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: Reuters
Mar 21, 2006
After years of delays, legal wrangles and cost overruns, Greece hopes to open its Acropolis Museum by the end of 2007, Culture Minister George Voulgarakis said on Tuesday."It is our ambition that by 2007 the museum will be open to visitors," he told journalists after touring the half-finished building near the ancient hilltop temples of the Acropolis.
Greece had hoped to open the museum before the 2004 Olympics to push its claim for the return of
Source: Canada.com
Mar 21, 2006
Canada's cultural treasures -- including religious objects from Quebec and aboriginal artifacts -- are "racing out of the country" because government controls are ineffective and Canada's border agency isn't interested in enforcing them, Canadian Heritage has been told."It should be pointed out that the recent creation of the (Canada Border Services Agency) as a result of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has resulted in a significant reduction in
Source: The Boston Globe
Mar 21, 2006
In 1629, colonists landed in Salem bearing the Royal Charter of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, granting permission "for the planting, ruling, ordering, and governing of Newe England in America." Massachusetts, as we know it, was born. And now, that mother of all real estate contracts, not to mention a foundational document in US history, could be up for sale.The Salem Athenaeum has made preliminary inquiries about selling its copy of the Massachusetts Bay Charter
Source: Andrew Bernstein article on HNN's homepage
Mar 21, 2006
A Seattle-area columnist has drawn the fire of more than a thousand complaining readers upset with her suggestion that African-Americans should be grateful their ancestors were enslaved and brought to America.
The column, by Adele Ferguson, was published in the Kitsap Peninsula Business Journal (KPBJ) on March 13, 2006. In the article Ferguson argued that black Americans should abandon the Democratic Party, claimingf it doesn't have their true interests at heart.
Source: Ansa.it
Mar 20, 2006
A very rare example of surviving pre-Greek settlement in southern Italy is to be excavated and explored. The site, at Molpa in the hills above Palinuro south of Naples, is believed to contain the remains of a large village of the Enotrians, the earliest known inhabitants of Calabria and southern Campania. The Greeks who settled across southern Italy from 700BC to create Magna Graecia had an idealised vision of the Enotrians ("wine lovers") as coming from the Eden-like land of Arcadia .
Source: AP
Mar 20, 2006
Mississippi, where violence in the 1960s came to epitomize the struggle for racial equality, could be a pioneer in offering history lessons on civil rights from kindergarten through high school.
A new state law will help school districts develop and pay for civil rights curricula. Districts, though, will not be required to implement such courses.Susan Glisson, executive director of the Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation at the University of Mississ
Source: CNN
Mar 20, 2006
NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) -- A 2,500-year-old sarcophagus with vivid color illustrations from Homer's epics has been discovered in western Cyprus, archaeologists said Monday.
Construction workers found the limestone sarcophagus last week in a tomb near the village of Kouklia, in the coastal Paphos area. The tomb, which probably belonged to an ancient warrior, had been looted during antiquity."The style of the decoration is unique, not so much from an artis
Source: Guardian (UK)
Mar 20, 2006
A collection of paintings by Gustav Klimt, stolen by the Nazis in 1938, has been restored to its heir in California after an eight-year legal battle. The five works, together worth £170m, now belong to 90-year-old Maria Altmann, who fled the Nazis following the annexation of Austria.Altmann has lent the paintings to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art for a temporary exhibition. She hopes that the exhibition, which opens on April 4, will attract a buyer. "My wish, and
Source: BBC News
Mar 20, 2006
The future of a museum dedicated to the US naval hero John Paul Jones is in jeopardy due to a lack of funds. The cottage birthplace of the Solway sailor at Arbigland, near Kirkbean, is operated by a group of trustees and attracts about 3,000 visitors a year.The trust's chairman has warned that it could close if extra resources for the museum could not be found.
Jones played a key part in the US War of Independence and was regarded as the "father of t
Source: BBC News
Mar 20, 2006
Police are investigating a vandal attack on the final resting place of Robert Burns in Dumfries.
Windows were smashed at the mausoleum in St Michael's Cemetery - the latest in a series of attacks on churches. It has prompted calls for the introduction of CCTV cameras to tackle the problem in the area.
Police said they were stepping up patrols around churches and have issued descriptions of three teenagers in connection with the incident.
