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: BBC
Mar 22, 2011
An investigation ordered by the Ulster Museum has quashed speculation that an Old Master hanging in Belfast was part of a haul looted by Nazis.
A Dutch art historian was called in to carry out an inquiry into the history of the ownership of the painting.
The Ulster Museum bought the painting in 1966 for £9,000. But in recent years, questions began to surface about the provenance of the masterpiece when it was linked to the Dutch Jewish art collector Jacques Goudstikker.
Source: BBC
Mar 22, 2011
A unique image, for the first time, has mapped organic compounds that are still surviving in a 50-million-year-old sample of reptile skin.
The infra-red picture reveals the chemical profile of the skin, offering an insight into how it was preserved.
A team of UK scientists say the sample was so well preserved that it was hard to tell the difference between the fossil and the fresh samples.
The details appear in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 22, 2011
A Kremlin holiday retreat that was a favourite of Boris Yeltsin, the late Russian president, complete with tennis court, sauna and crystal chandeliers is to be auctioned off for more than £6 million after falling into a state of disrepair.
In what is being billed as a unique opportunity to snap up a piece of modern Russian history, Yeltsin's dacha or country estate in northwest Russia is to go on the block next month with a recommended starting price of £6.25 million.
Source: AP
Mar 22, 2011
A fire has ripped through a two-century-old theater in northern Paris said to be a birthplace of French cabaret-style cancan dancing.
The blaze gutted the building whose internal structural supports were designed by Gustave Eiffel, famed for the Eiffel Tower.
The fire at the the Elysee Montmartre theater spewed plumes of smoke over the Montmartre neighborhood that is also home to the Moulin Rouge cabaret....
Source: AP
Mar 22, 2011
President Barack Obama stood, eyes closed, in a personal moment of silence before the tomb of slain Roman Catholic Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, whose fight for the poor during El Salvador's bloody civil war made him a national hero — and an international figure in human rights.
The visit Tuesday in the final hours of Obama's five-day swing through Latin America was a symbolic gesture that some called U.S. recognition of Romero's cause.
Obama toured the national cath
Source: AP
Mar 22, 2011
Frank Neuhauser, who in 1925 won the first national spelling bee with the word "gladiolus," and went on to become a patent lawyer, has died. He was 97.
Neuhauser died March 11 in his home Silver Spring, Md., home, Francis J. Collins Funeral Home verified on Tuesday.
He was 11 years old when he won the championship. His prizes included $500 in gold and a trip to the White House to meet President Calvin Coolidge....
Source: CNN
Mar 22, 2011
Former Cuban President Fidel Castro said Tuesday he resigned as the head of the Communist Party five years ago and has never tried to resume the post -- one that he was thought to still hold.
It was the first time that the 84-year-old leader of Cuba's revolution stated so directly that he no longer heads up the party he founded.
Cubans and foreign observers had believed that the head of the Communist Party was the one title that Castro still held after he was forced to
Source: CNN
Mar 22, 2011
Grammy-winning blues pianist Willie "Pinetop" Perkins died at his home in Austin, Texas, Monday, his official website said.
He was 97.
"It is with deep sadness that we announce Pinetop Perkins passed away," the web page said.
The Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award winner scored solo success late in his seven-decade-long career, releasing 14 albums between 1988 and 2010. He was the oldest person ever awarded a Grammy.
Source: BBC News
Mar 22, 2011
Israel's former President Moshe Katsav has been jailed for seven years for rape and other sex offences.
He was convicted at an earlier hearing of raping an employee in the 1990s when he was tourism minister, and of later sexual offences while he was president.
The rape victim, known as Woman A, told the court he had first attacked her at the tourism ministry office, and later at a hotel in Jerusalem.
Katsav resigned from the largely ceremonial post of presi
Source: Irish Times
Mar 21, 2011
Blacksmiths are a rare breed, but a woman working in Russborough House is re-igniting interest in the tradition
ON THE grounds of Russborough House in Co Wicklow, what Seamus Heaney termed “the hammered anvil’s short-pitched ring” echoes around empty outbuildings which were once hives of activity serving the commercial and domestic needs of the big house. Old carriage buildings are boarded up, while the stables and work sheds are all long since deserted.
