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: BBC
March 2, 2011
The historic green where Sir Francis Drake played bowls before defeating the Spanish Armada is under threat.
The lawn on Plymouth Hoe, Devon, is owned and operated by the city council and used by three bowling clubs.
The clubs fear they will not be able to afford to carry on if it is handed over to them under Big Society reforms.
Plymouth City Council said it was considering a proposal to transfer some playgrounds and bowling greens to local community owner
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 1, 2011
Archaeologists say six cannons recovered from a river in Panama that could have belonged to legendary pirate Henry Morgan are being studied and could eventually be displayed.
The group of Panamanian and foreign archaeologists say the cannons were found at the mouth of Panama's Chagres River, the site where Morgan's flagship, the Satisfaction, wrecked in 1671 while carrying him and his pirates to raid Panama City.
The team said on Monday that the size and shape of the p
Source: Fox News
March 2, 2011
The Obama administration may seek the prosecution of Muammar Qaddafi for the 1988 Pan Am bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, following claims of some ex-Libyan officials that the embattled dictator personally ordered the airline attack that killed 270 people.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Congress this week that she has asked the FBI and Justice Department to look into the matter in response to lawmakers' requests.
But Clinton noted that some Libyan officials wh
Source: AP
March 2, 2011
John Demjanjuk's defense team is asking for more evidence to be sought in his trial on charges he served as a guard in the Nazi's Sobibor death camp.
In a summary read aloud by judges on Wednesday, he asked for the court to find a statement from former Sobibor prisoner Dov Freiberg from 1976. Freiberg allegedly says that he was assigned to clean the Sobibor barracks where the Ukrainian guards were housed, and that he does not remember any Demjanjuk.
It was not clear whe
Source: CNN
March 3, 2011
A California state panel on Wednesday denied parole for Sirhan B. Sirhan, saying the convicted assassin of Robert F. Kennedy hasn't demonstrated an understanding of the "magnitude" of his crimes.
Commissioner Mike Prizmich of the California Board of Parole Hearings told Sirhan that he failed to meet the state's criteria for suitability for parole and added that he failed to seek self-help program and his behavoir was immature.
In response, Sirhan sought to int
Source: LA Times
March 2, 2011
A recent photo of Sirhan Sirhan, 66. A California parole board on Wednesday will consider whether the man who assassinated Robert F. Kennedy at a Los Angeles hotel should be set free.
Sirhan Sirhan has spent 42 years behind bars for the assassination in 1968 at the Ambassador Hotel. This will be his 13th parole hearing.
The parole board has repeatedly rejected Sirhan's appeals for release for failing to accept responsibility or show remorse for Kennedy's death....
Source: WaPo
March 1, 2011
CHARLOTTESVILLE - Thomas Jefferson's Rotunda, the historic heart of the University of Virginia, is among the most iconic structures in higher education. Yet a close inspection reveals that the proud Corinthian capitals above its entrance are crumbling. The elevator jams at inopportune moments. The roof leaks.
Coming up with the money to fix a building of such gravitas might seem a simple affair. Jefferson's university is a storied "public Ivy," with a $5 billion endowment
Source: Fox News Latino
March 1, 2011
It's a treasure hunt even Indiana Jones would be proud of.
Buried beneath a lake in Guatamala sits a fortune in lost treasure -- Mayan gold to be precise -- and a group of German archaeologists has just set off to find it. Their only guidance, a freshly decoded ancient book containing a map to the treasure.
It sounds like a movie, but it's very much real, reported FoxNewsLatino. Joachim Rittsteig, an expert in Mayan writing who is heading up the mission to Guatemala's
Source: Hurriyet (Turkey)
January 3, 2011
Germany authorities on Friday hit back at Turkish Culture Minister Ertuğrul Günay after he demanded the return of an ancient sphinx uncovered from a German archeological dig nearly a century ago.
In an interview with Thursday's Tagesspiegel, Günay gave Germany until June to hand back the priceless artifact, thought to date from around 1400 BC, else Ankara would revoke permits for other German excavations.
But in a statement issued Friday, the president of the P
Source: Daily Comet (LA)
March 1, 2011
A full-sized model of a historic World War II aircraft has a new home today.
The TBM Avenger reproduction, whose real-life counterparts fired torpedoes and dropped bombs during the war and saw service until the 1960s, was a gift from the National WWII Museum in New Orleans. That museum was given the aluminum model by the late Cmdr. Thomas Lupo, a retired naval officer and New Orleans businessman, had a California foundry build it.
