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)
Jan 15, 2008
The identity of the Mona Lisa may have been solved after German researchers claimed to have put a name to her face.
The debate over the name of Leonardo da Vinci's famous subject has raged for centuries and is one of the art world's greatest riddles.
Some suggested the master artist had amalgamated a variety of subjects to create his ideal woman, used his mother for a model, or even posed himself.
However, academics at Heidelberg University say scribbled
Source: Independent (South Africa)
Jan 15, 2008
French car-maker Citroen has apologised to China for running a full-page advertisement in several Spanish newspapers featuring a poster of late Chinese leader Mao Zedong pulling a wry face at a sporty hatch-back.Under the Biblical quotation "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's", the text talked up Citroen's position as a car sales leader in a bombastic tone.
"It's true, we are leaders, but at Citroen the revolution never stops,&
Source: Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel
Jan 15, 2008
A Republican congressman, who has spent the better part of the past two years on a mission to ensure Jesus Christ has a place in all aspects of federal government, has introduced a resolution to designate a week every year to honor the nation's "rich spiritual, and religious history."House Resolution 888, sponsored by Congressman Randy Forbes (R-Virginia), is currently before a House committee and has 31 co-sponsors. It purports to be free from singling out a speci
Source: Bloomberg News
Jan 15, 2008
Political realists may find it reductive or even absurd to paint the failure of a U.S. presidency as the consequence of a son's unresolved relationship with his father.
Yet the approach was good enough for William Shakespeare, as Jacob Weisberg argues in "The Bush Tragedy,'' an unexpectedly compelling piece of armchair psychoanalysis.
"The term 'competition' doesn't begin to do justice to the Oedipal complexities of this particular relationship,'' Weisberg wr
Source: Deutsche Welle
Jan 15, 2008
Dutch families whose relatives were put to death during the Nazi occupation reclaimed the victims' personal effects from Red Cross archives on Monday, Jan. 15.The personal effects have been locked up in Red Cross archives in Bad Arolsen, in central Germany, for decades.
Viewing the items evokes ghosts from the past, said Gerrit Jan Evers, who learned just a few weeks ago that the effects had been discovered.
"So many died. And now, 63 y
Source: Reuters
Jan 15, 2008
Plague, the disease that devastated medieval Europe, is re-emerging worldwide and poses a growing but overlooked threat, researchers warned on Tuesday.
While it has only killed some 100 to 200 people annually over the past 20 years, plague has appeared in new countries in recent decades and is now shifting into Africa, Michael Begon, an ecologist at the University of Liverpool and colleagues said.
A bacterium known as Yersinia pestis causes bubonic plague, known in med
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 14, 2008
The Prince of Wales, who is 60 today, is planning a symbolic change when he becomes King by taking the title Defender of Faith to reflect Britain's multicultural society.
The move would mean the monarch, as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, would no longer be known as Defender of the Faith for the first time since the reign of Henry VIII.
The Prince caused controversy within the Anglican church when he floated the idea several years ago of becoming Defender of
Source: BBC
Jan 14, 2008
A German U-boat sunk off Scotland's coast more than 90 years ago has been discovered by two divers.
Jim MacLeod, of Bo'ness, and Martin Sinclair, from Falkirk, found the wreckage of the U12 about 25 miles from Eyemouth at the weekend.
They had been looking for the 60-metre U-boat for the past five years.
Source: NYT
Jan 14, 2008
Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton have repeatedly invoked the name of Senator Chuck Hagel, a longtime critic of the Iraq war, as they defend Mrs. Clinton’s 2002 vote to authorize the war.
In interviews and at a recent campaign event, they have said that Mr. Hagel, Republican of Nebraska, helped draft the resolution, which they said was proof that the measure was more about urging Saddam Hussein to comply with weapons inspections, instead of authorizing combat.
Mrs. Clinto
Source: Spiegel Online
Jan 14, 2008
Reminders of the prehistoric past keep surfacing in a rich dinosaur graveyard in southern England. What a girl named Mary Anning found there in the 1800s began to dismantle the Bible's account of creation -- and anticipated the theory of evolution....
