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: Jerusalem Post
Mar 8, 2007
A section of the ancient walls of Masada, one of the country's most poignant symbols of survival, is in danger of collapse as a result of a heavy downpour that drenched the desert site three years ago, the Israel Nature and National Parks Protection Authority said Thursday.
The fortress, built as a palace by Herod the Great, who was King of Judea from 37 to 4 BCE, is situated atop an isolated rock cliff at the western end of the Judean Desert overlooking the Dead Sea, and was the si
Source: Boston Globe
Mar 8, 2007
In Colonial Boston, Henry Knox's bookstore on Cornhill Street was a fashionable gathering place for British Army officers and members of the town's Tory elite.
Knox developed an interest in the science and tactics of artillery that he furthered by reading the books he imported from England and carried in his store.
That knowledge would shortly be turned against his customers in the military surprise that led to the events celebrated on Evacuation Day, March 17.
Source: AP
Mar 8, 2007
HARRISBURG, Pa. -- Thousands of American Indian and Western artifacts purchased by the city government will be sold at a four-day auction scheduled for October, officials said Thursday.
Mayor Stephen R. Reed spent about $8 million in nontax city money to assemble the collection -— including Annie Oakley's coat, a card table from Wyatt Earp's saloon and the gun that killed Jesse James —- for an Old West museum he wanted to have built in Harrisburg. [WHP-TV reported the items are bei
Source: AP
Mar 8, 2007
America is once again struggling to atone for slavery and its aftermath.
In a nation with an unquenchable need to analyze its racial past, there is now a fresh flow of contrition from public officials for the many wrongs of U.S. history. ...
Why are public officials making amends now?
Because revelations about the past are pushing some people to think about race in America in new ways. Plus, echoes of racial bias remain all too obvious, and politicians ma
Source: NPR Morning Edition (with audio)
Mar 8, 2007
The Italian city of Pompeii is one of the best-known reminders of how deadly volcanoes can be. Mt. Vesuvius' eruption in 79 A.D. buried the city, entombing many of the dead in casts of hardened ash that remain today. Now, scientists say the destruction was even worse in an earlier incident -- a deadly day 4,000 years ago.
A group of scientists digging northwest of Vesuvius near Naples has found evidence that an enormous eruption during the Bronze Age covered the land almost 15 miles
Source: Bloomberg
Mar 8, 2007
The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles is forming a scholarly group to study the origin of a disputed ancient statue known as "Aphrodite" that the Italian Ministry of Culture has claimed.
The Getty, the world's richest art institution, said in November that it was willing to transfer ownership of the "Cult Statue of a Goddess" to Italy after the sculpture is examined for as long as a year. The museum said today in a statement that it invited a group of scientist
Source: AP
Mar 8, 2007
ATHENS -- If you have ever wandered around a dusty Greek archaeological site in midsummer, clueless about what you are seeing or where you are going, help is finally at hand. Greece's Culture Ministry on Thursday unveiled a hand-held gadget for visitors that offers high-resolution video, detailed diagrams of sites such as ancient temples, position indicators, and imagery along with stereo sound.
The battery-powered, touchscreen devices are about the size and weight of a personal ste
Source: AP
Mar 8, 2007
BUENOS AIRES -- A federal judge Thursday ordered former de facto president Reynaldo Bignone arrested in connection with human rights abuses stemming from Argentina's 1976-83 dictatorship, local media reported...
The Todo Noticias network and two local news agencies cited unidentified court officials as saying Bignone, 78, was to be held at a military base outside Buenos Aires ahead of a court appearance.
The Diarios y Noticias news agency, also citing an unidentified co
Source: Washington Times
Mar 8, 2007
Sen. Sam Brownback wants Congress to apologize to American Indians for the egregious federal actions committed against them, while a freshman House member wants the same courtesy extended to black Americans.
Mr. Brownback said he has introduced the legislation in the 108th and 109th Congresses, the bill being passed out of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs both times, but he has never been able to get the bill to the floor.
"The arguments against the bill are
Source: AP
Mar 8, 2007
NICOSIA, Cyprus -- Greek Cypriots early Friday demolished a wall along the boundary that splits Europe's last divided capital, Nicosia.
"Tonight, we demolished a checkpoint on our side," Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos said from Brussels. "Now we will see whether Turkey's troops will withdraw so that the passage will be opened or not."...
Earlier this year, Turkish Cypriots dismantled a footbridge in the area, angering Greek Cypriots and frustr
Source: AP
Mar 8, 2007
STRASBOURG, France -- They claim they were locked up in mental homes and denied education, the victims of a monstrous Nazi scheme and decades of public prejudice.
