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)
March 9, 2010
Mr Bush, who left office last year, has directly intervened in the Northern Ireland issue by pleading with David Cameron, the Conservative Leader, to urge Ulster Unionist Party to vote for a crucial policing deal. The Irish lobby on Capitol Hill are said to be concerned the party will vote on Tuesday against the devolution of policing and criminal justice powers to Belfast. Despite the international pleas for it to support the deal, party officials said they would not endorse the hard-fought agreement struck last month to transfer sensitive policing and justice powers from Westminster to the British province....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 8, 2010
Mr Miliband told the Chilcot Inquiry he voted for the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 because Saddam's defiance of the UN posed a danger to global peace and security.
He admitted that the hugely controversial US-led war exposed ''divisions'' in the international community.
But he insisted the UN would have been damaged if the conflict had not gone ahead.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 8, 2010
The Foreign Secretary told Sir John Chilcot’s inquiry into the war that Britain’s willingness to follow through on threats of military force had made some Arab governments more willing to “do business” with the UK.
Accepting that “a lot of people” strongly opposed the 2003, Mr Miliband said that Britain’s reputation had actually been strengthened in some parts of the Middle East.
“People in the region do respect those who are willing to see through what they say [they
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 8, 2010
Esat Altindagoglu has been inundated with more than 50 visitors a day hoping to see the "miracle" at his house near Paris.
The one-foot high painting was given to his wife Sevin by a Lebanese priest on her birthday in 2006, the Turkish-born salesman said.
It began weeping oil on February 12 this year, and had been "crying" every day since, he claimed.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 9, 2010
However, only four per cent of them were referred by their GP for specialist treatment, it has been found.
A study, published in the journal Psychological Medicine, conducted in the aftermath of the 2005 bombings traced survivors of the attacks, which killed 52 and injured 700.
They found that many more people required treatment than had been offered it and the researchers from University College London recommended that in future disasters those exposed to atrocities
Source: Guardian (UK)
March 8, 2010
The bibulous Irish playwright Brendan Behan, banned from entering Britain for a solo IRA wartime bombing mission, was monitored by MI5 for several decades.
More than 45 years after his death from excessive drinking and burial with an IRA military salute over his grave, the security service's files, finally released, include a remark from 1956 that one "source considers that as an individual he is too unstable and too drunken to be particularly dangerous".
He h
Source: ArtDaily.org
March 8, 2010
The recent finding of a 19th century silver bracelet in Alamo Mocho, in the desert of Baja California, represents the first material evidence of presence of the Mormon Battalion, which camped at the site before integrating to the 1847 Mexico-United States War (Mexican War).
The discovery took place after a sandstorm uncovered archaeological material. Specialists of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) began exploration at the site afterwards.
The je
Source: BBC
March 8, 2010
A major research project is aiming to mark the influence of the 19th Century copper industry on Swansea.
The Swansea University scheme plans to bring "back to life" the now dilapidated Hafod copper works which were founded exactly 200 years ago.
Computer animations, exhibitions and activities involving local groups to celebrate the site are planned.
Source: BBC
March 8, 2010
The Leonardo da Vinci extortion trial has heard one of the accused say that the starting figure for the Madonna of the Yarnwinder's return was £700,000.
Marshall Ronald told a man he believed represented the Duke of Buccleuch that five people wanted a 20% share of any additional payment to bring it back.
Mr Ronald is one of five men accused of conspiring to extort £4.25m for the safe return of the painting.
All of them deny the charges they face at the Hi
Source: BBC
March 8, 2010
An 18th Century south Devon canal is one step closer to being restored.
The Stover Canal near Newton Abbot was built by James Templer of Stover House to serve the ball clay industry.
In 1999 the Stover Canal Society was formed with the intention of restoring the scrub-filled waterway for fishing, rowing and wildlife.
Source: AP
March 7, 2010
"You want to see a living hobbit?" a guard at the cave whispered. "I can take you there but it will cost 500,000 rupiah ($55)."
