Breaking News
Highlights
- Texas board endorses conservative-backed curriculum
- Texas SBOE members clash over racial balance in history
- New photos of Beatles' John Lennon appear after 40 years
- Roadworks dig finds millions of Aboriginal artifacts in Tasmania
- WWII female pilots honored at Capitol Hill on March 10
- 43% say their kids' U.S. history textbooks are inaccurate
- Lost Jewish tribe 'found in Zimbabwe'
- Tourists banned from Indian islands over risk of killing off local tribes
- Peru drops some claims against Yale in Machu Picchu controversy
- Czech archaeologists find oldest settlement (150,000 years old) in Arbil, north Iraq
WEEK OF MARCH 8, 2010
Kenneth Dover, a Provocative Scholar of Ancient Greek Literature, Dies at 89
Apollo astronauts dismay at axing of Nasa mission to return mankind to the Moon
Settlement offer worth millions in 9/11 case to go before judge
Atheist in battle to remove 'In God We Trust' from US currency
New Harriet Tubman artifacts to go on display at the Smithsonian
Roadworks dig finds millions of Aboriginal artifacts in Tasmania
Google, Italian government reach agreement to digitize collections
Home of Khmer Rough leader Pol Pot protected as tourist attraction
Tourists banned from Indian islands over risk of killing off local tribes
Corpse of dead Cyprus ex-president recovered from bodysnatchers
Al-Qaeda came within days of terror attack on Britain last year, court hears
Peru drops some claims against Yale in Machu Picchu controversy
"Mafia congressman" James Traficant out of jail, considering new congressional run
Czech archaeologists find oldest settlement (150,000 years old) in Arbil, north Iraq
Chile quake moves the city of Concepcion more than 10 feet west
Rodney Alcala, convicted serial killer, won on 'Dating Game' back in 1978
Northern Ireland: Ulster officials defy 'bullying' after George W Bush 'intervention'
Iraq inquiry: action against Saddam Hussein vital for UN authority, says David Miliband
Iraq Inquiry: David Miliband says war has boosted Britain's reputation in Arab world
One third of 7/7 survivors had post traumatic stress: research
British intelligence deemed Irish playwright and IRA man Brendan Behan "too drunken to be dangerous"
US Congressional Panel's Decision Against Turkey Shows Blatant Hypocrisy
14th century Giotto frescoes exposed under ultraviolet light
Scientists reaffirm theory that giant asteroid killed dinosaurs
Toronto used bookstores bases its business model on medieval predecessors
WEEK OF MARCH 1, 2010
New book claims Robin Hood stole from the rich and lent to the poor
U.S. push for former President Ronald Reagan to be immortalised on $50 bill
Official: Armenian genocide resolution unlikely to get full House vote
ACLU Likens Obama to Bush in Ad Slamming Possible Reversal on KSM Trial
Fire Destroys Historic Pennsylvania Forge That Made Ashtrays for Hindenburg
Rove-elations: Former Bush Adviser Opens Up About Katrina, WMDs, Obama
White House considers military trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
Jewish group: The 'Armenian Resolution' Should be Opposed and Defeated
200 years of neglect - remains of soldiers neglected and desecrated
Principal apologizes for Black History Month celebration that included O.J. Simpson, Rodman, RuPaul
Sunday, March 14, 2010
Ancient Norse Settlements Hit Cold Spell
Source: Discovery News (3-10-10)
A long cooling period may have led to famine in Greenland and Iceland more than 1,000 years ago.
New research reveals just how bad an idea it was to colonize Greenland and Iceland more than a millennium ago: average temperatures in Iceland plummeted nearly 6 degrees Celsius in the century that followed the island's Norse settlement in about A.D. 870, a climate record gleaned from mollusk shells shows.
The record is the most precise year-by-year chronology yet of temperatures experienced by the northern Norse colonies, says William Patterson, an isotope geochemist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, who led the new work. The study will appear online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Expedition Sought to Find George Mallory's Camera
Source: Discovery News (3-12-10)
George Mallory's camera may contain photographic evidence of whether he and Andrew Irvine were the first to summit Everest.
Tom Holzel really wants a camera. The problem is, the only camera that he'll settle for was lost somewhere on Mount Everest 86 years ago.
The lost camera is a Vestpocket Kodak that belonged to George Mallory, the climber who died just 2,030 feet below Everest's summit in 1924.
If the camera is intact, there is a possibility its photographic film is still recoverable and could contain vital images that could settle one of the great unsolved exploration mysteries of the 20th century: Were Mallory and Andrew Irvine the first to summit Everest or did they die painfully close to the top?
Kenneth Dover, a Provocative Scholar of Ancient Greek Literature, Dies at 89
Source: New York Times (2-13-10)
Kenneth Dover, an eminent scholar of ancient Greek life, language and literature who became known for his willingness to break longstanding taboos in print, from his frank descriptions of sexual behavior (both the Greeks’ and his own) to his baldly stated desire to bring about the death of a vexing Oxford colleague, died on Sunday in Cupar, Scotland. He was 89.
His death was announced by the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Mr. Dover retired as the university’s chancellor in 2005.
The author of many books on the Greek classical age, Mr. Dover was known in particular for “Greek Homosexuality” (Duckworth, 1978). It was the first openly published scholarly work to talk about Greek male love in unfettered sexual terms. (A few earlier books on the subject had been privately published and were little known as a result.)
Dig may find signs of Viking town in Thetford
Source: BBC (3-14-10)
Archaeologists hope to find signs of an old Viking town during excavations in Norfolk.
The dig at the Anchor Hotel in Bridge Street, Thetford, is being carried out ahead of a possible redevelopment of the area.
The proximity of the Little Ouse river means there is every likelihood of well preserved remains under the car park, Breckland District Council said.
It is expected the work will take up to six weeks, depending on what is found.
Henry Kissinger released from South Korea hospital
Source: CNN (3-14-10)
Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was discharged from a hospital in Seoul on Sunday after being treated for a stomach virus.
He is "in good spirits," said Dr. John Linton of Yonsei Severance Hospital.
Kissinger was hospitalized Saturday. A special medical team conducted a check-up and an MRI scan and took X-rays, but found nothing serious, hospital staffers said.
Texas board endorses conservative-backed curriculum
Source: Houston Chronicle (3-13-10)
The State Board of Education tentatively approved new standards for social studies Friday with members divided along party lines — some blasting them as a fraud and conservative whitewash, others praising them as a tribute to the Founding Fathers that rightly portrays America as an exceptional country.
The standards, which will influence history and government textbooks arriving in public schools in fall 2011, were adopted by 10 Republicans against five Democrats after weeks of debate and across a racial and ideological chasm that seemed to grow wider as the proposal was finalized Thursday.
The document faces a public hearing and a final board vote in May.
The often contentious process has been watched closely across the nation, particularly this week as the board gathered to debate and vote on the proposed standards. Because of Texas' size, decisions by the board on what should and should not be included can influence publishers whose textbooks may be adopted by other states.
Democrats on the board — all of them black or Hispanic — complained the new standards dilute minority contributions to Texas and U.S. history.
“We have been about conservative versus liberal. We have manipulated the standards to insist on what we want to be in the document, regardless whether it's appropriate,” said Mavis Knight, D-Dallas. “We are perpetrating a fraud on the students of this state.”
But Terri Leo, R-Spring, called the proposal “a world class document” and told her Democratic colleagues the board has “included more minorities and historical events than ever before ... I am very disappointed at those allegations because they are simply not true.”...
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Ancient Tribal Meeting Ground Found in Australia
Source: Discovery News (3-10-10)
The 40,000-year-old site may hold the world's southernmost traces of early human life.
Australian archaeologists have uncovered what they believe to be the world's southernmost site of early human life, a 40,000-year-old tribal meeting ground, an Aboriginal leader said Wednesday.
The site appears to have been the last place of refuge for Aboriginal tribes from the cannon fire of Australia's first white settlers, said Michael Mansell of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre.
Villagers threatening Achaemenid tomb in southern Iran
Source: Tehran Times (3-11-10)
Construction by local residents has imperiled an ancient structure, believed to be the tomb of Cyrus I, the Achaemenid king and son of Teispes and grandfather of Cyrus II the Great, near the village of Tang-e Eram in Bushehr Province.
Experts have demarcated a 100-meter perimeter for the site, which was registered on the National Heritage List in 1997, the Persian service of the Mehr News Agency reported on Wednesday.
Any construction done on this perimeter is illegal, however, construction of buildings has increased in the vicinity of the boundary.
Jewish retiree creates stir defending Pope Pius
Source: AP (3-13-10)
In the long and painful debate over whether he should have done more to halt the murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators in World War II, Pope Pius XII has an unusual defender.
Gary Krupp, who is Jewish, says he grew up hating the late pontiff. Now, at 62, the retired Long Island businessman is caught up in the controversy over the Vatican's effort to make Pius a saint. He says that as a Jew he's not interested in the sainthood issue — he just wants to defend the wartime pope's reputation from "the worst character assassination of the 20th century."
That puts him among a handful of Jews who have bucked a widely held view of Pius as a pope who failed to pit his moral authority against Hitler's Holocaust, and who therefore is not entitled to sainthood. Some prominent Catholic scholars concede many questions linger about Pius's tenure, but his defenders say he saved thousands of Jewish lives by working behind the scenes.
Richard Stites, Historian of Russian Culture, Dies at 78
Source: New York Times (3-12-10)
Richard Stites, who opened up new territory for historians with a landmark work on the Russian women’s movement and in numerous articles and books on Russian and Soviet mass culture, died on Sunday in Helsinki, where he was doing research. He was 78 and lived in Washington.
The cause was complications from cancer, his son Andrei said.
Mr. Stites made a practice of seeking out unexplored historical byways. After publishing “The Women’s Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism and Bolshevism, 1860-1930” (1978), a book that virtually created a subdiscipline, he turned his attention to mass entertainment.
In books like “Russian Popular Culture: Entertainment and Society Since 1900” (1992), he shed light on cultural forms previously ignored or dismissed, writing about the variety stage, the composers of factory songs and beloved actors like Lyubov Orlova, a star in musical comedy films of the 1930s, who, as he put it, “sang and danced her way through a decade of terror and mass executions.”
Da Vinci trial hears of loan request
Source: BBC (3-12-10)
A lawyer asked one of his clients if he could borrow £350,000 to retrieve a stolen painting, a trial has been told.
Roy Radcliffe, 60, told the High Court in Edinburgh that he was promised a 10% profit but he dismissed lawyer Marshall Ronald's proposal as ludicrous.
Mr Ronald, 53, is one of five men accused of demanding £4.25m for the safe return of a stolen Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece.
The Madonna of the Yarnwinder was taken from Drumlanrig Castle in 2003.
