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: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 25, 2011
Museum openings, a big dig and a new film make this an ideal time to visit Hadrian's bequest to Britain, says Sophie Campbell.
Mist, dripping trees, stones black with wet. Thank Jupiter I’m not in a tunic; this is the sort of damp that rusts your armour and dribbles down your greaves into your socks.
Yes, the Romans wore socks. I don’t know why I find that so hilarious, but I do. They wore socks and hobnail boots in the winter and you could hear a legion coming for mil
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 25, 2011
British intelligence advised the Palestinian Authority to crush Hamas and other violent groups in the West Bank by detaining some of their leading figures, leaked documents have shown.
In an effort to restore peace during the Second Palestinian Intifada against Israel, MI6 drew up a strategy in 2004 to help Yasser Arafat's security forces neutralise "rejectionists" opposed to a Middle East peace deal.
Two strategy papers recommended "the detention of key
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 25, 2011
Germany's central Nazi war crimes body said on Tuesday it had launched an inquiry after an envelope with photos of killings in the Soviet Union in World War II was handed in anonymously.
"In total there are 50 photos, some of which show very drastic deaths, such as hangings, as well as corpses on the ground and bodies piled into German army trucks," spokesman Andreas Brendel said.
"There are German army soldiers in some of the photos but it is unclear if
Source: NYT
Jan 25, 2011
PARIS — The head of France’s national railway company, known as the S.N.C.F., on Tuesday made the company’s first formal public apology directly to Holocaust victims. The regrets came just a few months after American lawmakers, survivors and their descendants moved to block the company from winning contracts in the United States if it did not acknowledge its role in the shipping of thousands of Jews to Nazi death camps and make amends.
“In the name of the S.N.C.F., I bow down before
Source: AFP
Jan 25, 2011
Israeli archaeologists have finished work on a tunnel which starts at a site near the flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound inside the walls of Jerusalem's Old City, officials said on Tuesday.
The controversial 600-metre (-yard) tunnel, originally built as a drainage channel during the Second Temple period, starts at an archaeological site just south of the area known to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif or Noble Sanctuary, which houses the third holiest site in Islam.
The tu
Source: The Guardian (UK)
Jan 25, 2011
Scientists from the Space Research Centre are working with an art historian to reveal secrets of the Tudor Reformation
Cutting-edge space science technology of the sort used to analyse moon rock is being applied to fragments of 16th-century tombs. Scientists from the Space Research Centre in Leicester are working with an art historian from the nearby university as well as academics from Oxford and Yale in a three-year project that hopes to shed new light on our understanding of the
Source: BBC
Jan 25, 2011
A petition calling for an inquiry into the conviction of the Lockerbie bomber has been kept open despite an earlier refusal from the Scottish government.
The Justice For Megrahi (JFM) group handed over a petition to the Scottish Parliament in October last year.
It sought an independent probe into the case of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only man to be convicted of the bombing which killed 270 people in 1988.
The petitions committee agreed to write to the gove
Source: BBC
Jan 25, 2011
A 1,700-year-old skeleton shows that people of African descent have lived in Warwickshire for far longer than was previously thought, experts say.
The skeleton of an African man was discovered buried in Tiddington Road, Stratford-upon-Avon, in 2009.
Archaeologists said they now believed the man may have been a Roman soldier who chose to retire in Stratford after serving in an African unit.
Investigations into the man's background are continuing.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 25, 2011
The largest Claude Monet retrospective the world has seen ended on a historic high as France's most visited art exhibition in more than 40 years.
In all 913,064 visitors flocked to Paris' Grand Palais on the Champs-Elysées to view 'Claude Monet (1840-1926)', gathering some 170 tableaux of the much-loved impressionist painter from around the globe. The show closed on Monday night.
The last time such attendance levels were beaten in France was for a 1967 exhibition on t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 25, 2011
It was the final act of compassion that seemed to epitomise the decency of President Abraham Lincoln.
On April 14, 1865, having steered the US through the horrors of civil war, he issued a pardon for Patrick Murphy, a mentally disabled private in the union army who had been sentenced to death for desertion.
He then headed to Ford's Theatre in Washington, to watch a performance of Tom Taylor's 'Our American Cousin', during which he was shot dead by John Wilkes Booth.
