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 11, 2011
The Associated Press has sued several retailers including Urban Outfitters for the unauthorised use of the Hope image created by artist Shepard Fairey.
Artist Fairey used an AP photo without permission to create the image, and was sued by the news agency for violating copyright. That case was settled.
AP argues that using the image on T-shirts is wilful and blatant violation of the copyright of the photo.
A spokesman said that using photos for free devalued
Source: The Independent (UK)
Mar 11, 2011
Archaeologists have found Britain's oldest properly engineered road, and the discovery could change the way we look at a key aspect of British history. Now, many of the country's key A roads – long thought to be Roman in origin – could now turn out to be substantially more British than scholars had thought.
The discoveries, in Shropshire, suggest that ancient Britons were building finely engineered, well-cambered and skilfully metalled roads before the Emperor Claudius's conquering
Source: BBC
Mar 11, 2011
The three-year long war crimes trial of Liberia's ex-President Charles Taylor has closed for judges in The Hague to consider their verdict.
On the final day, the prosecution said Mr Taylor was an intelligent man who was hoping to fool the UN-backed court for Sierra Leone.
The defence team has argued that the trial has been politically motivated.
Mr Taylor denies 11 charges, including murder, rape and using child soldiers during the civil war in Sierra Leone
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 11, 2011
A new exhibition of Caravaggio's work has opened in a Roman church giving give fresh insight to the painter's technique.
The exhibition, in Rome's Palazzo Venezia, focuses on three great Caravaggio works – the Martyrdom of St. Matthew, the Calling of St. Matthew and St. Matthew and the Angel.
It supports a theory first put forward by the British artist David Hockney that the Renaissance artist used a primitive form of photography to create his paintings.
H
Source: NYT
Mar 11, 2011
CHARLESTON, S.C. — Here, in this lovely town, once one of the most prosperous in the American colonies, there is no escape.
In the Old Slave Mart Museum that opened in 2007, you read: “You’re standing in the actual showroom, the place where traders sold — and buyers bought — American blacks who were born into slavery.”...
Slavery and its heritage are everywhere here. Charleston was one of the main colonial ports of the 18th century, dealing in rice, indigo and slaves. I
Source: Seattle Times
Mar 11, 2011
Inside his trinket shop in the city's El Pueblo historic district, Mike Mariscal is surrounded by painted masks, woven blankets and Day of the Dead figurines he's long sold to tourists.
Mariscal fears his own day of reckoning is near as a series of disputes surround the adobe buildings, shops and Mexican-era churches in an increasingly trafficked corner of the city's revitalizing downtown.
One dustup is over Indian graves unearthed during construction of a Mexican-Ameri
Source: NYT
Mar 11, 2011
NEW DELHI — The Dalai Lama announced Thursday that he would formally relinquish his political leadership role in the Tibetan exile government, a decision intended to strengthen the democratic structure of the Tibetan movement on the eve of elections to choose a new generation of political leaders.
For years, the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader, has spoken of his desire to cede political authority, or “retire,” as he has sometimes put it. But in Thursday’s speech he made it
Source: Guardian (UK)
Mar 10, 2011
A leather football that British soldiers dribbled through no man's land while coming under machine-gun fire during a first world war battle has been saved for posterity after being discovered in an old box.
Members of the London Irish Rifles soccer team smuggled the ball out of their own trenches – against orders – during the battle of Loos in 1915 and passed it among themselves, determined to boot it into the German lines.
They didn't make it and the ball ended up pier
Source: Science Insider
Mar 10, 2011
Archaeologists are criticizing the ethics of a planned Smithsonian Institution exhibit, Shipwrecked: Tang Treasures and Monsoon Winds, slated to open in the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in 2012. The exhibit is based on artifacts hauled up from an Arab dhow that sank to the bottom of the Java Sea in the 9th century C.E. The wreck was salvaged by a private German company, Seabed Explorations GbR, in the late 1990s, and critics say that its divers did not observe professional archaeological standards
Source: BBC
Mar 10, 2011
Archaeological treasures that have been frozen for millennia are being destroyed because of climate change, according to Edinburgh researchers.
Remains in some of the coldest places on earth are being exposed as warmer temperatures cause ice and hardened ground to thaw.
