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: Birmingham Mail (UK)
Mar 25, 2013
It's the barely-known disaster which claimed the lives of four Birmingham seamen at the height of the Second World War.But the sinking of HMS Dasher is still at the centre of mystery and intrigue, 70 years later.A total of 379 lives were lost when the aircraft carrier went down in just eight minutes off the coast of Scotland on March 27, 1943.The tragedy was put down to an explosion caused by petrol fumes igniting....
Source: Reuters
Mar 25, 2013
(Reuters) - The French dubbed it the neglected "Cinderella" of their African colonial empire; modern observers have called it a "phantom state".Landlocked, isolated and poverty stricken, despite its reserves of gold, timber, uranium and gemstone quality diamonds, Central African Republic has been racked by debilitating rebellions for more than a decade. In the latest revolt, fighters from a loose rebel alliance demanding an end to years of exclusion from government seized control of the riverside capital Bangui on Sunday, forcing President Francois Bozize to flee....
Source: Time Magazine
Mar 25, 2013
Karl Marx was supposed to be dead and buried. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and China’s Great Leap Forward into capitalism, communism faded into the quaint backdrop of James Bond movies or the deviant mantra of Kim Jong Un. The class conflict that Marx believed determined the course of history seemed to melt away in a prosperous era of free trade and free enterprise. The far-reaching power of globalization, linking the most remote corners of the planet in lucrative bonds of finance, outsourcing and “borderless” manufacturing, offered everybody from Silicon Valley tech gurus to Chinese farm girls ample opportunities to get rich. Asia in the latter decades of the 20th century witnessed perhaps the most remarkable record of poverty alleviation in human history — all thanks to the very capitalist tools of trade, entrepreneurship and foreign investment. Capitalism appeared to be fulfilling its promise — to uplift everyone to new heights of wealth and welfare.
Source: Guardian (UK)
Mar 25, 2013
Congressional Republicans have condemned Barack Obama for designating five new national monuments at a time when sequester funding cuts are hitting existing national parks and landmarks.Doc Hastings, the Republican chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, issued a statement on Monday criticising the president for spending at a time when the sequester has forced the cancellation of White House tours.Obama signed proclamations on Monday establishing the five new monuments under the 1906 Antiquities Act."These sites honour the pioneering heroes, spectacular landscapes and rich history that have shaped our extraordinary country," Obama said. "By designating these national monuments today, we will ensure they will continue to inspire and be enjoyed by generations of Americans to come."...
Source: WSJ
Mar 25, 2013
At the turn of the last century, Manhattan’s Lower West Side was a bustling hub of life for Syrian, Lebanese and Palestinian immigrants who set up shops and moved into tenements in a community known as Little Syria.Now, there is little left marking the old neighborhood, seen as an epicenter of Arab immigration that was once home to stores like Brooklyn favorite Sahadi’s. But advocates are lobbying the Landmarks Preservation Commission to change that.“Every Arab-American who would have come to the United States would have probably spent some time or had ties to the Lower West Side of Manhattan,” said Todd Fine, co-founder of Save Washington Street. He calls Little Syria “the beating heart of Arab immigration to the United States,” with an important literary community and restaurants and cafes selling Lebanese food and pastries as the Ninth Avenue El whirred by....
Source: WaPo
Mar 25, 2013
When she returned from the Persian Gulf War in 1991, Air Force nurse Denise Nichols experienced sudden aches, fatigue and cognitive problems, but she had no idea what was causing them. They grew worse: Even helping her daughter with multiplication tables became difficult, she says, and eventually she had to quit her job.Nichols wasn’t alone. About a third of Gulf War veterans — possibly as many as 250,000 Americans — returned with similar symptoms.Now an imaging study has found that these veterans have what appear to be unique structural changes in the wiring of their brains. This fits with the scientific consensus that Gulf War Syndrome, or GWS, is a physical condition rather than a psychosomatic one and should be treated with painkilling drugs instead of counseling.Military authorities in various countries consistently denied in the past that there was a physical basis to GWS. Although the Department of Veterans Affairs now accepts that the disorder is physical, the issue has been mired in controversy....
Source: NYT
Mar 25, 2013
So few people do favors for NASA these days. So when Jeff Bezos, the Amazon.com founder, announced last week that an expedition he financed had hoisted two F-1 rocket engines from an Apollo mission off the ocean floor, the agency was understandably grateful.“We look forward to the restoration of these engines by the Bezos team and applaud Jeff’s desire to make these historic artifacts available for public display,” the NASA administrator, Maj. Gen. Charles F. Bolden Jr., said in a statement.
