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: Haaretz
Mar 20, 2008
Germany's national Jewish body said Thursday it has filed suit against YouTube and its parent company Google, demanding a court order for the site to be permanently purged of anti-Semitic videos.
Stephan Kramer, secretary general of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said in Hamburg, "we charge Google with aiding and abetting racial hatred and discrimination on its YouTube video- platform subsidiary.
"We applied this week for an injunction from a court
Source: International Herald Tribune
Mar 20, 2008
The hillside cemetery here is unlike any other in South Korea. The graves have no headstones. Instead they have identical, meter-long, white wooden stakes, most of them reading "Anonymous" and revealing little else about those lying beneath.
And, in contrast to the Korean tradition of aligning graves toward the south, those here, arranged in neat rows, all face north. In other words, they all look homeward.
Decades after they fell in combat during the 1950-53
Source: AP
Mar 20, 2008
Germany's justice minister solemnly noted the upcoming 75th anniversary of a key milestone in the Nazi seizure of power — a pressured vote in parliament that allowed Adolf Hitler to become dictator.
Brigitte Zypries said the so-called Enabling Act — passed by Germany's parliament on March 23, 1933 — signaled the legislative body's own demise.
"With the passage of the Enabling Act, the parliament disempowered itself — the abandonment of the division of power destroy
Source: Live Science
Mar 20, 2008
A recent molecular analysis of ancestry across Latin America has revealed a marked differentiation between regions and demonstrated a "genetic continuity" between pre-and post Columbian populations. This study provides the first broad description of how the genome diversity of populations from Latin America has been shaped by the colonial history of the region.The researchers examined genetic markers across the human genome, in hundreds of individuals drawn from 13
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 20, 2008
Children should not be taught to remember key historical dates such as the Battle of Hastings but should instead learn "life skills", teachers have claimed.
A new curriculum should place greater emphasis on broad skills such as team working and interpreting evidence rather than learning dates by rote, said the Association of Teachers and Lecturers.
Mary Bousted, general secretary, also said that excessive school tests were making children mentally ill.
Source: BBC
Mar 20, 2008
It started life as the emblem of the British anti-nuclear movement but it has become an international sign for peace, and arguably the most widely used protest symbol in the world. It has also been adapted, attacked and commercialized.
It had its first public outing 50 years ago on a chilly Good Friday as thousands of British anti-nuclear campaigners set off from London’s Trafalgar Square on a 50-mile march to the weapons factory at Aldermaston.
The demonstration had be
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 20, 2008
A memorial service has been held for a Russian princess who fled her homeland to marry a British soldier.
Princess Helena Davidovna Palavandova was 27 when she died a year after following her husband, the Somme veteran Lendon Fitz Payne, to Britain.
Descendants of the princess's late husband found that she lay in an unmarked grave. They have now travelled from far and wide to commemorate her and mark her plot.
Source: BBC
Mar 20, 2008
A memorial event has been held to remember those who were killed and injured in the IRA bombing of Warrington town centre 15 years ago.
Tim Parry, 12, and Johnathan Ball, three, died and 56 people were hurt in the two explosions on 20 March 1993.
Survivors joined the boys' families, town leaders and community members to lay white lilies at the scene.
Among the dozens attending the ceremony was Tim's brother Dominic, 29, who took his six-month-old daughter Olivia.
Source: WaPo
Mar 20, 2008
Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in the White House with a schedule befitting a president, packed with policy sessions, meetings with senators and trips to promote an ambitious political agenda. But after the collapse of her health-care plan in 1994, she largely retreated to a more traditional first lady's calendar of school visits, hospital tours, photo ops and speeches on a narrower set of issues.
Source: LAT
Mar 20, 2008
Dysfunctional capital markets, frantic central banks, stressed-out consumers, fear and uncertainty -- all are alarming echoes of the global economic cataclysm of the 1930s.
Which raises the inevitable question: Could another Great Depression be lurking over the horizon?
TV news programs show grainy footage of Depression-era bankers as reporters tick off grim economic statistics. The Federal Reserve invokes powers it hasn't used since the 1930s. Critics of President Bush
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood, is published by the Federation of American Scientists
Mar 20, 2008
A Defense Department-sponsored report that examined captured Iraqi
documents for indications of links between Saddam Hussein and terrorist
organizations is now available online.