Source: AP
Jan 25, 2011
The U.N. chief says a U.N. appointed expert on Palestinian rights made preposterous remarks when he alleged an apparent cover-up by U.S. authorities involving the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned Tuesday what he called the inflammatory rhetoric of Richard Falk, a U.N. special rapporteur appointed by the U.N.'s Human Rights Council in Geneva.
Falk suggested the cover-up in a blog post this month and criticized mainstream media for being un
Source: AP
Jan 25, 2011
An abandoned railway station outside Paris will be turned into a memorial for the tens of thousands of French and other European Jews who were deported from the site to death camps during World War II, an official said Tuesday.
The French national rail network, known as SNCF, is giving the former station in the Paris suburb of Bobigny to local officials as part of an agreement to create the memorial there.
SNCF last year for the first time expressed "sorrow and reg
Source: CNN
Jan 25, 2011
An exiled Rwandan rebel leader is being transferred to the International Criminal Court to face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, the Paris prosecutor's office said Tuesday.
Callixte Mbarushimana was arrested in Paris in October under an ICC warrant involving allegations of mass rape and other crimes committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Mbarushimana, a leader of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), is charged with 11 coun
Source: CNN
Jan 25, 2011
The Bush administration used a White House political office as a "boiler room" to support Republican congressional candidates in violation of federal law, a report released Monday by an independent government watchdog agency concludes.
The findings of the report by the Office of Special Counsel echo those of a 2008 House Oversight Committee investigation, which concluded that the activities of the Office of Political Affairs during the administration of President George W.
Source: CNN
Jan 25, 2011
A Spanish-language newspaper in Georgia has drawn bipartisan criticism for publishing a doctored photograph depicting the state's new governor as a Nazi.
El Nuevo Georgia Editor Rafael Navarro said the picture was meant to call attention to Hispanic issues -- and grab the attention of residents and politicians who often ignore the Hispanic community.
The photo illustration, published in the paper's January 6 edition, shows Republican Gov. Nathan Deal wearing a Nazi unif
Source: Fox News
Jan 25, 2011
After the mayor of a small Arkansas town flew the confederate flag in observance of Robert E. Lee’s birthday, the city council passed an ordinance Monday saying only the U.S. flag and Arkansas flag can be flown on city property.
Mayor Jim Smithson flew the flag above Marshal City Hall from the 14th to the 18th of January. It resulted in numerous phone calls, e-mails, and an emergency meeting to make sure it does not happen again....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 25, 2011
Germany's central Nazi war crimes body said on Tuesday it had launched an inquiry after an envelope with photos of killings in the Soviet Union in World War II was handed in anonymously.
"In total there are 50 photos, some of which show very drastic deaths, such as hangings, as well as corpses on the ground and bodies piled into German army trucks," spokesman Andreas Brendel said.
"There are German army soldiers in some of the photos but it is unclear if
Source: Kansas City Star
Jan 25, 2011
Super Mom ruled the '80s. She was to motherhood what the Virginia Slims chick was to cigarettes. She could do it all, be it all and have it all, all at the same time. She retired at the end of the decade, weary, exhausted, suffering from water retention and plantar fasciitis from spiked heels.
Soccer Mom ruled the '90s. She lived in the 'burbs, drove the kids to games in a minivan, had a lawn chair permanently stashed in the cargo hold, took snacks for the team, told her littlest on
Source: BBC News
Jan 25, 2011
People that have been to see last year's blockbuster The Social Network, could be forgiven for thinking that the rise of sites like Facebook started just a few years ago.
But to find the true origins of social networking you have to go further back than 2004.
In a side street in Berkeley California, the epicentre of the counterculture in the 1960s and 1970s, I found what could well be the birthplace of the phenomenon.
Standing outside what was once a shop c
Source: BBC News
Jan 25, 2011
The composer Fryderyk Chopin, who was hounded by hallucinations during his relatively short life, probably had epilepsy, say Spanish researchers.
The Polish pianist died in 1849 at the age of 39 as a result of a lung disease which has recently been attributed to cystic fibrosis.
But the Spanish doctors say he probably also suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy.
They cite reports of disturbing visions which the composer experienced.
Letters writt
