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: The Times of India
March 21, 2011
Very few of us know that 99 years back, an archaeological excavation was conducted at Patna to establish the existence of ancient Pataliputra. It's a coincidence that today Bihar is also celebrating 99 years of its foundation.
In 1912, Ratan Tata of Bombay made an offer to the Government of India to conduct archaeological excavations at his own expense. On the advice of the director general of archaeology, the site of Pataliputra near Patna was selected and work began there during
Source: BBC
March 21, 2011
Beavers are to be re-introduced to the Welsh countryside for the first time in at least 900 years.
Ceredigion-based Wales Wild Land Foundation will create an enclosed habitat for a pair of European beavers at Artist's Valley, near Machynlleth.
Beavers lived in Wales until the 12th Century and the rest of Britain until the 16th Century but were hunted to extinction.
Gerald of Wales reported in 1188 that by then the river Teifi was its only habitat in Wales.
Source: BBC
March 21, 2011
He is the new chaplain of the Titanic Quarter. His parish is forever linked with a name that is an international by-word for catastrophe.
But Church of Ireland minister Chris Bennett's enthusiasm is unsinkable.
His parish is a building site on the edges of east Belfast - one of Europe's biggest water regenerations projects.
It is the place where the great ship was built and launched, only to hit an iceberg and sink on her maiden voyage on 15 April 1912 with
Source: Media Matters (liberal media watchdog group)
March 21, 2011
Glenn Beck mocked AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka for saying that Dr. Martin Luther King lost his life while fighting for the rights of public union workers. In fact, King was shot while in Memphis to support striking municipal workers, and in his eulogy honoring King, Benjamin Mays -- King's mentor and friend -- spoke of King's dedication to "fighting to get a just wage" for workers.
Source: NYT
March 21, 2011
Morton Sobell, who was convicted with Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1951 in an espionage conspiracy case and finally admitted nearly six decades later that he had been a Soviet spy, now says he helped copy hundreds of pages of secret Air Force documents stolen from a Columbia University professor’s safe in 1948.
According to an article by two cold war historians, Ronald Radosh and Steven T. Usdin, in The Weekly Standard, Mr. Sobell, who is 93, said in an interview last December that
Source: The Examiner (MO)
March 20, 2011
In his cramped gunnery position behind the tail section of a B-26 Marauder bomber, Raymond Nolt fought Nazi Germany with his .50-caliber machine gun.
During the 13 months and 18 days he spent in the European Theater of War as a member of the U.S. Army Air Corps, Raymond made 66 combat missions over France, Germany and Holland as a tailgunner on the medium-size World War II bomber.
In his apartment at Valley View Residential Center at John Knox Village, the 92-year-old v
Source: PressofAtlanticCity.com
March 20, 2011
The last time George Kroll and Jerry Lory saw each other, they were leaving Italy after flying 50 combat missions together.
Kroll was a nose gunner. Lory, a radio operator.
That was 66 years ago.
A fortuitous twist of fate brought the two World War II veterans together for the first time in nearly seven decades on Saturday afternoon, in the lobby of the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort.
From July to December of 1944, Kroll and Lory were part of a
Source: Deutsche Welle (Germany)
March 18, 2011
Jewish organisations and the US government have raised objections to Poland's decision to suspend work on the restitution of Jewish property confiscated by the Nazis during WWII and under communism.
Jewish organizations and the US administration have both raised objections to Poland's decision to suspend work on the restitution of Jewish property confiscated by the Nazis during World War II and under communism.
The Polish government suspended work on the restitution pac
Source: Iberosphere
March 21, 2011
The ‘División Azul’, a Spanish force that fought alongside the German army against Russia in World War II, has mostly been overlooked by history books and filmmakers. A new book by Jorge Martínez Reverte seeks to redress the balance.
On June 24, 1941, two days after Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, General Francisco Franco announced the creation of a Spanish volunteer unit “to fight Bolshevism” that would eventually grow to include some 48,000 troops.
The División
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 21, 2011
Historic homes are already 'green', warn experts, as fears grow that insulation could be damaging old buildings
Home owners are in danger of harming historic buildings to make them more ‘green’ because of failure to understand how traditional building techniques already make houses energy efficient.
All homes now have to display an 'Energy Performance Certificate’ to show how energy efficient the building is before it can be rented out or sold.