'Despicable' raid at WWII heroine Andree Peel's home
Source: BBC (3-12-10)
Burglars have broken into the home of French Resistance heroine Andree Peel, it has emerged.
Mrs Peel, who died last week aged 105, helped save more than 100 Allied pilots and spent her final years in Long Ashton, near Bristol.
A police spokesman said Mrs Peel's house in the village was broken into some time after she died at her care home.
Cypriot 'Al Capone' suspected of stealing president's body
Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-12-10)
A notorious Cypriot villain, known as "Al Capone", is suspected of ordering the theft of the corpse of the former president Tassos Papadopoulos.
Antonis Kitas is suspected of giving the order to snatch the body from his prison cell and had hoped to use it as a bargaining tool to secure his release.
Police are questioning Kitas, who is serving a double life sentence in Nicosia prison for multiple rape and murder, about the theft.
Mr Papadopoulos's body was stolen from its grave in a Nicosia cemetery last December, the day before the first anniversary of his death.
Apollo astronauts dismay at axing of Nasa mission to return mankind to the Moon
Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-13-10)
Former Apollo astronauts have expressed dismay at President Barack Obama's decision to cancel the Nasa programme that was intended to return mankind to the Moon.
Eugene Cernan, the last man to set foot on the Moon, and Jim Lovell, commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission said they were disappointed by the decision to cancel Nasa's Constellation Moon programme.
Mr Lovell warned the decision would have "catastrophic consequences" for US space exploration.
Vandals Ransack Former Nazi Concentration Camp
Source: AP (3-13-10)
Vandals sprayed anti-Semitic graffiti on Holocaust memorials at a former Nazi concentration camp in Poland, desecration that authorities discovered Saturday and are investigating.
Words including "Jude Raus" — German for "Jew Out" — and "Hitler Good!" in English, were found in red paint Saturday on a large monument at the former Plaszow camp near Krakow. A smaller memorial plaque was also painted with a swastika and "Jude Raus."
The vandalism was discovered a day before a planned memorial march marking the 67th anniversary of the liquidation of Krakow's ghetto.
Alleged Ku Klux Klan Member Loses Appeal in 1964 Murders
Source: AP (3-13-10)
A federal appeals court has upheld the conviction of a reputed Ku Klux Klan member accused in the kidnapping of two black men who were abducted and killed in rural Mississippi in 1964.
In a two-to-one ruling, the panel of judges said the evidence in the case against James Ford Seale was sufficient for the jury conviction in the 2007 trial. Friday's decision came from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans.
The judge who dissented said too much time had elapsed to try Seale in the decades-old case and that incriminating statements Seale made should have been barred from his trial.
Settlement offer worth millions in 9/11 case to go before judge
Source: CNN (3-12-10)
A New York judge Friday postponed a decision on a proposed $657 million settlement for people who became ill after working on the World Trade Center site after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The settlement, announced Thursday, would cover about 10,000 plaintiffs, said Marc Bern, one of the lawyers representing the workers.
The postponement appeared to take attorneys -- and Mayor Michael Bloomberg -- by surprise. Attorneys for both sides and the mayor earlier made statements assuming the proposal would be approved by U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein.
The judge is particularly interested in making sure the attorneys' cut of the settlement is equitable for all parties.
Kissinger admitted to South Korean hospital
Source: CNN (3-13-10)
Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was admitted to a hospital in Seoul, South Korea, on Saturday with a stomach virus, a doctor told CNN.
The state-run Yonhap news agency reported that Kissinger, 86, arrived in the South Korean capital Wednesday for a security forum and met with President Lee Myung-bak on Friday.
A special medical team did a check-up and MRI scan and took X-rays, but found nothing serious, staff sources at the hospital said.
Friday, March 12, 2010
Miniature portrait of Scots naval hero goes on sale
Source: BBC (3-12-10)
A tiny portrait of a Scottish naval officer who helped set the White House ablaze is estimated to fetch up to £15,000 at auction next month.
The miniature of Sir Pulteney Malcolm (1768-1838), from Dumfriesshire, measures just 10cm in height.
In August 1814 Sir Pulteney was third in command of a fleet which set fire to several public buildings in Washington, including the White House.
The miniature portrait has been in the Malcolm family since 1806.
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert art shown in London
Source: BBC (3-12-10)
A new exhibition will showcase for the first time the art that Queen Victoria and Prince Albert collected and presented to each other.
The display at Buckingham Palace reveals the couple's enthusiasm for paintings, sculptures and jewellery.
The 400-piece royal collection is expected to "challenge attitudes towards the monarch," its curator said.
Victoria's most glamorous surviving dress, worn at a Buckingham Palace ball in 1851, is part of the exhibition.
Sweden to extradite Auschwitz sign theft suspect
Source: BBC (3-11-10)
A court in Stockholm has ruled that a Swedish man can be extradited to Poland to face trial over the theft of a sign from the Auschwitz death camp.
Investigators accuse Anders Hogstrom, 34, of instigating the theft of the infamous Arbeit Macht Frei sign from the camp gates last December.
The sign was recovered shortly afterwards, cut into three pieces.
Mr Hogstrom, a former neo-Nazi leader, denies the claims and is likely to appeal, his lawyer said.
Ex-Bosnian leader 'owed apology by British government'
Source: BBC (3-11-10)
Britain should apologise to a former Bosnian president for "mistreating" him in prison, the chairman of the joint presidency of Bosnia-Hercegovina said.
Former Bosnian President Ejup Ganic, 64, was arrested at Heathrow over war crimes allegations on 1 March at the request of Serbia. He was later bailed.
Haris Silajdzic, chairman of the joint presidency of Bosnia-Hercegovina, said Mr Ganic was denied basic rights.
Israel in legal battle over Kafka's papers
Source: BBC (3-12-10)
This is a struggle between Israel and Germany, between a Jewish refugee family from Prague and Israeli public opinion over a collection of papers that might include unpublished works by the celebrated 20th Century writer Franz Kafka.
Kafka became famous in spite of himself. Just before he died in 1924, the young novelist, who suffered from various mental and physical illnesses, entrusted his friend, Max Brod, with a collection of handwritten documents.
He asked him to destroy the unpublished manuscripts after his death. Brod ignored his friend's last wishes, allowing the world to enjoy great works such as The Trial and Metamorphosis.
No let-up in row over ex-Bosnian leader's arrest
Source: BBC (3-11-10)
The arrest of a former Bosnian president is still causing diplomatic fallout, even after the decision by the High Court in London on Thursday to release him on bail.
Ejup Ganic was arrested on 1 March on a Serbian extradition request alleging war crimes committed in 1992. His arrest sparked demonstrations outside the British embassy in Sarajevo and diplomatic protests.
But speaking in London after his release, the Bosnian President Haris Silajdzic said he had told the British Foreign Secretary David Miliband that this was not the end of the matter.
New York agrees World Trade Center 9/11 dust payout
Source: BBC (3-12-10)
New York City officials have agreed to pay up to $657.5m (£437m) to thousands of rescue and clean-up workers after 9/11.
The settlement would compensate more than 10,000 plaintiffs who say they were made sick by dust at the Ground Zero site of the attacks.
At least 95% of the plaintiffs must approve the deal for it to take effect.
Winnie denies interview criticising Nelson Mandela
Source: BBC (3-12-10)
Winnie Mandela, the former wife of ex-President Nelson Mandela, has denied giving an interview accusing him of letting down black South Africans.
Ms Madikizela-Mandela said the article, published in London's Evening Standard newspaper this week, was a fabrication.
The article was written by Nadira Naipaul, the wife of Nobel prize-winning author VS Naipaul.
The Mandelas, who were both leaders in the struggle against South Africa's minority white rule, divorced in 1996.
Atheist in battle to remove 'In God We Trust' from US currency
Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-12-10)
An atheist has claimed in court that the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and "In God We Trust" on US currency should be removed on the grounds they breach his constitutional rights as a non believer.
The San Francisco-based 9th U S Circuit Court of Appeals panel rejected two legal challenges by Michael Newdow, a doctor, who said the references to God are unconstitutional and infringe on his religious beliefs.
The same appeals court caused a national uproar and prompted accusations of judicial activism when it decided in Mr Newdow's favour in 2002, ruling that the pledge violated the First Amendment prohibition against government endorsement of religion.
Ancient Corpses Ritually Dug Up, Torn Apart, Reburied
Source: National Geographic (3-9-10)
According to the first known evidence of "double burials," ancient people in what is now Mexico routinely dug up decomposing bodies and took off their arms, legs, and heads, then reburied the bodies, new research shows.
Indigenous peoples of the Cape Region of Baja California Sur (see map) practiced these double burials for about 4,500 years, from about 300 B.C. to the 16th-century A.D, when Europeans first arrived in the region, anthropologists say.
To the native groups, death was "a motionless, painful state, from which the living could free" the dead by sectioning the limbs, physical anthropologist Alfonso Rosales-Lopez said in an email translated from Spanish."
(See pictures of facedown burials from around the world.)
The double-burial practice, he added, is consistent with beliefs in other cultures around the world that death isn't the end of life but rather a passing from one state to another.
Since 1991 Rosales-Lopez has examined more than a hundred of the double burials along the southern coast of Baja California and is currently working on a paper describing the practice....
Saxon pottery found at a playground
Source: Medieval News (3-11-10)
Archaeologists have found saxon pottery on the site of the new adventure playground for the town of Wisbech in Cambridgeshire, England
Further investigations will take place, but the find will not delay the start of work on the £800,000 project.
The adventure playground is an investment from the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) to provide the facility for the Waterlees district, which was identified as an area of ‘play deprivation’.
An exercise established that the local community rated improved provision for play, sport and leisure as a high priority.
The funding will enable 8 to 14-year-olds to have access to suitable play facilities. The playground has been primarily designed for this age range but this doesn’t mean children outside this age range won’t be able to use the facility. The plan will take into account the needs of local children to ensure that the playground is used to its full potential.
The playground is designed to be an open access, free playground for local children. Children will be asked to sign in on arrival and sign out again when they leave but there will be no charge to play on at the site.
The playground will be staffed by experienced, qualified staff who will oversee and encourage the children’s play whilst on site. All staff on the site will be CRB (Criminal Records Bureau) checked and meet the Independent Safeguarding Authority (ISA) requirements.
Any visitor to the site will be asked to sign in, for health and safety and child protection reasons. The playground will also have a comprehensive safeguarding policy and procedure which meets the requirements of the Local Safeguarding Children’s Board (LSCB).
At a meeting at the end of January 2010, Fenland District Council agreed to transfer the land to Cambridgeshire County Council. All parts of the Spinney outside of the adventure playground will remain public open land.
