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
Apr 9, 2009
Evidence of an ancient religious settlement has been discovered by archaeologists working at a visitor attraction in Argyll.
The finds were revealed at the end of a seven year refurbishment project at Crarae Garden near Inverarary.
The National Trust for Scotland, which owns the garden, said a ditch and stone bank dating back to the 7th - 9th century had been uncovered.
Source: Spiegel
Apr 9, 2009
For years, it has been widely accepted that artworks looted by the Nazis should be returned to their rightful owners. But now a prominent British expert has called for a stop to restitution -- and triggered protests in the art world.
The art connoisseur Sir Norman Rosenthal may be a British institution, but the equanimity often attributed to his compatriots is not one of his distinguishing features.
Rosenthal, the son of Jewish refugees from Germany and Slovakia, called
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 9, 2009
Two couples have been fined by a French court after making an adult film at the Vimy Ridge memorial to the First World War.
The men were found guilty of insulting the memory of fallen soldiers, while the women, who stripped off at the memorial, were convicted of exhibitionism.
The memorial pays tribute to hundreds of Canadian soldiers who fell at the 1917 Battle of Vimy Ridge, one of the bloodiest battles in the Somme.
Source: BBC
Apr 9, 2009
The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) abducted civilians in Kosovo who were then mistreated and in some cases killed, a BBC investigation has found.
Sources told the BBC that Kosovo Serbs, ethnic Albanians and gypsies were among an estimated 2,000 who went missing.
This took place both during and after the war in Kosovo, which ended in June 1999.
Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, the former KLA political director, has rejected the allegations.
Source: AP
Apr 9, 2009
Tens of thousands of supporters of an anti-U.S. Shiite cleric demanded an end to the U.S. military presence Thursday and burned effigy of ex-President George W. Bush in a rally marking the sixth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad to American forces.
Cleric Muqtada al-Sadr had urged all Iraqis to turn out for the protest at Firdous Square _ where Saddam Hussein's statue was toppled on April 9, 2003. Protesters set fire to Bush's effigy as it hung from the pillar where Saddam's statue
Source: Guardian (UK)
Apr 9, 2009
A French scholar imprisoned in 1971 by a Khmer Rouge official now facing a genocide court said today he heard the "triggers of the guns" but the shot he expected would execute him was not fired.
François Bizot testified before Cambodia's UN-backed tribunal for a second day in the trial of Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch‚ the chief jailer for the Khmer Rouge during its 1975-79 regime.
"The shot didn't happen. I was still blindfolded," said Bizot, w
Source: Times (UK)
Apr 9, 2009
It was the start of one of the earliest and most brutal episodes of ethnic cleansing in Europe, so Spain is, understandably perhaps, a little reluctant to mark the occasion.
Four hundred years ago today King Philip III signed an order to expel 300,000 Moriscos - or part-Muslims - who had converted from Islam to Christianity.
Over the next five years hundreds of the exiles died as they were forced from their homes in Spain to North Africa at the height of the Spanish I
Source: BBC
Apr 9, 2009
Conservative grandees, and members of the British establishment in general, were sniffy about Margaret Thatcher.
When she became leader of her party in 1975, many of them declared that she would never last.
Fifteen years later, when she had won three elections and survived as prime minister for over a decade, they often suggested that the serious thinking behind her policies had been done by other people.
Nigel Lawson, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer
Source: BBC
Apr 9, 2009
Cambodia says it is running out of money to pay staff, but international donors are withholding fresh cash until claims of corruption are addressed.
The deadlock could derail the trials of the surviving Khmer Rouge leaders.
Meanwhile, a French scholar detained for alleged espionage in the 1970s has testified against the chief jailer.
Source: http://www.novatoadvance.com
Apr 8, 2009
When Jean-Francois de Buren was a kid growing up in Marin, he’d often thumb through his great-great-grandfather’s journal.
Penned in French, the old bound book details the two-year-long journey that Henri de Buren, a Swiss naturalist, made from 1852-1854 in the Americas.
The trip took de Buren, then in his late 20s, across Mexico on horseback, over the Andes mountains and down the Amazon River. He visited the United States, Canada, Cuba, Mexico, Panama, Peru and Brazil.
