Stat
Source: AP
March 14, 2007
ANKARA, Turkey -- A prosecutor on Tuesday filed charges against a political science professor for allegedly insulting the legacy of the revered founder of modern Turkey.
Atilla Yayla's university has already suspended him amid allegations that he criticized Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, whose portrait hang in all government offices and his ideas are still the republic's most sacred principles 68 years after his death.
Prosecutor Ahmet Guven on Tuesday filed charges against Yay
Source: Christian Science Monitor
March 14, 2007
ATHENS -- The year was 1453. Ottoman troops under Sultan Mehmed II captured the Byzantine city of Constantinople –- present-day Istanbul –- and changed the region forever.
Ask a Greek student of history, and you'll likely hear of the event as the tragic fall of a great Christian city. Ask a Turk, and you'll probably hear of the glorious conquest for a rising Muslim empire.
In this still-fragile region, history is often served up as a nationalistic tale that highlights t
Source: Telegraph
March 14, 2007
A Hollywood film depicting a battle between the Persian empire and a Greek army was denounced by Iran yesterday as "hostile" and an example of "cultural and psychological warfare".
The film, 300, about the battle of Thermopylae in 480BC, has made about $70 million in America in its first three days of release. It was attacked for its depiction of Persians as ruthless but dumb imperialists, who were repeatedly outsmarted by a smaller "western" force. The
Source: Washington Post
March 14, 2007
Rufina Amaya, the woman who was often identified as the last, or only, survivor of the massacre at the village of El Mozote, died last week. She was not, strictly speaking, the only survivor of that monstrous event, but she appears to have been the only one who emerged with her wits about her, a clear memory of what took place, and the will to describe how hundreds of people, including her husband and four of her children, were systematically butchered on Dec. 11, 1981, in an impoverished corner
Source: AFP
March 13, 2007
DERBY, South Africa -- Amid the majestic beauty of South Africa's Magaliesberg mountain range, veterans of the battle against whites-only rule are trying to banish demons that still haunt them.
Matlapeng lodge, the setting for an 'eco-therapy' session involving around a dozen ex-combattants, translates from Xhosa as the "Place of Stone", but tears flow freely and deep-seated fears are revealed by the former warriors.
"It's a cleansing process. You'll all
Source: USA Today
March 7, 2007
HONOLULU, Hawaii —- A violent road-rage altercation between Native Hawaiians and a white couple near Pearl Harbor two weeks ago is provoking questions about whether Hawaii's harmonious "aloha spirit" is real or just a greeting for tourists.
The Feb. 19 attack, in which a Hawaiian father and son were arrested and charged with beating a soldier and his wife unconscious, was unusual here for its brutality. It sparked a public debate over race relations that is filling blogs a
Source: Independent (UK)
March 12, 2007
Tony Blair's first envoy to Iraq, banned from publishing his own book on the crisis there, has used a roundabout route to make sharp criticism of the British and American governments for failing to study history before invading the country in 2003.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock, a former ambassador to the United Nations, says American politicians ignored the lessons of British disasters, failed to delegate proper authority to commanders on the ground and lacked imagination in their leadersh
Source: NYT
March 13, 2007
Archaeologists have applied more polish to the long-tarnished reputation of the Philistines.
In recent years, excavations in Israel established that the Philistines had fine pottery, handsome architecture and cosmopolitan tastes. If anything, they were more refined than the shepherds and farmers in the nearby hills, the Israelites, who slandered them in biblical chapter and verse and rendered their name a synonym for boorish, uncultured people.
Archaeologists have now f
Source: UPI
March 13, 2007
BOLOGNA, Italy -- Italian researchers have determined blue-green algae, not smoke from oil well fires, caused discoloration of some Iranian archaeological treasures.
The scientists say black deposits soiling and discoloring monuments at some important Iranian archaeological sites did not result from smoke produced by oil well fires in Kuwait during the first Gulf War, as had been claimed.