Archaeologists will be meeting the construction company to plan exactly where this further dig will need to be. This will not delay the construction as the archaeological work will be at the Roman Bank end of the site and the construction of the playground will start at the east end of the site.
Organisers are still looking for local residents from Waterlees to join the resident liaison group. Anyone interested in joining this group should contact Jane Leet on 01954 273357 or email: jane.leet@cambridgeshire.gov.uk
Israel in legal battle over Kafka's papers
Source: BBC News (3-12-10)
Imagine a number of safety deposit boxes, in different banks in different countries. No-one is quite sure what's inside them.
Yet private individuals, state bodies and commercial institutions are locked in a seemingly endless legal battle to own their contents.
Sounds like a Kafka novel? Well, almost.
This is a struggle between Israel and Germany, between a Jewish refugee family from Prague and Israeli public opinion over a collection of papers that might include unpublished works by the celebrated 20th Century writer Franz Kafka.
Kafka became famous in spite of himself. Just before he died in 1924, the young novelist, who suffered from various mental and physical illnesses, entrusted his friend, Max Brod, with a collection of handwritten documents.
He asked him to destroy the unpublished manuscripts after his death. Brod ignored his friend's last wishes, allowing the world to enjoy great works such as The Trial and Metamorphosis....
Texas Conservatives Seek Deeper Stamp on Texts
Source: NYT (3-10-10)
Even as a panel of educators laid out a vision Wednesday for national standards for public schools, the Texas school board was going in a different direction, holding hearings on changes to its social studies curriculum that would portray conservatives in a more positive light, emphasize the role of Christianity in American history and include Republican political philosophies in textbooks.
The hearings are the latest round in a long-running cultural battle on the 15-member State Board of Education, a battle that could have profound consequences for the rest of the country, since Texas is one of the largest buyers of textbooks.
The board is expected to take a preliminary vote this week on a raft of changes to the state’s social studies curriculum proposed by the seven conservative Republicans on the board. A final vote will come in May.
Conservatives argue that the proposed curriculum, written by a panel of teachers, emphasizes the accomplishments of liberal politicians — like the New Deal and the Great Society — and gives less importance to efforts by conservatives like President Ronald Reagan to limit the size of government.
“There is a bias,” said Don McLeroy, a dentist from College Station who heads up the board’s conservative faction. “I think the left has a real problem seeing their own bias.”...
Germany fights to keep Holocaust organiser's files sealed
Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-12-10)
Germany is fighting to keep sealed the Eichmann files detailing the years the Holocaust's chief logistics organiser spent on the run before he was captured by Mossad agents.
Those hoping to have a 50-year secrecy order overturned believe the government is embarrassed by details within that may prove German and Vatican officials colluded in his escape and freedom.
The secrecy order is being challenged in a benchmark court case against the BND, Germany's domestic intelligence service, which wants the 4,500 pages of documents on Adolf Eichmann to remain out of the public domain. The service claims that intelligence agencies in other countries will be "frightened off" in future data-sharing if they are disclosed, Der Spiegel reported.
Critics believe this is a smokescreen designed to avoid official embarrassment both in Berlin and the Vatican. It is well documented that German Bishop Alois Hudal in Rome operated postwar "Ratlines," getting passports for wanted Nazis to allow them to escape justice.
Franz Stangl, commandant of the Treblinka extermination camp, admitted to British Nazi expert Gitta Sereny that Hudal helped him get away after the Nazi defeat in 1945.
Eichmann also escaped. He was the ultimate "desk murderer" of the Third Reich who, as head of department IVB4 of the SS in Berlin, was responsible for the trains that carried millions to their deaths at extermination centres in Nazi occupied Poland....
Paths could retrace Jacobite night march of 1746
Source: BBC News (3-11-10)
Parts of routes believed to have been followed by Jacobites attempting a night assault could be recreated in a new network of public footpaths.
The National Trust for Scotland (NTS) said elements of the ill-fated night march of April 1746 could be a feature of the project at Culloden.
However, the trust stressed the paths idea was still in the early stages.
Supporters of Bonnie Prince Charlie tried to march from Culloden to Nairn to attack Hanoverian troops.
Last year, the night march was re-enacted for the first time to give historians an insight into what the Jacobite soldiers endured....
Texas SBOE members clash over racial balance in history
Source: Houston Chronicle (3-11-10)
The State Board of Education's Hispanic and African-American members clashed with its Anglo majority for hours Thursday over how to present history to the state's 4.7 million public school children.
Much of the conflict centered on the racial balance of the historical figures to be included in textbooks starting in the 2011-2012 school year. Tempers boiled over when sex or religion were added to the mix.
Members grew increasingly distraught over the process as they moved toward a preliminary adoption of new social studies curriculum standards, set for today....
Mavis Knight, D-Dallas, was unable to attract any Republican support for her motion to teach students that government is not supposed to favor any religion. Knight's proposed amendment: “Examine the reasons the Founding Fathers protected religious freedom in America by barring government from protecting or disfavoring any particular religion over all others,” was defeated.
Board member Cynthia Dunbar, R-Richmond, a Liberty College law professor, called Knight's proposal inaccurate.
“We don't want our religious history to be drawn from a viewpoint that is not historically accurate,” Dunbar said.
Later, she said the nation's Founding Founders were not antagonistic toward religion: “They did not have a ‘barring' ideology.”...
New photos of Beatles' John Lennon appear after 40 years
Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-12-10)
Candid pictures of John Lennon which have never been seen in public have been found after being kept hidden in a photographer's drawer for more than 40 years.
The extraordinary photos of the musician and Yoko Ono, taken during their famous Bed-in for Peace in Montreal in 1969, snapped by Life photographer Gerry Deiter.
He was the only photojournalist allowed to witness and document the bed-in for the full eight days and managed to capture pictures of the couple totally off-guard.
But his story about them, due to run in Life magazine, was ditched at the last minute for an article on the Vietnam war.
Since the photographer's death in 2005, the unpublished photos were hidden away until this week, when they go on exhibition for the first time in Coventry Cathedral, West Mids, on Saturday.
Lennon and Yoko flew to Montreal on May 26 where they stayed in Room 1738 and 1742 at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel, writing and recording the song Give Peace a Chance from their bedroom.
Nick Chevasse, the Cathedral's tourist director, said the photos had only recently been unearthed.
He said "Gerry Deiter was the only photojournalist there the entire eight days, with complete access.
"He was on assignment for Life magazine, but his story was bumped in favour for one about Vietnam.
"The photos were never published, they never ran, so Deiter hid them away.
"This is why many of the images are not familiar, even to Lennon fans - they have never been seen before by anybody.
Israel in legal battle over Kafka's papers
Source: BBC News (3-12-10)
Imagine a number of safety deposit boxes, in different banks in different countries. No-one is quite sure what's inside them.
Yet private individuals, state bodies and commercial institutions are locked in a seemingly endless legal battle to own their contents.
Sounds like a Kafka novel? Well, almost.
This is a struggle between Israel and Germany, between a Jewish refugee family from Prague and Israeli public opinion over a collection of papers that might include unpublished works by the celebrated 20th Century writer Franz Kafka.
Kafka became famous in spite of himself. Just before he died in 1924, the young novelist, who suffered from various mental and physical illnesses, entrusted his friend, Max Brod, with a collection of handwritten documents.
He asked him to destroy the unpublished manuscripts after his death. Brod ignored his friend's last wishes, allowing the world to enjoy great works such as The Trial and Metamorphosis.
Legacy
Now, a bitter legal battle is raging in Israel over Kafka's legacy and Max Brod's estate. The twists and turns of the case have become Kafkaesque in themselves.
Austrian gov't finds mass graves of Nazi victims
Source: Salon.com (3-12-10)
Austrian government officials say they have identified at least two mass graves of Nazi victims on property used by the army.
Interior Ministry spokesman Rudolf Gollia says talks will be sought with the owners of the site to discuss possible exhumation. He said Friday he did not know whether the army owns the property or rents it.
The mass graves are located underneath an army sports field in the southern city of Graz. Government officials say they contain about 70 bodies....
Decapitated bodies in britain found to be Vikings
Source: BBC News (3-12-10)
Fifty-one decapitated skeletons found in a burial pit in Dorset were those of Scandinavian Vikings, scientists say.
Mystery has surrounded the identity of the group since they were discovered at Ridgeway Hill, near Weymouth, in June.
Analysis of teeth from 10 of the men revealed they had grown up in countries with a colder climate than Britain's.
Archaeologists from Oxford believe the men were probably executed by local Anglo Saxons in front of an audience sometime between AD 910 and AD 1030.
The Anglo Saxons were increasingly falling victim to Viking raids and eventually the country was ruled by a Danish king.
The mass grave is one of the largest examples of executed foreigners buried in one spot.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
New Harriet Tubman artifacts to go on display at the Smithsonian
Source: AP (3-10-10)
Tourists and history buffs will be able to see some rare, personal belongings of abolitionist Harriet Tubman when a museum of African-American history opens on the National Mall.
On Wednesday, historian Charles L. Blockson donated about 40 objects from Tubman's life to the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture.
The museum is slated to open near the Washington Monument in 2015.
Once owned by the woman who led hundreds of slaves to freedom via the Underground Railroad, the items range from a knife and spoon from her kitchen to a shawl given to her by Queen Victoria, as well as Tubman's favorite hymnal.
They are the only relics from Tubman known to exist outside of her home in Auburn, N.Y., said museum director Lonnie Bunch.
"For me to be able to tell the story of the Underground Railroad through Harriet Tubman with actual artifacts is really a surprise I didn't expect," Bunch said. Seeing the artifacts for the first time, he said, was "really one of the most moving moments in my career."...
D.C. Recorder of Deeds moving but fate of murals unclear
Source: WaPo (3-11-10)
When visitors walk into the lobby, they are greeted by the likenesses of Frederick Douglass and President Franklin D. Roosevelt. If they take a right at the statue of a shirtless President Abraham Lincoln, they will be flanked by four murals, one showing Gen. Andrew Jackson on a white horse at the Battle of New Orleans and another a dying Col. Robert Gould Shaw being held by a soldier of his Massachusetts 54th Regiment during the Civil War.
But this isn't a museum. It's a government office building.
Since its construction in 1942, the Recorder of Deeds building, 515 D St. NW, has saved a record of every sale or transfer of property in the District, including mortgages, land deeds, livestock records and slavery documents.
After more than 60 years, the office will be relocated to a smaller, more modern space, but the fate of the historic building and its relics has yet to be decided.
Ironically, the same building that houses manumission deeds also chronicles a long history of black leadership. Of the dozen oil portraits of former deeds recorders hanging on the halls, only a couple are of white officials. Most recorders have been black, starting with abolitionist Douglass, who was appointed by President James A. Garfield in 1881. For decades, the title was the highest obtained by any African American in Washington.
