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
February 15, 2007
BRUSSELS -- A group of Greeks seeking compensation from Germany for a Nazi massacre in 1943 suffered a setback Thursday when the European Union's high court said the claim was not covered by an EU convention on civil and commercial law.
Irini Lechouritou and other descendants of victims of the World War II atrocity have been fighting since 1995 in Greek courts to secure compensation from Germany for financial loss, nonmaterial damage and mental anguish.
An earlier bid w
Source: Reuters
February 15, 2007
CALGARY, Alberta -- Here's a hot, new discovery: archaeologists have traced what they believe is evidence of the first home-grown chili peppers, used in South America 6,100 years ago.
And it was people in tropical, lowland areas of what is now western Ecuador who first spiced up their cuisine, not those from higher, drier Mexico and Peru as was previously assumed, said Scott Raymond, a University of Calgary archaeologist.
His team, led by Linda Perry, researcher with th
Source: AP
February 15, 2007
TALLINN, Estonia -- Estonian lawmakers on Thursday approved a bill calling for the removal of a disputed Soviet war memorial, ignoring warnings from Moscow, but the president said he would veto the measure.
In a 46-44 vote, lawmakers in the 101-member assembly approved the Law on Forbidden Structures, which prohibits the public display of monuments that glorify the five-decade Soviet occupation of Estonia. Eleven lawmakers were absent or abstained.
The measure was speci
Source: Deutsche Welle World
January 26, 2007
As one of the most famous Holocaust deniers goes on trial in Germany, the EU takes steps to criminalize denying the Shoah.
German prosecutors in Mannheim demanded a five-year jail sentence Friday for one of the most high-profile figures in the Holocaust denial movement, Ernst Zündel, in closing arguments at his trial.
Zündel, a 67-year-old German citizen, stands accused of inciting racial hatred for disputing the historical fact that Nazi Germany systematically slaug
Source: AP
February 15, 2007
Three women who say they endured rape and torture at the hands of Japanese soldiers during World War II and a lifetime of mental and physical scars are asking that U.S. lawmakers urge the Japanese to apologize.
The two Koreans and a former Dutch colonist were among as many as 200,000 "comfort women" who historians say were forced to have sex with millions of Japanese soldiers during the war. Japan objects to a proposed congressional resolution calling for an apology, and t
Source: Scotsman
February 15, 2007
A campaign to honour Britain's first woman doctor, who was forced to pretend to be a man for 53 years in order to practise medicine, has been launched in the Capital. Miranda Stewart had to don the disguise in the early 1800s to gain entry to the exclusively male world of Edinburgh University.The teenager adopted the name James Barry, later becoming a pioneering Army surgeon and keeping her elaborate deception a secret until she lay on her deathbed in 1865.
Now
Source: UPI
February 14, 2007
ISTANBUL -- Turkish novelist and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk reportedly is in exile in the United States, living in fear for his life.
Istanbul columnist Fatih Altayli told The Telegraph he heard that "Pamuk recently withdrew $400,000 from his bank account and said he would leave Turkey and would not be returning to his country any time soon."
After the killing of Hrant Dink, an ethnic Armenian journalist, last month, Pamuk, 54, told others that he fears for hi
Source: AP
February 14, 2007
WASHINGTON -- George Washington's birthday celebration will have a golden tinge this year. Millions of new gold-colored dollar coins bearing the first president's likeness are being introduced in time for the festivities.
U.S. Mint officials are hoping they have overcome the problems that doomed the Susan B. Anthony and Sacagawea dollars. Coin experts are skeptical.
The new $1 coins, the first in a series featuring four presidents a year, were to go into circulation on
Source: AP
February 14, 2007
WASHINGTON -- On one side: Abe Lincoln, Davy Crockett, poet Robert Frost. On the other: Winston Churchill, Dwight Eisenhower, Martin Luther King Jr.
The House debate on the Iraq war has a ghostly quality as lawmakers tap the wisdom of long-dead men to press their case. No one knows what any of them would have thought about this war. But their thoughts about grand events of their time are coming in handy now.
In perhaps the oddest use of history, Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., i
Source: Washington Post
February 15, 2007
Two things we know for sure about the desk: It is an exact replica of the one on which Abraham Lincoln is believed to have drafted the Emancipation Proclamation.
And it was not in the White House at the time, but in the president's cherished cottage retreat three miles away, where Lincoln penned the document freeing the slaves.
Are historians certain he committed his seminal prose to paper at said desk? No.
