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: New Statesman
Mar 11, 2008
In the London Borough of Hackney, Jewish secondary-level students at Yesodey Hatorah School who boycotted an exam on The Merchant of Venice because they found it anti-Semitic were backed by their head teacher, Rabbi Abraham Pinter, despite damaging their National Curriculum assessment results and demoting the school from 1st to 274th place in performance league tables. An ex-teacher of the school blogging on the Talkback message board for the online edition of Israeli newspaper Haaretz
Source: CNN
Mar 11, 2008
The U.S. military has identified frozen remains found atop a California glacier as those of a World War II era airman who vanished more than half a century ago.
Ernest G. Munn had been missing since his training flight disappeared over the Sierra Nevada mountain range on November 18, 1942, the U.S. military said Monday. He was 23 at the time.
Last year, two hikers found the frozen remains of a man with blond, wavy hair in a remote area of Kings Canyon, east of Fresno, C
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 11, 2008
An American envoy has claimed that he played a critical role in the fate of Aldo Moro, the former Italian prime minister who was murdered by terrorists in 1978.
Steve Pieczenik, an international crisis manager and hostage negotiator in the State Department, said that Moro had been "sacrificed" for the "stability" of Italy.
In a new book called We Killed Aldo Moro, Mr Pieczenik said he was sent to Italy by President Jimmy Carter on the day that Moro w
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 11, 2008
Those filled with despair at the prevalence of binge drinking in 21st-century Britain cannot say they were not warned - Sir Walter Raleigh cautioned over the dangers of alcohol more than 400 years ago.
The one-time favourite of Queen Elizabeth I even wrote a little-known treatise on the matter, warning future generations - and his son, also called Walter, in particular - that excessive alcohol consumption "transformeth a Man into a Beast" and was "a bewitching and inf
Source: NYT
Mar 11, 2008
By now, many of the more publicized escapades have become embedded in political lore, from President Clinton encounters with Monica Lewinsky to Sen. Bob Packwood and his unwanted advances on women to Rep. Mark Foley and his lewd e-mails to House pages.
Who can forget the late Wilbur D. Mills, the one-time powerful head of the House Ways and Means committee, and his dalliances back in 1975 with the stripper Fanne Foxe? She’s the one who barreled out of Mr. Mills’s car and waded into
Source: The New Zealand Herald
Mar 11, 2008
Ned Kelly's resting place has been found among bones dug up at Australia's former Pentridge Prison site. The breakthrough solves an 80-year-old mystery, News Limited newspapers report. The grave site of Australia's most notorious bushranger was unearthed after historians and archaeologists found a Department of Justice document that contained a vital clue."We have still some testing to do, but it's pretty clear we have found them," Heritage Victoria senior archeologist Jere
Source: http://www.huntspost.co.uk
Mar 10, 2008
A COLD War bunker, designed to withstand a direct hit by a nuclear bomb and built less than 20 years ago, has received one of the highest categories of listing in English Heritage's register of buildings of architectural and historic importance.
But the 17th century riverside inn, the Pike and Eel in Needingworth, has been de-listed because of the quality and size of 20th century additions.
The "Magic Mountain", as the former US Air Force avionics building at
Source: Catholic News Service
Mar 10, 2008
Rumors that the Vatican is set to rehabilitate Martin Luther, the 16th-century leader of the Protestant Reformation, are groundless, said the Vatican spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi.
News reports in early March alleged that Pope Benedict XVI was dedicating a planned September symposium with former doctoral students to re-evaluating Luther, who was excommunicated and condemned for heresy.
The story "does not have any foundation, insofar as no rehabilitat
Source: AP
Mar 10, 2008
Ceremonies are being held in Bulgaria Monday to commemorate the massive protests that saved the country's Jews from deportation to Nazi death camps during the Second World War.
The laying of flowers at memorials in the capital of Sofia and other large cities is to mark the 65th anniversary of protests by Bulgarian clergymen, intellectuals, politicians and others.
In 1943, the pro-fascist government of Germany's ally, Bulgaria, signed a secret agreement with the Nazis to
Source: http://www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk
Mar 10, 2008
AN "EXCEPTIONAL" ancient Roman site has been discovered in woodland near Peterborough.
Despite numerous digs and excavations across the region over the past two centuries, the huge site, hidden deep in woods at Bedford Purlieus, had miraculously gone unnoticed.
Early work has only scratched the surface of the Roman remains, but indications have left experts stunned by how well preserved the remains, of what appears to be a building of some importance, are.
