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
Mar 4, 2009
So many Japanese people are living longer that the government is reducing the size of silver cups presented to those who turn 100 years old.
More than 20,000 people are expected to reach their 100th birthday this year.
The Japanese have one of the longest life expectancies of any nation, but there are concerns about the burden on society of paying for care of the aged.
UN projections suggest there will be about one million Japanese over the age of 100 by
Source: BBC
Mar 4, 2009
The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Sudan's president on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur.
But the ICC in The Hague stopped short of accusing Omar al-Bashir of genocide. He denies the charges and has dismissed any ruling by the court as worthless.
Thousands of protesters took to the streets of the capital, Khartoum, after the announcement, amid fears of unrest.
The UN estimates 300,000 people have
Source: AP
Mar 4, 2009
Edgar Allan Poe apologizes to his publishers for drinking too much and asks them to buy an article because he's "desperately pushed for money" in an 1842 letter acquired by the University of Virginia for an exhibition marking the author's 200th birthday.
Writing from Philadelphia, Poe blames his friend William Ross Wallace, a poet and lawyer, for making him drink too many "juleps" and for misbehaving on a visit to New York.
The university bought the
Source: Media Matters (liberal watchdog group)
Mar 4, 2009
Summary: CNBC's Jim Cramer has repeatedly characterized President Obama and congressional Democrats as Russian communists intent on"rampant wealth destruction," claiming Obama is"taking cues from Lenin" and using terms such as"Bolshevik,""Marx,"" comrades,""Soviet,""Winter Palace," and"Politburo" in reference to Democrats.
###
In the past month,
CNBC Mad Money host Jim Cramer
has repeatedly characterized President Obama and congressional Democrats as
Russian communists in
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
Mar 4, 2009
The editors of The Chronicle of Higher Education received a letter from Bill Moyers in response to my blog post from last week. (See here for the post and comments.) Here is the text in full, and my answer follows.
To the Editors of the Chronicle of Higher Education, The Chronicle Review and The Brainstorm:
In his vituperative attack on me (“The Moyers Controversy,” February 25), Brainstorm Blogger Mark Bauerlein irresponsibly and egregiously misrepresented my journalism, r
Source: http://www.artdaily.org
Mar 4, 2009
The Smithsonian celebrates Women’s History Month in March with a series of films, lectures and performances at museums around the Institution. All programs are free unless otherwise indicated. ...
Exhibition
“First Ladies at the Smithsonian” showcases premier objects from the nearly century-old collection, including 14 dresses ranging from those of Martha Washington to Laura Bush. An introductory section explores the evolution of the collection and how it has been disp
Source: Times (UK)
Mar 4, 2009
The final cost of four inquiries into Northern Ireland’s Troubles will surpass £300 million, the Government revealed today.
The Bloody Sunday Inquiry, set up to re-examine the 1972 killings of 14 Catholic civilians by soldiers during a civil rights march in Londonderry, is expected to cost around £190 million, Shaun Woodward, the Northern Ireland Secretary, said.
A further three inquiries, also established under the peace process during negotiations over power-sharing
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 4, 2009
Atticus, the Russian publishers, have cancelled their contract with the award-winning British author for his latest work, The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia.
Their decision comes after masked officers from the Russian general prosecutor's office raided the offices of Memorial, a human rights organisation which helped Professor Figes research the book.
As well as confiscating about a third of the material used for the book, the officers seized Memorial's ent
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 4, 2009
Number 93 rue Lauristan, a building in Paris' chic 16th arrondissement where dozens of resistance members were tortured and killed during the Second World War, was synonymous with the worst form of French wartime Nazi collaboration.
It was the base of a group of around 20 French auxiliaries of the Gestapo – mostly convicted criminals - who between 1941 and 1944 tortured and killed dozens of resistance members. Its notorious leaders were disgraced policeman Pierre Bonny and gangster
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Mar 4, 2009
Gordon Brown sparked fury today by awarding an honorary knighthood to U.S. senator Edward Kennedy, who has been accused in the past of being an IRA sympathiser.
Conservative MPs and Peers condemned as 'inappropriate' the decision to make a man closely linked to the Irish nationalist movement a 'Sir'.
