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 (UK)
Apr 6, 2006
The last time they flew across the Channel, they were 32 feet long, with Rolls-Royce engines and wings bristling with 20mm cannons.
Now they measure all of 18 inches, have no engine and not so much as a peashooter - but their "pilots" still risk being thrown into German captivity.The Sunday Telegraph has learnt that a "big wing" of more than 10,000 inflatable Spitfires will this week cross into Germany and, when the World Cup star
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 6, 2006
It was another time, in the dying days of war, but thousands of football fans will soon be able to judge for themselves whether guidance to British soldiers in 1944 still holds true.
The Germans are brutal when they are winning and sorry for themselves when they are beaten, it said.
They have unbalanced minds and can fly into a rage if things go wrong, it continued. Germany: 1944, the British Soldier's Pocketbook, which was issued to tens of
Source: Daily Record
Apr 6, 2006
PEQUANNOCK -- Police are looking for vandals who damaged 57 headstones at graves in a cemetery that's more than 200 years old last weekend.
The graves at the cemetery date back to the 1700s and include veterans of the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, former slaves, a Medal of Honor recipient and other deceased Pequannock-area residents, local historians said.
Source: Ansa.it
Apr 6, 2006
Italian archaeologists believe they have found an ancient city where the demi-gods Castor and Pollux fought Aeneas, the Trojan hero whose descendants founded Rome .
Lorenzo and Stefania Quilici of Bologna and Naples universities claim the large, massive-walled settlement dating from the VI to III Century BCE was the city of Amyclae, believed by Renaissance scholars to be somewhere near Lake Fondi between Rome and Naples .
Source: myrtlebeachonline.com
Apr 6, 2006
The California state Senate will consider a bill that would require schools to teach students about the contributions gays and lesbians have made to society - an effort that supporters say is an attempt to battle discrimination and opponents say is designed to use the classroom to get children to embrace homosexuality.
The bill, which was passed by a Senate committee Tuesday, would require schools to buy textbooks "accurately" portraying "the sexual diversity of our s
Source: Independent (London)
Apr 6, 2006
For 25 years, this exquisitely enamelled medieval casket had been on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Made in the French city of Limoges in about 1200, it was designed to hold the relics of Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury famously murdered in Canterbury Cathedral. It had been on public display until 2000 when it was put into storage while the new Medieval and Renaissance Galleries were prepared.
Like its sister work, a slightly earlier Becket casket whi
Source: BBC
Apr 6, 2006
A replica of the first European ship to visit Australia 400 years ago has set off on a year-long voyage in the footsteps of 17th Century sailors.
The Dutch ship Duyfken, or Little Dove, first mapped Australia's coastline in 1606, and a Fremantle-built replica is to retrace its journey.
The ship's builders say the project aims to help dispel the myth that Captain Cook "discovered" Australia.
Source: BBC
Apr 6, 2006
More than 6,000 artworks looted by the Nazis during World War II should be returned to their rightful owners, an Austrian panel has recommended.
Culture Minister Elisabeth Gehrer said a total of 6,292 works were earmarked for return to their rightful owners or heirs - most of whom were Jewish.
Austria has been returning works to their rightful owners under the 1998 culture property restitution law.
Source: CBS News
Apr 6, 2006
For 2,000 years, Judas has been reviled for betraying Jesus. Now a newly translated ancient document seeks to tell his side of the story.
The "Gospel of Judas" tells a far different tale from the four gospels in the New Testament. It portrays Judas as a favored disciple who was given special knowledge by Jesus — and who turned him in at Jesus' request. "You will be cursed by the other generations — and you will come to rule over them,
Source: National Geographic News
Apr 6, 2006
After 1,700 years, the Gospel of Judas is lost no more. And the twisting tale of the document itself is nearly as surprising as the story it tells.
"We can consider it a real miracle that [such an ancient literary work]—especially one threatened by the hatred of the great majority of its contemporary readers, who saw it as a shame and a scandal, destined to be lost … would suddenly appear and be brought to light," said scholar Rodolphe Kasser.
