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 News
Apr 1, 2010
Peru's most treasured archaeological site, Machu Picchu, is due to be formally re-opened after it was closed for two months.
Heavy rains and landslides at the end of January destroyed rail access to the 15th Century Inca ruin - the most visited site in Latin America.
Every day the monument was closed, Peru lost $1m (£660,000) in tourism revenue.
The damaged railway line linking the citadel to the rest of Peru was mended with an urgency rarely seen before.
Source: BBC News
Apr 1, 2010
Herb Ellis, considered to be one of the great jazz guitar soloists, has died in Los Angeles at the age of 88.
The musician, who had Alzheimer's disease, died at his home, his son told the Los Angeles Times.
Ellis, whose career spanned six decades, performed with what is regarded as the classic line-up of the acclaimed Oscar Peterson Trio.
He also worked with jazz greats including Ella Fitzgerald, Jimmy Dorsey and Louis Armstrong.
Ellis - who
Source: University of Chicago Magazine
Apr 1, 2010
On April 13, 2003, Donny George Youkhanna walked into the Iraq Museum. It was George’s first visit since fleeing the museum five days earlier, when the U.S. Army had entered Baghdad. Iraqi looters had broken down the museum’s doors and smashed windows to get in, dragging out gold, clay, and bronze pieces, and even stripping the museum of electrical wire and office chairs. Staircases were chipped as the looters heaved large antiquities from upper floors. United States military tanks had sat outsi
Source: BBC
Mar 31, 2010
The army in Southern Sudan has pledged to demobilise all child soldiers by the end of the year.
The Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) has established a child protection unit to fulfil the pledge.
The UN children's agency estimates that the SPLA, thought to have already discharged more than 20,000 children, still includes about 900 in its ranks.
Sudan's civil war ended with a peace agreement in 2005, which committed both sides to an extensive process of
Source: Hampoton Roads Pilot
Mar 31, 2010
State engineers and volunteers plan to salvage what could be the oldest shipwreck remains known on the North Carolina Outer Banks.
Plans are to move the wreck next week from its precarious place in the sand and surf to a plot near the Currituck Beach Lighthouse in Corolla, keeper Meghan Agresto said.
Some are concerned the ship would go to pieces and disappear if left alone.
The ship is believed to be about 400 years old. State underwater archaeologists mea
Source: The Root
Mar 31, 2010
The United States is playing a leading role in the meeting at the United Nations this week, where countries will announce their commitment to help rebuild Haiti. The involvement of the United States with Haiti is not new, and it has not always been benign. The two countries have had consistent interactions since the mid-18th century. Take a look at The Root's timeline of important Haiti/U.S. relations.--1492 Dec. 5, after "discoverin
Source: USA Today
Mar 31, 2010
Andean mummies reveal arsenic poisoning afflicted people in northern Chile for thousands of years, a hair analysis shows.
In the current Journal of Archaeological Science, a team led by Bernardo Arriaza of Chile's Universidad de Tarapaca analyzed hair from 45 Andean mummies taken from ten sites some 7,000 to 600 years old. The mummies dried in Chile's Atacama desert region, one of the most parched regions on Earth. They were deliberately mummified with sticks, reeds and clay, give
Source: Live Science
Mar 31, 2010
Though pranksters and joke-lovers in many countries now gleefully prepare to dupe friends and loved ones on April Fool's Day, no one knows exactly when or why, or even where, this tradition began.
A giddy spurt of practical joking seems to have coincided with the coming of spring since the time of the Ancient Romans and Celts, who celebrated a festival of mischief-making. The first mentions of an All Fool's Day (as it was formerly called) came in Europe in the Middle Ages.
Source: CNN
Mar 31, 2010
Former first lady Barbara Bush was released from a Texas
hospital Wednesday, four days after being admitted for a series of tests.
Doctors believe the 84-year-old wife of former President George H.W. Bush may have suffered a mild relapse of Graves disease, a thyroid condition for which she was first treated in 1989, according to a statement released from Houston's Methodist Hospital.
In response, Mrs. Bush's medication levels have been adjusted, the statement sa
Source: NYT
Mar 31, 2010
The European Union, which has been coaxing Serbia into a historical reckoning about its bloody role in the Balkan wars of the 1990s, gave a cautious welcome Wednesday to a declaration by the Serbian Parliament that condemned the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica. But it warned that what amounted to reluctant, latter-day contrition about the worst massacre in Europe since World War II was insufficient if Serbia wanted closer ties with the bloc.
