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: AP
February 17, 2010
Federal prosecutors in Utah are disclosing more about the confidential informant at the center of a two-year federal investigation into the looting of Southwestern artifacts.
In federal court filings Tuesday, U.S. attorneys in Salt Lake City said they're giving defense attorneys copies of the informant's agreement with FBI investigators, records of his payments and a copy of his criminal background check.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 18, 2010
The 35-year-old Titanic star told Russian daily Komsomolskaya Pravda: "I'd love to play Stalin very much. However, it is all about a script and there is no such script at the moment."
DiCaprio's Russian grandmother survived the Soviet era with its political purges, mass killings and all powerful secret police.
"My grandmother was telling me about the Second World War, the Gulags and other Russian tragedies.
"I really do not know whether
Source: Independent (UK)
February 18, 2010
The round clay outline of a human body decorated with necklace, belt and bracelets has provided archaeologists with the first glimpse in possibly 1,400 years of a lost West African civilisation.
The discovery of 80 clay figurines from burial mounds in a remote area of northern Ghana is being hailed as evidence of the existence of a hitherto unknown but sophisticated society. It is hoped that the find will provide information about the region's pre-Islamic history.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 18, 2010
In Roman mythology, the bough was a tree branch with golden leaves that enabled the Trojan hero Aeneas to travel through the underworld safely.
They discovered the remains while excavating religious sanctuary built in honour of the goddess Diana near an ancient volcanic lake in the Alban Hills, 20 miles south of Rome.
They believe the enclosure protected a huge Cypress or oak tree which was sacred to the Latins, a powerful tribe which ruled the region before the rise of
Source: Times (UK)
February 18, 2010
A Red Army soldier who appeared in an iconic photograph of a Soviet flag flying from the ruins of Hitler’s Reichstag has died, aged 93.
Abdulkhakim Ismailov had fought all the way to Berlin from the Battle of Stalingrad three years earlier, where the destruction of the German Sixth Army turned the tide against the Nazi regime in the Second World War.
But he was only recognised half a century later as one of three soldiers raising the Hammer and Sickle flag in a pictur
Source: Der Spiegel International
February 17, 2010
The Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania has protested against the inclusion of a Romanian film about anti-communist partisans in the Berlinale festival program. They say the main character was fascist and anti-Semitic.
The Berlin International Film Festival is no stranger to controversy and, as it celebrates its 60th anniversary, another scandal may be brewing.
The Romanian film "Portrait of the Young Man as a Fighter," whi
Source: Der Spiegel International
February 13, 2010
Exactly 65 years ago, on Feb. 13, 1945, Allied bombers decimated the city of Dresden with a deadly combination of explosive and incendiary bombs. The resulting firestorm killed some 25,000 people and left the city in ruins.
It was not the most deadly of the many firestorms Allied planes visited upon Nazi Germany during World War II. But for many, it has become a symbol of excessive violence. Many in Germany's far right, in fact, refer to the event as the "bombing Holocaust,&quo
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 17, 2010
In a letter to the Pope, the scholars said that making Pius XII a saint could do grave damage to relations between the Catholic Church and Jews and that he had become a de facto "symbol of Christian anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism".
Jewish groups have long claimed that Pius turned a blind eye to the Holocaust, but this is thought to be the first time that a group of Catholic theologians have issued such a strongly worded appeal to the Pope.
They endorsed deman
Source: AP
February 17, 2010
It turns out Egypt's beloved boy-king wasn't so golden after all — or much of a wild and crazy guy, for that matter.
But will research showing King Tut was actually a hobbled, weak teen with a cleft palate and club foot kill enthusiasm for a mummy that has fascinated the world for nearly a century?
Not likely, historians say, even though the revelations hardly fit the popular culture depiction of a robust, exotically handsome young pharaoh, or a dancing "how'd-you-
Source: BBC
February 17, 2010
Scientists have analysed the DNA of ancient giant European wild cattle that died out almost 400 years ago.
They have determined the first mitochondrial genome sequence from aurochs (Bos primigenius) from bone found in a cave in England.
The work was carried out at the University College Dublin's Animal Genomics Laboratory and Conway Institute using new technology that allows billions of base pairs of DNA to be sequenced.