"There's a lot of history in this building," said Larry Todd, the current recorder of deeds....
Sea dog from 16th century English warship to go on display
Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-11-10)
The only female crew member of The Mary Rose is to go on display after years of painstaking reconstruction - a two-year-old mongrel called Hatch.
The 16th century sea dog acquired the nickname after divers discovered her remains near the sliding hatch door of the ill-fated ship's carpenter's cabin, where she had lain since it sank in 1545.
Hatch's skeleton will be on display at this year's Crufts as the special guest of the Kennel Club, along with a selection of other Tudor artefacts.
The mongrel was most likely on board as the ship's ratter - superstitious Tudor seamen did not have cats on board as they were thought to bring bad luck. According to experts, analysis of Hatch's skeleton suggests she spent most of her life within the confines of the ship.
"We are delighted to bring Hatch, the world's oldest lost sea dog, to the world's premier dog show, so that visitors can meet an ancestor of their much loved pets," said John Lippiett, Chief Executive of the Mary Rose Trust and Hatch's guardian....
Guy Ritchie to direct Hollywood version of King Arthur
Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-11-10)
Guy Ritchie is to direct a Hollywood film version of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.
The film is to be “reimagined for a modern audience” by the 41-year-old, who separated from Madonna last year, and John Hodge, the Trainspotter screenwriter.
Ritchie has been signed to the project by Warner Brothers, following the success of his latest film, Sherlock Holmes, according to Variety.
That film made $470 million (£314 million) worldwide and reinforced his reputation following a string of flops.
The Dark Ages tale of the sixth-century Celtic king who defended Britain against Saxon invaders will be based in part on Le Morte d’Arthur.
The compilation of Arthurian romances, written in 1485 by Sir Thomas Malory, is one of the most important pieces of Arthurian literature.
The film will reportedly centre around the gathering of the Knights. Industry observers have described it as "The Magnificent Seven in armour", according to The Independent.
The producers behind 300, a 2007 adaptation of a graphic novel which retells the story of the Battle of Thermopylae, a famous Spartan battle.
Ritchie is also scheduled to direct Lobo, a live-action adaptation of the DC Comics drama about an alien bounty hunter.
Germany wants “Graf Spee” Nazi eagle displayed in a museum
Source: Merco Press (3-10-10)
During a brief visit to Montevideo, Westerwelle was asked about the ongoing diplomatic dispute over parts of what was once the pride of the Nazi navy, the “Admiral Graf Spee,” since they were salvaged in 2006.
“We want to prevent wreckage from the ship, in particular the Nazi symbols, from landing on the market for military insignia,” he told reporters after talks with his Uruguayan counterpart, Luis Almagro.
“We want the remains of the Graf Spee to be dealt with properly.”
The ship was scuttled in 1939 in shallow waters off Montevideo after been hounded by a British flotilla. Its wreckage includes a giant bronze eagle with spread wings with a swastika under its talons -- a favored Nazi symbol that could fetch a handsome sum at auction.
Businessman Alfredo Etchegaray and Falklands’ born marine archeologist Mensum Bound participated in an operation to salvage the eagle and Mr. Etchegaray has asserted his right to sell it.
But the German government opposes a public auction of the World War II-era relic, which adorned the legendary battleship's stern, claiming that it belongs to Berlin and should not land in the hands of Nazi-memorabilia fanatics.
“We are also willing to do our part to contribute to the necessary historical approach here” Westerwelle said. “In a museum, the historical context could be carefully presented. We are seeking a constructive solution”.
Biblical City's True Location Discovered, Researchers Claim
Source: Live Science (3-9-10)
Scientists think they've finally found the real location of a city called Neta'im mentioned in the Bible.
Based on its proximity to another biblical town, and archaeological ruins dating from the time of the biblical King David's rule, researchers think Neta'im might have been located at the modern site called Khirbet Qeiyafa, in Israel.
Khirbet Qeiyafa contains the ruins of an ancient fortress city on top of a hill overlooking the Elah Valley. Pottery shards and burned olive pits at the site date to about 1,000 B.C. Most scholars think King David ruled during this time.
Archaeologists have previously associated Khirbet Qeiyafa with the biblical city Sha'arayim, which means "two gates," because of the discovery of two gates in the fortress ruins, and because Sha'arayim was also associated with King David in the Bible. But now researchers claim this site is really Neta'im, a town mentioned in the book 1 Chronicles in the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament.
"The inhabitants of Neta'im were potters who worked in the king's service and inhabited an important administrative center near the border with the Philistines"' said Gershon Galil, a professor of biblical studies at the University of Haifa in Israel.
Egypt Restores 11 Historic Synagogues
Source: Discovery News (3-9-10)
Egypt will shoulder the costs of restoring the country's Jewish houses of worship said the culture minister Tuesday, two days after a historic synagogue in Cairo's ancient Jewish quarter was rededicated in a private ceremony.
Farouk Hosny said in a statement that his ministry views Jewish sites as much a part of Egypt's culture as Muslim mosques or Coptic churches, and the restorations would not require any foreign funding.
On Sunday, the Ben Maimon synagogue, named after the 12th century rabbi and intellectual Maimonides, was rededicated in a ceremony that included half a dozen Egyptian Jewish families that long ago fled the country.
Roadworks dig finds millions of Aboriginal artifacts in Tasmania
Source: ABC News (Australia) (3-10-10)
Archaeologists say they may have found proof of the oldest and most southerly human habitation in the world at the site of a major road project in Tasmania.
Archaeologists and Aboriginal heritage officers have been removing sediment from eight trenches along the Jordan River levee at the Brighton roadworks site, north of Hobart.
Initial findings suggest the sediment is between 28,000 and 40,000 years old, making it the oldest, most southern site of human habitation in the world.
It is believed up to 3,000,000 artefacts could be buried there.
Dozens of protesters have been arrested and 19 people have been charged over protests aimed at trying to stop the roadwork in recent months.
Fiona Newson from the Tasmanian Aboriginal Land and Sea Council says the Tasmanian Goverment needs to take the latest report from archaeologists seriously.
"We're talking about a worldwide significant site in regards to the scientific values and heritage values," she said.
"It would be a total waste and not a good look on Tasmania if they were going to destroy it."
Stalin to be put on billboards in Moscow for VE Day
Source: FoxNews (3-11-10)
If there was an award for despicable legacies Joseph Stalin would rank right up there with Hitler and Mao for the men with the most blood on their hands. By conservative estimates the man who led the Soviet Union for 30 years until his death in 1953, was responsible for killing some 30 million people, most of them his own citizens.
His penalty? In May of this year when Russia celebrates it's victory over Germany in World War 2 (victory with the help of all it's allies including America) it will put Stalins face on billboards all over Moscow.
Vladimir Makarov, with the Moscow City Government advertising committee confirms to Fox News Stalin's face will be on at least 10 huge billboards. The exact design is not finalized but he says "we do not say Staliin was not a criminal, we're only saying this man was the Commander in Chief when the Soviet Union and it's Allies defeated the Germans and we can't erase him from history."
Of course not erasing him from history and putting his face on billboards is quite another matter to Russians we talked to in the street. One woman said "so many people suffered fromk this man, generations of people who are still alive, families, good smart people simply vanished because of Stalin".
Imagine if Germany suddenly put up billboards of Adolf Hitler? Unfair comparison? Last year the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe declared Stalin was equally to blame as Hitler for mass genocide in Europe. In fact Stalin secretly made a deal with Hitler to carve up Countries like Poland.
Stalin, vicious and paranoid, arranged for hundreds of thousands of Russians to be spirited away to Gulags or workcamps. He used 'purges' to execute hundreds of members of the Communist Party he found to be threatening. He starved millions of people. But none of those facts and that history will make it to the Moscow City Hall billboards.
WWII female pilots honored at Capitol Hill on March 10
Source: AP (3-10-10)
They flew planes during World War II but weren't considered "real" military pilots. No flags were draped over their coffins when they died on duty. And when their service ended, they had to pay their own bus fare home.
These aviators - all women - got long-overdue recognition on Wednesday. They received the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor given by Congress, in a ceremony on Capitol Hill.
About 200 women who served as Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs, were on hand to receive the award. Now mostly in their late 80s and early 90s, some came in wheelchairs, many sported dark blue uniforms, and one, June Bent of Westboro, Mass., clutched a framed photograph of a comrade who had died.
As a military band played "The Star-Spangled Banner," one of the women who had been sitting in a wheelchair stood up and saluted through the entire song as a relative gently supported her back.
"Women Airforce Service Pilots, we are all your daughters; you taught us how to fly," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the first woman to serve as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. She said the pilots went unrecognized for too long, even though their service blazed a trail for other women in the U.S. military.
In accepting the award, WASP pilot Deanie Parrish, 88, of Waco, Texas, said the women had volunteered without expectation of thanks. Their mission was to fly noncombat missions to free up male pilots to fly overseas....
Sweden to extradite Auschwitz sign theft suspect
Source: BBC News (3-11-10)
A court in Stockholm has ruled that a Swedish man can be extradited to Poland to face trial over the theft of a sign from the Auschwitz death camp.
Investigators accuse Anders Hogstrom, 34, of instigating the theft of the infamous Arbeit Macht Frei sign from the camp gates last December.
The sign was recovered shortly afterwards, cut into three pieces.
Mr Hogstrom, 34, a former neo-Nazi leader, is likely to appeal against his extradition, his lawyer said.
Five Polish men have already been arrested over the theft.
The sign, which weighs 40kg (90lb), was half-unscrewed, half-torn from above the death camp's gate.
The 5m (16ft) wrought iron sign - the words on which translate as "Work sets you free" - symbolises for many the atrocities of Nazi Germany.
The theft caused outrage in Israel, Poland and around the world. More than a million people - 90% of them Jews - were murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz in occupied Poland during World War II.
43% say their kids' U.S. history textbooks are inaccurate
Source: Rasmussen Reports (3-9-10)
Sixty percent (60%) of Americans with children in elementary or secondary school say most school textbooks are more concerned with presenting information in a politically correct manner than in accuracy.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 28% of adults with children in the schools disagree and think most textbooks are more concerned with accurately providing information.
Among all Americans, regardless of whether they have children in the schools or not, 27% say accuracy is paramount, while 55% disagree and believe most textbooks are more concerned about political correctness. Eighteen percent(18%) are undecided.
Thirty-one percent (31%) of adults say most school history textbooks portray American history accurately. But 43% say most U.S. history textbooks are not accurate, and another 26% are not sure....
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Google, Italian government reach agreement to digitize collections
Source: AP (3-10-10)
Google said Wednesday it will scan up to 1 million old books in national libraries in Rome and Florence, including works by astronomer Galileo Galilei, in what's being described as the first deal of its kind.