For that, the E.U. foreign p
Source: BBC Radio 4
Mar 31, 2010
Was the great Florentine artist and scientist who painted the Last Supper, designed the legendary Sforza horse and did the first great studies of human anatomy also a sinister military genius whose inventions caused horrible deaths in the wars of sixteenth century Europe?
This was a question I came up against in researching my book The Lost Battles: Leonardo, Michelangelo and the Artistic Duel that Defined the Renaissance.
The book tells how, from 1504 to 1506, these tw
Source: AP
Mar 31, 2010
A newly released letter to then-Pope Paul VI indicates the Vatican was aware of clergy abuse in the U.S. nearly five decades ago.
In the 1963 letter released Wednesday, the head of a Roman Catholic order that oversaw treatment of pedophile priests tells the pope he recommends removing pedophile priests from active ministry.
The letter is a summary of the Rev. Gerald M.C. Fitzgerald's thoughts on problem priests that appears to have been requested by the pope after Fitzg
Source: BBC
Mar 31, 2010
A signed copy of a Jane Austen novel published in 1816 has been bought for £325,000.
The book is a first edition copy of Emma which Austen presented to her friend Anne Sharp, the inspiration for Mrs Weston in the novel.
Jonkers Rare Books in Oxfordshire paid £180,000 for it at auction in 2008.
It is understood that a British collector bought the book, which is one of 12 special 'presentation' copies Austen gave to friends and family.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 31, 2010
Great-great-grandmother Florrie Baldwin was in her 50s when the NHS was formed and had been a pensioner for more than a decade when Neil Armstrong took his first steps on the moon.
The centenarian, who became the oldest woman in Europe last year, celebrated the big day with her family, care home residents and the obligatory telegram from the Queen - her 11th.
Florrie, who was three when the Boer War broke out and married two years after the end of the First World War,
Source: BBC News
Mar 31, 2010
South Africa's ruling African National Congress has expressed fury at a court decision to ban the singing of a song with the words "Shoot the Boer".
It says a campaign by white activists to get the song banned is an attempt to "elevate apartheid agents as victims".
It wants the Constitutional Court to overturn a ruling by a white judge that the words amount to hate speech.
ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema recently sang the song, lea
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 31, 2010
The inventors of Post-it notes and the technologies that led to video games, modern scuba diving equipment and Global Positioning System technology are among 16 new members of the U S National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau and his fellow Frenchman and colleague, Emile Gagnan, are entering the Hall posthumously for their invention of the aqualung breathing equipment.
Previous members include Edward Calahan, inventor of the stock ticker, and Samuel Blum fo
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 31, 2010
Tourists visiting the Turin Shroud next month will get the chance to view the burial cloth in 3-D, revealing details invisible to the naked eye.
The glasses, which will be sold to pilgrims for £1.80 a pair when the shroud goes on display for six weeks after Easter, will allow visitors to see wounds on the figure of the man on the linen cloth.
The Holy Shroud is held by many Christians to be the cloth that Jesus Christ was buried in, but others believe it is a forgery cr
Source: Spiegel Online
Mar 31, 2010
Serbia on Wednesday took an important first step towards addressing its troubling recent history by passing a resolution condemning the massacre in Srebrenica, Bosnia. But the resolution aimed at steering a path towards EU membership for the Balkan nation steers clear of the term "genocide."
After more than 13 hours of debate, the Serbian parliament passed a resolution apologizing for the massacre at Srebrenica with a slim majority early Wednesday morning. The resolution &
Source: BBC News
Mar 30, 2010
An ancient chapel has revealed a new mystery with the discovery of a 600-year-old hive built into the stones.
Builders renovating Rosslyn Chapel, which was made famous in The Da Vinci Code, found the "unprecedented" hive while dismantling a rooftop pinnacle.
The bees entered the hive through a hole in a carved flower crafted by the chapel's master stone masons.
The 15th Century Midlothian building is undergoing a £13m conservation and site improve
Source: Discovery News
Mar 30, 2010
Imagine if the shape of your head changed with the foods that you ate. That's what a team of paleontologists now thinks happened to the long-necked sauropod dinosaur, Diplodocus, which also was one of the least intelligent dinosaurs. Its head might have been interesting, in terms of shape, but previous studies suggest there wasn't a lot of brain power in it. But, as for all animals, it evolved what it needed for survival.
Diplodocus was a huge, hefty dinosaur that lived towards the
