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 19, 2008
Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Communist leader of the Soviet Union, has acknowledged his Christian faith for the first time, paying a surprise visit to pray at the tomb of St Francis of Assisi.
Accompanied by his daughter Irina, Mr Gorbachev spent half an hour on his knees in silent prayer at the tomb.
His arrival in Assisi was described as "spiritual perestroika" by La Stampa, the Italian newspaper.
"St Francis is, for me, the alter Christus,
Source: Guardian
Mar 19, 2008
On the day that dozens of US cruise missiles rained down on Serbia in an attempt to punish Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic for the country's onslaught against ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo, first lady Hillary Clinton was far from the White House war room: instead she was touring ancient Egyptian ruins, including King Tut's tomb and the temple of Hatshepsut. And on the day before the signing of the Good Friday agreement in Belfast she was at an event called "Hats on for Bella&q
Source: Deutsche Welle
Mar 19, 2008
Chancellor Merkel's government gave the go-ahead on Wednesday, March 19, for a controversial documentation center in Berlin recalling the expulsions of millions of Germans from central Europe after World War II.The center, to be built in Berlin at a cost of around 30 million euros ($46 million) is intended as a "visible symbol against flight and expulsions," according to the government. It will be located near Berlin's famous Potsdamer Platz and will be part of the
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 19, 2008
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has told Israel that her nation is "filled with shame" over the Nazi holocaust and that she bows before its victims.
Mrs Merkel delivered the speech, in German, on the last day of a three-day visit to the Middle Eastern country. Speaking to the Knesset, or parliament, the chancellor praised the warm ties between the two nations, and said that Germany would always stand by Israel's side.
She singled out Iran as the greatest
Source: http://www.columbusdispatch.com
Mar 18, 2008
New technologies seem to make almost everyone's job easier, and archaeology is no exception. One of the newest and most exciting tools in the archaeologist's kit is aerial laser scanning, sometimes referred to as Light Detection And Ranging, or LiDAR. It works a bit like radar, but instead of using radio waves, it uses infrared laser pulses. The echoes can "see" through trees and shrubs, revealing the precise contours of the ground surface.
In the April issue of the Journa
Source: AP
Mar 18, 2008
Baghdad's National Museum, a treasure trove of antiquities from the stone age and Babylon to the
Assyrians and Islamic art, cannot open to the public despite the renovation of two of its galleries nearing completion, an Iraqi
official said Tuesday.
Source: National Security Archive
Mar 18, 2008
As if the sub-prime credit crisis was not enough, the U.S. Treasury Department today won the fourth annual Rosemary Award for the worst performance by a federal agency under the Freedom of Information Act.
Given annually by the Emmy- and George Polk Award-winning National Security Archive at George Washington University, the Rosemary recognizes outstandingly bad responsiveness to the public that flouts the letter and spirit of the Freedom of Information Act. The Award is named after
Source: International Herald Tribune
Mar 18, 2008
Atop the globe, the icy surface of the Arctic Ocean has remained relatively peaceful. But its depths have boiled with intrigue, no more so than in the Cold War.
Although the superpowers planned to turn those depths into an inferno of exploding torpedoes and rising missiles, the brotherhood of submariners - the silent service, both Russian and American - has worked hard over the decades to keep the particulars of those plans hush-hush.
Now, a few secrets are spilling thr
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 18, 2008
The world's most famous statue, Michelangelo's statue of David, has dodgy legs.
The results have come from a new method for analysing stress which has been applied to scans of the Renaissance masterpiece, a marble statue sculpted between 1501 to 1504.
Although the stress points in the magnificent symbol of strength and beauty have been charted before, this is a proof of principle for a computer-based method that is simpler, faster and more accurate than those used befor
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
Mar 18, 2008
The Civil War Preservation Trust (CWPT) recently unveiled its annual report on the status of the nation’s historic battlegrounds. The report, entitled History Under Siege: A Guide to America’s Most Endangered Civil War Battlefields, identifies the most threatened Civil War sites in the United States and what can be done to rescue them.
Source: Forbes.com
Mar 18, 2008
To stand in the shadow of the past is a feeling unlike any other. That's why each year millions travel thousands of miles to see the world's most historic sites.
