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: outlookindia.com
Apr 17, 2006
The economy in this small, nondescript pocket of rural Bengal is booming. And not due to a miraculous leap in agricultural yield but the highly lucrative business of smuggling priceless antiques, including ivory and gold objects, and exquisite terracotta art, out of the country.
Located 40 kilometres northwest of Calcutta and spread over about four square miles, Chandraketugarh is a treasure trove of antiques, some dating back to 650 BC. These are being dug up by avaricious locals w
Source: Telegraph
Apr 16, 2006
Up to a million hours of broadcasting history could be made available on the internet as part of a plan to open the BBC's archive to licence fee payers.
Lost gems of radio and television, some of which have never been repeated, include an interview with Martin Luther King filmed shortly before he was assassinated, and a 1956 episode of the nature series Zoo Quest in which a young David Attenborough captures the komodo dragon on film for the first time.
The episode has n
Source: BBC
Apr 16, 2006
In 1926, pioneering film-maker Claude Friese-Greene travelled from Land's End to John O'Groats. His unique film - one of the first in colour - reveals not only how life has changed, but what remains unaltered.
Source: dailypress.com
Apr 16, 2006
Jamestown Rediscovery curator Bly Straube sits wearily at her desk, surveying the stacks of reference books that have grown up over the past few weeks to surround her.
At least half a dozen jumbled piles encircle the small cleared space where she writes, with some reaching 10 or 12 volumes high. Scattered in between and around the floor of her U-shaped workstation is an even greater number of folders, articles and reports, all of them focused on such things as the rings, buttons, bu
Source: CNN
Apr 16, 2006
With no more than 3,000 members in the United States and 85,000 worldwide, this offshoot of the Catholic church has been accused of using lavish riches and carefully cultivated clout to do everything from propping up Francisco Franco's Spanish dictatorship in the 1950s to pushing through its founder's premature sainthood to planting conservative minions in governments from Warsaw to Washington.
But most of all, it has been known for its silence.
Now, the leaders of the
Source: Washington Times
Apr 16, 2006
La reconquista, a radical movement calling for Mexico to "reconquer" America's Southwest, has stepped out of the shadows at recent immigration-reform protests nationwide as marchers held signs saying, "Uncle Sam Stole Our Land!" and waved Mexico's flag.
Even as organizers urged marchers to display U.S. flags, the theme of reclaiming "stolen" land remained strong. One popular banner read: "If you think I'm illegal because I'm a Mexican, learn t
Source: Washington Times
Apr 16, 2006
The Emancipation Day parade through downtown tomorrow will close sections of Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest for most of the day as hundreds are expected to celebrate the 144th anniversary of the end of slavery in the District.
The parade, more than 100 years old, is a celebration of President Abraham Lincoln's freeing 3,100 blacks in the District in 1862 -- nearly nine months before he signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
Source: NYT
Apr 16, 2006
Scholars who study the armed forces say [that the supportive comments made this past week by General Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for Secretaqry Rumsfeld] were a public restatement of a bedrock principle of American governance: civilian control of the military.
"This is what the chairman of the Joint Chiefs is expected to do by tradition and law," said Dennis E. Showalter, a military historian at Colorado College who has taught at the Air Force Academy
Source: NYT
Apr 16, 2006
WHEN a magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck San Francisco 100 years ago Tuesday and the city — like New Orleans last year — lay in ruins, Theodore Roosevelt was president and cars were just a plaything of the rich.
By the time San Francisco regained its past glory, at least according to some historians here, the automobile had started to reshape America's cities, Roosevelt was dead and, four presidents later, the country was on the precipice of the Great Depression.
Source: NYT
Apr 16, 2006
SHHH! Don't tell anyone: The British and American intelligence services worked together in World War II.
What may seem to some an obvious historical fact struck a Central Intelligence Agency apparatchik in 2002 as a secret still worth protecting. He redacted a sentence describing the "close coordination" of the allies' spies from a 1946 memorandum recounting war propaganda duties before approving its public release. For good measure, he also took out the number of American
Source: Wa Po
Apr 15, 2006
The two-year-old modern history textbook used at Baghdad's Mansour High School for Boys doesn't mention the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq in 2003.