Nonetheless, the meticulous replica goes on displa
Source: AP
February 14, 2007
VALLEY FORGE, Pa. -- A long-planned Revolutionary War museum will be built on private land after years of arguing with the U.S. government over the previous site, museum organizers said Wednesday...
The new site is within the boundaries of Valley Forge National Historical Park, the place where George Washington's troops waited out the winter in 1777.
The museum is buying about 130 acres (52 hectares) of land for $7.1 million and hopes to begin construction on the $150 m
Source: AP
February 14, 2007
Author Salman Rushdie started a five-year appointment with the Emory University faculty on Tuesday, one day before the 18th anniversary of the death threat that catapulted him into worldwide fame.
Rushdie says he still receives a "sort of Valentine's card" from Iran each year on February 14 letting him know the country has not forgotten the vow to kill him...
Rushdie was forced into hiding for a decade after the late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a 1989 fa
Source: Live Science
February 13, 2007
Chemists have solved a 20-year mystery surrounding the date of a Madonna and Child painting, the "de Brecy Tondo," painted by an as-yet unidentified artist...
Howell Edwards, a specialist in Raman spectroscopy at the University of Bradford in the United Kingdom, used laser-based technology to detect yellow pigments and glue typical of the Renaissance period, which dates the painting between the 14th and 16th centuries...
During the past 24 years, 8 laboratorie
Source: USA Today
February 11, 2007
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, goes the old saw. But when you are an archeologist and life gives you looters, often all you can do is make lamentations. Looting afflicts archaeological sites worldwide, from the wide-spread plundering of ancient Sumerian sites in Iraq, to pot-hunters in the American Southwest, to the looting of Inca and other sites in the Peruvian Andes.
However, a few archaeologists have figured out a way to put the looters to work for them, as archaeolo
Source: AFP
February 14, 2007
CAIRO -- Dutch archaeologists have discovered a tomb in the Saqqara necropolis from the time of Egypt's monotheistic pharaoh Akhenaton some 3,300 years ago, the Supreme Council of Antiquities has said.
The discovery shows that notables contemporary with Akhenaton continued to be buried in Saqqara, just outside the modern day capital of Cairo, indicating the enduring importance of old religious orthodoxy under "the heretic pharaoh"...
The tomb, which bears the
Source: AP
February 14, 2007
NEW YORK -- Anne Frank's father tried to arrange U.S. visas for his family before they went into hiding, but his efforts were hampered when Allied and Axis countries tightened immigration policies, according to papers released Wednesday.
Otto Frank also sent desperate letters to friends and family in the U.S. pleading for help with immigration costs as the family tried to escape the Nazi-occupied Netherlands.
"I would not ask if conditions here would not force me t
Source: Opinion column by Shubhajit Roy in Indianexpress.com
February 11, 2007
Are you an American scholar? You aren’t welcome in India.
That’s the signal from the UPA to Fulbright scholars in the US: delaying their visas for weeks, months; rejecting their research proposals without any reason. Even asking them to change their subject. This when Indo-US equation couldn’t have been better.... Records show that for US scholars, the last two years — since the UPA came to power — have been the worst in the 57-year history of the programme. Not
Source: Guardian
February 13, 2007
A furious row was raging across the Adriatic today over the Second World War after the presidents of Croatia and Italy traded accusations of racism and barbarism.
Italian diplomats called off visits to Zagreb and summoned the Croatian ambassador in Rome for a stiff talking-to; and the Italian prime minister, Romano Prodi, attacked Croatia after its president, Stipe Mesic, accused his Italian counterpart of racism and trying to rewrite history.
Croatia and Slovenia were
Source: BBC News
February 14, 2007
Antony and Cleopatra, one of history's most romantic couples, were not the great beauties that Hollywood would have us believe, academics have said.
A study of a 2,000-year-old silver coin found the Egyptian queen, famously portrayed by Elizabeth Taylor, had a pointed chin, thin lips and sharp nose. Her Roman lover, played by Richard Burton, had bulging eyes, thick neck and a hook nose.
The tiny coin was studied by experts at Newcastle University. [See BBC webpage for
Source: International Herald Tribune
February 13, 2007
by Michael Johnson
BORDEAUX -- On daily walks through one of the big Bordeaux parks, le Jardin public, I kept noticing a large, isolated statue of a man in a frock coat grasping a top hat and frowning. One day I took a closer look and discovered that the bronze statue with the pained expression was of the aging, tormented painter Francisco Goya, the "Spanish Rembrandt" and a genius Bordeaux likes to claim as its own.
Now, at the request of Goya's admirers, the