Officials from Google and the Italian culture ministry said it was the first time Google Books and a culture ministry have had such a partnership....
The remarkable stories of Britain's Heroes of the Holocaust
Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-10-10)
The Prime Minister has recognised 27 British men and women as "Heroes of the Holocaust". Here are their stories of extraordinary bravery in the face of Nazi persecution.
Denis Avey
Imprisoned in the Auschwitz prisoner of war camp during the Second World War, Denis Avey arranged to swap one night at a time with Jewish inmates from the nearby concentration camp.
Youngest casualty of WW2
Unsung British heroes of the Holocaust awarded medals
Exchanging his uniform for the filthy, striped garments of the Jewish prisoners, he took the opportunity to gather facts about the horrific conditions inside the camp while the other man had a chance to eat and rest well in the relative comfort of the military prison.
The 91-year-old is currently under consideration for recognition by Yad Varshem – the Israeli Holocaust remembrance authority – as a Righteous Among the Nations.
Sir Nicholas Winton
Sir Nicholas Winton organised the rescue of 669 mostly Jewish children from German-occupied Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Second World War in an operation that later became known as the Czech Kindertransport.
He arranged their safe passage to Britain and found homes for them when they arrived. Sir Nicholas served in the Royal Air Force during the war and was knighted in the 2002 New Year Honours list in recognition of his work with Jewish refugees.
He accepted his recognition as a "Hero of the Holocaust" at the age of 100 yesterday.
DNA of extinct birds extracted from ancient eggshell
Source: BBC News (3-10-10)
Researchers have found that eggshells of extinct bird species are a rich source of preserved DNA.
An international team isolated the delicate DNA molecules of species including the massive "elephant birds" of the genus Aepyorni .
The Proceedings of the Royal Society B research demonstrated the approach also on emu, ducks and the extinct moa.
The team says that the technique will enable researchers to learn more about ancient birds and why they died out.
"Researchers have tried unsuccessfully to isolate DNA from a fossil eggshell for years," said Charlotte Oskam at Murdoch University in Western Australia, who authored the research.
"It just turned out that they were using a method designed for bone that was not suitable for a fossil eggshell."
The team has obtained DNA from the shells of a variety of species, most notably the elephant bird Aepyornis , which at half a tonne was heaviest bird to have ever existed.
Aepyornis looked like an outsized ostrich, standing three metres tall; most of them died out 1,000 years ago.
Lost Jewish tribe 'found in Zimbabwe'
Source: BBC News (3-10-10)
The Lemba people of Zimbabwe and South Africa may look like their compatriots, but they follow a very different set of customs and traditions.
They do not eat pork, they practise male circumcision, they ritually slaughter their animals, some of their men wear skull caps and they put the Star of David on their gravestones.
Their oral traditions claim that their ancestors were Jews who fled the Holy Land about 2,500 years ago.
It may sound like another myth of a lost tribe of Israel, but British scientists have carried out DNA tests which have confirmed their Semitic origin.
These tests back up the group's belief that a group of perhaps seven men married African women and settled on the continent. The Lemba, who number perhaps 80,000, live in central Zimbabwe and the north of South Africa.
And they also have a prized religious artefact that they say connects them to their Jewish ancestry - a replica of the Biblical Ark of the Covenant known as the ngoma lungundu, meaning "the drum that thunders".
The object went on display recently at a Harare museum to much fanfare, and instilled pride in many of the Lemba.
"For me it's the starting point," says religious singer Fungisai Zvakavapano-Mashavave.
"Very few people knew about us and this is the time to come out. I'm very proud to realise that we have a rich culture and I'm proud to be a Lemba.
"We have been a very secretive people, because we believe we are a special people."
DR Congo ring may be giant 'impact crater'
Source: BBC News (3-10-10)
Deforestation has revealed what could be a giant impact crater in Central Africa, scientists say.
The 36-46km-wide feature, identified in DR Congo, may be one of the largest such structures discovered in the last decade.
Italian researchers considered other origins for the ring, but say these are unlikely.
They presented their findings at the recent Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas, US.
The ring shape is clearly visible in the satellite image by TerraMetrics Inc reproduced on this page.
Only about 25 terrestrial impact craters are of comparable size or larger, according to the web-based Earth Impact Database.
Giovanni Monegato, from the University of Padova, said the feature was revealed only after trees were cleared from the area over the last decade.
The Unia River flows around the ring structure, underlining its round shape. The central part of the Wembo-Nyama feature is irregular and about 550m in elevation.
This is about 50-60m higher than the depression where the river flows. Although this might sound counter-intuitive, experts say that impact craters can sometimes lift up dense rocks. The surrounding rocks may subsequently erode, leaving a dome.
1980s star Corey Haim dies at 38
Source: CNN (3-10-10)
Actor Corey Haim, who appeared in a number of movies during the 1980s, died early Wednesday of a possible drug overdose after being taken to a hospital, authorities said.
Haim, 38, was taken to Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, California, where he was pronounced dead at 2:15 a.m. PT (5:15 a.m. ET), said Lt. Cheryl MacWillie, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County coroner's office. The hospital is a mile from Haim's apartment.
His death appears to be accidental and may possibly be due to an overdose, according to Los Angeles police Sgt. Frank Albarran.
The coroner's office has taken possession of Haim's body, MacWillie said.
The actor's most famous role was in the 1987 movie "The Lost Boys" in which he appeared with his frequent co-star, Corey Feldman.
In later years, the two friends -- who appeared in eight movies together -- both struggled with drug abuse and went their separate ways. They reunited for a reality show, "The Two Coreys," in 2007, but A&E Network canceled the program after slightly more than a year.
In a 2007 interview on CNN's "Larry King Live," Haim and Feldman both discussed their battle with drugs. Feldman told King that he had gotten clean, but it took Haim a while longer.
Haim called himself "a chronic relapser for the rest of my life."
"I think I have an addiction to pretty much everything," he said. "I mean, I have to be very careful with myself as far as that goes, which is why I have a support group around me consistently."
Winnie Mandela urged to clarify comments about Nelson
Source: BBC (3-10-10)
Mrs Mandela was quoted in UK newspaper the Evening Standard as saying former President Mr Mandela was a "sell-out" who had agreed a "bad deal for blacks".
The Mandelas were leaders of the struggle against the apartheid regime of the white-minority government.
The ANC said it wanted to verify the report before commenting further.
Mrs Mandela is thought to be in the US, and her office has refused to comment on the report.
Home of Khmer Rough leader Pol Pot protected as tourist attraction
Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-10-10)
Following Cabinet approval last week, the sites at Anlong Veng will be protected from destruction by local people and illegal encroachment, provincial Gov. Yim Phana said.
Anlong Veng, about 185 miles (300 kilometres) north of Phnom Penh, fell to government forces in 1998 after nearly 20 years of fighting.
The Khmer Rouge regime, under which an estimated 1.7 million people died from execution, disease and malnutrition, was toppled in 1979 but its guerrillas fought on in the jungles, with Anlong Veng becoming their last stronghold.
Ex-MI5 chief: US hid torture from us with lies
Source: Times (UK) (3-10-10)
A former head of MI5 has claimed that US intelligence agencies deliberately concealed their mistreatment of terror suspects.
Baroness Manningham-Buller said she learnt that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, had been waterboarded only after she retired from the Security Service in 2007.
In a speech to the Mile End Group at the House of Lords, Lady Manningham-Buller said: “The Americans were very keen that people like us did not discover what they were doing.”
She said that she had wondered, in 2002 and 2003, how the US had been able to supply her service with intelligence from Mohammed.
Caravaggio displaces Michelangelo as Italy's top artist
Source: NYT (3-9-10)
By at least one amusing new metric, Michelangelo’s unofficial 500-year run at the top of the Italian art charts has ended. Caravaggio, who somehow found time to paint when he wasn’t brawling, scandalizing pooh-bahs, chasing women (and men), murdering a tennis opponent with a dagger to the groin, fleeing police assassins or getting his face mutilated by one of his many enemies, has bumped him from his perch.
That’s according to an art historian at the University of Toronto, Philip Sohm. He has studied the number of writings (books, catalogs and scholarly papers) on both of them during the last 50 years. Mr. Sohm has found that Caravaggio has gradually, if unevenly, overtaken Michelangelo.
He has charts to prove it.
The change, most obvious since the mid-1980s, doesn’t exactly mean Michelangelo has dropped down the memory hole. To judge from the throngs still jamming the Sistine Chapel and lining up outside the Accademia in Florence to check out “David,” his popularity hasn’t dwindled much.
But, charts or no charts, Mr. Sohm has touched on something. Caravaggiomania, as he calls it, implies not just that art history doctoral students may finally be struggling to think up anything fresh to say about Michelangelo. It suggests that the whole classical tradition in which Michelangelo was steeped is becoming ever more foreign and therefore seemingly less germane, even to many educated people. His otherworldly muscle men, casting the damned into hell or straining to emerge from thick blocks of veined marble, aspired to an abstract and bygone ideal of the sublime, grounded in Renaissance rhetoric, which, for postwar generations, now belongs with the poetry of Alexander Pope or plays by Corneille as admirable but culturally remote splendors.
Caravaggio, on the other hand, exemplifies the modern antihero, a hyperrealist whose art is instantly accessible. His doe-eyed, tousle-haired boys with puffy lips and bubble buttocks look as if they’ve just tumbled out of bed, not descended from heaven. Coarse not godly, locked into dark, ambiguous spaces by a strict geometry then picked out of deep shadow by an oracular light, his models come straight off the street. Cupid is clearly a hired urchin on whom Caravaggio strapped a pair of fake wings. The angel in his “Annunciation” dangles like Chaplin’s tramp on the high wire in “The Circus,” from what must have been a rope contraption Caravaggio devised....
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Obama, reading up on Roosevelt (Theodore)
Source: USA Today (3-9-10)
Many presidents like to read about their predecessors, and President Obama said yesterday he is studying up on Theodore Roosevelt.
Press Secretary Robert Gibbs tells us the president is reading The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, by Edmund Morris -- a true classic of the presidential genre.
First published in 1979, the beautifully written narrative tells the story of how a privileged yet sickly New York City boy grew up to become the outdoorsman, writer, military man, political leader, and occasional bully whom history remembers as TR.
Heirs delay sale of historic papers in Italy tax tussle
Source: BBC (3-9-10)
An auction of the papers of Giorgio Vasari, the man credited with founding European art history, has been called off at the last moment.
The papers, which include letters to and from Michelangelo, were due to be auctioned to pay off tax debts.
But lawyers for their owners, an aristocratic Italian family, stepped in at the last minute, claiming they were being sold too cheaply.
Giorgio Vasari, himself an acclaimed artist, lived in the 16th Century.