Source: BBC News
Mar 20, 2006
A WWII minesweeper and a torpedo boat are among 10 sunken vessels being raised from the entrance to the Forth and Clyde Canal. The £1.5m clean up aims to transform and revitalise Bowling Harbour in West Dunbartonshire by April.
British Waterways Scotland described the wrecks as "a safety hazard" and said they would be broken up.
Propellers from some of the boats will go on display on the harbour side when the improvements are completed.
Source: NYT
Mar 20, 2006
MUNISING, Mich., March 19 — A man who beat Rosa Parks and took $53 from her in a break-in at her Detroit home in 1994 says he dreams of redemption.In a prison interview published Sunday in The Detroit News, the man, Joseph Skipper, 40, repeatedly apologized for the attack and said he cried when he learned that Ms. Parks had died in October.
Mr. Skipper is serving an 8- to 15-year sentence at the Alger Maximum Correctional Facility in the Upper Peninsula of Michi
Source: Inside Higher Ed
Mar 20, 2006
A new study — soon to be published in PS: Political Science & Politics — finds that students are the ones with bias, attributing characteristics to their professors based on the students’ perceptions of their faculty members’ politics and how much they differ from their own.he authors of the study say that it backs the claims of proponents of the Academic Bill of Rights that students think about — and are in some cases concerned about — the politics of their profes
Source: Wa Po
Mar 20, 2006
Under the presidential library system, libraries receive operating subsidies from the government but are built through private donations, sometimes with help from state and local governments. The Nixon project marks the first time that Uncle Sam is providing funds for new construction before it pays any operating expenses.
As recently as last March, Allen Weinstein, head of the National Archives, told library officials in a letter,"The Nixon Foundation is responsible for securing funds for th
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 20, 2006
A family of New Mexico Indians is suing the producers of a Steven Spielberg television series, claiming a stylist violated tribal customs by cutting a girl's hair to make her look like a boy.A lawsuit filed by the girl's father, Danny Ponce, of the Mescalero Apache tribe, seeks $250,000 (£142,000) for emotional distress and $75,000 (£42,000) in damages from an unnamed stylist and Turner Films, the makers of Into the West.
"It's part of our culture not to cu
Source: Washington Post
Mar 20, 2006
The Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace, like the president it honors, has always been outside the mainstream. Opened in 1990 in Yorba Linda, Calif., it is the only presidential library with no original presidential papers; a 1974 law kept them in Washington out of concern that Nixon might destroy materials related to the Watergate scandal that forced him to resign. Built for $40 million, the nine-acre complex, which includes a museum and conference space, is alone among presidential libraries
Source: Newsday
Mar 20, 2006
Benedict dropped an ecclesiastical bombshell, proving his merit as a historian and a pastor. He said that sacramental ordination to priesthood was not the only avenue to ministerial service, but "nevertheless, it is right to ask oneself if more space, more positions of responsibility, can be given to women, even in the ministerial services."He did not elaborate.
Why is this such a bombshell? The priest asked about governance and ministry, each of which
Source: Email from Chuck Jones's Iraq Crisis Newsletter
Mar 20, 2006
Starting in October 2001, about a year and a half before the US and its allies invaded Iraq, dozens of Iraqi exiles and international experts were brought together to figure out how to create a new Iraq should Saddam Hussein somehow be taken out of power. Seventeen working groups were organized to cover Transitional Justice, Public Finance, Public Outreach, Democratic Principles, Water, Agriculture and the Environment, Defense, Local Government, Economy and Infrastructure, Civil Society, Transpa
Source: International Herald Tribune
Mar 20, 2006
In the cavernous Victory Palace, the home of Romania's government, history is being made in a small two-room office. Here, a staff of just three people under Marius Oprea has embarked on a task that until this year had been blocked by successive governments since the execution of the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in December 1989.Oprea, 41, is in charge of the Institute for the Investigation of the Crimes of Communism. It was the first time such an institute has been establishe
Source: Times (London)
Mar 20, 2006
The Vatican has begun moves to rehabilitate the Crusaders by sponsoring a conference at the weekend that portrays the Crusades as wars fought with the “noble aim” of regaining the Holy Land for Christianity.The Crusades are seen by many Muslims as acts of violence that have underpinned Western aggression towards the Arab world ever since. Followers of Osama bin Laden claim to be taking part in a latter-day “jihad against the Jews and Crusaders”.
The late Pope Jo