Source: http://www.rferl.org
Apr 8, 2009
A U.S. archaeological team will return to Iraq’s ancient city of Ur, the biblical
birthplace of Abraham, to conduct excavations after the area is returned to Iraq by U.S.-led forces
on May 13.
An official told RFE/RL’s Radio Free Iraq (RFI) that Iraqi archaeologists will work with a
university team from the state of Pennsylvania, which on an earlier visit uncovered statues, baked
clay pots, and other artifacts from Ur for the Iraqi National Museum.
Parliament’s cultural committ
Source: Archaeo News Stone Pages
Apr 8, 2009
A particular archaic blend of wine, beer, apple juice and honey. This is the composition of a sort of Grog, as Patrick McGregor says, an archaic drink that has been recently market in USA and named 'Midas Touch'. McGovern, professor at the Pennsylvania University, Philadelphia, studied the evolution of viticulture in the East and West, finding some earthenware along the Tigris river showing traces of tartaric acid - an element which is characteristic of the grape fermentation - honey, apple juic
Source: Archaeo News Stone Pages
Apr 8, 2009
Archaeological sites from the frozen steppes of Central Asia to the coast of Greenland are threatened by climate change. In the survey Sites in Peril for the Archaeological Institute of the American publication Archaeology, Andrew Curry says that "archaeologists can't stop global warming but they can make dealing with it a priority". One project is to save frozen tombs in the Altai Mountains of Kazakhstan and Russia, which in the past 60 years have yielded burials with well-preserved g
Source: Guardian (UK)
Apr 8, 2009
Libraries and archives from around the world have come together in a project to share their collections of rare books, maps, films, manuscripts and recordings online for free.
Almost four years in the making, the World Digital Library will launch on 21 April, functioning in seven languages – Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish – and including content in additional languages. A prototype of what will be on offer includes a voice recording of the 101-year
Source: WaPo
Apr 8, 2009
Although New Market Heights was not one of the grand battles of the Civil War, it was a place of death and valor for the soldiers who fought there. [Christian A.] Fleetwood's medal was one of 14 Medals of Honor earned by black troops in the battle that day.
The scene of their heroism has been listed by the Civil War Preservation Trust as one of the 10 most-endangered battlefields in the country.
The site [near Richmond] has one roadside marker describing the battle. Lit
Source: BBC
Apr 8, 2009
Lebanon has a long and varied history, but schools steer clear of teaching about the country's recent past, as the BBC's Natalia Antelava found out when she visited a school in the capital, Beirut.
###
Kristina and Ali sit side by side in their history class and together they learn about the Phoenicians and the Romans, the Greeks and the Ottomans.
But when it comes to Lebanon's more recent, turbulent past - their school teaches them nothing. Modern history
Source: McClatchy
Apr 8, 2009
We're not finished yet. Even today, scientists say that human beings are continuing to evolve as our genes respond to rapid changes in the world around us.
In fact, the pressures of modern life may be speeding up the pace of human evolution, some anthropologists think.
Their view contradicts the widespread 20th-century assumption that modern medical practice, antibiotics, better diet and other advances would protect people from the perils and stresses that drive evoluti
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Apr 8, 2009
Two men who filmed their wives stripping naked at a sombre World War I memorial have been sentenced for insulting the memory of heroic soldiers.
The women who exposed themselves for the cameras at the Vimy memorial in northern France were also sentenced for exhibitionism.
The poignant monument pays tribute to hundreds of Canadian soldiers who fell at the 1917 Battle of Vimy Ridge, one of the bloodiest battles in the Somme.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Apr 8, 2009
For the average five-year-old, you might expect playtime rather than Plato to be upmost in their thoughts.
But now the sound of neo-Socratic dialogue can be heard in primary school classrooms throughout the land as infants debate life's great mysteries in philosophy lessons.
Children as young as five are grappling the big questions that have troubled speculative thinkers from Aristotle through to Darwin, Freud and Kant.
Philosophy lessons are being introdu
Source: NYT
Apr 8, 2009
An international war crimes court in Freetown, Sierra Leone, sentenced three rebel leaders on Wednesday to long prison terms for atrocities committed during the country’s decade-long civil war of the 1990s. The conflict became notorious because of its particular brutality, including the hacking off of the limbs of uncounted civilians, the use of child soldiers and the digging for diamonds to pay for guns and ammunition.
The sentences handed out at the Special Court for Sierra Leone
