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: NYT
Apr 7, 2009
Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg is the last grand duke anywhere in the world. Yet he insists he is not an endangered species, and to a great extent he helped stir up the furor that threatens to curtail his ducal powers.
“The title is historic,” he said, receiving a visitor in the castle of Berg, a faux Gothic residence that his great-grandfather built of reinforced concrete before World War I. “But of course we are now a constitutional monarchy.”
Henri’s role here has la
Source: Civil War News
Apr 7, 2009
Sites threatened by mining, erosion, commercial and residential development and road widening lead the Civil War Preservation Trust’s 2009 edition of “History Under Siege,” the annual report on the most endangered Civil War battlefields.
In addition to the country’s 10 “most endangered” battlefields, another 15 are cited as “at risk.” They face threats from the usual development, as well as airport expansion, wind energy development, artificial wetland, railroad switching yard and a
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 7, 2009
The Duke had seen the recently felled 10sq ft wood during a carriage drive and declared it a "bloody eyesore" for visitors coming through the nearby Blacknest Gate.
But when Crown Estate staff tried to clear the site by dousing the woodpile with petrol and setting it alight, they came close to disaster.
Fifteen-foot flames risked spreading to Windsor Great Park's famous oaks in the southern area of the Royal estate, near to Ascot.
Unable to cont
Source: NYT
Apr 7, 2009
The Stonewall rebellion of 1969, in which protesters clashed with the authorities after a violent police raid on a Greenwich Village bar, is a defining moment in the history of the gay rights movement. Now New York City officials hope to capitalize on the 40th anniversary of the uprising, this June, by promoting the city as a gay tourist destination.
Announcing a new marketing campaign under the slogan “Rainbow Pilgrimage,” tourism officials said Tuesday that they would seek to port
Source: L.A. Times
Apr 7, 2009
In its latest effort to return wayward ancient artworks to their rightful owners, the J. Paul Getty Museum will send a Roman fresco fragment to Italy. The fragmentary panel, a roughly 36-by-32-inch section of a wall painting made in the third quarter of the 1st century BC, joined the museum's collection in 1996 as a gift of New York collectors Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman.
The museum --- which has returned 39 antiquities to Italy since 2007 -- listed the fragment as "at some
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Apr 7, 2009
SAN SIMEON, Calif. -- Three 16th century oil paintings that have been hanging in William Randolph Hearst's famous castle at San Simeon belonged to a Jewish couple who were forced to give them up during the Nazi reign in Germany, authorities said Tuesday.
Two of the three paintings, visible to guests and millions of tourists at Hearst Castle since 1935, will be returned Friday to the heirs of the rightful owners, both of whom died during the war, one in the death camp at Auschwitz.
Source: New York Times
Apr 7, 2009
Thirty years after the killing stopped, Cambodia suffers from a particularly painful generation gap — between those who survived the brutal rule of the Communist Khmer Rouge and their children, who know very little about it.
“I used to tell my children the stories, but they only believed a tiny bit, like nothing,” said Ty Leap, 52, who sells noodles and fruit drinks from a roadside stall. “I don’t like it, but what can you do? It really is unbelievable that those things happened.”
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 7, 2009
One of Spain's most enduring historical mysteries is close to being solved as experts undertake a project to decipher more than 10,000 Arabic inscriptions adorning the walls and ceilings of the Alhambra palace in Granada.
Researchers armed with digital cameras and 3D laser scanners are for the first time cataloging and translating the intricately carved words that have fascinated centuries of visitors at Spain's most popular tourist attraction.
Many inscriptions consis
Source: BBC
Apr 7, 2009
Salacious details of how Anne Boleyn was said to have cheated on Henry VIII with her own brother are contained in documents which have been put on the internet for the first time.
An official account of her trial in 1536, including graphic claims of incest, features in an online exhibition to mark the 500th anniversary of the Tudor monarch's accession to the throne.
Anne's relationship with Henry set the course of British history, triggering England's split with Rome a
Source: BBC
Apr 7, 2009
It was a small brass trinket box that held safe its secret link to the Titanic across the years and thousands of miles.
It was a gift from JJ Brown to his wife, better known as the Unsinkable Molly Brown, after she had survived the Titanic disaster and lived to make enough of a name for herself to inspire a Broadway musical.
The trinket box features in a new exhibition at Belfast's Linenhall Library as the 100th anniversary of the Titanic's launch looms.
