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: CNN
Mar 1, 2009
Kaing Guek Eav is an elderly former math teacher and a born-again Christian.
He is also -- prosecutors contend -- a former prison chief with Cambodia's ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge movement who oversaw the torture and killing of more than 15,000 men, women and children three decades ago.
The trial of the 66-year-old man, better known as Duch, resumes Monday in front of a U.N.-backed tribunal just outside the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.
He faces charges that
Source: AP
Mar 1, 2009
When archaeologists on a dig in southern Portugal last year flipped over a heavy chunk of slate and saw writing not used for more than 2,500 years, they were elated.
The enigmatic pattern of inscribed symbols curled symmetrically around the upper part of the rough-edged, yellowish stone tablet and coiled into the middle in a decorative style typical of an extinct Iberian language called Southwest Script.
"We didn't break into applause, but almost," says Amilc
Source: AP
Mar 1, 2009
Italy on Sunday returned ownership to Russia of an Orthodox church named after St. Nicholas in a goodwill gesture toward Moscow and the Orthodox faithful.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev traveled to the southern Italian city of Bari for the hand-over, which was aimed at boosting ties between the two countries and improving often-tense Roman Catholic-Russian Orthodox relations.
Source: Yahoo News
Mar 1, 2009
Belgian archaeologists have rediscovered an ancient Egyptian tomb that had been lost for decades under sand, Egyptian Culture Minister Farouk Hosni said on Sunday.
In 1880 Swedish Egyptologist Karl Piehl uncovered the tomb of Amenhotep, the deputy seal-bearer of the Pharaoh King Tuthmosis III, in the city of Luxor, about 600 km (375 miles) to the south of the capital Cairo.
"It later disappeared under the sand and archaeologists kept looking for it to no avail unti
Source: NYT
Mar 1, 2009
According to a June 1928 dispatch, experts were still hopeful that Roald Amundsen, the great polar explorer, would be found. “They recall the times in the past when he disappeared into the ice wastes of the Arctic and Antarctic, only to come out safely when hope for him had reached its lowest ebb.” But there was no finding Amundsen, despite a sea and air search that went on into the autumn....
In August, the Norwegian Navy will launch a new expedition to find the remains of Amundsen
Source: WaPo
Mar 1, 2009
Today, we presented in verse the story of an on-going controversy about the state song of Maryland."Maryland, My Maryland," sung to the tune of"Oh Christmas Tree," has been the state's official ditty since 1939. Legislators periodically propose changing the lyrics, which were written in 1861 as a call for Maryland to join the Confederacy. Later this week, the House and Senate will hear bills that propose changing the lyrics of the song to a poem written in 1894.
Related Lin
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 1, 2009
In a letter dated December 3, 1941, the Welsh Parliamentary Party wrote to the Prime Minister to demand a meeting to discuss a petition on the Welsh language.
Four days later – the day Japan bombed Pearl Harbour - Mr Churchill wrote in response: "Much as I should like to meet the deputation of the Welsh Parliamentary Party, I regret that, owing to the many tasks which fall to my lot at this time, it is impossible for me to arrange a date."
The petition's aim
Source: IHT
Mar 1, 2009
"We were victims, too," said Him Huy, the head of the guard detail at the Tuol Sleng torture house, who took part in the executions of thousands of people at a Khmer Rouge killing field.
As the prisoners knelt at the edges of mass graves, with their hands tied behind them, executioners swung iron bars at the backs of their heads - two times, if necessary - before they toppled forward into the pits.
"I had no choice," said Him Huy, 53. "If I hadn
Source: IHT
Mar 1, 2009
The truth, if ever it emerges, will come too late for Emilia Girón. For 65 years, the hard-bitten mother of seven ached to know what had become of her son, Jesús. Born during the vengeful early years of Franco's rule, he was taken from her to be baptized shortly after his birth. She never saw him again.
The story is part of a dark and overlooked chapter of the repressive Franco era that has drawn new attention since November, when Judge Baltasar Garzón ordered provincial judges to i
Source: BBC
Mar 1, 2009
The funeral has been held of the last British witness to the signing of the German surrender, signalling the end of World War II in Europe.
Susan Hibbert, from Andover, Hampshire, was a young sergeant in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, based at General Eisenhower's HQ in France at the time.
As a secretary in May 1945, she typed and retyped the surrender for 20 hours.
The 84-year-old's funeral was held at St Mary's Church in Abbots Ann, where she had l
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 28, 2009
A private detective has been hired to investigate an alleged murder of a Jewish underground fighter in 1947 by a British major.
