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: http://www.thanhniennews.com
Mar 5, 2008
An Australian veteran has givien VND1 million to a young girl from Dong Nai province who was badly injured when a wartime artillery shell exploded, killing her parents last week.
John Papadopoulos, who is on holiday in Vietnam, has promised to visit 13-year-old Truong Thi Nga again and do anything else she requested.
Papadopoulos read about her in Thanh Nien Daily last week and came to the newspaper’s office in Ho Chi Minh City to find the address of the hospital where Nga is
Source: AP
Mar 5, 2008
The FBI is investigating 26 unsolved civil-rights era cases out of nearly 100 referred to the bureau over the last year, according to Director Robert Mueller.
Mueller, who was set to testify Wednesday at an FBI oversight hearing before the Senate, also described the protection of civil liberties as one of his top priorities. Lawmakers were expected to press him about whether his agents violated the civil rights of U.S. citizens whose personal information was obtained secretly in ter
Source: http://www.eveningsun.com
Mar 5, 2008
The ghost-hunting summit that was expected to attract more than 500 paranormal investigators to Gettysburg in June has been canceled.
The Gettysburg National Military Park's policy against organized paranormal investigations on the battlefield is the main reason for the cancellation of the G4 Summit, organizer Kerry Eble-Keller said.
"It was just not what it could be," Eble-Keller said Tuesday.
Had things gone as planned, it would have been the fi
Source: http://www.mainelincolncountynews.com
Mar 5, 2008
The 19th Judicial Circuit Court of Virginia has ruled the holder of a 1776 Salem Massachusetts Bay broadside copy of the Declaration of Independence found in a Wiscasset home in 1995 can retain quiet title of the historic document.
The Feb. 22 decision ends an extensive search and subsequent legal battle the state of Maine initiated in 2004 on behalf of Wiscasset and its predecessor, Pownalborough, based on its claim that the document is an official town record of Wiscasset and shou
Source: AP
Mar 5, 2008
Road construction on the western Greek island of Lefkada has uncovered and partially destroyed an important tomb with artifacts dating back more than 3,000 years, officials said on Wednesday.
The find is a miniature version of the large, opulent tombs built by the rulers of Greece during the Mycenaean era, which ended around 1100 B.C. Although dozens have been found in the mainland and on Crete, the underground, beehive-shaped monuments are very rare in the western Ionian Sea island
Source: BBC
Mar 5, 2008
The Renaissance genius Galileo Galilei is once again at the centre of a row between Church and science more than 360 years after his death.
Italian researchers want to exhume his body for DNA tests to find the cause of the blindness that afflicted him.
They also want to confirm whether the body that shares his grave is that of Galileo's beloved daughter.
Galileo fell foul of the religious authorities of the day when he argued that the Earth revolved around
Source: BBC
Mar 5, 2008
Community groups in Lockerbie are planning a "low key" approach to the 20th anniversary of its air disaster.
A total of 270 people were killed when Pan Am flight 103 blew up above the Dumfries and Galloway town on 21 December 1988.
Local organisations said they hoped events would "remember the past" but also be "focused on the future".
Source: BBC
Mar 5, 2008
Children are growing up too fast, says a leading author. But hasn't society always worried that young people are experiencing adulthood too soon?
Fat, spoilt, feral and stupid. Who would be a child or teenager today? They even miss-time their coming-of-age, apparently.
"I think children act like adults at an alarmingly early age," said Dame Jacqueline Wilson, who has sold more than 30 million books. Her remarks came as a poll by her publisher suggested that more tha
Source: AP
Mar 5, 2008
Barely a year into the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln suggested buying slaves for $400 apiece under a "gradual emancipation" plan that would bring peace at less cost than several months of hostilities.
The proposal was outlined in one of 72 letters penned by Lincoln that ended up in the University of Rochester's archives. The correspondence was digitally scanned and posted online along with easier-to-read transcriptions.
Accompanying them are 215 letters
Source: AP
Mar 5, 2008
This 1888 photo released by the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston shows Helen Keller when she was eight years old, left, holding hands with her teacher, Anne Sullivan, during a summer vacation to Brewster, Mass., on Cape Cod. A staff member at the society discovered the photograph in a large photography collection recently donated to the society.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 5, 2008
The mystery of the pioneering British Army surgeon who successfully fooled Victorian society into thinking she was a man throughout her extraordinary life has finally been solved.