Source: TheRoot
Mar 25, 2013
One of the genuine pleasures of teaching African-American Studies today is the satisfaction of being able to restore to the historical record "lost" events and the individuals whose sacrifices and bravery created those events, never to be lost again. Few institutions from the black past have attracted more attention recently from teachers, students, museum curators and the tourism industry than the Underground Railroad, one of the most venerable and philanthropic innovations in our ancestors' long and dreadful history in human bondage. But in the zeal to tell the story of this great institution, legend and lore have sometimes overwhelmed historical facts. Separating fact from fiction -- always an essential part of telling it like it really was -- has required a great deal of effort from a number of scholars. Doing so only makes the sacrifices and heroism of our ancestors and their allies all the more noble, heroic and impressive....
Source: McClatchy DC
Mar 25, 2013
The construction fence is down; the heavy equipment is gone.After 2 1/2 years of construction -- and several years of planning -- work on the George W. Bush Presidential Center on the edge of Southern Methodist University is down to the finishing touches.Workers are busy arranging exhibits, beginning the last phase of landscaping and addressing other final details before the center, a tribute to the 43rd president, is unveiled to an invitation-only audience April 25 and to the general public May 1."What was a dream four years ago is today a reality," Mark Langdale, president of the George W. Bush Foundation, has said.The reality is a 226,560-square-foot center that houses a library and a museum, presidential archives, a public policy institute, the Bush foundation and a 15-acre park, all honoring Bush's two terms in office....Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/03/25/186807/george-w-bush-library-set-to-open.html?storylink=addthis#.UVBctofxQTM.twitter#storylink=cp
Source: The Scotsman (UK)
Mar 25, 2013
A RECENTLY discovered DNA marker suggests that 10 per cent of Scottish men are directly descended from the Picts, it is revealed today.Mystery has long surrounded the fate of the tribe of fierce enigmatic people who battled with Rome’s legions before seeming to disappear from history.Now new research from ScotlandsDNA, an ancestry testing company, has found a marker strongly suggesting for the first time that a large number of descendants of these northern tribes, known as “Picti” by the Romans meaning “Painted Ones”, are living in Scotland....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 24, 2013
Her name has been put forward for inclusion in the organisation’s scheme by a member of the public and her case is being considered by a panel including Sir David Cannadine, the historian, and Sir Andrew Motion, the former Poet Laureate.The plaques, which are attached to birthplaces and former homes of prominent figures, are not traditionally associated with royalty, as the scheme does not cover royal buildings or palaces.However, in the case of the late Queen Mother, other addresses could be considered, including her parents’ house near Victoria Station in London, where she lived as a child, and a property in Sloane Street. She also lived at a house in Bruton Street, near Berkeley Square, where the Queen was born....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 24, 2013
...It has been a year that has seen the popularity of King Juan Carlos plummet to unprecedented depths - to the point that even die-hard "JuanCarlistas", as his supporters are known, are now openly discussing the need for abdication in favour of his heir, Prince Felipe....The King, long extolled for his role in bringing democracy to Spain following the death of dictator Francisco Franco, had for decades enjoyed the sort of respect and privacy from the press that would have been the envy of his British relatives, the Windsors.The King's playboy reputation and love of expensive pursuits including fast cars and sailing were tolerated even with an annual bill of around 9 million euros to the taxpayer.But a turning point in his popularity came last April when it emerged - after a nocturnal accident that left him with a broken hip - that he had been enjoying a luxury safari in Botswana hunting elephants....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 24, 2013
Livingstone Fagan is waiting for the end of the world as we know it, which he believes is coming soon.“The tables will turn,” he says, pacing his bare council flat in a tower block in Nottingham. “We endure what is thrown at us, no matter how extreme, because the day will come, as David says.”This trim 53-year-old with ashen dreadlocks is talking about David Koresh, the self-declared messiah who was holed up in a compound in Waco, Texas, with an armed group of followers, 20 years ago today.Fagan was there, willing to fight in defence of his family and the man he believed was a second Christ. He had done so in the gunfight at the beginning of the siege in late February 1993, when federal agents attempt to storm the compound and were repelled. And when it all finished with another attack, 51 days later, Fagan lost his wife, his mother, and many of his friend....