Source: AP
Apr 7, 2009
A Peruvian court gave former President Alberto Fujimori 25 years in prison for his role in death squad activities during his 10-year rule in the 1990s.
Fujimori is the first democratically elected former president to be tried for rights violations in his own country. His lawyers have said he would appeal the verdict.
In its first bloody raid, the military death squad Fujimori was convicted of authorizing killed 15 people — including an 8-year-old — with silencer-equippe
Source: CNN
Apr 7, 2009
Critics of Obama's proposed $3.5 trillion federal budget say he's poised to jeopardize the economic gains unleashed by President Reagan.
They say he will make the same mistakes that President Lyndon B. Johnson did when he committed massive amounts of federal money to create a slew of anti-poverty programs dubbed "The Great Society."
"The Great Society created a lot of programs and wasted a lot of money," said Kenneth Khachigian, a former Reagan spee
Source: WaPo
Apr 7, 2009
You cannot plant a flag on the North Pole.
It is not Antarctica. It is not a body of land, but a mathematical spot, a maze of shifting ice floes that would swiftly carry any marker away from true north. When explorers reach the Pole, they must rely on navigational instruments and witnesses to prove their location.
One hundred years ago yesterday, Robert Peary and Matthew Henson said they had become the first to reach the North Pole. Yesterday morning at Arlington Nation
Source: Bloomberg
Apr 7, 2009
President Barack Obama is winning higher marks from Americans than the last three presidents early in their terms as he takes on a global recession, two wars and domestic fights over government spending, health care and taxes.
Obama’s approval rating climbed to a high of 66 percent in an April 1-5 New York Times/CBS News poll released today. The poll follows recent surveys by the Gallup Poll, Quinnipiac University and the Pew Research Center all showing that about six out of 10 Amer
Source: Reuters
Apr 7, 2009
Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison on Tuesday, the first time a democratically elected Latin American president was found guilty in his own country of human rights crimes.
A three-judge panel convicted him of ordering a military death squad to carry out two massacres that killed 25 people during his 1990-2000 rule, when he was battling guerrillas. Nearly 70,000 people died in two decades of conflict in the Andean country.
Source: WaPo
Apr 7, 2009
Medical officers who oversaw interrogations of terrorism suspects in CIA secret prisons committed gross violations of medical ethics and in some cases essentially participated in torture, the International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a confidential report that labeled the CIA program "inhuman."
Health personnel offered supervision and even assistance as suspected al-Qaeda operatives were beaten, deprived of food, exposed to temperature extremes and subjected to
Source: BBC
Apr 7, 2009
Raul Castro has held talks with members of Congress in his first face-to-face meeting with US politicians since he became president last year.
State television showed Mr Castro talking to members of the delegation, which is in Havana to explore ways of improving US-Cuban relations.
Barack Obama is expected to ease some of the travel and economic restrictions imposed on Cuba nearly 50 years ago.
Barbara Lee, the leader of the seven-strong group of Democrats
Source: BBC
Apr 7, 2009
Rwandan President Paul Kagame has accused the international community of cowardice during a speech marking the 15th anniversary of Rwanda's genocide.
He told a rally of 20,000 people in the capital, Kigali, UN troops abandoned their posts without firing a shot.
He led commemorations at Nyanza, where more than 5,000 people were slaughtered after peacekeepers pulled out.
President Kagame said: "We are not like those who abandoned people they had come to
Source: Stephen D. Crocker in the NYT. Mr. Crocker wrote the first RFC.
Apr 7, 2009
TODAY is an important date in the history of the Internet: the 40th anniversary of what is known as the Request for Comments. Outside the technical community, not many people know about the R.F.C.’s, but these humble documents shape the Internet’s inner workings and have played a significant role in its success....
The early R.F.C.’s ranged from grand visions to mundane details, although the latter quickly became the most common. Less important than the content of those first docume
Source: Azzaman
Apr 7, 2009
US President Barack Obama called on Turkey to address the killings of Armenians in eastern Anatolia nearly a century ago but gave clear signs that he would stay out of the debate, saying it is up to Turkey and Armenia to deal with history.
"History is often tragic. But if unresolved, it can be a heavy weight. Each country must work through its past," Obama said in an address to the Turkish Parliament, noting that although there are strong views on the issue, Turkey should
