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: AlbanyPatch
March 30, 2011
A decade-long oral history project focused on those with home front experiences during World War II has put out a call for Bay Area residents with stories to share.
"We're looking for anyone who may have had unique or interesting experiences," said Sam Redman of Albany, lead interviewer of the Rosie the Riveter / WWII American Homefront Project. "What may have been seemingly mundane, like maintaining a victory garden, participating in war bond drives or going to work
Source: BBC
March 30, 2011
Peru has given a lavish welcome to hundreds of Inca artefacts returned by Yale University in the US, nearly a century after they were taken from the famed citadel of Machu Picchu.
A convoy of trucks escorted by police carried the remains from the airport to the presidential palace in Lima.
Yale agreed to return the artefacts last year after a long campaign by Peru.
President Alan Garcia led the welcoming ceremony.
The relics will be briefly
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 30, 2011
An American museum has agreed to return a 370 year-old painting that was looted by the Nazis during the Second World War.
The 1640 work "Landscape With Cottage and Figures" by Pieter Molijn previously belonged to Jacques Goudstikker, the biggest art dealer in the Netherlands in the 1930s.
Goudstikker fled the Nazis with his wife and young son at the beginning of the war, but fell through a trap door on a departing ship and died.
His large art c
Source: CNN
March 30, 2011
Recently discovered photos and letters are giving an inside look at the man convicted of assassinating the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
On April 4, 1968, King was shot and killed by a sniper as he stood on a balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was trying to mediate a garbage workers' strike.
Little was known of Ray's state of mind in his months in jail before his guilty plea -- until Shelby County, Tennessee, officials came across a bundle of do
Source: City Wire (AK)
March 29, 2011
The process began Monday (Mar. 28) to learn what may be buried on top of the Cavanaugh Mound and possibly to learn how the mound was built.
The mound, located behind the New Liberty Baptist Church in south Fort Smith, is believed to have been constructed by Native Americans (possibly Caddo Indian ancestors) between AD 1100 and 1300.
The mound, originally about 200 feet long at the base of each of the four sides and about 40 feet tall, is a project The Archaeological Con
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 28, 2011
Italy has offered an olive branch to a US museum by proposing a deal under which a long-disputed ancient statue could be shared.
The "Victorious Youth" bronze, which dates from 300-100BC, was pulled from the sea by Italian fishermen in 1964 off the eastern town of Fano.
The Getty Museum in Los Angeles says it bought the piece, also known as the "Getty Bronze," in good faith in 1977 for $4 million (£2.5m).
But last year an Italian court
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 30, 2011
The term Satanism represents a broad range of religions, world views, and literature that all look favourably on Satan or similar rebellious figures.
Satan first appeared in the Hebrew Bible as an angel who challenged the religious faith of humans. In the Book of Job he is called "the Satan" ("the accuser") and acted as the prosecutor in God's court.
A character named Satan was described as the cosmic enemy of the Lord and tempter of Jesus within ma
Source: BBC
March 28, 2011
Dozens have gathered at Three Mile Island to mark the 32nd anniversary of America's worst nuclear accident.
On 28 March, 1979, a combination of mechanical failure and human error led to a partial meltdown at the nuclear power plant in central Pennsylvania.
The accident caused no injuries or deaths but provoked widespread fear and mistrust among the US public.
The anniversary comes as Japan grapples with radiation leaks from its quake-damaged Fukushima nucle
Source: Irish Times
March 26, 2011
A JUDGE is to look at laws and charters predating the Magna Carta in a bid to settle a dispute over Dublin City Council’s legal right to lease out the fishing interests of the river Liffey.
Dublin and District Salmon Anglers’ Association claims entrepreneur David Wright, of West Pier, Howth, Co Dublin, is trespassing and disturbing the peace and calm of the river....
The association claims, through charters going back to the times of King Henry II, who died in 1189, tha
Source: Jewish Telegraph Agency
March 24, 2011
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (JTA)—My childhood was full of magical, well-known tales about characters like Tevye the Milkman, as well as tales of love and joy and everyday life in the shtetls of Poland, told with warmth and wit by my grandparents.
There were Moyshe and Sorale and Feygele from the shtetl of Zamosc; people I never met but who were brought to life through my grandparents’ stories. Some of them became my childhood heroes.
