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
Mar 14, 2007
A Hollywood film depicting a battle between the Persian empire and a Greek army was denounced by Iran yesterday as "hostile" and an example of "cultural and psychological warfare".
The film, 300, about the battle of Thermopylae in 480BC, has made about $70 million in America in its first three days of release. It was attacked for its depiction of Persians as ruthless but dumb imperialists, who were repeatedly outsmarted by a smaller "western" force. The
Source: Washington Post
Mar 14, 2007
Rufina Amaya, the woman who was often identified as the last, or only, survivor of the massacre at the village of El Mozote, died last week. She was not, strictly speaking, the only survivor of that monstrous event, but she appears to have been the only one who emerged with her wits about her, a clear memory of what took place, and the will to describe how hundreds of people, including her husband and four of her children, were systematically butchered on Dec. 11, 1981, in an impoverished corner
Source: IRNA (Islamic Republic News Agency)
Mar 13, 2007
TEHRAN -- Government spokesman, Gholam-Hossein Elham said Tuesday that the movie called `300' insults the culture of world countries.
The statement was made in response to the question raised about the anti-Iran movie dubbed `300'.
The government spokesman referred to the movie as part of the extensive cultural aggression aiming to degenerate cultures of world states.
Elham noted that the Iranian nation and those involved in cultural activities will respond
Source: AFP
Mar 13, 2007
DERBY, South Africa -- Amid the majestic beauty of South Africa's Magaliesberg mountain range, veterans of the battle against whites-only rule are trying to banish demons that still haunt them.
Matlapeng lodge, the setting for an 'eco-therapy' session involving around a dozen ex-combattants, translates from Xhosa as the "Place of Stone", but tears flow freely and deep-seated fears are revealed by the former warriors.
"It's a cleansing process. You'll all
Source: NYT
Mar 13, 2007
Archaeologists have applied more polish to the long-tarnished reputation of the Philistines.
In recent years, excavations in Israel established that the Philistines had fine pottery, handsome architecture and cosmopolitan tastes. If anything, they were more refined than the shepherds and farmers in the nearby hills, the Israelites, who slandered them in biblical chapter and verse and rendered their name a synonym for boorish, uncultured people.
Archaeologists have now f
Source: Press Release--Gilder Lehrman
Mar 13, 2007
Students at four Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) will have the opportunity to improve their academic performance and college preparedness through a unique academic enrichment program based on American history. Funded by a $975,000, five-year grant from the Cargill Foundation, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History program aims to accelerate learning for participating students.
According to the executive director of the Gilder Lehrman Institute, the program lev
Source: Report by Mary Kay Magistad, The World (PRI & BBC News)
Mar 13, 2007
China is on the rise. And that's fueled nationalistic pride at home. It's also fueled a new pastime among some young Chinese. They've taken to strolling in the park in Han Dynasty-style clothing. The Han Dynasty lasted from about 200 BC to 220 AD. Some romanticize it as a time of superior morals, values, and philosophy. They say China today would do well to learn from it...
On a blustery, cold and wet Sunday afternoon – a couple dozen people, most in their 20s and early 30s, gather
Source: UPI
Mar 13, 2007
BOLOGNA, Italy -- Italian researchers have determined blue-green algae, not smoke from oil well fires, caused discoloration of some Iranian archaeological treasures.
The scientists say black deposits soiling and discoloring monuments at some important Iranian archaeological sites did not result from smoke produced by oil well fires in Kuwait during the first Gulf War, as had been claimed.
Alessandra Bonazza and colleagues from Italy's National Research Council said Iran
Source: AP
Mar 13, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Plans for a casino just outside Gettysburg were shot down last year, but the site of the Civil War's bloodiest battle is threatened by spreading home construction, a preservation group says.
While Gettysburg's new nemesis is housing, a site in Alabama's Mobile Bay is suffering from neglect and a lack of state funding, and vast tracts of land stretching from Virginia to Pennsylvania are at risk from a planned major power line, the Civil War Preservation Trust said in it
Source: Toronto Globe and Mail
Mar 13, 2007
The Royal Canadian Legion is renewing calls for a boycott of the Canadian War Museum and is asking the Senate Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs to intervene in a dispute over a controversial panel of text about the devastation of the Allied bombing campaign in the Second World War.