It was delivered Monday via two 18-whee
Source: Vice magazine
March 2, 2011
Uwe Boll’s Auschwitz came out of nowhere. The German director, widely reviled for his video game adaptations, once again faced the wrath of the internet when he stuck a teaser trailer online the other day, featuring himself as a Nazi guard standing in front of a gas chamber.
The general consensus is that the film will be tasteless and exploitative. Critics don’t like Uwe Boll. I’ve never seen any of his films but wanted to know what he was doing with Auschwitz, so last night I got i
Source: Imperial War Museum (UK)
March 2, 2011
In 1939, the Government began the mass evacuation of children (as well as some recent or expectant mothers) from cities seen as being in danger of being attacked by enemy bombers. Although most evacuees ended up in the British countryside, more than 15,000 children were sent to safety abroad. A new exhibition, Oceans Apart: stories of children evacuated overseas, at the Imperial War Musem North, takes a closer look at their experiences....
Source: AP
March 2, 2011
Pope Benedict XVI has made a sweeping exoneration of the Jewish people for the death of Jesus Christ in a new book, tackling one of the most controversial issues in Christianity.
In "Jesus of Nazareth" excerpts released Wednesday, Benedict uses a biblical and theological analysis to explain why it is not true that the Jewish people as a whole were responsible for Jesus' death.
Interpretations to the contrary have been used for centuries to justify the persecut
Source: CNN
March 2, 2011
One of the surviving shooting victims in the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy said he will not object to Sirhan B. Sirhan's release if a parole panel OKs it.
Sirhan, who was convicted of the slaying, will appear before a California parole board for the first time in at least nine years on Wednesday, supported by two psychologists' reports saying he no longer poses a threat to society, his attorney said.
Retired TV journalist William Weisel, who shared with CNN hi
Source: BBC News
March 2, 2011
The management of a popular Japanese boy band has apologised after they appeared on national television dressed in uniforms resembling Nazis.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organisation based in Los Angeles, said it was shocked and dismayed by the broadcast.
The band, Kishidan, wore the uniforms - complete with iron crosses and red armbands - for an interview on MTV.
Sony Music Artists said there was no ideological meaning to the outfits
Source: CatholicCulture.org
February 25, 2011
Pope Benedict XVI will travel in March to the Fosse Ardeatine, the site of a Nazi massacre on the outskirts of Rome.
On March 24, 1944, Nazi troops killed 335 Italians, in revenge for a partisan bomb attack in Rome that had killed 22 Nazi soldiers. The victims included Jews, political prisoners, and ordinary citizens; all were summarily executed and their bodies buried under rubble. On the 67th anniversary of the atrocity, Pope Benedict will visit the Fosse Ardeatine to honor the de
Source: BBC News
February 27, 2011
A 14th Century moat which was covered with rubbish in the 1920s is being excavated at Fulham Palace.
The work is part of an £8m improvement programme to the palace and adjoining Bishops Park.
The first known reference to the moat dates back to 1392, although some historians believe it may date back to the Iron Age.
Archaeological consultant Phil Emery said it was important to preserve the moat for future generations....
Source: CS Monitor
March 1, 2011
Young women in America are more likely than men to have a college degree, and women’s earnings constitute a growing share of household income, but their wages still lag significantly behind those of men with comparable education, according to a report on the status of women released Tuesday by the White House.
The White House released the report, which it called the “first comprehensive federal report on the status of women in almost 50 years,” on the first day of Women’s History Mo
Source: NPR
March 1, 2011
The Obama administration says it will continue to deny health care benefits to the same-sex legal spouse of a federal court employee despite the fact that it has abandoned its court arguments in support of the Defense of Marriage Act....
While the administration's DOMA shift is unusual, it is not rare. It has happened more than a dozen times since 2004 and many more in the past 60 years, including in some very important cases.
During the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Truman a
Source: WaPo
February 28, 2011
What was it like in the trenches? What was it like in all those places whose names have faded in the dusty recesses of memory, places like Ypres and Gallipoli, Verdun and the Marne? What was it like to fight the war that was supposed to make the world safe for democracy?
There's no one left to ask.
The Great War has almost passed from living memory. The veterans have slipped away, one by one, their obituaries marking the end of the line in country after country: Harry P