Senior British politicians also expressed unease at honouring the Democrat who was embroiled in controversy when he was involved in an infamous car accident on Chappaquiddi
Source: Spiegel Online
Mar 4, 2009
Responding to considerable domestic and international pressure, the German Federation of Expellees said Wednesday it would withdraw the nomination of controversial politician Erika Steinbach from the board of directors of a planned museum that will document the expulsion of Germans from Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe after World War II.
The board of the Federation of Expellees said it had accepted a proposal from Steinbach that, for the time being, she not be named as a me
Source: Spiegel Online
Mar 4, 2009
Disaster struck in Cologne on Tuesday, as the building housing the city's Historical Archive suddenly collapsed. According to city officials, two people are officially missing and believed dead. And hundreds of firefighters were on the scene Wednesday looking for survivors as Cologne historians and archivists mourned the apparent destruction of Germany's largest municipal archive.
"It's an inconceivable loss," Eberhard Illner, a former archivist for the city, told the Köln
Source: Deutsche Welle
Mar 4, 2009
German authorities searched more than 200 locations on Wednesday, March 4, confiscating 45,000 CDs, more than 170 computers and some 70 weapons.
They are also investigating 204 suspects. Though no one was arrested, the head prosecutor in Stuttgart, where the operation was based, characterized it as a significant contribution in combating racist and neo-Nazi subcultures.
"Music represents the gateway through which young people are lured in," Siegfried Mahler sa
Source: History Today
Mar 4, 2009
Extracts from Queen Victoria’s journal describing her three-day visit to Arundel Castle with Prince Albert in December 1846, as the guests of the Duke and Duchess of Norfolk, have recently been discovered in the castle’s archives. The extracts, which are copied from the original manuscripts in the royal archives at Windsor Castle, were unearthed by Penny Horsfield, Arundel Castle’s Head Guide, whilst looking through a collection of long-forgotten papers in the archives. They provide detailed des
Source: BBC
Mar 4, 2009
The consul general of India in New York is also due to meet the US-based collector for talks over the sale.
Antiquorum Auctioneers are to sell Gandhi's iconic round glasses, a pocket watch, leather sandals and other items.
The planned auction has led to an uproar in India with many saying the government must bring back the items.
On Tuesday, the Delhi high court issued an order against the auction or sale of Mahatma Gandhi's belongings.
The
Source: Salt Lake Tribune
Mar 3, 2009
Tomorrow's commuter trains and a railside development could rob Utahns of a full understanding of their state's ancient past if the Legislature allows construction on the site of a buried village in Draper, archaeologists say.
It's a site where a preliminary dig in 2007 found tantalizing evidence that archaic American Indians up to 3,000 years ago were farming and cooking corn -- hundreds of years before modern scientists previously believed farming had reached the Great Basin."It could resh
Source: Columbus Dispatch
Mar 3, 2009
The idea that a comet blasted into eastern North America about 10,900 years ago has been receiving a lot of media attention lately.
The explosion, which is said to have been equivalent to a 100-million-megaton bomb, supposedly caused the extinction of the giant mammals of the ice age as well as the people who lived then.
R.B. Firestone of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and numerous co-authors presented the basic argument in an article in the Proceedings of th
Source: WaPo
Mar 3, 2009
The White House released a statement by President Obama proclaiming March Women's History Month. March was selected as a time to honor American women in 1978, when a Women's History Week was initiated; the time-period was expanded to a month in 1987. Obama's proclamation follows:
With passion and courage, women have taught us that when we band together to advocate for our highest ideals, we can advance our common well-being and strengthen the fabric of our Nation. Each year during W
Source: WaPo
Mar 3, 2009
The CIA got rid of 92 videotapes depicting the harsh interrogations and confinement of "high value" al-Qaeda suspects, government lawyers disclosed yesterday, as a long-running criminal probe of the tapes' destruction inched toward a conclusion that is not expected to result in charges against CIA operations employees, three sources said.
Then-directorate of operations chief Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. gave an order to destroy the recordings in November 2005, as scrutiny of the
Source: http://blogs.cqpolitics.com
Mar 3, 2009
Evidently $30 million and 10 years wasn't enough to finish the job of declassifying records on the involvement of U.S. intelligence agencies with Nazi and Japanese war criminals.
Congress has just budgeted another $650,000 to finish the job - really, they're serious this time -- of poring through some 8 million postwar pages.
"There's a million pages of Army and CIA documents left" to read and catalog, said Miriam Kleiman, a spokeswoman for the National Archiv