Mbonyumutwa son protests at Rwanda leader exhumation
Source: BBC (3-9-10)
The son of Rwanda's first President, Dominique Mbonyumutwa, has told the BBC he is protesting against an order to exhume his father's remains.
The mayor of Muhanga district has given the family 60 days to decide where they want the former president re-buried.
He was buried in Gitarama town's sports stadium, which is being redeveloped.
The stadium, called Democracy Stadium, is where Rwanda's Hutu leaders declared that the Tutsi monarchy would be abolished.
Pope's brother admits slapping choirboys
Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-9-10)
The brother of Pope Benedict XVI has admitted that he slapped choirboys at the German choir school that he headed for 30 years, as the Vatican struggled to address burgeoning sex abuse scandals across Europe.
Georg Ratzinger, 86, who ran the choir from 1964 to 1994, said he now regretted using corporal punishment against his charges and asked their forgiveness.
The choir that he ran, the Domspatzen in Regensburg, Bavaria, has become the latest Catholic institution in Germany to be swept up in allegations of boys as young as eight being abused by priests.
Prince of Wales pictured during Royal Marines training
Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-9-10)
A collection of photographs from the Royal Marines' archive that show the Prince of Wales going through his commando training have emerged.
The collection also includes never-before-seen snaps of other well known royals including Diana, Princess of Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh.
Other celebrities are also present in the photographs taken through the 1970s and 1980s and among them are The Krankies, Jimmy Saville and Larry Grayson.
The collection was compiled by a former Marine, Graham Sharp who worked in the photography department after being injured in the Falklands war.
Israeli spy with Iran-Contra scandal links dies
Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-9-10)
David Kimche, the Israeli spy-turned-diplomat who played a key role in the Iran-Contra scandal that rocked President Ronald Reagan's administration, has died. He was 82.
The British-born Kimche began his career with Israel's Mossad spy agency in the 1950s after emigrating to Israel, and rose to deputy director of the agency. He later served as director-general of Israel's Foreign Ministry.
Kimche also is said to have been a key proponent of Israel's failed attempt to set up a pro-Israeli government led by Christians in Lebanon.
Tourists banned from Indian islands over risk of killing off local tribes
Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-9-10)
Tourists are to be banned from large areas of resorts on the Indian islands because of fears they will bring disease which could wipe out the 350 remaining members of a local tribe.
The Indian government has introduced a buffer zone around a reservation for the threatened Jarawa tribe on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and ordered the closure of an expensive beach resort in an attempt to save the tribe from being driven into extinction.
Its Attorney General has told the Supreme Court there are now only 350 surviving members of the tribe, who are believed to be descendants of migrants from Africa, and that they are highly vulnerable to Western diseases and infections.
Corpse of dead Cyprus ex-president recovered from bodysnatchers
Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-9-10)
The corpse of the former Cyprus president, Tassos Papadopoulos, has been recovered by police three months after it was mysteriously snatched from the grave.
The body was found dumped at a cemetery in a suburb of Nicosia late on Monday following an anonymous telephone tip-off to police on the eastern Mediterranean island.
Mr Papadopoulos's grave was robbed on December 11 – the eve of the first anniversary of his death – in a crime that baffled Greek Cypriots.
His coffin was raided at night during a thunderstorm and was discovered empty the next morning by a member of the former president's personal guard, who went each day to light a candle at his grave.
Al-Qaeda came within days of terror attack on Britain last year, court hears
Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-9-10)
An alleged al-Qaeda terrorist cell arrested in the North West was within days of launching an attack on Britain a senior officer in MI5 has told a tribunal.
The men, who were arrested in Manchester and Liverpool in April last year, were said to be in direct contact with al-Qaeda in Pakistan, using coded email messages that talked about cars and girls.
They were said to be “operating in a similar manner” to those planning the mass casualty attacks of July 7 2005 and the trans-Atlantic airline plot of 2006.
Peru drops some claims against Yale in Machu Picchu controversy
Source: CBC News (3-9-10)
The government of Peru has withdrawn six of the 17 elements of its 2008 lawsuit against Yale University that demands the return of Inca artifacts removed from Machu Picchu.
Yale holds more than 4,000 pieces excavated from the ancient Peruvian city by history professor Hiram Bingham between 1911 and 1915.
Peru recently filed papers in U.S. Federal Court withdrawing its claims that Yale committed fraud and conspiracy in collecting the artifacts, which include silver statues, jewelry, musical instruments and human bones.
It had previously accused Yale of intending to deceive the South American nation by promising to return the artifacts when they were first taken.
The Associated Press reported that the claims were withdrawn after Peru hired new lawyers who believe the move would simplify the case and resolve the dispute.
"Peru has dropped all claims of Yale having intentionally done anything wrong," Jonathan Freiman, Yale's attorney, told The Associated Press. "We're glad they have done so, but we think the rest of the case is equally misguided and should be withdrawn as well."...
Berliners hope new proposed airport will revitalize city
Source: NYT (3-8-10)
Supporters of Berlin-Brandenburg International Airport contend that it might be the salvation of a city that, despite its incredible historical resonance, has become an economic and geographic backwater. Detractors vehemently argue that the airport will be just another misguided drain of money by a local government critics say has failed to help Berlin realize its potential despite the city’s status as one of the hottest destinations on the planet....
The landlocked capital on the eastern fringe of the country will have closed three airports to open one: the budget airport currently at Schönefeld, the main airport, Tegel, and, in an emotionally charged shuttering in 2008, Tempelhof Airport, an architectural monument and symbol of freedom to West Berliners since the days of the Berlin Airlift. Officials placed their bets on the new mega-airport at Schönefeld, the size of 2,000 football fields with a terminal building as big as the Nazi-built Olympic stadium....
Many of Berlin’s problems are not the same as those facing other industrial cities in decline like Detroit, but are a product of its unique history. Beginning in 1945, the Soviets literally carried factories home from their sector in the east as reparations for Nazi crimes.
Gradually, remaining factory owners gave up on the capitalist island of West Berlin during the 28 years that the Wall constricted the movement of goods and people. Finally the reunification of city and country brought an end to subsidies pressed by cold war adversaries....
"Mafia congressman" James Traficant out of jail, considering new congressional run
Source: New Yorker (3-9-10)
James Traficant, the flamboyant former Democratic congressman from Ohio who recently completed a seven-year stint in jail for bribery and racketeering, has announced that he plans to run for Congress this year as an independent. As I detail in my new book, “The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession,” Traficant’s history is much more sordid and disturbing than many realize, in ways that extend well beyond his conviction in 2002.
Traficant emerged out of perhaps the last truly mobbed-up county in America, a place in Ohio’s Mahoning Valley where people were often murdered or disappeared...In an old box in a courthouse, I found a transcript of a tape recording in which Traficant was caught seemingly scheming with the Carabbia brothers...According to the transcript, Traficant acknowledged receiving bribes, and indicated that, in return, he would use the sheriff’s office to protect the Mafia’s rackets. Charlie told Traficant, “Your uncle Tony was my goombah … and we feel that you’re like a brother to us.” Traficant assured his benefactors that he was a “loyal f----r,” and if any of his sheriff’s deputies betrayed them “they’ll f----n' come up swimming in [the] Mahoning River.”...
12 shipwrecks discovered in the Baltic by gas company
Source: AP (3-9-10)
A dozen centuries-old shipwrecks — some of them unusually well-preserved — have been found in the Baltic Sea by a gas company building an underwater pipeline between Russia and Germany.
The oldest wreck probably dates back to medieval times and could be up to 800 years old, while the others are likely from the 17th to 19th centuries, Peter Norman of Sweden's National Heritage Board said Tuesday.
"They could be interesting, but we have only seen pictures of their exterior. Many of them are considered to be fully intact. They look very well-preserved," Norman told The Associated Press.
Thousands of wrecks — from medieval ships to warships sunk during the world wars of the 20th century — have been found in the Baltic Sea, which doesn't have the ship worm that destroys wooden wrecks in saltier oceans.
The latest discovery was made during a search of the seabed east of the Swedish island of Gotland by the Nord Stream consortium, which is building a 750-mile (1,200-kilometer) pipeline in the Baltic Sea.
Feminism is showing signs of life
Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-9-10)
Feminism has been out of fashion but there are signs that women are becoming activists again, says Cassandra Jardine.
Trafalgar Square on Saturday afternoon was filled with marching women carrying feminist placards. “It’s more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier,” said one. “Turn your back on Page 3,” read another. When speakers called out: “Can you hear me, sister?” voices and arms were raised in enthusiastic response.
These weren’t the ageing remnants of Sixties and Seventies feminism enjoying a retro wallow to mark the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day yesterday. These were young women in Ugg boots with amusingly dyed hair; some of them were wearing make-up.
Just when feminism appeared dead, the corpse is showing signs of life. The march, entitled Million Women Rise, is not the only indication of a pulse, faint at the moment but gaining strength. A rash of new books, including Natasha Walter’s Living Dolls and Kat Banyard’s The Equality Illusion, has brought women’s issues back into focus, while the campaigning Fawcett Society reports a threefold increase in membership to 8,500 over the last three years.
Even before BBC Four’s three-part series Women, which began yesterday by revisiting the Libbers of old – and what a sparkling bunch they were – the web has been buzzing with feminist sites, and “FEM” conferences were gathering crowds. This week even sees an all-female audience for Question Time – though why Monty Don has been chosen for the panel is unclear. Are the women going to ask about pruning their roses?
Small though these green shoots may look, they are enough to give heart to the old guard. “This feels like a new wave gathering momentum and the women are bringing young men with them,” says Woman’s Hour’s Jenni Murray. “Feminism is alive and well in important places,” says Joan Bakewell who, at 73, still occasionally wears a T-shirt saying: “This is what a feminist looks like.”
Sikh WWII flying ace was "saved by turban"
Source: Daily Mail (UK) (2-24-10)
A sikh fighter pilot's life was saved by the padding in his turban after he was forced to ditch his plane in a WWII dogfight.
Squadron Leader Mohinder Singh Pujji, one of only a handful of Indian ace flyers in the RAF, crashed into the English Channel after his plane was shot down in a mid-air skirmish.
Advised to plant his stricken Hurricane in the sea because he was unable to swim, the 22-year-old nose-dived into the water.
Rescuers boarded boats to help the young flyer, who crashed landed near the White Cliffs of Dover, and pulled him from the wreckage with bad head injuries.
But Sqdn Ldr Singh Pujji, now 91, has told how his specially-adapted headgear, which even had his wings sewn onto it, acted as a cushion for the crash-landing.
He said: 'The padding of my turban saved me, it was full of blood. I was taken to the hospital but after seven days I was back to flying again.'
