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: Mary K. Miller, Smithsonian Magazine
Mar 1, 2007
A thin beam of X-rays scans the writings of the legendary Greek scientist and mathematician Archimedes, a hidden text that may be the most important ancient scientific document discovered since the Renaissance. As faint lines emerge on a large computer monitor at Stanford's Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, I can just barely make out the ghostly image of the Greek letter lambda.
As a Webcast producer for the Exploratorium science museum in San Francisco, I have been documenting this experi
Source: Press Release -- ABFFE
Mar 1, 2007
The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) and the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC) today condemned the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan for asking the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate a complaint that books used in the public schools of Howell, Michigan, are obscene. The complaint was filed by a woman who was unsuccessful in persuading the Howell Board of Education to remove several books that she dislikes, including Toni Morriso
Source: Mother Jones
Mar 1, 2007
... Through Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era, black landowners tended to stay away from the courts and rarely put their wills through the legal system; without those official filings, title dispersed over time among all of an original owner's descendants. Fractured ownership isn't generally a problem unless the land becomes valuable—at which point someone typically discovers a provision in the law allowing any heir to file suit for his cut at any time. An auction is a common result, and devel
Source: AP
Mar 1, 2007
BUCHAREST, Romania -- The Romanian government said Thursday it would return a castle and other confiscated property to former King Michael.
Peles castle was built in the mountain resort of Sinaia in the late 19th century by Romania's first German-born king, Carol of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. It was confiscated by the former Communist regime after Michael abdicated in 1947. The nearby Pelisor and Foisor palaces also will be returned.
Michael, 85, hailed the return of his castle, a pla
Source: Independent
Mar 1, 2007
Two centuries after William Wilberforce's campaign to abolish the slave trade was won, two of his descendants yesterday began a journey from his hometown to ask for "forgiveness".
The abolitionist's great-great-great-grandson, also called William Wilberforce, was among a team of modern-day anti-slavery campaigners dressed in yokes and chains who embarked on the 250-mile walk, beginning in Hull and finishing in London, together with his great-great-great-granddaughter, Lady
Source: Der Spiegel
Mar 1, 2007
There was no annually published Guinness Book of Records to keep track, but the ancient Greeks and Romans were crazy about setting and breaking records. Now two Swedish archaeologists have compiled a selection.
The Ancient Greeks and Romans liked to keep records of top achievements in sport, nature, anatomy and sex. Not long after the birth of Christ, when the most debauched phase of Roman history began, the wife of Emperor Claudius -- Messalina, 34 years his junior -- made a name
Source: International Herald Tribune
Mar 1, 2007
INCHEON, South Korea -- All was quiet in South Korea's non-bustling new Chinatown on a recent weekday. The lunch-time trickle was over, leaving the streets as deserted as they had been in the morning. The shiny new arches, the ubiquitous red lanterns, the towering "Welcome to Chinatown" sign, all magnified the neighborhood's inactivity.
Hoping to lure ever-increasing numbers of Chinese tourists and investors, the local government here in Incheon, just outside Seoul, transf
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
Mar 1, 2007
International relations scholars find a remarkable consensus on the most pressing foreign-policy issues of today, according to a survey of the discipline by four researchers at the College of William and Mary.
According to the study -- which was based on the responses of 1,112 international-relations professors -- experts across the ideological spectrum "agree far more on current policy and future threats than they disagree." That consensus is especially striking when it c
Source: AP
Mar 1, 2007
PITTSBURGH -- Local preservationists and lawmakers have worked for more than a dozen years to get an area of the city known for its steel history designated a national historic site. Many believe this could be the year it finally happens.
U.S. Sens. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Bob Casey, D-Pa., have introduced legislation in the Senate and Rep. Mike Doyle has introduced a companion bill in the House that would designate the Steel Heritage National Historic Site in Pittsburgh. The area
Source: by Brian Lowery, Variety
Mar 1, 2007
Although this provocative special features a few voices of skepticism, Discovery doesn't bother to qualify the title with, say, a question mark at the end, and why should it? Anything pertaining to Jesus -- in this case, the assertion that his family tomb was found in 1980 on the site of what now houses a Jerusalem apartment complex -- is going to stir up a response, and one suspects that's precisely what the channel wanted. As for the merits of the show itself (which bears director James Camero
Source: AP
Mar 1, 2007
BOSTON -- The USS John F. Kennedy returned to the 35th president's home state Thursday for the last time before it goes out of service later this month.
