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: Press Association
Feb 9, 2007
Prime Minister Tony Blair has revealed that he does not keep a diary - but wishes he had.
The news will raise questions over the memoirs Mr Blair is expected to write after he leaves 10 Downing Street later this year.
Publishers are believed to be queuing up to get their hands on what will be one of the biggest political books of the decade, potentially earning millions of pounds for Mr Blair.
But they now know that he will not have the benefit of a detaile
Source: by Jackie Wullschlager, Financial Times-Deutschland
Feb 8, 2007
Is it possible, a century on, to unravel painting from myth?"Les demoiselles" belongs to a handful of works whose celebrity is blinding.
In the summer of 1906, Pablo Picasso retreated from Paris to a village in the Spanish Pyrenees. Had he died there, he would be remembered as a gifted symbolist, painter of pink and blue harlequins. But, says his biographer John Richardson,"there in the isolation of a mountain wilderness the artist, who sometimes chose to identify with Christ, decided that
Source: http://www.courant.com
Feb 8, 2007
After years of complaints, Yale University is taking down a painting of Elihu Yale that shows the wealthy merchant being waited on by a black man with a silver collar around his neck - an unmistakable symbol of bondage.
Elihu Yale apparently did not own slaves but critics over the years have objected to the painting's racist overtones and the significant place it is displayed at the university named for him. The portrait hangs over an ornate fireplace in the Corporation Room in Wood
Source: http://cbs2chicago.com
Feb 8, 2007
Illinois may not have the ancient Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Colossus of Rhodes or the Great Pyramid of Giza, Egypt.
But it does have the Garden of the Gods in the Shawnee National Forest the southern part of the state.
That is just one in a list of sites and attractions that have been nominated in a contest to choose the Seven Wonders of Illinois.
Anything from historic sites to cheesy tourist attractions can be nominated. ...
Source: http://www.middle-east-online.com
Feb 8, 2007
Morocco's capital Rabat is rebuilding its seafront and in so doing uncovering a vast treasure trove of relics, artefacts and ruins.
"We have made some fantastic discoveries not only for the history of Rabat but of the kingdom," said archaeologist and historian Mohammed Essemmar.
Essemmar, 43, heads the heritage department of the agency in charge of redeveloping the Bouregreg valley, a watercourse linking the twin cities of Rabat and Sale.
Source: AP
Feb 8, 2007
The capital city's ties to the Gold Rush are everywhere, from the historical old town where fortune-seekers arrived on the Sacramento River to Sutter's Fort, where costumed actors recreate the Wild West for schoolchildren.
It was at that fort, just two miles west of the state Capitol, that Swiss explorer Johann Sutter set it all in motion when he built his adobe trading post in 1839 on land that was then Mexican territory.
What remains of the fort is now a state histori
Source: Reuters
Feb 8, 2007
JERUSALEM -- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has spurned a call by his defense minister to consider halting excavations near Jerusalem's most sacred Islamic shrine that have angered Muslims, an official said on Thursday.
The dig, outside a compound housing the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosque, has exposed the depth of Arab suspicions over Israeli activities in Arab East Jerusalem and the simmering tensions between Olmert and Defense Minister Amir Peretz.
Arab stat
Source: AP
Feb 8, 2007
MOSCOW -- Vladimir Putin has been likened to czars and Communist Party chiefs, but a top aide came up with an unusual comparison Thursday for the Russian president: Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Speaking at a conference marking 125 years since Roosevelt's birth, Vladislav Surkov, the deputy chief of staff seen as the Kremlin's main ideologue, drew a parallel between one of America's most famous Democrats and a Russian leader who has been accused by Washington of backtracking on democracy..
Source: Reuters
Feb 8, 2007
WASHINGTON (-- Three women who were forced into sexual servitude by Japanese soldiers in World War Two will testify before a U.S. congressional committee next week, the author of a resolution calling on Tokyo to apologize for the practice said on Thursday.
Rep. Mike Honda, a California Democrat who introduced the nonbinding measure on February 1, told reporters he was confident the resolution would pass by the end of March...
Honda's resolution calls on the government o
Source: MSNBC
Feb 8, 2007
Charles Darwin could have saved himself from some of his first critics if he had remembered to include his preface in the first edition of his influential book on evolution and natural selection, "The Origin of Species."