Historians have been kept guessing over claims Dr James Barry, Inspector General of Military Hospitals, was in fact a woman for more than 140 years.
Now previously unknown letters, highlighted in this week's New Scientist, have proved the diminutive physician who fought for better conditions
Source: BBC
Mar 5, 2008
The assembly commission is to meet again on Thursday to discuss a Sinn Féin plan to celebrate the life of IRA member Maireád Farrell at Stormont.
The cross-party body, which is charged with looking after the estate, has been asked to rule on the event, to mark International Women's Day.
A number of meetings on the issue have already been postponed this week.
Farrell was shot dead in Gibraltar in 1988 along with two other IRA members by the SAS.
Source: Jonathan Jones in the Guardian
Mar 5, 2008
In the misty, rainy morning, pairs of bright white lights keep appearing on the near horizon, and across the grass there is the unholy spectacle of a continuous flow of cars and trucks on the A303. Amazingly, this crowded road is soon going to get worse. In February, it was revealed that Tesco plans to build a gigantic warehouse near Andover, from which it is estimated a Tesco juggernaut will emerge every minute - many of them on to the A303.
The Tesco "MegaShed" is just t
Source: Fox News
Mar 5, 2008
An Israeli researcher suggests the biblical Israelites who followed Moses may have been inspired by substances closer to earth, according to a Reuters report.
Benny Shanon, a psychology professor at Jerusalem's Hebrew University, writes that the ancient Jews may have been high on a hallucinogenic plant when the prophet delivered the Ten Commandments down from Mount Sinai, Reuters reported.
The thunder, lightning and blaring of a trumpet recorded in the Book of Exodus co
Source: AP
Mar 5, 2008
A retired steelworker from Sharon [PA] who served as a Nazi concentration camp guard should not be deported because the State Department — rightly or wrongly — granted him a visa in 1956, his lawyer argued Monday.
Anton Geiser, 83, of Cedar Avenue, did not cite his Nazi ties on his visa application, but neither is he accused of lying about the matter. Geiser’s investigative file from the period is lost, so it is not clear whether the person who would have interviewed him for the vis
Source: http://media.www.collegian.com
Mar 5, 2008
Zev Kedem spent much of his childhood seeing sights.
He saw the horrors of Nazi concentration camps, the factory of Oskar Schindler and, eventually, the downfall of the Nazi regime.
Looking back over 60 years, Kedem, 73, is amazed that he came out alive.
"The most amazing thought is that the Holocaust overtook me when I was five," Kedem said in a telephone interview on Monday. "That's amazing for a child."
Kedem will speak a
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 5, 2008
One of Britain's most controversial politicians, the Rev Ian Paisley, has announced he is to quit as Northern Ireland's First Minister following concerns within his party over his close relationship with Sinn Fein.
Mr Paisley - previously one of the most outspoken critics of Irish republicanism - steered his Democratic Unionist Party from the fringes of Northern Irish politics to become the biggest party in a power-sharing executive last year with Martin McGuinness as his deputy.
Source: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk
Mar 4, 2008
Martin Luther King III was just 10 years old when his father was shot on the balcony outside room 306, at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, on 4 April, 1968. Now 50 years old, he remembers the day vividly.
"My siblings and I were watching the evening news at home in Atlanta and we heard 'Dr Martin Luther King Jr has been shot,'" says King III, who will lead a march tomorrow to that motel, now home to the National Civil Rights Museum.
"We ran to our mother's
Source: William Underwood in Japan Times
Mar 4, 2008
Historical issues involving Japan and South Korea have entered a new phase with the inauguration in Seoul last week of a conservative president and the return to South Korea last January of the remains of 101 Koreans who died while forcibly serving in the Japanese military during World War II.
President Lee Myung Bak has said he "does not want to tell Japan to apologize or engage in self-reflection," calling instead for future-oriented ties and a "mature relationship&
Source: AP
Mar 4, 2008
When beachcombers found two small cannons that likely came from the 1846 wreck of the Navy schooner Shark on the north Oregon coast, the state assumed it had some priceless artifacts. And for now, it does.
But the Navy reminded Oregon that if the cannons were Navy property back then, they’re Navy property now — 162 years notwithstanding.
There is no immediate sign the Navy will come get its guns, which are fairly rare. The shipwreck itself closed out a little-known chap