He added: 'I couldn't swim. I carried on until I saw the white cliffs of Dover and I thought, "I'll make it."
'The aircraft was a total wreck. I was dragged out and I heard voices saying, "He's still alive, he's still alive." Because my eyes were closed I couldn't see.'
Sqdn Ldr Pujji added how his turban was fitted so that the earphones could go over the top and how he carried a spare in his cockpit.
'I had a special strap made to hold my earphones. I used to carry a spare turban with me so I would have one if I got shot down.
'I thought I was a very religious man, I shouldn't take off my turban.'
Sqdn Ldr Singh Pujji surrounds himself with wartime memorabilia at his sheltered accommodation block in Gravesend, Kent.
Czech archaeologists find oldest settlement (150,000 years old) in Arbil, north Iraq
Source: Prague Monitor (Czech Rep.) (3-8-10)
An expedition of Czech archaeologists has found remains of an about 150,000-year-old prehistoric settlement in Arbil, north Iraq, which has been the so far oldest uncovered in this part of northern Mesopotamia, team head Karel Novacek told reporters Friday.
The archaeologists revealed a high number of items, mainly prehistoric stone tools, about nine metres under the ground in Arbil, capital of the Kurdish autonomous region, said archaeologist Novacek, from the University of West Bohemia in Plzen.
The eight-member expedition returned from Iraq at the end of last year. The team comprised experts from the University of West Bohemia, academic and university institutions in Prague and two companies.
Czech experts have succeeded in finding evidence of the oldest human settlement in the locality as all other finds of American expeditions working there 50 years ago are probably younger.
"We have been the first foreign expedition in this area since the second Gulf War in 2006," Novacek added.
The project, supported by the Czech Science Foundation (GACR), has been the first professional Czech expedition to Mesopotamia, a cradle of human civilisation.
"The expedition has mainly focused on the town of Arbil that used to be one of the royal residential centres of ancient Assyria. Its research is a real challenge for the modern 21st century archaeology," Novacek explained.
Chile quake moves the city of Concepcion more than 10 feet west
Source: CNN (3-9-10)
The magnitude-8.8 earthquake that rocked the west coast of Chile last month was violent enough to move the city of Concepcion at least 10 feet to the west and the capital, Santiago, about 11 inches to the west-southwest, researchers said.
The quake also shifted other parts of South America, as far apart as the Falkland Islands and Fortaleza, Brazil.
The results were reached via global positioning satellite measurements taken before and after the February 27 quake by teams from The Ohio State University, the University of Hawaii, the University of Memphis and the California Institute of Technology, as well as agencies across South America.
NASA scientists have also credited the quake with shifting the Earth's axis enough to create shorter days. The change is negligible, but still worth noting: Each day should be 1.26 microseconds shorter, according to preliminary calculations. A microsecond is one-millionth of a second.
A large quake -- like the one that hit Chile's Maule region -- shifts massive amounts of rock and alters the distribution of mass on the planet.
When that distribution changes, it changes the rate at which the planet rotates. And the rotation rate determines the length of a day.
Rodney Alcala, convicted serial killer, won on 'Dating Game' back in 1978
Source: CNN (3-9-10)
Before he was a convicted serial killer, Rodney Alcala was a winning bachelor on "The Dating Game."
"Oh yeah, I remember it quite clearly," said Jed Mills, the game-show contestant who sat next to Alcala in 1978. "He was creepy. Definitely creepy."
Found guilty in February of murdering four women and a child, Alcala, 66, is acting as his own attorney in the penalty phase of the trial. He is hoping to persuade the jury in Santa Ana, California, to spare his life.
The crimes Alcala committed date to the late 1970s. Nobody at the time knew the man with the wavy long hair and toothy grin was an apparent psychopath -- an unstable, antisocial personality.
That includes Mills, a veteran television and film actor, whose only encounter with Alcala was when both of them appeared on "The Dating Game."
"That's when I became part of a nightmare, and I didn't realize it was a nightmare until 32 years later," Mills said.
Alcala, who already had been convicted for the 1968 rape of an 8-year-old girl, was the first contestant to be introduced in the game-show episode.
"Bachelor No. 1 is a successful photographer who got his start when his father found him in the dark room at the age of 13, fully developed," host Jim Lange said. "Between takes you might find him skydiving or motor-cycling. Please welcome Rodney Alcala."
Japan confirms Cold War-era 'secret' pacts with US
Source: WaPo (3-9-10)
Japan confirmed for the first time Tuesday the existence of once-secret Cold War-era pacts with the U.S. that tacitly allowed nuclear-armed warships to enter Japanese ports in violation of Tokyo's postwar principles.
While declassified U.S. documents have already confirmed such 1960s agreements, Tuesday's revelation broke with decades of official denials.
The investigation by a government-mandated panel is part of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's campaign to rein in the power of bureaucrats and make his government, which was elected to power last year, more open than that of the long-ruling conservatives, who repeatedly denied the existence of such pacts.
"It's regrettable that such facts were not disclosed to the public for such a long time, even after the end of the Cold War era," Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada told a news conference, adding that the investigation was meant to restore public trust in Japan's diplomacy....
Historic ocean liner "United States" adrift, on the block
Source: USA Today (3-8-10)
The SS United States, America's greatest ocean liner and the fastest ship of its kind ever to cross the Atlantic, is in "imminent danger" of being sold and ripped up for scrap, according to a preservation group.
The SS United States Conservancy says Norwegian Cruise Line (NCL), which owns the mothballed ship, has set a deadline this month for bids from buyers and could sell it soon to a scrapper.
"This is it," says Dan McSweeney, conservancy director. "We could lose this symbol of the United States."
In a statement, NCL says it is looking for "a suitable buyer." Asked whether that definition includes scrappers, AnneMarie Mathews of NCL says it means any "U.S. entity that has the funds to purchase the ship."
Peter Knego, an ocean liner historian, says almost all such vessels eventually are scrapped: "NCL will be vilified for this, but it's the natural order of things." He says a scrapper is the only likely buyer....
Northern Ireland: Ulster officials defy 'bullying' after George W Bush 'intervention'
Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-9-10)
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.
Iraq inquiry: action against Saddam Hussein vital for UN authority, says David Miliband
Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-8-10)
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.
Iraq Inquiry: David Miliband says war has boosted Britain's reputation in Arab world
Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-8-10)
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 will do],” Mr Miliband said.
“Even people who disagreed with it say to me, ‘You’ve sent a message that when you say something, you mean it’.”
He added: “In the Arab world today, I don’t believe that the Iraq decisions have undermined our relationships or our ability to business. Some of our ambassadors say we are in stronger position.”
Mr Miliband also said that Britain is popular with many Iraqis, who voted in a general election on Sunday.
Virgin Mary icon 'crying tears of oil' in France
Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-8-10)
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.
One third of 7/7 survivors had post traumatic stress: research
Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-9-10)
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 are proactively traced.
Monday, March 8, 2010
British intelligence deemed Irish playwright and IRA man Brendan Behan "too drunken to be dangerous"
Source: Guardian (UK) (3-8-10)
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 had tried to blow up Liverpool Docks during an unauthorised raid, was caught and sent to prison for offences under the Explosive Substances Act.
In October 1941 he was deported back to Ireland and a notice circulated to passport offices that he should be refused entry. Back in Dublin, Behan was soon in trouble. After shooting at several Gardai officers, following a republican commemoration, he was arrested and sent to the city's Mountjoy Prison.
Correspondence with his stepbrother, Sean Furlong, who worked at the Royal Ordnance factory in Sellafield, was monitored by the intelligence services. "It's the futility of it all that's getting me down," Behan admitted from his cell in Mountjoy.
"Personally I think the Irish people are just about browned off with all this bloody game of private armies ... Sean, I am firmly convinced that republicanism (God almighty it's not even republicanism with the half of them) of this particular brand is defunct....
Evidence of Mormon Participation in Mexican War Found
Source: ArtDaily.org (3-8-10)
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 jewel represents a clear testimony for Mexican and American historians that Mormons camped in Alamo Mocho approximately for 3 days, before their integration with the 1847 war, fact only stated in documents until now.
Archaeologist Antonio Porcayo Michelini declared this at the Baja California Archaeology Analysis Table that took place recently in Tijuana, Baja California. He detailed that a bifacial stone knife was found as well, which could be more than 8,000 years old. Other material found consists of Yumana ceramics, fish bones and other mammals’ rests....
Plans to celebrate 'Copperopolis' (Wales)
Source: BBC (3-8-10)
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.
Da Vinci artwork return 'starting figure' heard
Source: BBC (3-8-10)
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 High Court in Edinburgh.
Society plans restoration of 18th Century Devon canal
Source: BBC (3-8-10)
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.
Indonesian villages cashing in on 'hobbit' craze
Source: AP (3-7-10)
"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 discovery of the remains in the Liang Bua cave in 2003 put the Flores excavation on the map. Suddenly, a steady stream of fossil enthusiasts was turning up, and hobbit tours began.
US Congressional Panel's Decision Against Turkey Shows Blatant Hypocrisy
Source: Asian Tribune (3-8-10)
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 government has pulled its ambassador home as a protest of the U.S. congressional panel decision.
While the death of those Armenians during World War I has often been dubbed as genocide, perpetrated by the Ottoman Turks, it should be noted that the Ottoman Empire was a distant memory since 1908 after the Young Turks, run by the Freemasons, had taken effective control of the falling Caliphate. It was its Committee of Unity and Progress (CUP) that entered the war on Germany's side in 1914. Those Freemasons had little, if any, love for Islam or the old Ottoman Caliphate. To most Muslims, those secular fundamentalist - Young Turks were traitors.
'Closet-Nazi' in running for Austrian presidency
Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-8-10)
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 which the country, which was under Nazi rule from 1938 to 1945, has never fully come to terms.
JFK Condolence Letters Published for 1st Time
Source: AP (3-8-10)
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 months reading 15,000 letters and then contacting hundreds of the writers and their heirs to get permission to publish them.
Woman Certified as Country's Oldest Dies at 114
Source: AP (3-8-10)
A woman certified as the oldest person living in the United States has died.
Mary Josephine Ray, who was born in Canada, died Sunday at a nursing home in Westmoreland, New Hampshire, at age 114 years and 294 days old.
The Gerontology Research Group says that until her death, Ray was the oldest person in the United States and the second-oldest person in the world.
14th century Giotto frescoes exposed under ultraviolet light
Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-8-10)
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 by Helena Bonham Carter, meets her future husband.
The frescoes include lavishly illustrated depictions of St John the Evangelist ascending to heaven and the head of St John the Baptist being presented to King Herod on a plate by a Roman soldier.
The researchers stumbled on the ultraviolet technique by accident, after spending four months mapping the frescoes as preparation for a possible future restoration.
