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 News
Mar 15, 2011
Disney Studios has scrapped plans for a 3D remake of The Beatles' 1968 film Yellow Submarine, according to industry paper Hollywood Reporter.
The new film was being developed by director Robert Zemekis incorporating the 16 Beatles songs and recordings from the original animated film.
Budget issues and a cancelled meeting with surviving Beatles' members were cited as reasons for the film's demise.
However, Zemekis is still free to try and sell the project to
Source: BBC News
Mar 15, 2011
Neil Diamond, Tom Waits and Alice Cooper have become the latest music stars to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
They were joined by New Orleans pianist Dr John and R&B singer Darlene Love at the annual ceremony in New York.
Waits said: "They say I have no hits and that I'm difficult to work with... like it's a bad thing."
The ceremony will be aired on US cable TV on 20 March.
One of the most successful artists of a
Source: BBC News
Mar 15, 2011
Guatemalans who were deliberately infected with syphilis or gonorrhoea in medical tests in the 1940s are suing the US government for compensation.
Hundreds of Guatemalan prisoners, psychiatric patients and orphans were infected without their consent in a programme to study penicillin.
A class action lawsuit was filed by lawyers for the Guatemalans and their relatives.
The US apologised last year for the "reprehensible" experiments.
Bu
Source: NYT
Mar 15, 2011
Fire, scientists agree, helped give rise to a successful, thriving human population by providing heat for cooking and protection from the cold.
But they don’t agree exactly when humans began using fire. Some researchers argue that it occurred more than a million years ago when early humans made their way to Europe from Africa, and others say it happened much later. Now, a new study argues that humans did not master fire until about 400,000 years ago.
Two archaeologists,
Source: NYT
Mar 15, 2011
TRIPOLI, Libya — Akram al-Warfalli, a leader of this country’s giant Warfalla tribe, said only a few words in his interview with Al Jazeera: “We tell the brother Qaddafi, well, he is no longer a brother,” Mr. Warfalli said. “We tell him to leave the country.”
It appeared to be the defection of a powerful tribe that has supported Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi — a powerful inspiration for the revolts that were then taking shape in the east. Some Libyans and scholars outside the country say
Source: NYT
Mar 15, 2011
NATORI, Japan — Hirosato Wako stared at the ruins of his small fishing hamlet: skeletons of shattered buildings, twisted lengths of corrugated steel, corpses with their hands twisted into claws. Only once before had he seen anything like it: World War II.
“I lived through the Sendai air raids,” said Mr. Wako, 75, referring to the Allied bombings of the northeast’s largest city. “But this is much worse.”
For the elderly who live in the villages lining Japan’s northeaster
Source: AFP
Mar 14, 2011
It's safe to say that the Emperor Nero -- the subject of a major new exhibition and archaeology trail that opened in the Roman Forum this week -- has always had something of an image problem.
He has gone down in the history books as the man who had his domineering mother Agrippina killed, kicked his pregnant wife Poppaea to death and -- as legend would have it -- played his lyre on a hill while Rome burnt below him.
The new exhibit "Nero", which runs until Sep
Source: Nature
Mar 14, 2011
The logical argument that ancient human ancestors had to have mastered fire before departing balmy Africa for the often freezing climes of Europe is being challenged by a review revealing that there is no evidence to support the idea.
Exactly when fire became a tool in the hominin toolbox is a thorny issue. Unlike stone tools, which hold together reasonably well over the course of time and can be dated as having been in hominin hands for at least 2.6 million years, the ash and charc
Source: American Catholic
Mar 14, 2011
VATICAN CITY (CNS)—Being the point person for promoting a sainthood cause requires the combined qualities of a private investigator, a theologian, a lawyer, a historian and a medical examiner.
But, most of all, it seems, patience and attention to detail are what's needed to be a postulator -- the key person promoting and shepherding the cause through each stage of the process, which often takes decades.
Teaching future postulators to navigate the process is the job of t
Source: BBC News
Mar 14, 2011
The US has urged Haiti's former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide to delay his return from exile until after presidential elections on 20 March.
A State Department spokesman said it was up to Haiti to decide whether the former leader should be allowed home.
But he said a return before the election could be "destabilising".