A monument like the Kremlin--where Peter the Great stored weapons used to fight Napoleon and Ivan the Great built a cathedral to serve as the seat of the Russian Orthodox Church--is a prime example of how historic structures provide a unique glimpse into a culture's evolution.
Machu Picchu is another. A testame
Source: McClatchy Newspapers
Mar 18, 2008
... Vice President Dick Cheney gave an upbeat view of conditions in Iraq as he concluded his unannounced trip to mark the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion. Cheney also defended the toppling of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein as part of the struggle against terrorism following the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
This month, an exhaustive Pentagon-sponsored review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents captured during the 2003 U.S. invasion found no evid
Source: AP
Mar 18, 2008
Thousands of pages of Hillary Rodham Clinton 's schedules as first lady are being released to the public after months of pressure and criticism that the Clintons were delaying the disclosure.
The National Archives, which operates former President Clinton's presidential library in Little Rock, announced Tuesday it would release 11,046 pages of Clinton's daily schedules at the Little Rock facility and online Wednesday morning.
Clinton has faced criticism from fellow Democ
Source: http://indiancountrynews.net
Mar 18, 2008
To anyone driving over the Miami Bridge, it doesn’t look like much. Blink and you miss the small billboard that announces the Miami Circle sits just below on the river’s edge – a dusty parcel of 2.2 acres surrounded by chain-link fencing in the shadow of the giant Sheraton Hotel and 30-story condos. At its center is a circle of pale limestone, 38 foot in diameter, pitted with what looks like post-holes. But to historians and archaeologists who excavated here furiously for months in the late 1990
Source: LiveScience
Mar 18, 2008
Long before Homer wrote the Iliad, the real-life progenitors of the epic poem's characters might have visited a small outpost on the Greek coast.
Archaeologists have discovered a spectacularly preserved ancient harbor town of the Mycenaeans, the civilization on which many ancient Greek legends were based. Though the settlement was built 3,500 years ago, hundreds of walls are still standing.
The site, which is partially underwater, lies along a rocky, isolated stretch of
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Mar 18, 2008
It was supposed to be a quick war and a cheap one. Five years later,
160,000 U.S. troops are still in Iraq. And the costs keep piling up - $12
billion every month - putting a strain on an already faltering economy.
The United States has poured more than $500 billion into Iraq, mostly for military operations. But that figure is just a small piece of the much
larger bill that taxpayers will pay in the future.
Because the money for the war is being borrowed, interest payments could add an
Source: NYT op ed
Mar 18, 2008
Since the last big anti-Chinese riots in Tibet two decades ago, Beijing has sought to smother Tibetan separatism by sparking economic development and by inserting itself into the metaphysics of Tibetan Buddhism. But an influx of Han Chinese to Tibet, and a growing sense among Tibetans that China is irreparably altering their way of life, produced a backlash when Communist Party leaders most needed stability there, analysts say.
“Why did the unrest take off?” asked Liu Junning, a lib
Source: http://www.aswataliraq.info
Mar 18, 2008
An ancient archeological city dating back to the neo-Babylonian era was unearthed in Diwaniya, the province's museum curator revealed, noting the ancient wide city comprised buildings of an advanced architectural nature.
"The Babylonian city was discovered in the district of al-Shamiya, (33 km) west of Diwaniya, where 341 archeological pieces were found during the first stage of excavations that lasted for the month of February," Muhammad Yahya Radi told Aswat al-Iraq – V
Source: WaPo
Mar 18, 2008
Sen. Barack Obama today repudiated what he described as offensive comments by his former pastor, but he refused to "disown" the man who was once his spiritual mentor. The contender for the Democratic presidential nomination sought to explain the anger that persists in the black community over racism and that occasionally makes its way into sermons in black churches.
In what his campaign billed as a major speech in Philadelphia, Obama tried to come to grips with the issue o
Source: Yorkshire Post
Mar 17, 2008
HULL will today remember its war dead as residents join VIPs to pay tribute to those whose suffering was kept secret from the rest of Britain as their city was reduced to rubble.
The site of one of the last bombs to be dropped on Hull during the Second World War will be the focal point for a commemorative service to remember the hundreds of civilians killed in the 1941 Blitz.
During the fighting, the strategic importance of Hull's docks meant it suffered devastating air
