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: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 16, 2009
Britain is showing signs of sliding towards a 1930s-style depression, the Bank of England says today for the first time.
The country is displaying early symptoms of being trapped in a so-called “debt deflation trap” where families find themselves pushed further and further into the red every month, according to a Bank report published today.
The stark warning will cause serious concerns, since it was this combination of falling prices and soaring debt burdens that pla
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 16, 2009
Josef Stalin and Leonardo da Vinci are deep in conversation, Vladimir Putin rests his legs next to a sprawled Mike Tyson, while Margaret Thatcher – clutching her handbag – looks on with disdain.
This extraordinary painting depicting 103 figures from world history in striking detail has become the latest internet hit.
Message boards have erupted with contests to identify all those featured, who range from instantly recognisable figures like Gandhi to some more obscure
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 16, 2009
Henry Allingham, Britain's oldest man and one of only two surviving Great War veterans, has been awarded a French Legion of Honour medal.
Mr Allingham, 112, the oldest Royal Navy veteran, was moved to tears as he received France's highest military honour in a ceremony at the official London residence of the French ambassador in recognition of his role in the First World War.
The veteran, who lives at St Dunstan's care home for blind ex-service personnel in Ovingdean,
Source: BBC
Mar 16, 2009
The smallest meat-eating dinosaur yet to be found in North America has been identified from six tiny pelvic bones.
Hesperonychus was the size of a small-chicken, and used its rows of serrated teeth to feed on insects, experts say.
The bird-like creature is closely related to Microraptor - a tiny feathered dinosaur discovered in China.
The specimen helps to confirm that reptiles, and not mammals, filled the role of small predators during the age of the di
Source: NYT blog
Mar 16, 2009
As General Motors and Chrysler struggle to remain solvent, the railroad bailout of a generation ago could offer a template to the Obama administration — one in which the federal government would run the auto companies until they are back on their feet, The New York Times’s Louis Uchitelle reported.
That was a different age, of course. Congress was very much on board, supervising the reorganization of the bankrupt Northeastern railroads and then forming Conrail, in 1976, to run them.
Source: The Courier News (Chicago)
Mar 16, 2009
With Feb. 12 marking the bicentennial anniversary of the birth of America's 16th president, an exhibit focusing on Abraham Lincoln collectibles was well-attended Sunday at the Spring Fox Valley Antiques Show.
The two-day event began Saturday and drew more than 1,000 visitors, said Virginia Larsen, chair of the Chicago Suburban Antique Dealers Association show.
Presenting rare finds -- ranging from an original bust of Lincoln, dated in 1865, to a steel engraved Lincoln
Source: AP
Mar 16, 2009
Excavation begins amid fear tribal pieces may wash away.
Archaeologists are excavating sites along the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon in hopes of saving artifacts before they wash away.
Although the National Park Service typically leaves such artifacts alone, about 60 sites are being undercut by water, or unearthed by wind, topography and a lack of sand, which is largely blocked from getting into the canyon by Glen Canyon Dam upriver.
National Park Serv
Source: AP
Mar 16, 2009
Travelers to Egypt will soon be able to explore the inner chambers of the 4,500-year-old "bent" pyramid, known for its oddly shaped profile, and other nearby ancient tombs, Egypt's antiquities chief announced Monday.
The increased access to the pyramids south of Cairo is part of a new sustainable development campaign that Egypt hopes will attract more visitors but also to avoid some of the problems of the urban sprawl that have plagued the famed pyramids of Giza.
Source: Time
Mar 16, 2009
Biblical scholars have long argued that the Dead Sea Scrolls were the work of an ascetic and celibate Jewish community known as the Essenes, which flourished in the 1st century A.D. in the scorching desert canyons near the Dead Sea. Now, a prominent Israeli scholar, Rachel Elior, disputes that the Essenes ever existed at all — a claim that has shaken the bedrock of Biblical scholarship.
Elior, who teaches Jewish mysticism at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, claims that the Essenes we
Source: Times (UK)
Mar 16, 2009
The last statue of General Franco in Spain is to be withdrawn almost 34 years after the death of the dictator.
The regional government of Melilla, one of Spain's North African enclaves along with Ceuta, said the bronze statue of General Franco would be removed "within the period of 15 days".