However the Societ
Source: AP
March 21, 2011
For Andrew Carroll and Thomas Smith, two North Texas sixth-graders, the adventure began when they found a bone while exploring a creek southeast of Sherman.
"We all got excited because I knew it was too big to be a cow bone, so we knew it was a dinosaur bone," Andrew said of himself and his Pottsboro Middle School classmate.
What it was, once the Dallas Paleontological Society investigated. The bone was a pelvis of a Columbian mammoth, one of the two largest s
Source: BBC
March 20, 2011
Scotland's five world heritage sites are to link up in a series of interactive events exploring the theme of cultural identity.
The events will be part of the World Heritage Day celebrations on 18 April.
Edinburgh Old and New Town, New Lanark, Heart of Neolithic Orkney, The Antonine Wall and St Kilda will all participate.
The project is entitled 'Shadows of our Ancestors' and will see special events at each of the five sites.
At the Antonine Wa
Source: BBC
March 20, 2011
An experiment has shed light on how Iron Age people communicated from their hilltop homes 2,500 years ago.
About 200 volunteers stood on the summit of 10 hillforts in north Wales, the Wirral and Cheshire, and signalled to each other with torches.
Their aim was to learn if communities used the summits to warn each other.
Saturday night's Hilltop Glow event was rescheduled after December's severe weather.
The ancient sites used were on the Clwydi
Source: BBC
March 19, 2011
Nearly a century ago, Britain was accused of masterminding a failed plot to kill Lenin and overthrow his fledgling Bolshevik regime. The British government dismissed the story as mere Soviet propaganda - but new evidence suggests it might be true.
For decades what became known as the "Lockhart plot" has been etched in the annals of the Soviet archives, taught in schools and even illustrated in films.
Determined to get the Russians back into the war on the All
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 20, 2011
Six Picasso pieces are among a catalogue of hundreds of high value stolen art and previous objects published by Spanish police in the hope of reuniting them with their rightful owners.
The Picasso pieces from 1933 are part of a series called 'Cardinal Sins' and include 'Envy' and 'Avarice'. Each are in a silver frame. They feature alongside an Etruscan period bronze sculpture thought to be around 2,000 years old.
The items were recovered between 2005 to 2010 and jewel
Source: NYT
March 18, 2011
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Get people talking about civil rights-era buses and it’s all Rosa Parks all the time.
Museums are dedicated to her role in the boycott in the mid-1950s that forced Montgomery to stop banishing African-Americans to the back of city buses. Schools and stamps bear her name. There is a Rosa Parks cookie jar and a Rosa Parks app.
But no one talks much about Worcy Crawford, who died in July at age 90, leaving a graveyard of decaying buses behind his h
Source: NYT
March 18, 2011
In 1973, vexed by an Arab oil embargo and soaring fuel prices, President Richard M. Nixon championed a long-term solution: to have 1,000 nuclear reactors in place in America by the year 2000 as part of a national energy independence plan.
That never came to pass: 104 nuclear reactors operate today, compared with 40 then. The last permit for construction of what became a fully operational nuclear plant was issued in 1978.
The main obstacles to the industry’s growth were
Source: NYT
March 19, 2011
Warren M. Christopher, the secretary of state in President Bill Clinton’s first term and the chief negotiator for the 1981 release of American hostages in Iran, died Friday night in Los Angeles. He was 85.
A spokeswoman for O’Melveny & Myers, the law firm where Mr. Christopher was a senior partner, confirmed his death, according to The Associated Press. He had been ill with kidney and bladder cancer.
Methodical and self-effacing, Mr. Christopher alternated for nearl
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 18, 2011
The famous Stalin-era park on the banks of the Moskva River in central Moscow has fallen into serious disrepair since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and is in urgent need of a revamp.
People familiar with the matter said that the 44-year-old oligarch, who Forbes magazine rated as Russia's ninth richest person earlier this year, was likely to help bankroll its redevelopment and that talks were in progress.
A close associate of Mr Abramovich's, MP Sergey Kapkov,
Source: CNN
March 18, 2011
The cities flattened by last week's earthquake look eerily similar to the decimated buildings Shigeko Sasamori saw after an atomic bomb was dropped on her hometown in 1945.
The floodwaters from the tsunami -- the waves of debris and bodies -- remind her of the rivers in Hiroshima, Japan, swamped with corpses.
And the struggle to contain radioactive emissions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant makes Sasamori, 78, wonder if the crisis there will plague a new generatio