Now a group of Norwegian "war children", born as part of a German plan to create a genetically pure race, are taking their case to the European court of human rights, demanding compensation and recognition of their suffering from the government in Oslo.
Up to 12,000 children with a Norwegian mother a
Source: AFP
Mar 8, 2007
JERUSALEM -- German bishops were criticised for comparing the plight of Palestinians to that of Jews during the Second World War. The bishops accused Israel of racism and said that the occupied West Bank had similarities to the Warsaw ghetto. “It is infuriating,” Gregor Maria Hanke, the Bishop of Eichstätt, said during a visit to the region.
Avner Shalev, the director of the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, said that the comments showed a “woeful ignorance of history”. “These unwarran
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Mar 8, 2007
PALO ALTO, Calif. -- The city of Palo Alto has agreed to issue a demolition permit for the city's oldest home after losing a nine-year legal tussle.
Preservation groups and city officials had sought to maintain the 160-year-old Juana Briones House, built by one of California's early settlers, which is to be leveled and could make way for a luxury home.
After a trial court and appeals court both ruled that the city's heritage ordinance was unenforceable, Planning Directo
Source: Dallas Morning News
Mar 8, 2007
The faculty senate of Southern Methodist University split down the middle Wednesday on whether the campus should consider dissociating from a partisan institute that would be part of the George W. Bush Presidential Library.
The senate voted 13-13 on the resolution, which called on SMU to consider two options: reject any affiliation with the institute, to the point of not allowing it on campus; or make the institute nonpartisan and bring it under SMU's control. Three senators abstain
Source: AP
Mar 8, 2007
ATLANTA -- Black legislative leaders said Thursday they will propose that Georgia apologize for the state's role in slavery and segregation-era laws.
"It is time for Georgia, as one of the major stake-holders in slavery, as one of the major players in lynchings, to say it's sorry," said state Rep. Tyrone Brooks, a Democrat. "Sorry for the fact that it was involved in slave trade, sorry for the fact that it was involved in Jim Crow laws."
The measure
Source: NYT
Mar 8, 2007
SYDNEY, Australia, March 7 — Wu Hsiu-mei said she was 23 and working as a maid in a hotel in 1940 when her Taiwanese boss handed her over to Japanese officers. She and some 15 other women were sent to Guangdong Province in southern China to become sex slaves.
Inside a hotel there was a so-called comfort station, managed by a Taiwanese but serving only the Japanese military, Ms. Wu said. Forced to have sex with more than 20 Japanese a day for almost a year, she said, she had multiple
Source: Telegraph
Mar 8, 2007
The Pope tried to stop Bob Dylan playing for the late John Paul II because he feared the musician was a "prophet" whose beliefs were at odds with the Roman Catholic Church.
In a new book of memoirs about his predecessor, Pope Benedict recalls the events of the World Eucharist Congress at Bologna in 1997, a gathering of 300,000 young Catholic pilgrims who were to be exposed to the singer's iconoclastic songs and their "completely different" message.
P
Source: AP
Mar 8, 2007
WASHINGTON -- An eclectic collection of 25 recordings deemed among the most culturally important to the US were selected on Tuesday for preservation in a special sound archive, the National Recording Registry. Among recordings are: president Franklin D Roosevelt's December 8 1941 address to Congress to obtain a declaration of war against Japan the day after the Pearl Harbor attack; the Rolling Stones' most famous songs -- (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction; and Paul Simon's Graceland. Each year the L
Source: New York Times
Mar 8, 2007
In December 1989, one month after the fall of the Berlin Wall, President George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev met in Malta and, in the words of a Soviet spokesman, “buried the cold war at the bottom of the Mediterranean.”
The Russian transcript of that momentous summit was published in Moscow in 1993. Fourteen years later American historians are still waiting for their own government to release a transcript.
Now lawmakers and scholars are hoping to pry open the gatew
Source: Los Angeles Times
Mar 8, 2007
SARK, Channel Islands — Here, on an island that might be called Camelot, the winds of democracy have blown in like the waft from a landfill.
This 3-mile-long stretch of granite crags, flowered meadows, neat cottages and well-behaved Guernsey cows 80 miles off Britain's coast in the English Channel is the last feudal outpost in Europe...
Sark has remained pretty much the same for 442 years, since Queen Elizabeth I declared it a noble fiefdom...
Landownershi