"Big John," as the aircraft carrier is called, will stay in Boston for five days before heading to Mayport, Fla., for decommissioning. It will be maintained on inactive status in Philadelphia.
About 500 people braved a chill to watch the Kennedy cruise into Boston Harbor with sailors lining its deck. Fireboats
Source: AP
Mar 1, 2007
BUDAPEST -- A court said Thursday the 1944 conviction and sentencing of a former Hungarian armed police captain for crimes committed during World War II cannot be enforced.
Sandor Kepiro, 93, was convicted but never punished for his role in killings committed by Hungarian forces in Novi Sad, Serbia, during the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia in World War II, according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center...
The Budapest Municipal Court issued a statement saying the 1944 ruling
Source: NYT
Mar 1, 2007
Japan's nationalist prime minister denied Thursday that the country's military forced women into sexual slavery during World War II, casting doubt on a past government apology and jeopardizing a fragile detente with his Asian neighbors.The comments by Shinzo Abe, a member of a group of lawmakers pushing to roll back a 1993 apology to the sex slaves, were his clearest statement as prime minister on military brothels known in Japan as ''comfort stations.''
Histori
Source: Space.com
Mar 1, 2007
The oldest solar observatory in the Americas has been discovered in coastal Peru, archeologists announced today.
The 2,300-year-old ceremonial complex featured the Towers of Chankillo, 13 towers running north to south along a low ridge and spread across 980 feet (300 meters) to form a toothed horizon that was used for solar observations. [See aerial photo
here.]
Researchers excavated the solar observatory be
Source: Guardian
Mar 1, 2007
A previously unpublished letter by Richard Wagner to a firm of Milanese couturiers offers the intriguing possibility that the great composer was, in fact, a cross-dresser.
The letter is published for the first time today in the inaugural edition of the Wagner Journal. In it, the composer of the Ring des Nibelungen details the cut of an outfit, ostensibly intended for his wife, Cosima.
Requesting "something graceful for evenings at home" he continues: "The
Source: Telegraph
Mar 1, 2007
Italy is bracing itself for an unseemly court battle over who has the right to call himself the head of the country's royal family.
While the titles and honours of the Italian royal family have not legally been recognised since 1946, when the republic was founded, Prince Victor Emmanuel, 70, has ruled over the House of Savoy since the death of his father, Umberto II, in 1983. [See
Savoy family tree.
Source: Telegraph
Mar 1, 2007
Russian spy maps of the UK produced by the KGB during the Cold War have been released for the first time.
They were produced by the Russian military between 1950 and 1997 as part of a worldwide strategy for global domination.
The maps feature details not present on Ordnance Survey maps because of political and military sensitivities at the time.
Using aerial photos, satellite images, local knowledge and even spies to compile their maps, the Russians mapped
Source: Times (of London)
Mar 1, 2007
TOKYO -- To one furious Japanese politician it is “a matter of national pride and honour”. Another urged an “information war against the rest of the world”. Other MPs in Tokyo described an “atmosphere of crisis” between Japan and China.
It is not the usual kind of dispute over underwater oil-fields or military spending, but a battle over a series of forthcoming films about an atrocity a lifetime ago.
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the notorious Rape of Nanking,
Source: http://www.lasvegasnow.com
Mar 1, 2007
One of the valley's most important cultural sites is under assault by unknown vandals. The place is known as Little Red Rocks and it's home to petroglyphs that date back thousands of years.
Unlike most cultural sites, this one is on private property. The owner has spent a bundle to protect the area but nothing seems to work. Now a new partnership has been formed that is designed to protect what's left.
"At one point we put boulders across Charleston, I mean big bou
Source: Korea Times
Mar 1, 2007
President Roh Moo-hyun has urged Japan to respect historical truth and be more sincere about addressing pending bilateral issues, including Japanese leaders' repeated visits to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japanese war criminals.
In a speech marking the 88th anniversary of the March 1 Independence Movement, the South Korean president said Japan should abstain from glorifying or justifying its colonial history and respect globally-accepted principles of conscientio
