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: AP
Mar 17, 2007
KABUL, Afghanistan -- More than 1,400 artifacts -- protected from looters and the Taliban since 1999 at a museum-in-exile in Switzerland -- were returned to the National Museum of Afghanistan on Saturday.
The collection, which includes a piece from a foundation stone that was "touched by Alexander the Great" and several items thousands of years old, was assembled in Switzerland by Afghans who wanted to save their cultural heritage after decades of war.
The old
Source: International Herald Tribune
Mar 17, 2007
SANJIAZI, China -- Seated cross-legged in her farmhouse on the kang, a brick sleeping platform warmed by a fire below, Meng Shujing lifted her chin and sang a lullaby in Manchu, softly but clearly...
Meng is one of 18 residents of this isolated village in northeastern China, all older than 80, who, according to Chinese linguists and historians, are the last native speakers of Manchu.
Descendants of seminomadic tribesmen who conquered China in the 17th century, they are
Source: AP
Mar 17, 2007
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- A Confederate flag hanging from a noose on a 13-foot (4-meter) gallows will remain on display despite protests from the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who call it an affront to Southern heritage.
"The Proper Way to Hang a Confederate Flag" by black artist John Sims is "offensive, objectionable and tasteless," Robert Hurst, commander of the local camp of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, said Friday.
But the Mary Brogan Museum of A
Source: Belfast (Ireland) Telegraph
Mar 17, 2007
The group lobbying for the re-routing out of the M3 motorway is hitting out at the removal of a series of ancient underground buildings from the site in the past week.
A team of archaeologists removed the souterrains this week, which date back to the early Christian era. ['Souterrain is a name given by archaeologists to a type of underground structure associated with the Atlantic Iron Age. Regional names include fogous and Pictish houses and they appear to have been brought northwa
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
Mar 17, 2007
For four decades there have been rumours that Marilyn Monroe's death was not a simple suicide. Now a Los Angeles-based Australian writer and director, Philippe Mora, has uncovered an FBI document that throws up a chilling new scenario.
Bobby Kennedy's affair with the screen idol Marilyn Monroe has been documented, but a secret FBI file suggests the late US attorney-general was aware of -- and perhaps even a participant in -- a plan"to induce" her suicide.
The detailed three-page repo
Source: Reuters
Mar 17, 2007
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- The trials of surviving Khmer Rouge leaders moved a big step closer on Friday as international and Cambodian judges said they had finally agreed on the rules of the tribunal.
"The review committee discussed in exhaustive detail many points and resolved all remaining disagreements, although some fine tuning remains to be done," they said in a statement at the end of 10 days of talks.
Disagreements which had held up the start of the tribu
Source: Washington Post
Mar 17, 2007
Poetic justice is not so easily meted out, as a distinguished gaggle of lawyers and psychiatrists found out when gathered on Thursday night to consider the sanity of Hamlet.
After two hours of mock-trial arguments at the Kennedy Center -- presided over by no less a jurist than Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy -- a jury of Washingtonians deliberated over whether Hamlet was in his right mind when he stabbed Polonius to death. In elegant tribute to Shakespeare's enigmatic maste
Source: Washington Post
Mar 17, 2007
The Maryland Senate agreed to express "profound regret" for the state's role in the slave trade with unanimous approval of a resolution that acknowledges the responsibility the state had in maintaining "the institution of slavery and its attendant evils."...
The Maryland resolution, which appears likely to win approval in the House as well, says slavery "fostered a climate of oppression" not just for slaves and their descendants but for other people of
Source: Los Angeles Times
Mar 17, 2007
An ancient Indian sculpture quietly consigned for sale in a New York gallery by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will be returned to the museum, LACMA Director Michael Govan said, as the museum reconsiders policies on the perpetually controversial issue of such "de-accessions."
"I'm very conservative on de-accessioning," Govan said in a telephone interview Thursday. "LACMA's existing policies are standard. You may see those policies change in the future
Source: Times (of London)
Mar 17, 2007
Musicians have always sought to replicate the divine sounds that Frédéric Chopin made on the piano at the height of his powers. Now they have a chance to do exactly that, after the discovery of the composer’s own grand piano, which he brought to England in 1848 for the last great concert tour of his life.
Chopin’s French-made piano disappeared into obscurity after his death, but more than 150 years later it has been tracked down to an English country house.