"Basically we don't want people going to the War Museum. We find that the panel is insensitive," said Bob Butt, a Legion spokesman in Ottawa. "The people who were actually on the [bombing] m
Source: Guardian
Mar 13, 2007
MOSCOW -- Berlin lay in smouldering ruins. Hitler had been dead for four weeks. The Soviet Union was the undisputed master of eastern Europe. Working in great secrecy, some Red Army soldiers embarked on a delicate mission: to spirit back home unique cultural treasures belonging to the vanquished Germans.
In June 1945, three chests holding 1,538 gold and silver items were loaded on to a Moscow-bound plane. For more than half a century German experts had little clue as to whether the
Source: Los Angeles Times
Mar 13, 2007
WASHINGTON —- The house is so quiet you can hear the clocks tick, except on those weekends when the mothers come in from around the country. Then the clocks are drowned out by all the chatter as everyone takes turns in the kitchen...
This brick four-story home in the chic Dupont Circle neighborhood is the clubhouse for a sorority no woman wants to join: The only qualification for membership is to lose a child in military service.
For a while, it looked as though the Ame
Source: New York Times
Mar 13, 2007
LONDON -— Faced with the unpleasant prospect of actually having to run for office, members of the House of Lords declared Monday that their chamber had functioned pretty well without elections for hundreds of years and that there was no need to rush into anything now.
“It is, by definition, not elected,” said Lord Irvine of Lairg, speaking of the House of Lords, “but I do not accept the conclusion that it is illegitimate.”
He was taking part in one of the strangest deba
Source: Telegraph
Mar 13, 2007
BUENOS AIRES -- Britain forced Argentina to invade the Falkland Islands, the members of General Leopoldo Galtieri's family said yesterday in their first interview since the 1982 conflict.
The widow and children of Argentina's former military ruler claimed that the war was engineered by Britain to avoid negotiations that could have led to the loss of sovereignty over the islands.
Speaking to The Daily Telegraph in the Buenos Aires apartment where Galtieri lived with his
Source: Times (of London)
Mar 13, 2007
MADRID -- It is possibly the most famous literary feud of modern times: Gabriel García Márquez, the Nobel prize-winning author, and Mario Vargas Llosa, his fellow giant of Latin American literature, have refused to talk to each other for three decades.
Once great friends, the two writers have steadfastly refused to talk about the reasons behind their spectacular bust-up, and so have their wives.
Now two pictures have appeared in which a youthful García Márquez shows off
Source: Times (of London)
Mar 13, 2007
The curse of Tutankhamun is about to be visited on one of Britain’s most cursed buildings — the Millennium Dome. More than 130 treasures from the tomb of the Egyptian boy-king, including the gold crown that adorned his head, will go on display in the Dome from November, 35 years after many were last in the country.
The artefacts attracted a record 1.7 million visitors to the British Museum then, ushering in the age of the museum blockbuster, and organisers hope that the forthcoming exhibition
Source: BBC News
Mar 13, 2007
A new £20 note featuring a portrait of Scottish economist Adam Smith comes into circulation on Tuesday.
The note includes a range of enhanced security measures designed to prevent counterfeiting, such as a wider holographic strip and microlettering.
The new image of Smith will mark the first time a Scotsman has appeared on a Bank of England note.
[An image of Smith already appears on Scottish £50 notes.]
Current £20 notes, featuring English composer Edward Elgar, will be phas
Source: Times (of London)
Mar 13, 2007
SYDNEY -- A long-dead Englishman threatens to spoil lavish celebrations planned for Sunday, when Sydney celebrates the 75th anniversary of Australia’s greatest engineering achievement —- the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Final preparations are under way for a mass walk across the “Coathanger”, a fly-past and a sail-past by a flotilla of historic vessels. But an English engineering company has put forward strong evidence that the Australian long credited with designing the bridge, John Brad
Source: Telegraph
Mar 13, 2007
A child of eight who died 160,000 years ago in Morocco is today revealed to be the oldest human to grow up and develop in a modern way.
Genetic evidence suggests that between 200,000 and 160,000 years ago modern humans -- Homo sapiens -- evolved in east Africa and then spread over the world, displacing all other humans, such as the Neanderthals.
Today, Dr Tanya Smith tells of what she says are the remains of the oldest human, from a cave in Jebel Irhoud, 60 miles west o
Source: Telegraph
Mar 13, 2007
Exactly 250 years after Admiral John Byng was executed for failing to "do his utmost" to save Minorca for the British before the Seven Years' War, the prospect of a formal pardon may be at hand.
Descendants of the admiral have written to the Ministry of Defence to demand that their "wronged" ancestor receives the same treatment as the 306 First World War soldiers shot at dawn who were pardoned last year...
But the gesture was not extended to Viscount