Tens of thousands of tourists come to Charmouth each year to hunt for the remains of prehistoric fauna. Freelance biologist Colin Dawes guides hundreds of amateur paleontologists through the bizarre fossil graveyard every week. Under h
Source: International Herald Tribune
Jan 14, 2008
GÖTTINGEN, Germany: The future of indigenous American studies in this historic German university town now lies partly in the hands of a 56-year-old Australian named Gordon Whittaker.
Whittaker is one of the last professors in Germany who cultivates the dying languages of native peoples in North and South America. At the University of Göttingen, where he has been a professor since 1990, he looks likely to witness the end of such work there.
This year, the university deci
Source: David Plotz at Slate
Jan 14, 2008
An American-born Israeli in his early 50s, Ian [Stern] operates Dig for a Day, probably the biggest archaeology outreach program in the world. Every year, Stern's dig here at Maresha is visited by 30,000 to 50,000 tourists—most of them American Jews. They do spadework for Stern's academic research, get a hands-on crash course in archaeology, and experience their own history by digging in the dirt.
The Bible and archaeology are almost comically obtrusive in Israel. It's a tiny, dense
Source: Catholic World News
Jan 14, 2008
An organization devoted to inter-religious understanding has uncovered a large amount evidence to rebut the charge that Pope Pius XII was indifferent to Jewish suffering during the Holocaust.
The Pave the Way Foundation has announced discovery of a large quantity of evidence showing that Pope Pius XII actually worked to save the lives of Jews. Gary Krupp, the group's president, says that most of this evidence is already "available publicly but simply not known."
Source: HealthDay
Jan 14, 2008
A new analysis of the genetics of syphilis provides support for the theory that the disease hitched a ride with Christopher Columbus from the New World back to the Old World.
But in a new wrinkle, the research suggests the disease may not have been transmitted through sex until it adapted to the environment in Europe.
"It evolved this whole new transmission mode, and it didn't take very many genetic changes," said study lead author Kristin Harper, a graduate
Source: http://www.independent.ie
Jan 14, 2008
A "hugely important'' medieval artefact was within minutes of being accidentally dumped before it was retrieved from builders' rubble.
The stone carved bishop's head -- believed to date from the 15th century -- was rescued by amateur historian Seamus Lynch from the rear of a premises being renovated in Athenry, Co Galway.
The head -- thought to have been used to adorn a nearby Dominican Abbey -- had lain undiscovered, set into a wall behind an old sweet shop in Ath
Source: BBC
Jan 14, 2008
Britain's own underwater "Atlantis" could be revealed for the first time with high-tech underwater cameras.
Marine archaeologist Stuart Bacon and Professor David Sear, of the University of Southampton, will explore the lost city of Dunwich, off the Suffolk coast.
Dunwich gradually disappeared into the sea because of coastal erosion.
"It's about the application of new technology to investigate Britain's Atlantis, then to give this information
Source: WaPo
Jan 14, 2008
There is a natural tendency to look to history as a guide to the future, but in the 2008 presidential campaign, that is of limited help. After the first two contests on the nominating calendar, neither the Democratic nor the Republican race clearly fits the pattern of past campaigns.
The Democratic race may come closer, at least at first glance. The battle between Clinton and Obama evokes comparisons to a number of past nomination fights in which an establishment front-runner drew a
Source: WaPo
Jan 14, 2008
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton defended her recent remarks on civil rights Sunday, as Sen. Barack Obama weighed in on the controversy for the first time, describing Clinton's earlier comments about the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. as "unfortunate" and "ill-advised."
Obama had previously tried to sidestep direct engagement in the debate over race. But the recent controversy has touched a nerve with many African Americans, including some sympathetic to the Clinton
Source: Reuters
Jan 14, 2008
German academics believe they have solved the centuries-old mystery behind the identity of the "Mona Lisa" in Leonardo da Vinci's famous portrait.Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a wealthy Florentine merchant, Francesco del Giocondo, has long been seen as the most likely model for the sixteenth-century painting.
But art historians have often wondered whether the smiling woman may actually have been da Vinci's lover, his mother or the artist himself.
Source: NYT
Jan 14, 2008
After staying on the sidelines in the first year of the campaign, race and to a lesser extent gender have burst into the forefront of the Democratic presidential contest, thrusting Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton into the middle of a sharp-edged social and political debate that transcends their candidacies.
In a tense day of exchanges by the candidates and their supporters, Mrs. Clinton suggested on Sunday that Mr. Obama’s campaign, in an effort to inject race into