Two decades
Source: Discovery News
Mar 16, 2007
Either the ancient Greeks loved grape juice, or they were making wine nearly 6,500 years ago, according to a new study that describes what could be the world’s earliest evidence of crushed grapes.
If the charred 2,460 grape seeds and 300 empty grape skins were used to make wine, as the researchers suspect, the remains might have belonged to the second oldest known grape wine in the world, edged out only by a residue-covered Iranian wine jug dating to the sixth millennium B.C.
Source: National Geographic News
Mar 16, 2007
Gruesome evidence found in ancient burial chambers reveals a period of violence and instability in Stone Age Britain, according to archaeologists.
Signs of bloody massacres and fractured societies are emerging from research that used new dating techniques to age prehistoric skeletons and burial sites in southern England.
Source: BBC
Mar 16, 2007
Almost two-thirds of people celebrating St Patrick's Day have no idea who the priest was, a survey claims.
Guinness sales rise dramatically every year on 17 March as people across the world mark the event.
But its true meaning has been forgotten - or never learnt - by many, according to the Manchester Irish Festival.
Organisers quizzed 2,000 people taking part in its festival parade but only 40% knew of the Christian missionary, who is the patron saint of Ireland
Source: Discovery News
Mar 16, 2007
Either the ancient Greeks loved grape juice, or they were making wine nearly 6,500 years ago, according to a new study that describes what could be the world’s earliest evidence of crushed grapes.
If the charred 2,460 grape seeds and 300 empty grape skins were used to make wine, as the researchers suspect, the remains might have belonged to the second oldest known grape wine in the world, edged out only by a residue-covered Iranian wine jug dating to the sixth millennium B.C.
Source: Independent
Mar 16, 2007
This week, a 97-year-old Polish woman was finally honoured for saving thousands of Jewish children from extermination in Nazi death camps. Claire Soares tells her extraordinary tale.
Behind the doors of a Polish nursing home sits a woman who might be described as the female Oskar Schindler. She didn't have his industrial machinery or his financial might, but the one-time health worker rescued twice as many Jews from the horrors of the Holocaust. Nearly 2,500 children were sav
Source: Reuters
Mar 16, 2007
TOKYO -- A diplomatic furore over Japan's wartime brothels looked unlikely to fade after Tokyo said on Friday a 14-year-old study had found no evidence the government or military officials had kidnapped women to act as prostitutes.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's latest statement -- which was issued in response to an opposition lawmaker's query and which also reiterated that Japan stood by a 1993 apology -- came as the U.S. ambassador to Japan said he believed the women were forced to a
Source: National Geographic News
Mar 16, 2007
Gruesome evidence found in ancient burial chambers reveals a period of violence and instability in Stone Age Britain, according to archaeologists.
Signs of bloody massacres and fractured societies are emerging from research that used new dating techniques to age prehistoric skeletons and burial sites in southern England.
The sites include Wayland's Smithy in Oxfordshire, where the remains of 14 people show evidence of an ancient massacre, according to a team led by the
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Mar 16, 2007
Scholars differ on much about the life of St. Patrick, but they tend to agree that his mission of walking the Emerald Isle to spread the gospel of Christ fits squarely into the 5th century A.D.
But now comes a challenge from a Patrick sleuth at UC Berkeley, Daniel Melia, a professor of rhetoric and Celtic studies -- and incidentally a former "Jeopardy" champion who won a quarter of a million dollars and a silver Corvette he still drives.
Melia has studied ling
Source: AP
Mar 16, 2007
ATLANTA -- Georgia's top Republican state senator said Friday he expects that the state will follow Virginia's lead and apologize for its role in slavery.
State Senate President Pro Tem Eric Johnson said he has been meeting with prominent black leaders in Georgia to craft a strategy and believed something could pass before the legislative session concludes in mid-April...
Johnson has been meeting with [state Rep. Al] Williams, D-Midway, Rep. Tyrone Brooks, D-Atlanta and
Source: NYT
Mar 16, 2007
Frustrated by their own government’s timidity but encouraged by recent court rulings in Argentina and Chile, Brazilian human rights groups are seeking to overturn an amnesty for human rights abuses that went into effect in 1979, when a right-wing military dictatorship ruled this nation.
A family of five jailed earlier in the 1970s has filed a civil action against Col. Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, who was then the commander of Center for Operations for Internal Defense here. A jud