All except one,
Source: National Parks Traveler
Mar 21, 2011
Long before Ken Burns' PBS series on the national parks, the filmmaker produced another multi-program epic that features several NPS areas. THE CIVIL WAR, which first aired in 1990, remains the highest-rated series in the history of American public television. The series is being rebroadcast in early April to mark the 150th anniversary of the beginning of America's Civil War.
THE CIVIL WAR was a milestone in the history of documentary film and television,” notes John F. Wilson, chie
Source: Yahoo News
Mar 21, 2011
ABBEVILLE, Ala. – Nearly 70 years after Recy Taylor was raped by a gang of white men, leaders of the rural southeast Alabama community where it happened apologized Monday, acknowledging that her attackers escaped prosecution because of racism and an investigation bungled by police.
"It is apparent that the system failed you in 1944," Henry County probate judge and commission chairwoman JoAnn Smith told several of Taylor's relatives at a news conference at the county courth
Source: NYT
Mar 21, 2011
Some history is in order.
In the late 1850s, an architect whose name is lost in the mists of time designed a five-story building at 45-47 Park Place, in the neighborhood now called TriBeCa.
Leap forward to 1989. The city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission considered designating the building a landmark, but saw no reason to take action. If any New Yorkers felt that an injustice had been done, they kept it to themselves for many years....
In 2009, the build
Source: Kent Online (UK)
Mar 21, 2011
Archaeologists have uncovered an ancient burial ground in Kent where around a hundred people were laid to rest.
The site - dating back to the late Roman era - is on the former Hallets garage site in Canterbury's St Dunstan's.
Experts have found hardly any grave goods and since most of the bodies are lying east/west they are believed to be mainly Christian.
The excavation is being carried by Canterbury Archaeological Trust.
Director Paul Bennett
Source: Jerusalem Post
Mar 21, 2011
Labor Party lawmaker Anders Mathisen tells newspaper the Holocaust never happened and challenges readers to prove him wrong.
“There is no evidence the gas chambers or mass graves existed," he told the newspaper, according to reports. "Even reputable Holocaust historians have admitted it cannot be established.”
Mathisen reportedly has spent months researching World War II concentration camps and is advocating changing history books, according to the Coordinatio
Source: BBC News
Mar 21, 2011
It was one of Northern Ireland's darkest days - the Belfast Blitz.
15 April 1941 was a night when nearly 1,000 people were killed during a sustained bombing campaign by the Germans.
The city was regarded as a legitimate target during World War II because of its shipyard and aircraft factory.
The night chosen by the bombers to carry out their deadly attack was Easter Tuesday 1941.
An air warden in Belfast that night said "The sirens started
Source: BBC News
Mar 21, 2011
Twitter launched five years ago with the simple message "just setting up my twttr". In the same way, many technological breakthroughs that ultimately shaped the world began life, not with a fanfare of trumpets, but with a few humble words.
"Alright, so here we are in front of the elephants."
And so with great understatement, the first words were uttered on YouTube, in its first video posted in April 2005.
Me at the Zoo depicts co-founder
Source: NYT
Mar 21, 2011
Supreme Court arguments often concern not just the narrow issue in the case but also the implications of a ruling. You sometimes catch the justices squinting, trying to see over the legal horizon.
Nine years ago, for instance, the court heard arguments in a case about whether Congress was free to add 20 years of copyright protection for works that had not yet entered the public domain.
Several justices asked about a different and even tougher question: Was Congress also
Source: The Guardian (UK)
Mar 21, 2011
A century after Machu Picchu's rediscovery, ancient Mayan and Moche sites are being ransacked for tourist baubles.
Etched into the surviving art of the Moche, one of South America's most ancient and mysterious civilisations, is a fearsome creature dubbed the Decapitator. Also known as Ai Apaec, the octopus-type figure holds a knife in one hand and a severed head in the other in a graphic rendition of the human sacrifices the Moche practiced in northern Peru 1,500 years ago.
Source: CNN
Mar 21, 2011
Though they sit quietly beneath the waves, shipwrecks are a cause of much wrangling above the surface. The issue of underwater archaeology is clouded by concerns about treasure hunting, the safety of wrecks, and the sale of finds.
A planned 2012 exhibition at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, featuring 9th century Chinese artifacts salvaged from a wreck in Indonesian waters in 1998 is at the center of the latest row.
Archaeologists within the institution -- and f