The five-volume report affirmed that there was"no 'smoking gun' (i.e.,
direct connection) between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda." But it also said
there was"strong evidence that links the regime of Saddam Hussein to
regional and global terrorism."
Although the report was publicly released on March 13, the D
Source: http://www.azzaman.com
Mar 19, 2008
Iraqi archaeologists have discovered a new Babylonian town 180 kilometers south of Baghdad.
The head archaeologist Mohammed Yahya said the town is more than 20,000 square meters in area and includes administrative quarters, temples and other buildings of “magnificent and splendid design”
Yahya, who is the head of the provincial Antiquities Department in the Province of Diwaniya, where the new Babylonian town was discovered, said he still lacks evidence on the town’s anc
Source: The Newsletter of the New York American Revolution Round Table
Mar 19, 2008
The New London (CT) Historical Society has recently discovered it owns an American flag that may be worth millions. It's an antique 13 star banner made of faded white and red silk ribbons hand stitched together. It's been part of the Society's collection for decades and until lately hung over the mantle in the front parlor of the Shaw Mansion in downtown New London. In 2006 it was restored by experts in Rhode Island. Gradually, it dawned on them that it was one of only a very small number of 13
Source: USA Today
Mar 19, 2008
... Germany is offering ghetto workers such as [Gisela] Fischer who were denied pensions a one-time payment of 2,000 Euros, about $3,000.
Jewish organizations are alerting the estimated 20,000 survivors in the USA who worked in ghettos. The German government estimates that 50,000 people around the world are eligible for the Ghetto Labor Compensation Fund.
The U.S. Congress and Jewish organizations lobbied Germany after the country denied 90% of the pension applications
Source: Gateway Pundit (Click here to view charts.)
Mar 19, 2008
Iraq War (5 years)-- 3,990
Batan Death March (one week)-- 10,000
Battle of Guadalcanal (186 days)-- 7,099
Battle of Guam (20 Days)-- 3,000
Operation Market Garden (9 days)-- 3,664
Battle of the Bulge (41 days)-- 19,276
Battle of Iwo Jima (39 days)-- 6,821
Battle of Pusan Perimeter (61 days-Korea)-- 6,706
Source: Newsweek
Mar 19, 2008
The discovery of ancient artifacts is usually cause for celebration and public excitement. But this being Rome, excavation often brings more heartache than joy. Engineers digging up 38 sites in the Italian capital for the construction of much-needed third subway line seem stymied at every turn by some piece of history or another. A $4.7 billion project set to be complete in 2015, the 15-mile subway line is designed to carry 24,000 passengers an hour, hopefully decreasing above-ground traffic con
Source: Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Mar 19, 2008
A silver coin that was used to pay the half-shekel head tax to the Temple was found in what was the main drainage channel of Jerusalem in the Second Temple period.
Source: http://en.rian.ru
Mar 19, 2008
Archaeologists plan to resume excavations this summer in the southern Urals, where the remains of the last Russian tsar's children were allegedly found last July, a local archaeologist said Wednesday.
The remains of a boy and a young woman were exhumed near Yekaterinburg, where Tsar Nicholas II, his wife, their four daughters and son, and several servants, were shot by the Bolsheviks in 1918. They are believed to belong to Nicholas II's son and heir Alexis, and his daughter Maria.
Source: NYT op ed
Mar 19, 2008
A group made up of relatives of those killed aboard United Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001, announced Tuesday that it had agreed to buy a 903-acre tract to be part of a permanent memorial near Shanksville, Pa.
The land is owned by PBS Coals Inc., a company in Somerset, Pa., that previously mined the site. The company will also donate the 27 acres closest to the crash site. Both parcels will eventually be transferred to the National Park Service, which is overseeing the creation of the m
Source: CNN
Mar 19, 2008
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton got to work on health care reform within days of her arrival at the White House as first lady in 1993, newly released documents show.
Her first meeting on the subject came on January 23, 1993, only three days after her husband Bill Clinton's inauguration as president, and dozens of related events followed.
Despite her efforts, the Clinton health care reform foundered in Congress.
The National Archives on Wednesday released more t