A spokesman for Mr Aristide said last Friday that he would return from South Africa "in a few days" but insisted the
Source: Püblic Opinion Online (PA)
Mar 14, 2011
A Fayetteville re-enactor who dresses as a German soldier in World War II has found a friend who actually served in the German military during the war.
Jason Mixell met 87-year-old Gustau Rewwer in December 2010. At the time, Mixell was putting on a display of his German military artifacts.
The two got acquainted and have kept in touch. Mixell even took the veteran to a re-enactment of the Battle of the Bulge at Fort Indiantown Gap.
Rewwer (pronounced like
Source: Montreal Gazette
Mar 14, 2011
Most young Canadians know little or nothing about most of the wars and peacekeeping missions their countrymen have served in, according to a survey done one year ago for Veterans Affairs Canada.
While a bare majority of the 13-to-17-year-olds surveyed claimed to know at least a moderate amount about the Second World War, their knowledge fell off rapidly beyond that.
More than two-thirds said they knew very little or nothing at all about the First World War, and nearly a
Source: The Huffington Post
Mar 14, 2011
Leo Steinberg, the Russian-born art historian and Renaissance scholar whose work had a heroic impact on the understanding and reception of American postwar art, particularly Pop and postmodern art, passed away at the age of 90 on Sunday in New York. His death was reported in an email circulated by Utrecht-based art historian Gary Schwartz, and confirmed by University of Pennsylvania art history department chair Professor Holly Pittman.
A writer and thinker of immense erudition, Stei
Source: NYT
Mar 14, 2011
BERLIN — While Americans have been obsessing lately about Charlie Sheen and his live-in porn film stars, Germany has been consumed by improprieties over a doctoral thesis.
All the German talk shows, the front pages of the country’s newspapers and magazines, its political pundits and comedians (yes, there are German comedians), not to mention the hundreds of thousands of protesters who have taken to the streets or to the pages of Facebook, have had a field day indulging in very Germ
Source: Worcester News
Mar 14, 2011
COUNTY archaeologists have provided conclusive proof that the plague which wiped out about 60 per cent of the European population in the 14th century was caused by fleas.
Human skeletons excavated from pits near Hereford Cathedral helped scholars at Worcestershire Historic Environment and Archaeology Service definitively confirm the plague’s origins.
The team were working as part of an international science project in partnership with the University of Mainz in Germany.
Source: BBC
Mar 14, 2011
A police force found an unfortunate twist after tracing relatives of a police officer who died in the line of duty a century ago.
Pc William Davies, 43, died from injuries suffered whilst trying to make an arrest in Montgomery in 1903.
Dyfed Powys Police traced Pc Davies' descendants because it wants to restore his grave's headstone.
But descendants revealed police evicted Pc Davies' family from their home two weeks after the officer died.
The
Source: BBC
Mar 14, 2011
Researchers believe that Robert Burns' relationship with Highland Mary, the woman described as his muse, was dramatically exaggerated.
Academics at Glasgow University said the myth was largely constructed to lend cultural significance to the poet himself.
Highland Mary, whose real name was Mary Campbell, died in 1786 only a few weeks after meeting Burns.
The Bard went on to publish works dedicated to her.
The Highland Lassie, O, Highland Mary a
Source: BBC
Mar 14, 2011
A 200-year-old love letter has been found hidden in the arm of a chair at a furniture upholsterers in Tewkesbury.
The note, written in French, was bought in a house clearance in France.
The chair's owner, Georgina Mucklow-Davis, explained that it came from a house in the village of St Marcel sur Aude she bought "from a lovely French family who've been living there for over 150 years".
She has written to the family asking if they have any idea who
Source: BBC
Mar 14, 2011
Lincolnshire County Council has announced new plans to put the Magna Carta back on public display in Lincoln Castle.
The council originally wanted to house the exhibit in the building currently used by the crown court, which is situated inside the castle grounds.
But plans to move the court away from the castle were abandoned by HM Courts Service.
The new plans are for the Magna Carta to be housed in a purpose-built vault....
Source: NYT
Mar 14, 2011
“Every Man Dies Alone,” a German novel about a husband and wife who oppose the Nazis in early 1940s Berlin, is about to be published there for second time, but with much more attention, the BBC News reported....