Edinburgh University experts said the materials at risk included ancient tombs, artefacts and human remains.
They are often culturally significant, especially for indigenous populations.
Source: NYT
Mar 10, 2011
Anthropologists studying living hunter-gatherers have radically revised their view of how early human societies were structured, a shift that yields new insights into how humans evolved away from apes.
Early human groups, according to the new view, would have been more cooperative and willing to learn from one another than the chimpanzees from which human ancestors split about five million years ago. The advantages of cooperation and social learning then propelled the incipient huma
Source: NYT
Mar 10, 2011
TOKYO — A top American diplomat, Kevin K. Maher, has been removed from his post after stirring outrage in Japan for reportedly belittling Okinawans, a State Department official said Thursday....
According to Japanese news reports, Mr. Maher told students at American University in Washington during a lecture in December that the Okinawans were “masters of manipulation and extortion.” Mr. Maher, who was head of the State Department’s Office of Japan Affairs, has called the news report
Source: KSPR 33
Mar 10, 2011
REPUBLIC, Mo. (AP) — Vandals did at least $4,000 damage to four cannons at the Wilson's Creek National Battlefield in southwest Missouri.
Park Superintendent Ted Hillmer says the vandalism to four of 10 cannons was discovered Monday. The cannons were reproductions of weapons used during the Civil War battle near Republic....
Source: Billings Gazette
Mar 10, 2011
LITTLE BIGHORN BATTLEFIELD NATIONAL MONUMENT — In two cramped rooms in the basement of the visitor center at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, treasures are everywhere.
In drawers and filing cabinets, on shelves and in display cases, there are nearly 120,000 priceless artifacts, documents and books.
There is a large parchment commission, dated 1861 and signed by President Abraham Lincoln, appointing George A. Custer a second lieutenant in the Army's seco
Source: AP
Mar 10, 2011
SKOPJE, Macedonia — Macedonia has inaugurated a $23 million memorial centre for the country's Jews who were killed in Nazi death camps during World War II.
Thursday's ceremony in central Skopje was attended by the presidents of Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro, as well as Israel's Cabinet minister for strategic affairs, Moshe Yaalon....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 10, 2011
The first, and perhaps only, colour photographs of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and fire that nearly flattened the city have been unearthed.
The six never-published images were snapped by photography innovator Frederick Eugene Ives several months after the April 1906 "Great Quake".
Most were taken from the roof of the hotel where Ives stayed during an October 1906 visit.
They were stowed amid other items donated by Ives' son, Herbert,
Source: BBC
Mar 10, 2011
Archaeologists are to dig up the garden of a Ceredigion pub in the search for a legendary Victorian circus elephant.
The Tregaron Elephant has long had its place in local folklore - a beast that died while on tour rumoured to be buried behind the town's Talbot Hotel.
A small-scale excavation in April will search for clues in the hope of revealing its final resting place.
The elephant was said to have fallen ill after drinking contaminated water in the town
Source: BBC
Mar 10, 2011
A statue by French sculptor Auguste Rodin was stolen during the Israel Museum's recently completed renovation, the museum has said.
The nude bronze of French novelist Honore de Balzac was one of a series of four for a Balzac monument in Paris.
It was donated to the museum by the Jewish American songwriter Billy Rose in 1966. Independent estimates put its value at about $350,000 (£220,000).
Rodin is renowned for masterpieces such as The Thinker and The Kiss.
Source: BBC
Mar 10, 2011
Archaeologists working on a housing development in Oxfordshire claim to have found one of the oldest complete pots in the country.
The neolithic find was discovered on a housing development in Didcot and is thought to be about 5,500 years old.
Archaeologist Rob Masefield said they could determine its age by the nature of the pot.
The change from a hunter-gatherer to farming way of life is what defines the start of the neolithic age.
The conce
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 10, 2011
A photograph said to be of the 19th century composer Frederic Chopin just after his death has surfaced in Poland – an extremely rare find that experts are trying [to authenticate.]br />
If real, it would be only the third known photograph of the Polish-French musical genius who lived from 1810-1849.
Wladyslaw Zuchowski, a photographer and gallery owner in Gdansk, said on Thursday that he bought the daguerreotype, the earliest type of photograph, from a private owner in Scotl