A new study shows that Darwin was composing the introductory chapter to his book as early as 1856, even though that preface remained unpublished for six years until Origin's second edition. The findings suggest Darwin also wrote the chapter on his own acco
Source: Catholic News Service
Feb 8, 2007
Polish nuns withstood pressure from communist secret police better than male clergy, according to research by the country's women religious orders.Nuns who researched Interior Ministry files found that no more than 30 people associated with women religious had been recruited by secret police during the 1980s, when collaborators were most active, said Mother Jolanta Olech, a member of the Ursuline Sisters of the Sacred Heart of the Agonized Jesus and president of Poland's Con
Source: BBC
Feb 8, 2007
Thousands of men conscripted into the pits as miners during World War II are to be recognised for their contribution to the war effort.
Up to 50,000 young men became Bevin Boys, named after wartime minister Ernest Bevin, who devised the scheme to maintain the mining industry's output.
The Bevin Boys Association has long campaigned for its members' efforts to be recognition as war service.
Veterans Minister Derek Twigg agreed to badges being struck for the survivors.
Source: Rediff (India)
Feb 8, 2007
It's a 261-year-old tragedy.
On September 12, 1745, the Swedish ship East Indiaman Gotheborg almost reached the Gothenburg dock on Sweden's west coast after completing 30 months of her third voyage to China.
The ship -- belonging to the Swedish East India Company, which was established in 1731 to trade in southeast Asia -- was on a trade voyage, with goods like tea, porcelain, silk and spices worth millions on board. But she sank at the entrance of the dock.
Source: UPI
Feb 8, 2007
PARIS -- The United Nations has expressed "deep concern" over Israeli construction projects around the Temple Mount, or al-Aqsa Mosque, in Jerusalem.
Koichiro Matsuura, director-general of UNESCO, said Thursday he has written a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert asking for the construction plans for the sites. He also asked the prime minister to refrain from action that could increase tension in the area, which could endanger the historic sites.
The
Source: AP
Feb 8, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Inventors of the MRI, the Ethernet, the LP record and a popular weedkiller are among 18 people picked for induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
The Akron, Ohio-based hall of fame was founded by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the National Council of Intellectual Property Law Associations. It has inducted members since 1973 and will have honored 331 inventors with the new class.
The hall once was at the Patent Office in Washington, bu
Source: AP
Feb 8, 2007
JERUSALEM -- The Israel Antiquities Authority is considering broadcasting real-time, 24-hour video from a contentious Jerusalem holy site in a bid to allay Muslim fears the shrine will be harmed by repair work, an official said Thursday.
Muslim leaders ridiculed the idea, and Israeli police were on heightened alert before Friday Muslim prayers at the site, imposing travel restrictions and planning for a helicopter to hover overhead.
Israel says it needs to replace a cen
Source: Telegraph
Feb 8, 2007
ROME -- A Jewish academic has shocked Italy by stating that Jews murdered Christians during the Middle Ages so that their blood could be used in ritualistic ceremonies.
The details were revealed in yesterday's Corriere Della Sera newspaper which published extracts of the book by Professor Ariel Toaff, "Easter of Blood: European Jews and Ritual Homicides".
Last night his claims were denied by leading Jewish figures including his father Elio, once chief rabbi o
Source: Guardian
Feb 8, 2007
MADRID -- Spanish police have arrested 52 people accused of plundering 300,000 artifacts from excavation sites throughout Andalusia in the largest swoop against illegal archaeological treasure hunting in the world, the interior ministry said.
The coins, urns, sculptures and mosaics from Iberian, Roman and Islamic settlements were stolen at night using metal detectors, historical maps of the digs and excavation manuals, police said. Sometimes watchmen collaborated with the thieves, l
Source: AP
Feb 8, 2007
ROME -- They died young and, by the looks of it, in love. Two 5,000-year-old skeletons found locked in an embrace near the city where Shakespeare set the star-crossed tale "Romeo and Juliet" have sparked theories the remains of a far more ancient love story have been found.
Archaeologists unearthed the skeletons dating back to the late Neolithic period outside Mantua, 25 miles south of Verona, the city of Shakespeare's story of doomed love.
Buried between 5,00
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 7, 2007
The tour guide was seething. "Chiang Kai-shek was a psychopathic dictator," she shouted, glaring at the woman in the gift shop of what used to be the main memorial to Taiwan's former leader. "Nonsense," the shopkeeper snapped back. "He was a great historical figure, a great man."
Some 32 years after his death, the man who became synonymous with the island's split with mainland China has been thrust back into the political spotlight, as Taiwan's two main