There's not a word about Iraq's annexation of -- and subsequent expulsion from -- Kuwait in 1990 and 1991, or its grinding eight-year war with Iran in the 1980s that took the lives of a generation of young men.Perhaps most conspicuously absent from the book, earlier versi
Source: Financial Times
Apr 15, 2006
This summer's soccer world cup is proving to be another test of how Germany deals with its Nazi past. Events in recent weeks, including warnings of extremist protests during the tournament and police raids on the country's leading far-right political party, have temporarily shifted the world cup spotlight away from football and on to neo-Nazis and racism in modern German sport and society.
In anticipation of the influx of hundreds of thousands of foreign fans, several city authoriti
Source: Inter Press Service
Apr 14, 2006
Hundreds of languages disappeared from Latin America and the Caribbean over the past 500 years, and many of the more than 600 that have survived could face the same fate in the not-so-distant future.
United Nations agencies and many experts maintain that it is an avoidable tragedy, but there are those who see it as the inherent fate of all but a few languages. Faced with Western culture and the dominant presence of Spanish, Portuguese and English in the
Source: BBC
Apr 14, 2006
A senior US marine officer says he is willing to apologise for the damage caused by his troops to the ancient Iraqi site of Babylon.
US forces built a helicopter pad on the ancient ruins and filled their sandbags with archaeological material in the months following the 2003 invasion.
Colonel Coleman was chief of staff at Babylon when it was occupied by the First Marine Expeditionary Force.
Babylon's Hanging Gardens were among the Seven Wonders of the Anc
Source: MSNBC
Apr 14, 2006
One day after receiving two medals more than six decades late, a World War II Army veteran in a California nursing home died at age 87, the Ventura County Star reported.
On Wednesday, Adam Macht was pinned with Bronze Star and Purple Heart medals — more than 60 years after he earned them.
Macht served as a combat infantryman under Gen. George S. Patton during World War II in Tunisia, Algeria and French Morocco. But he never received the Bronze Star he earned for heroic
Source: International Herald Tribune
Apr 14, 2006
BABYLON, Iraq In this ancient city, it is hard to tell what are ruins and what is just ruined.
Crumbling mud-brick buildings, some 2,500 years old, look like smashed sandcastles at the beach. Signs of military occupation are everywhere: trenches, bullet casings, shiny coils of razor wire and blast walls stamped "This side Scud protection."But Iraqi leaders and UN officials are not giving up on it. They are working assiduously to restore Babylon, home t
Source: Reuters
Apr 14, 2006
Residents of a Cypriot village, intrigued for decades by a tale of buried treasure and an underground flight of steps leading nowhere, have decided to get to the bottom of the mystery.
More than half a century after British colonial rulers forced them to abandon their last attempt to explore the site, residents of Tseri village in central Cyprus have begun excavating the 1,500-year-old tunnel and stairway.
Antiquities officials say the stone structure is part of an anci
Source: BBC
Apr 14, 2006
Belfast is applying the finishing touches to a series of events to mark the 95th anniversary of the launching from the city of the RMS Titanic.
The fifth annual 'Titanic Made in Belfast' festival begins on Easter Saturday 15 April and continues until Saturday 22 April.
The ill-fated liner, which sank with the loss of 1,500 lives on its maiden transatlantic voyage in 1912, was built at Belfast's Harland and Wolff shipyard.
Source: BBC
Apr 14, 2006
Many people might have no doubts about being prepared to kill Hitler. But what if you were a prominent theologian? A noted pacifist? What then? That was exactly the dilemma that faced Dietrich Bonhoeffer, born 100 years ago, and one that led to his own death. In the grey early morning of 9 April 1945, only weeks before the end of the war in Europe, a 39 year-old German Lutheran pastor was led naked to the gallows at Flossenbürg concentration camp in Bavaria.
Source: NYT
Apr 14, 2006
Gasoline prices are rising. Sales of Detroit's carmakers suffer as Japanese brands carve out a growing share of the American market. One of the nation's largest automobile manufacturers flirts with bankruptcy.
Sound familiar?Just over a quarter of a century ago, the Chrysler Corporation teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, hobbled by falling sales, heavy payroll costs and bloated debt.
Today General Motors and Ford, staggering under th