The technology was similar to that
Source: Telegraph (UK)
February 17, 2010
Catholic scholars from around the world have "implored" Pope Benedict XVI not to make a controversial wartime pontiff a saint before opening up to scrutiny secret Vatican archives.
In a letter to the Pope, the scholars said that making Pius XII a saint could do grave damage to relations between the Catholic Church and Jews and that he had become a de facto "symbol of Christian anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism".
They endorsed demands made by Jewish grou
Source: AP
February 17, 2010
France's national anthem blared across the tarmac on Wednesday as Nicolas Sarkozy made the first visit ever by a French president to Haiti, once his nation's richest colony — offering aid to a country prostrate after a catastrophic earthquake.
He said his visit had particular resonance given France and Haiti's historical ties and acknowledged that the "wounds of colonization" were perhaps still fresh in the minds of many Haitians, some of whom blame France for the country'
Source: CNN
February 17, 2010
Peru's ancient Inca ruins of Machu Picchu should reopen April 1, more than two months after rain stranded hundreds of tourists at the popular spot, the government said.
Heavy rain in January unleashed mudslides that cut off roads and blocked a rail line between Machu Picchu and the nearby city of Cusco.
Water levels at the Vilcanota River have receded enough to allow repairs to the rail line, said Martin Perez, head of Peru's Ministry of Exterior Commerce and Tourism.
Source: NYT
February 16, 2010
A new mini-series about John F. Kennedy’s presidency that is being prepared by the History channel does not yet have a cast or a premiere date. Not a frame of footage has been shot. It does, however, have prominent critics who want it brought to a halt.
The critics, including Theodore C. Sorensen, a former Kennedy adviser, say they have read the scripts for the project and that those contain errors of fact and emphasis. But like a similar controversy over a 2003 television film abou
Source: Moscow Times
February 17, 2010
Forensic experts in St. Petersburg have confirmed that bloodstains found on a sofa on which the famed 19th-century poet and author Alexander Pushkin is said to have died were indeed left by the poet.
“The results of our medical research allow us to state that it is the poet’s blood on this historic sofa,” Yury Molin, deputy head of the Leningrad region’s legal and medical department, said at a news conference in the city’s Pushkin Apartment Museum earlier this month.
Pu
Source: culture24.org.uk
February 8, 2010
The convoluted campaign to restore the Cutty Sark, Greenwich's 19th century naval icon, is expected to be completed in time for the 2012 Olympics in London after the government confirmed the final funds for the £46 million rebuild had been secured.
A £3 million grant from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport will complete the project to re-open the Grade I listed ship to the public for the first time since November 2006.
Led by National Maritime Museum Chairman L
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
February 17, 2010
Every few minutes during a talk last week at the University of California at Irvine, the same thing happened. A student would get up, shout something critical of Israel, be applauded by some in the audience, and be led away by police.
The speaker -- Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to the United States -- was repeatedly forced to stop his talk. He pleaded for the right to continue, and continued. University administrators lectured the students and asked them to let Oren speak. In t
Source: Pilot Online (VA)
February 17, 2010
North Carolina's education officials have confronted a firestorm of criticism about a proposal to teach only post-Reconstruction American history in high school, leaving lessons on the Founding Fathers and the Civil War to fifth- and seventh-grade classes....
...[S]tate educators say the proposed change in curriculum standards addresses a need to teach U.S. history after 1877 more in-depth, and is not an attempt to thwart learning about the Constitution or the Emancipation Proclamat
Source: Sun-Sentinel (Florida)
February 15, 2010
First, farming and development robbed the Everglades of its life-giving water flows. Now, making up for those environmental mistakes risks robbing the Everglades of its history.
Multibillion-dollar plans to recreate once-natural water flows to the Everglades involve building massive reservoirs and filter marshes across hundreds of thousands of acres south of Lake Okeechobee.
But saving an environmental treasure threatens to trample sacred ground. Some of the land identi
Source: BBC News
February 16, 2010
Sir Paul McCartney has told the BBC he hopes the famous Abbey Road Studios can be saved, after reports that it has been put up for sale by owner EMI.
Selling the studios, best known for being the place where the Beatles recorded their albums, could raise £30m for the debt-stricken record company.
Sir Paul told the Newsnight programme some people associated with the studio may be "mounting some bid to save it".
EMI and its private equity owner Terr