Alessandra Bonazza and colleagues from Italy's National Research Council said Iran
Source: Press Release--Gilder Lehrman
March 13, 2007
Students at four Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) will have the opportunity to improve their academic performance and college preparedness through a unique academic enrichment program based on American history. Funded by a $975,000, five-year grant from the Cargill Foundation, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History program aims to accelerate learning for participating students.
According to the executive director of the Gilder Lehrman Institute, the program lev
Source: Report by Mary Kay Magistad, The World (PRI & BBC News)
March 13, 2007
China is on the rise. And that's fueled nationalistic pride at home. It's also fueled a new pastime among some young Chinese. They've taken to strolling in the park in Han Dynasty-style clothing. The Han Dynasty lasted from about 200 BC to 220 AD. Some romanticize it as a time of superior morals, values, and philosophy. They say China today would do well to learn from it...
On a blustery, cold and wet Sunday afternoon – a couple dozen people, most in their 20s and early 30s, gather
Source: BBC News
March 13, 2007
A new £20 note featuring a portrait of Scottish economist Adam Smith comes into circulation on Tuesday.
The note includes a range of enhanced security measures designed to prevent counterfeiting, such as a wider holographic strip and microlettering.
The new image of Smith will mark the first time a Scotsman has appeared on a Bank of England note.
[An image of Smith already appears on Scottish £50 notes.]
Current £20 notes, featuring English composer Edward Elgar, will be phas
Source: AP
March 13, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Plans for a casino just outside Gettysburg were shot down last year, but the site of the Civil War's bloodiest battle is threatened by spreading home construction, a preservation group says.
While Gettysburg's new nemesis is housing, a site in Alabama's Mobile Bay is suffering from neglect and a lack of state funding, and vast tracts of land stretching from Virginia to Pennsylvania are at risk from a planned major power line, the Civil War Preservation Trust said in it
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
March 12, 2007
The steps by which the Justice Department conducts
investigations of unauthorized disclosures of classified
information ("leaks") were described by then-Attorney General
Janet Reno in 2000 testimony before a closed hearing of the
Senate Intelligence Committee.
At a moment when some, such as Senator Jon Kyl, are proposing to
enact new statutory penalties against leaks, it is noteworthy
that the Attorney General concluded that such p
Source: Times (of London)
March 13, 2007
The curse of Tutankhamun is about to be visited on one of Britain’s most cursed buildings — the Millennium Dome. More than 130 treasures from the tomb of the Egyptian boy-king, including the gold crown that adorned his head, will go on display in the Dome from November, 35 years after many were last in the country.
The artefacts attracted a record 1.7 million visitors to the British Museum then, ushering in the age of the museum blockbuster, and organisers hope that the forthcoming exhibition
Source: New York Times
March 13, 2007
LONDON -— Faced with the unpleasant prospect of actually having to run for office, members of the House of Lords declared Monday that their chamber had functioned pretty well without elections for hundreds of years and that there was no need to rush into anything now.
“It is, by definition, not elected,” said Lord Irvine of Lairg, speaking of the House of Lords, “but I do not accept the conclusion that it is illegitimate.”
He was taking part in one of the strangest deba
Source: Toronto Globe and Mail
March 13, 2007
The Royal Canadian Legion is renewing calls for a boycott of the Canadian War Museum and is asking the Senate Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs to intervene in a dispute over a controversial panel of text about the devastation of the Allied bombing campaign in the Second World War.
"Basically we don't want people going to the War Museum. We find that the panel is insensitive," said Bob Butt, a Legion spokesman in Ottawa. "The people who were actually on the [bombing] m
Source: Guardian
March 13, 2007
MOSCOW -- Berlin lay in smouldering ruins. Hitler had been dead for four weeks. The Soviet Union was the undisputed master of eastern Europe. Working in great secrecy, some Red Army soldiers embarked on a delicate mission: to spirit back home unique cultural treasures belonging to the vanquished Germans.
In June 1945, three chests holding 1,538 gold and silver items were loaded on to a Moscow-bound plane. For more than half a century German experts had little clue as to whether the