He was a founder member of the SAS, was one of the most decorated officers of the Second World War, and has been hailed as a "legend among fighting men".
The heroism on the battlefield of Major Roy Farran, who died in 2006, earned him a Distinguished Service Order, three Military Crosses, the Croix de Guerre and the American Legion
Source: IHT
Feb 28, 2009
China celebrated 50 years of direct control over Tibet with a lavish international Buddhist conference Saturday featuring a rare appearance by Beijing's hand-picked Buddhist leader — underscoring efforts to promote its image as a protector of the faith.
March 28 marks the date when China ended the 1959 Tibetan uprising, sending Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama over the Himalayas into exile in India and placing Tibet under its direct rule for the first time.
In Ch
Source: IHT
Feb 28, 2009
It looked like the kind of toy telescope a child might have made with scissors and tape — a lumpy, mottled tube about as long as a golf club and barely wider in girth, the color of 400-year-old cardboard.
But near one knobby end was a bit of writing that sent Derrick Pitts, chief astronomer of the Franklin Institute here, into rapture.
The tube's focal length is "piedi 3," the inscription said, or 3 feet. It was in the hand of Galileo, one of history's great t
Source: AP
Feb 28, 2009
Just as the chief Khmer Rouge torturer takes the stand before a United Nations-backed genocide tribunal, a mausoleum fit for a king will be unveiled for another murderous leader from the same regime.
The entombed Ta Mok, known to his victims as "The Butcher," remains a revered figure in Anlong Veng because practically everyone here _ from the district chief to the tourism promoter, from the wealthiest businessmen to dirt-poor farmers _ was once Khmer Rouge.
Th
Source: Stone Pages Archaeo News
Feb 28, 2009
It's a mystery that could shed light on life in Hampshire (Southern England) 6,000 years ago. Four Stone Age axes are giving clues to the origins of settled human life in the county. They were found at Hill Head and Titchfield, near Fareham, and at Beaulieu, in the New Forest, and Bartonon-Sea. The tools, which are now in Winchester City Council's collection, have been analysed and found to originate in the north Italian Alps from around 4,000 BCE. They had been carried for many miles before the
Source: Archaeo News Stone Pages
Feb 28, 2009
Mexican authorities unveiled a stunning collection of 8,000 pre-Hispanic antiquities, some dating back 3,000 years, donated to the state by a private collector. "It literally took my breath away as I opened case after case to discover these objects in tortoiseshell, jade, serpentine and gold," Xochicalco archeology director Marco Antonio Santos said. Experts say it is the most spectacular private collection ever unveiled in Mexico given the number of artifacts, their variety and their
Source: NY Daily News
Feb 28, 2009
The visitors have heard the urban legend about an escape passage built between Fort Totten in Queens, to Fort Schuyler in the Bronx, where the Long Island Sound and the East River meet.
Historians, park rangers and common sense suggest it is a myth. The technology needed to build a tunnel under more than 100 feet of water, simply didn't exist at the time, they maintain.
But speculation has been stoked by tantalizing clues - including dead-ending corridors and walled-up
Source: WSJ
Feb 28, 2009
For six decades, his parents and siblings battled Moscow and their native Stockholm, mounting a search for answers that cost them their savings, careers, relationships, health and, concealed until now, two of their lives.
Also unknown, even to the Swedish foreign ministry -- whose file on Mr. Wallenberg dwarfs its record of any king, colony or war -- is that the family documented its struggle. Mr. Wallenberg's late mother and stepfather, who died two days apart in 1979, kept a diary
Source: NYT
Feb 28, 2009
The memory of how a former prime minister of Lebanon, Rafik Hariri, died appears to have sobered those hoping to prosecute his assassins.
The Special Tribunal for Lebanon, which begins proceedings on Sunday in a leafy suburb near The Hague, has planted an impressive arsenal of security devices, with an extra focus on forestalling car bombs.
Mr. Hariri and 22 others were killed when a white van exploded near his motorcade in Beirut, the Lebanese capital, on Feb. 14, 2005
Source: NYT
Feb 28, 2009
He’s already installed and inscribed his tombstone. He’s recruited a rabbi to preside over his funeral. He’s been saying some goodbyes. He insists he no longer carries any grudges; well, maybe just a few. He’s issued an apology or two and even confesses to a few regrets as mayor.
Ed Koch, at 84, isn’t dead yet.
But the former mayor — still looming though stooped from stenosis, a spinal degeneration — is philosophically confronting his own mortality. His is a life that h