Source: Guardian (UK)
Mar 24, 2013
Max Mannheimer will never forget the words of his block leader when he entered the gates of Dachau concentration camp on 6 August 1944. "You're veterans at this by now," said the prisoner, a communist. "You know that the most important thing is not to draw attention to yourselves if you want to survive."Behind Max, then aged 24, and his younger brother Edgar had lain a long and gruelling trudge through Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz and Theresienstadt, and the Warsaw ghetto, during which the siblings had lost their entire family, most of them in Auschwitz, simply for being Jewish.In Dachau, Mannheimer was assigned the prisoner number 87098. "It was the last camp number I would ever have," the 93-year-old said. "But I took the block leader's message on board: 'You've got this far, just keep your head down, as the SS will pounce on you for the smallest violation'." He was liberated nine months later by US troops from a Dachau sub-camp, where one of his last jobs had been to cart the corpses of prisoners into the mortuary. Stricken with typhus, he had been reduced to skin and bones, weighing just 47kg. "I was a skeleton," he said. "I cried with both joy and despair."...
Source: WSJ
Mar 24, 2013
Mohammed Fairouz has never been shy about using his musical platform to explore political and social issues. Nor is the young New York-based composer allergic to popular culture in its most colorful forms. So for his latest work, "Symphony No. 4, In the Shadow of No Towers," which will make its world premiere Tuesday at Carnegie Hall, he is grappling with the aftermath of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, by adapting the 2004 graphic novel "In the Shadow of No Towers" by Art Spiegelman.Mr. Fairouz, who is 27 and grew up in New York and London, said he was initially attracted both to the book's structure and to its contemplative treatment of the events. "Graphic novels have a kind of architecture that is musical," he said. "I thought the way that it dealt with the event and its aftermath wasn't overly sentimental, but at the same time was respectful."But when he pitched the "No Towers" idea to Mr. Spiegelman, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and illustrator of "Maus" was hesitant. A previous effort by another composer to create a multimedia production had yielded mixed results, so the artist's expectations were tempered. After hearing Mr. Fairouz's completed symphony, though, he was moved....
Source: AP
Mar 24, 2013
He is being hailed with pride and wonder as the “first Latino pope,” a native Spanish speaker born and raised in the South American nation of Argentina. But for some Latinos in the United States, there’s a catch: Pope Francis’ parents were born in Italy.Such recent European heritage is reviving debate in the United States about what makes someone a Latino. Those questioning whether their idea of Latino identity applies to Pope Francis acknowledge that he is Latin American, and that he is a special inspiration to Spanish-speaking Catholics around the world. Yet that, in their eyes, does not mean the pope is “Latino.”These views seem to be in the minority. But they have become a distinct part of the conversation in the United States as the Latino world contemplates this unique man and moment.—”Are Italians Latino? No,” says Eric Cortes, who has been debating the issue with his friends....
Source: WaPo
Mar 24, 2013
INDIANAPOLIS — Saplings from the chestnut tree that stood as a symbol of hope for Anne Frank as she hid from the Nazis for two years in Amsterdam are being distributed to 11 locations in the United States as part of a project that aims to preserve her legacy and promote tolerance.The tree, one of the Jewish teenager’s only connections to nature while she hid with her family in a Secret Annex in her father’s company building, was diseased and rotted through the trunk when wind and heavy rain toppled it in August 2010. But saplings grown from its seeds will be planted starting in April, when the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis will put the first one in the ground....
Source: ABC News
Mar 24, 2013
The engagement ring the young Napoleon "must have broken his wallet" to buy for his fiancee Josephine shattered expectations today at the Osenat auction house in France when it sold for close to $1 million, Osenat's expert Jean-Christophe Chataignier said.The winning bidder, who wanted to stay completely anonymous, paid $949,000, almost 50 times the $20,000 Osenat had expected to bring in. Including the buyer's 25 percent commission to Osenat, the total price for the ring was $1.17 million."In my wildest dreams, I did not think we would outsell the estimate by more than 47 times," said Osenat's Emily Villane, who led today's auction. "We based the estimates in our catalog on the actual market value of the ring, minus Napoleon and Josephine provenance. It is not our job to tell bidders how much they should pay for the historical premium."...
Source: NYT
Mar 24, 2013
VATICAN CITY — Sharing lunch is rarely historic, except perhaps when the two people eating are a pope and his predecessor.On Saturday, the pope emeritus, Benedict XVI — who broke church tradition by resigning rather than dying in office — ate with Pope Francis at Castel Gandolfo, the hilltop villa where Benedict is living, while reporters waited outside for any scraps of news about how the meeting went.
Source: NYT
Mar 24, 2013
JERUSALEM — Under persistent prodding from President Obama, Israel and Turkey resolved a bitter three-year dispute on Friday with a diplomatic thaw that will help a fragile region confront Syria’s civil war, while handing the president a solid accomplishment as he closed out his visit to the Middle East.
