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: Turkish Weekly (Ankara)
Mar 15, 2007
The Turkish Historical Society (TTK) reportedly wants to finance the opening up of the Tashnak Archives in Boston to Turkish historians.
The president of the TTK, Professor Yusuf Halaçoğlu, said that until now his organization has been denied access to the Tashnak Archives on the basis of claims that the documents "are not classified and categorized."...
The TTK has obtained access to documents pertaining to Ottoman Armenians in the archives of a num
Source: Guardian
Mar 15, 2007
The memorial in a Bedfordshire church bristles with outrage: "To the perpetual Disgrace of Public Justice," it claims of the man it commemorates, Admiral John Byng, executed on the quarterdeck of his ship 250 years ago yesterday for failing to engage the French in battle with sufficient enthusiasm.
He was, it adds, "a Martyr to Political Persecution...when Bravery and Loyalty were Insufficient Securities for the Life and Honour of a Naval Officer."
Source: Yahoo News
Mar 14, 2007
A heated debate over whether to excavate one of the 28 imperial tombs dotting the outskirts of China's ancient capital of Xian has resurfaced with a respected economist weighing in on the advantages to the nation of opening the royal grave."The cultural enlightenment from excavating the tomb of Qinshi Huang will surpass the pyramids of Egypt," Zhang Wuchang of Hong Kong University said in a recent article that has sparked the debate.
"Not starting
Source: Age (Australia)
Mar 14, 2007
Climate change was one of the key factors in the abandonment of Cambodia's ancient city of Angkor, Australian archaeologists said today.
The centuries-old city, home to more than 700,000 people and capital of the Khmer empire from about 900AD, was mysteriously abandoned about 500 years ago.
It has long been believed the Khmers deserted the city after a Thai army ransacked it, but University of Sydney archaeologists working the site say a water crisis was the real reason
Source: UPI
Mar 14, 2007
PARIS -- The United Nations wants Israel to stop work on access to Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem's Old City and consult with Muslim religious authorities.
The U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, said Wednesday while Israeli archaeological work for an access pathway in Jerusalem's Old City does not threaten the Al-Aqsa Mosque and complies with professional standards, an expert's report said it would like I excavations stopped for meetings on a final plan with the Mu
Source: UPI
Mar 14, 2007
TEL AVIV -- Fears that discussing the Armenian genocide would disrupt Israel's relations with Turkey led lawmakers to drop the issue Wednesday.
Voting 15 to 12, the Israeli legislature rejected a call by Knesset Member Haim Oron of the dovish opposition Meretz Party to discuss the massacre that next month will mark its 80th anniversary. Ottoman Turks have killed almost 1.5 million Armenians and deported more than 500,000 others then, Oron noted...
However Haaretz noted
Source: BBC News
Mar 14, 2007
Peers have rejected plans for a fully elected House of Lords -- setting them on a clear collision course with MPs.
Last week MPs voted in favour of 80% or all members of a reformed second chamber being elected in the future.
But a crowded House of Lords instead voted to keep a fully appointed house, voting down other options for reform.
Votes are not binding but the division between MPs and peers suggests any attempt to draw up a reform bill will meet month
Source: AFP
Mar 14, 2007
PARIS -- One of the star exhibits at the Louvre's egyptology wing, a collection of four jars said to have contained the embalmed organs of Egypt's greatest pharoah, Rameses II, have a sadly less glamorous vintage.
The beautiful turquoise-blue earthenware pots, emblazoned with Rameses' name in hieroglyphs and with incantions to the gods Mut and Amon, are genuine.
But the belief that they held Rameses' preserved innards to help ease the pharoah into the afterlife is false
Source: AP
Mar 14, 2007
ROME -- Five former members of Argentina's military were convicted Wednesday of murdering three Italians during the 1970s "dirty war" in the South American country.
A Rome court sentenced the men to life imprisonment, which is Italy's stiffest punishment. But all were tried in absentia, and it wasn't clear Argentina would hand them over...
Four are under arrest in Argentina and face prosecution by federal courts there in connection with deaths and disappearanc
Source: Turkish Daily News
Mar 14, 2007
ANKARA, Turkey -- Future commanders of the U.S. military have been touring the monumental Turkish War of Independence battle fields in order to learn about the war strategies of Turkey's founding father Mustafa Kemal Atatürk on the ground.
The group made up of 15 students from the U.S. Military Academy West Point and six from the U.S. Naval Academy was joined by four Turkish students from the Ankara Land Forces War Academy. Guided by a number of Turkish and American professors, they have a
Source: NYT
Mar 14, 2007
Why does Japan insist on whaling?...