As a little boy yet unaware of Auschwitz, I w
Source: Guardian (UK)
March 28, 2011
Majella O'Hare was 12 years old. It was a bright summer's day in 1976 and the schoolgirl had just walked past an army checkpoint on the way to church. Moments later, she lay dying on a country road in County Armagh, shot in the back by a paratrooper.
Now, almost 35 years after the infamous killing, an unprecedented apology from the Ministry of Defence will be handed over to her elderly mother at a ceremony in Belfast.
The letter, signed by the defence secretary, Liam Fo
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
March 28, 2011
A museum dedicated to Holocaust victim Anne Frank is expected to move almost next door to the proposed controversial mosque at Ground Zero, it was revealed today.
The Anne Frank Center is reported to be about to sign a lease in the 20-floor glass and steel tower at 100 Church St.
The building's windows overlook Park 51, the planned 16-storey Muslim community centre and mosque at 45 park Place, just two blocks from Ground Zero.
The non-profit making Anne Fra
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 28, 2011
Italy has offered an olive branch to a US museum by proposing a deal under which a long-disputed ancient statue could be shared.
The "Victorious Youth" bronze, which dates from 300-100BC, was pulled from the sea by Italian fishermen in 1964 off the eastern town of Fano.
The Getty Museum in Los Angeles says it bought the piece, also known as the "Getty Bronze," in good faith in 1977 for $4 million (£2.5m).
But last year an Italian cour
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 27, 2011
Pope Benedict XVI has visited a memorial to victims of a 1944 massacre by Nazis, one of the worst atrocities by German occupiers during the Second World War.
The German-born pontiff prayed on Sunday at the Ardeatine Caves in Rome to mark the anniversary of the killings of 335 civilians in revenge for an attack by resistance fighters who killed 33 members of a Nazi military police unit.
Jewish leader Elan Steinberg expressed renewed outrage that one of the massacre's per
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
March 28, 2011
Mahatma Gandhi was bisexual and left his wife to live with a German-Jewish bodybuilder, a controversial biography has claimed.
The leader of the Indian independence movement is said to have been deeply in love with Hermann Kallenbach.
He allegedly told him: ‘How completely you have taken possession of my body. This is slavery with a vengeance.’
Kallenbach was born in Germany but emigrated to South Africa where he became a wealthy architect.
Ga
Source: Press-Citizen (Iowa)
March 26, 2011
Some 30 feet below the surface of Linn and Market Streets, beneath the Brewery Square Building, is a place in Iowa City’s history dating back more than 150 years.
And, if you ask local archeologist Marlin Ingalls nicely, he just might take you there.
He’ll meet you in the lobby of Brewery Square and take you on an elevator to the basement. Stepping off the elevator, you’ll walk into La’ James Beauty School’s massage parlor. Turn right at the desk, walk down a hallway li
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 29, 2011
The West is losing ground in the scientific research race, a Royal Society report reveals, and it's much harder to get backing for blue-sky thinking, says Michael Day.
Harvard's position as the world's leading university appears unassailable. This side of the Atlantic, Cambridge University is justifiably proud of its status as the pre-eminent producer of Nobel prize winners. But it would be unwise to draw too much comfort from the reputations of the West's top research institutions.
Source: Bloomberg
March 28, 2011
Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc. (OMEX), the ocean salvager featured in the Discovery Channel series “Treasure Quest,” is trying to recover silver valued at as much as $260 million by October from a ship torpedoed by a Nazi submarine in 1941.
The Tampa, Florida-based company was awarded a contract by the U.K. government last year that would allow it to keep about 80 percent of the bullion treasure of the S.S. Gairsoppa, a cargo steamer sunk by a German U-boat off the Irish coast. The
Source: BBC News
March 28, 2011
US scientist Paul Baran, whose work in the 1960s helped pave the way for the internet, has died aged 84.
Mr Baran thought up the idea of making communication networks resilient to attack or traffic surges by splitting the data sent over them into chunks.
His pioneering work was carried out in connection with Cold War military research.
It would later form the basis of the academic network Arpanet which eventually led to the internet.
Nuclear strike
Source: NYT
March 28, 2011
The latest skirmish in the caffeine wars — this one involving the high levels of caffeine in so-called energy drinks, especially those consumed by children — recalls one of the earliest.
It happened a century ago this month, in a courtroom in Chattanooga, Tenn. The trial grabbed headlines for weeks and produced scientific research that holds up to this day — yet generated no federal limits for caffeine in foods and beverages....
The drink was Coca-Cola. Harvey Washingt