The move means no more commemorative figures will stand in public streets to the man who ruled Spain between the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939 and his death in No
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 16, 2009
Henry VIII was emotionally dependent on women, according to the historian David Starkey, who has identified striking similarities between the monarch's and his mother's handwriting. Unlike most early modern princes the Tudor monarch was brought up in a feminine household and was almost certainly taught to write by his mother, analysis shows.
This upbringing shaped Henry's "emotionally incontinent" personality, leading him to fall and love with – and marry – so many wome
Source: BBC
Mar 16, 2009
Cleopatra, the last Egyptian Pharaoh, renowned for her beauty, was part African, says a BBC team which believes it has found her sister's tomb. Queen Cleopatra was a descendant of Ptolemy, the Macedonian general who ruled Egypt after Alexander the Great.
But remains of the queen's sister Princess Arsinoe, found in Ephesus, Turkey, indicate that her mother had an "African" skeleton.
Experts have described the results as "a real sensation."
Source: CNN
Mar 15, 2009
A Florida state investigation has determined that 31 crosses on the grounds of a former reform school mark graves of teens and employees who died in a fire and an influenza outbreak.
One grave even contains the body of a student who was slain by another student, the investigation found.
The five-month investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement rules out claims by a group of reform school survivors that students who were beaten by guards are buried ther
Source: IHT
Mar 15, 2009
The protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are forcing the administration of President Barack Obama to rethink what for more than two decades has been a central premise of American strategy: that the nation need only prepare to fight two major wars at a time.
For more than six years now, the United States has in fact been fighting two wars, with more than 170,000 troops now deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. The military has openly acknowledged that the wars have left troop
Source: Stars and Stripes
Mar 15, 2009
During a ceremony Wednesday at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, members of the Kosakadani family were presented a Japanese flag that belonged to Cpl. Masayuki Kosakadani, who died during World War II.
The flag was brought to Japan by Air Force Col. Charles Eastman, who is in Japan with members of the Air War College in Alabama, where he is an instructor. Eastman got the flag from Casey Breslin, a friend who says the colonel is the only servicemember she knows, Eastman said after the cerem
Source: The HIndu
Mar 15, 2009
Pope Benedict XVI will undertake what would be the first papal visit to Britain in 30 years and the second by any pontiff since King Henry VIII broke with the Vatican to establish Church of England, according to sources.
However, details of the papal visit are still under discussion, but some cities being considered include London, Birmingham, Oxford, Edinburgh, Armagh and Dublin, 'The Daily Telegraph' quoted the unnamed sources as saying.
And, a senior cardinal is due
Source: Science Daily
Mar 15, 2009
The Ancient Egyptians cherished their fragrant scents, too, as perfume flacons from this period indicate. In its permanent exhibition, Bonn University's Egyptian Museum has a particularly well preserved example on display. Screening this 3,500-year-old flacon with a computer tomograph, scientists at the university detected the desiccated residues of a fluid, which they now want to submit to further analysis. They might even succeed in reconstructing this scent.
Pharaoh Hatshepsut wa
Source: AP
Mar 15, 2009
In the city where the Civil War began and where its longest battle was fought, an archaeologist with a clutch of high-tech equipment went searching Friday for watery clues to the past.
James Spirek of the South Carolina Institute for Archaeology and Anthropology is making the first comprehensive historical map of the harbor bottom to record everything from fortifications to sunken ships.
Fort Sumter, where the war began in 1861, sits in the harbor. The fight over Charle
Source: Boston Globe
Mar 15, 2009
Three hundred years ago, more or less, the last serious alchemists finally gave up on their attempts to create gold from other metals, dropping the curtain on one of the least successful endeavors in the history of human striving.
Centuries of work and scholarship had been plowed into alchemical pursuits, and for what? Countless ruined cauldrons, a long trail of empty mystical symbols, and precisely zero ounces of transmuted gold. As a legacy, alchemy ranks above even fantasy baseba
Source: BBC
Mar 15, 2009
Defence Secretary John Hutton has said the Afghanistan war is a "fundamentally important" one which will "define much of the politics of the 21st century".
He said Nato's European members must do more if it was to "come through this test of its resolve and character".
Lessons learned there and in Iraq would lead to a "transformation" of policy by the UK Ministry of Defence.
Asked if the mission had changed to a cou