Historically, fishermen in coastal towns, like Taiji in southwestern Japan, hunted whales in nearby waters. But things changed after the Commodore Perry’s so-called Black Ships forced an isolationist Japan to open up in the 1850s. Back then, the United States used whale oil lamps, and part of Perry’s mission to Japan was to secure the rights of American whalers in the Pacific.
As whaling became knotted with Japan’s traumatic opening to the wo
Source: Reuters
Mar 14, 2007
The headless body of a Ukrainian poet, night-time raids on railway depots and the theft of priceless works of art. The ingredients of a Cold War thriller?
No, they are the latest victims of a global crime spree targeting metal sculptures, copper cables and even playground slides, as thieves take advantage of soaring metals prices to make a fast buck...
Thefts of metal are not a new phenomenon. The lead roofs of English churches and monasteries were plundered by Henry VI
Source: Christian Science Monitor
Mar 14, 2007
MYSTIC, Conn. -- Inside a darkened room, oceanographer Robert Ballard stares at an array of flat-screen monitors. The monitor to his left shows a crew of scientists aboard the submarine support vessel Carolyn Chouest in the Gulf of Mexico. On a monitor to his right, a roomful of Rhode Island high school students are intently focused on something unseen. And directly ahead, a large plasma TV plays live footage of what's holding everyone's attention: the ocean floor some 115 miles off the Texas co
Source: IHT
Mar 14, 2007
Scribbled on diaries, loose pages or even toilet paper, they are the notes left behind by Jews swept away in the Holocaust, prisoners of war and interned civilians who struggled to survive in the concentration camps of World War II.Italian researchers hope thousands of nearly forgotten works will find new life as they assemble a library of music composed or played in those dark places between 1933 and 1945.
The library, set to open in September at Rome's Third U
Source: AP
Mar 14, 2007
WARSAW -- A 97-year-old woman credited with saving 2,500 Jewish children during the Holocaust was honored by parliament Wednesday at a ceremony during which Poland's president said she deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
Irena Sendler, who lives in a nursing home in Warsaw, was too frail to attend the special session in which members of the Senate unanimously approved a resolution honoring her and the Polish underground Council for Assisting Jews...
Sendler was cited for or
Source: IHT
Mar 14, 2007
A new law enters force in Poland on Thursday that requires up to 700,000 people in public positions in this country of 38 million — including journalists and teachers — to be screened for Soviet-era collaboration.The law is part of a push by Poland's president and prime minister, identical twins and former Solidarity activists Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, to purge from public life those who collaborated with the communist intelligence agencies — a reckoning largely avoided i
Source: AP
Mar 14, 2007
DENVER -- Mary and Ray Smith can't make heads or tails of a new presidential dollar coin they found last week [in two rolls they bought]. It doesn't have either. A week after the revelation that some of the coins slipped out of the U.S. Mint without"In God We Trust" stamped on the edge, the Smiths said Tuesday they found one with nothing stamped on either flat side.
It does have"In God We Trust" on the edge. What's missing is the image of George Washington on the front and the Stat
Source: AP
Mar 14, 2007
ANKARA, Turkey -- A prosecutor on Tuesday filed charges against a political science professor for allegedly insulting the legacy of the revered founder of modern Turkey.
Atilla Yayla's university has already suspended him amid allegations that he criticized Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, whose portrait hang in all government offices and his ideas are still the republic's most sacred principles 68 years after his death.
Prosecutor Ahmet Guven on Tuesday filed charges against Yay
Source: Christian Science Monitor
Mar 14, 2007
ATHENS -- The year was 1453. Ottoman troops under Sultan Mehmed II captured the Byzantine city of Constantinople –- present-day Istanbul –- and changed the region forever.
Ask a Greek student of history, and you'll likely hear of the event as the tragic fall of a great Christian city. Ask a Turk, and you'll probably hear of the glorious conquest for a rising Muslim empire.
In this still-fragile region, history is often served up as a nationalistic tale that highlights t
Source: Times (of London)
Mar 14, 2007
Only one of Henry VIII’s wives had no life portrait taken, and she is the most famous of them all, Anne Boleyn...
Now, 30 years after a [c. 1530] Holbein portrait in the Royal Collection was demoted to the status of an unknown lady from the court of Henry VIII, new research has reinstated it as a contemporary depiction of the king’s second wife... [Image online
here.]
Academics have now tra