Kornelis Jaman was referring to the dwarf cave-dwellers, whose skeletal remains were discovered in the cave. Scientists believe they went extinct 17,000 years ago, but villagers with an eye for profit insist the hobbits hung around until at least 300 years ago and their descendants are still living in nearby villages.
The di
Source: Asian Tribune
March 8, 2010
The U.S. foreign affairs committee endorsed the resolution with a 23-22 vote even though the Obama administration had urged Congress not to approve it. The resolution now goes to the full House, where prospects for passage are uncertain.
Turkey has always maintained, and rightly so based on objective investigation of the matter by unbiased historians that the Armenian toll in 1915-16 has been inflated and those killed were victims of civil war and unrest, not genocide. Turkish gove
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 8, 2010
A far-Right candidate for Austria's presidential election has brought the country's dark past to the surface again, by denouncing a law banning Nazi groups and Holocaust denial.
Barbara Rosenkranz, 51, a regional leader of the Freedom Party (FPOe), looks likely to be the only candidate to run against the incumbent, President Heinz Fischer, on April 25.
But her comments supporting the scrapping of the tough prohibition law have renewed the debate about a heritage with
Source: AP
March 8, 2010
Most of the 1.5 million condolence letters sent to President John F. Kennedy's widow after his assassination were destroyed, and the 200,000 or so pages that were saved have been hidden away in the archives of his presidential library in Boston.
More than 200 of the letters have now been published for the first time in "Letters to Jackie: Condolences From a Grieving a Nation."
Author Ellen Fitzpatrick, a University of New Hampshire history professor, spent mon
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 8, 2010
Frescoes painted by Giotto, the 14th Century Italian master, have been brought to life with the use of ultraviolet technology.
Restorers discovered that under ultraviolet light, long-lost colour and detail was revealed.
The frescoes date from 1320 and decorate the walls of the Peruzzi Chapel in Florence's Santa Croce church.
They were immortalised in EM Forster's Room with a View as the place where the young Englishwoman Lucy Honeychurch, played in the 1985 film
Source: Telegraph (UK)
March 8, 2010
A French resistance heroine who saved over 100 lives and survived a Nazi firing squad has died at her English care home aged 105.
Andree Peel - known as Agent Rose - helped a string of British and American pilots flee occupied Europe.
Winston Churchill wrote her a personal letter of congratulation, which had to be destroyed once she had read it for security reasons. She was awarded a second Legion d'Honneur last year in recognition of her bravery.
Born Andree Vir
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
March 8, 2010
A glamorous Nazi spy became amorously entangled with two British secret agents in wartime Cairo, previously classified files show.
Sophie Kukralova - codenamed R 37 49 by her German bosses - developed a 'most undesirable familiarity' with the two intelligence officers.
One already married agent offered to leave his wife and marry the blonde while the second threatened to blow her cover unless she slept with him.
Kukralova's arrival in Cairo in 1941 immediat
Source: CNN
March 8, 2010
A team of scientists has agreed that a giant asteroid killed off dinosaurs and a majority of other species on Earth more than 65 million years ago.
The researchers analyzed evidence and agreed it supports a single-impact theory first proposed 30 years ago on the cause of the mass extinction.
Since 1980, scientists have gathered an overwhelming amount of evidence that shows a single asteroid about 6 miles in diameter and traveling at thousands of miles an hour, slammed i
Source: BBC Radio 4
March 8, 2010
Summer 1937. What could be more fitting in the cool afternoon of an English country lane than a group of cycling tourists steadily pedalling their way from one historic site to another, stopping to camp overnight in fields along the way.
The only problem was, that summer, some of those groups of teenage boys were Hitler Youth.
In an era without satellite photography, when detailed ordnance survey maps could be hard to come by and when tension in Europe was rising, MI5 w
Source: Medieval News
March 8, 2010
A used bookstore in Toronto is taking a page from medieval booksellers to create a new model for his industry. It is the daring idea of Jason Rovito, whose store, Of the Swallows, their Deeds and the Winter Below, will be opening next month as an experiment in providing a new way of selling books.
Rovito became interested in starting a used bookstore while working on his PhD dissertation on symbolic spaces within urban places, and noticed how important booksellers were