Source: Times (UK)
Mar 10, 2008
Evidence of pagan rituals involving swans and other birds in the Cornish countryside in the 17th century has been uncovered by archaeologists.
Since 2003, 35 pits at the site in a valley near Truro have been excavated containing swan pelts, dead magpies, unhatched eggs, quartz pebbles, human hair, fingernails and part of an iron cauldron.
The finds have been dated to the 1640s, a period of turmoil in England when Cromwellian Puritans destroyed any links to pre-Christian
Source: http://www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk
Mar 10, 2008
PUB landlord Billy Nettleton was astonished after a 700-year-old grave cover was discovered in his village pub - thanks to the smoking ban.
He knew nothing about the carved stone relic that had been built into an internal passage wall.
But one of his regulars, archaeologist Percival Turnbull, spotted it low in the wall as he stood outside puffing his pipe, because he can no longer smoke in the bar of the Blacksmiths Arms in Mickleton, County Durham.
Though
Source: NYT
Mar 10, 2008
SCRANTON, Pa. — She is about 3 1/2 years old, a prim little blonde in a light dress, road-testing her white anklets and Mary Janes. Her mother, slim and stylish in a 1940s fitted suit, hat and strapped white heels, clutches her hand and guides her down some outdoor steps.
Then the daughter breaks free and rushes exuberantly toward the camera, an uninhibited assertion by little Hillary Rodham that she is ready for her close-up.
The scene unspools in a grainy black-and-wh
Source: UVA Today
Mar 10, 2008
There's good news for historians and other enthusiasts of the founding era of American history. The Papers of George Washington, housed at the University of Virginia, has released another volume of annotated Washington documents from the Revolutionary War period. The Washington books are published and available through the University of Virginia Press.
Volume 17 of the Revolutionary War Series project on Washington covers the period from Sept. 15 through Oct. 31, 1778, a time when W
Source: AP
Mar 10, 2008
Greek workers discovered around 1,000 graves, some filled with ancient treasures, while excavating for a subway system in the historic city of Thessaloniki, the state archaeological authority said Monday.
Some of the graves, which dated from the first century B.C. to the 5th century A.D., contained jewelry, coins and various pieces of art, the Greek archaeological service said in a statement.
Thessaloniki was founded around 315 B.C. and flourished during the Roman and B
Source: International Herald Tribune
Mar 10, 2008
The construction of what is sometimes called the "Death Railway" linking Thailand with colonial Burma in the 1940s became a symbol of the cruelty inflicted by Japanese troops as they sought to conquer the lands of East Asia and beyond. Yet the largest group of victims, an estimated 70,000 Asian laborers, are barely commemorated here in Kanchanaburi and their remains lie for the most part where the Japanese dumped them: scattered up and down the railway line that is still partially in u
Source: Reuters
Mar 10, 2008
The wreck of a British warship sunk by the Germans during World War Two, killing more than 100 men, has been discovered on the bottom of a deep fjord in the north of Norway, the Norwegian Navy said.
HMS Hunter went down on April 10, 1940, in the Ofot fjord outside of the Arctic port of Narvik during the first of two battles between the British and the Nazis, during which several other ships were sunk and never seen again in the deep inlet.
Source: McClatchy Newspapers
Mar 10, 2008
An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein's regime had any operational links with Osama bin Laden's al Qaida terrorist network.
The Pentagon-sponsored study, scheduled for release later this week, did confirm that Saddam's regime provided some support to other terrorist groups, particularly in the Middle East, U.S. officials told McClatchy. However, his security services were d
Source: Times (UK)
Mar 10, 2008
Drug pushers, the obscenely rich, environmental polluters and “manipulative” genetic scientists beware – you may be in danger of losing your mortal soul unless you repent.
After 1,500 years the Vatican has brought the seven deadly sins up to date by adding seven new ones for the age of globalisation. The list, published yesterday in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, came as the Pope deplored the “decreasing sense of sin” in today’s “securalised world” and the falling numb
Source: Press Release--Montpelier
Mar 10, 2008
The $24 million restoration of James Madison’s Montpelier will be a featured segment on the "CBS Sunday Morning Show." The show will air on Madison’s birthday Sunday, March 16.
Correspondent Rita Braver and the CBS production crew spent two days delving into the life of James Madison at Montpelier, and his eminent role in shaping our nation’s history as “Father of the Constitution.”
Montpelier is the lifelong home of Madison, the nation’s fourth president. T