Source: Gettsyburg Times
Apr 6, 2006
Three hundred citizens gathered in the Gettysburg College Student Union ballroom Wednesday to express their joy or displeasure at the idea of a casino near Gettysburg. At the receiving end of the comments were members of the state Gaming Control Board, which later this year will decide who receives two available casino resort licenses.LeVan, president and CEO of the investment group behind the proposed Crossroads Gaming Resort and Spa, told the board his 3,000-ma
Source: wric.com
Apr 6, 2006
FREDERICK, Md. The Civil War "battle that saved Washington" is getting a fresh interpretation.
The National Park Service is breaking ground today for a new visitor center at the Monocacy (mah-NAH'-kah-see) National Battlefield just south of Frederick, Maryland.
The three-point-five (m) million-dollar structure on state Route 355 will house a museum shop and exhibits designed to better explain the clash to the 17-hundred people who visit the site on the banks o
Source: NewsObserver.com
Apr 6, 2006
Former UNC-Chapel Hill Provost Richard Richardson had heard bits and pieces about Chapel Hill's slave poet -- the man who charged students 25 to 75 cents for acrostics to give to their sweethearts.
But it wasn't until Richardson was doing research for the university's bicentennial celebration that he really came to know the work of George Moses Horton, the Chatham County slave who published his first book of poetry before he could write."For a m
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists
Apr 6, 2006
One of the lacunae in the history of defense policy and science advice to government concerns the role of the JASON advisory panel. A fascinating new book on the JASONs helps to fill in that mysterious gap.
Established in 1960, the JASONs first gained unwelcome public attention as the result of a reference in the leaked Pentagon Papers. They have only rarely since been heard from in public.Their membership is not publicized. Their meetings are closed.
Source: NYT
Apr 6, 2006
For most of the last 60 years, Maria Altmann did not know that the celebrated Klimt paintings hanging in the Austrian Gallery in Vienna actually belonged to her. And when she learned that they most likely did, she also knew that recovering them was probably an impossible quest.
But in an unexpected turn of events, the endless ripples of World War II history have washed up on the shore of a California museum, where this week the 90-year-old Mrs. Altmann came face to face with the su
Source: NYT
Apr 6, 2006
For several years, museum curators and American painting experts had been troubled by discrepancies between Norman Rockwell's 1954 canvas "Breaking Home Ties" and tear sheets of the legendary Saturday Evening Post cover for which he painted it.
Last month — more than three decades after the owner divorced, and nearly a year after his death — his son Dave, 54, noticed a strange gap in a wood-paneled wall in his father's house. When he and his brother Don Jr., 59, gave it a
Source: CNN
Apr 5, 2006
Archeologists said Wednesday they have discovered a massive 6th-century Indian pyramid beneath the site of a centuries-old re-enactment of the crucifixion of Christ.
Built on a hillside by the mysterious Teotihuacan culture, the pyramid was abandoned almost 1,000 years before Catholics began re-enacting the crucifixion there in the 1800s, unaware they were celebrating one of the holiest moments of their faith on a site originally dedicated to gods of earth, wind and rain.
Source: Secrecy News, written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists
Apr 5, 2006
The total amount of U.S. aid to Iraq since 2003 is already comparable to post-World War II U.S. assistance to Germany and nearly double that provided to Japan, according to a new Congressional Research Service analysis."U.S. assistance to Germany totaled some $4.3 billion ($29.6 billion in
2005 dollars) for the years of direct military government (May 1945-May 1949) and the overlapping Marshall Plan years (1948/1949-1952)."
"Total U.S
Source: NYT
Apr 5, 2006
Television cameras are not about to enter the Supreme Court any time soon.
That was the unmistakable message that two Supreme Court justices gave Congress at a hearing on Tuesday on the court's budget.Asked for his views on the subject, Justice Kennedy said it raised a "sensitive point" about the constitutional separation of powers.
"It's not for the court to tell Congress how to conduct its proceedings," and the reve
Source: NYT
Apr 5, 2006
The Iraqi court trying Saddam Hussein announced Tuesday that it had charged him with genocide, saying he sought to annihilate the Kurdish people in 1988, when the military killed at least 50,000 Kurdish civilians and destroyed 2,000 villages.
The case is the first against Mr. Hussein to address the large-scale human rights violations committed during his decades in power, the same acts the Bush administration has publicized in explaining the American invasion of Iraq. Six other def