In the course of the project, they found that by shining ultraviolet light on the paintings they were able to see much more than was visible to the naked eye.
The frescoes are thought to have been admired by Michelangelo and are said to have influenced his work nearly 200 years later.
The paintings were covered in whitewash in the 18th century and then underwent a brutal restoration in 1840, when the whitewash was removed with the aid of steel wool scrubbers and solvents. The work left the masterpieces faded, scratched and washed out.
Art lovers, however, are unlikely to see the enhanced paintings because permanently bathing them in ultraviolet would damage them.
Restorers hope instead to use the ultraviolet images to build a computer-generated facsimile of the chapel.
French resistance heroine who saved over 100 lives dies
Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-8-10)
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 Virot, she moved to England after meeting future husband John Peel.
Mrs Peel, who died on Friday, had been living at the Lampton House care home in Long Ashton, Bristol.
Manager Sherry Kitchen said: ''We are all a bit shell-shocked here. She was lovely - an amazing character with such a strong spirit.''
At the time of the Nazi invasion, Ms Virot owned a beauty salon in Brest, France.
She began her involvement with the Resistance modestly, by handing out underground newspapers. Later she tracked troop movements and went on to head an under-section of the famous movement.
As Agent Rose, she guided Allied planes to makeshift landing strips, using torches. Dozens of airmen were then smuggled on to submarines and gunboats across the coast.
She spent three years with the Resistance and recounted her experiences in her autobiography Miracles Do Happen.
The blonde who captivated Cairo: Glamorous Nazi spy had romantic affairs with two British secret agents
Source: Daily Mail (UK) (3-8-10)
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 immediately aroused suspicion due to her inexplicable wealth, expensive taste in clothes, and her claims of high-level links to the Nazi regime.
She was arrested and interned.
While British intelligence said they had no definite proof she was spying for the Nazis, it said: 'With her cosmopolitan and unscrupulous character, her interest in espionage, her unusual knowledge of armaments and military affairs, Sophie would, if released, be a potential menace to security wherever she was.'
The file adds she 'acquired a most undesirable familiarity with British military personnel, including at least one NCO (non-commissioned officer) engaged on most secret work'.
A further note said: 'Her contacts and behaviour were generally suspicious and there seems to have been some scandal in Cairo in connection with a Bob Sewell of the Intelligence Corps and an unexplained individual named Flett who got drunk, tried to seduce her, and then threatened to have her arrested as a spy.'
Scientists reaffirm theory that giant asteroid killed dinosaurs
Source: CNN (3-8-10)
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 into the Gulf of Mexico, said Richard Norris, a paleoceanographer at the University of California San Diego.
The impact caused a crater 24 miles deep and 125 miles wide, according to Norris, who was part of the research team.
The crater was discovered in 1991 in Chicxulub, Mexico, on the Yucatan Peninsula, said scientists who called it the "smoking gun" that backed up the asteroid theory.
Norris compared the asteroid's impact with a blast from 100 million tons of TNT.
"It's basically more powerful than all the atomic weapons on the planet going off all at once," he said.
The researchers wanted to settle disputes about what killed off the dinosaurs. Some theories have argued that it would have taken many meteorites to cause such a cataclysmic event. Another rival theory suggested that the mass extinction was a result of a massive volcanic eruption in India that took place around the same time as the impact.
The mystery of Hitler's 'spyclists'
Source: BBC Radio 4 (3-8-10)
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 were worried that this innocent cyclo-tourism was a cover for spying.
MI5 had been told that Hitler Youth groups visiting abroad were asked to complete a detailed questionnaire, including questions on terrain, population, and political views of the population.
They were asked to take photographs, especially of industry, and to get lists of names of all those taking part in anti-German movements.
In May 1937, the British "Daily Herald" paper had printed an article about "spyclists" - based on translation of the Nazi Cycling Association's advice to members travelling abroad.
It too asked travellers to try to note carefully the features of the countryside they visited:
Toronto used bookstores bases its business model on medieval predecessors
Source: Medieval News (3-8-10)
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 in the Middle Ages. He said in an interview with Medievalists.net that he was "looking back to the origins of bookshops and how they were integral to schools and monasteries. Books were not commodities but cultural symbols due to their scarcity."
Rovito wants to recreate this experience with his bookstore by creating a space that sells more than just books - it will serve as a a space to circulate ideas and provide an opportunity for conversation and learning.
He is carefully preparing his store by giving it a sense of exclusivity and making it a destination for Toronto's cultural community. Located on the second and third floors of a Victorian building in downtown Toronto, the final look of store will include Persian rugs and tables to facilitate talks and meetings.
The store is already hosting workshops from the Toronto New School of Writing and plans to base an online journal in this location. He also hopes the store will host classes and readings, what Mr. Rovito says is "part of the larger ecology of reading."
The store opens during a period when booksellers are having a difficult time keeping their smaller stores open in the face of competition from online alternatives and large big-box stores. But Rovito hopes that he worked out an economic model which will allow him to succeed, and will be able to tap into an urban community's "desire for there to be something" that preserves its culture and connection with books.
The bookstore is located on the outskirts of the University of Toronto, and Rovito believes he will able to develop connections and networks within the university community. The store will only be keeping between 3000 and 4000 volumes on it shelves, which will "keep the stock dynamic", and will be arranged in an interdisciplinary fashion that also hearkens back to how medieval universities taught their students.
Of the Swallows, their Deeds and the Winter Below officially opens on April 2nd. Click here to go to its website.
Female WWII pilots get their due
Source: LA Times (3-8-10)
The ceremony takes places on Wednesday at 11 a.m. at Emancipation Hall in the U.S. Capitol. Surrounded by statues of some of the nation's most treasured icons, nearly 200 women who served as military pilots during World War II as part of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) program will be on hand to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Recruited to fill a manpower shortage among male fliers, 25,000 women applied. Nearly 1,100 completed training. This little-known band of female pilots -- the first women in history trained to fly U.S. military aircraft -- did everything the men did except participate in combat. They flew trailers so male soldiers could take practice shots at the targets they pulled along. They flew bombardiers so male pilots could practice dropping bombs. They flew test planes, delivered supplies and piloted every plane the Air Force had in its arsenal. By war's end, 38 had been killed -- their bodies returned home and buried at their families' expense.
In 1977, Congress finally granted them veteran status. This week, they finally get their due in Washington....
Sunday, March 7, 2010
New book claims Robin Hood stole from the rich and lent to the poor
Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-6-10)
A new book has claimed that Robin Hood was not as selfless as he is often depicted, suggesting he stole from the rich and lent money to the poor as an early kind of loan shark.
By stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, Robin Hood gained legendary status as a selfless re-distributor of wealth.
But a new book claims that the outlaw of Sherwood Forest was in fact something of a loan shark, who operated a sophisticated lending scheme for those short of cash.
Robin Hood: The Unknown Templar, points to several passages in an old English ballad that depict Robin loaning £400 to an impoverished knight.
The claim threatens to tarnish the image of a hero of English folklore who has been played on screen by actors including Errol Flynn and Kevin Costner, and who even has even has an airport, in Doncaster, named after him....
Dinosaurs Older Than Once Thought
Source: Discovery News (3-3-10)
Paleontologists have discovered a new dinosaur relative that could completely rewrite the history of these animals, according to a new study which appears in tomorrow's issue of Nature.
Fossil remains of the new species, Asilisaurus kongwe, date back to about 240 million years ago -- around 10 million years before the oldest known dinosaurs first emerged.
Aside from reshaping the dino timeline, Asilisaurus has shed new light on the evolution of dinosaurs. Researchers believe that dinosaurs and their relatives went from being exclusively meat-eaters to including plants in their diet.
Weymouth Relief Road artefacts to go on show (UK)
Source: BBC (3-7-10)
A number of artefacts discovered during work on an £87m road development in Dorset are to go on display.
The Weymouth Relief Road is being built to ease traffic between Dorchester and Weymouth and Portland, where Olympic sailing events will be held in 2012.
The site attracted much interest when archaeologists found an ancient burial pit on Ridgeway Hill last year.
Items including ancient bones, Iron Age pottery and shale jewellery will go on display at Weymouth Pavilion.
U.S. push for former President Ronald Reagan to be immortalised on $50 bill
Source: Daily Mail (UK) (3-7-10)
A bid to change the face of America’s currency has come under fire from US historians and politicians.
Republican Congressman Patrick McHenry has introduced a new law to replace Ulysses S. Grant with Ronald Reagan on the $50 bill.
The change is designed to coincide with next year’s 100th anniversary of Reagan’s birth.
Official: Armenian genocide resolution unlikely to get full House vote
Source: CNN (3-7-10)
A narrowly passed committee measure that recommends the United States recognize the 1915 killings of ethnic Armenians in Ottoman Turkey as genocide will likely not get a full vote in the House of Representatives, according to a senior State Department official.
The official said Friday that the State Department has an understanding with House leadership on the issue, and, "We believe it will stop where it is."
The Obama administration had urged the House Foreign Affairs Committee not to pass the resolution, warning it could damage U.S.-Turkish relations and jeopardize efforts to normalize relations between Turkey and its neighbor Armenia. The two do not share formal diplomatic relations.
Trafalgar cannons fired to mark 200th anniversary (UK)
Source: BBC (3-7-10)
Cannons which last saw action at the Battle of Trafalgar are fired on Tyneside to mark the 200th anniversary of Admiral Lord Collingwood's death.
The four huge guns are at the base of a statue of the Newcastle-born naval hero which stands in Tynemouth.
The cannons, which are no longer in working order, were fired on Sunday using pyrotechnics.
They were last used in battle on board Collingwood's vessel Royal Sovereign as it led British ships in 1805.
Karl Rove regrets weak defence of Bush on Iraq
Source: BBC (3-7-10)
The failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq damaged President George W Bush's reputation, his former strategist Karl Rove says.
In his memoir, Mr Rove writes that he felt he should have done more to reject claims that President Bush lied about the existence of Saddam's weapons.
He called his perceived failure one of the worst mistakes he made.
But he described the achievements of the Bush administration as "impressive, durable and significant".
ACLU Likens Obama to Bush in Ad Slamming Possible Reversal on KSM Trial
Source: Fox News (3-7-10)
The possibility that President Obama could send the self-professed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks to a military tribunal has earned him the highest insult from the left -- that he's another George W. Bush.
A full-page ad in Sunday's New York Times left no doubt as to how the American Civil Liberties Union feels about the possibility of the president reversing the decision to send Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his alleged co-conspirators to civilian court.
"What will it be Mr. President?" the ad asks in boldfaced type. "Change or more of the Same?"
In the middle of those words are four photos that show Obama's face morphing into Bush's.
Fire Destroys Historic Pennsylvania Forge That Made Ashtrays for Hindenburg
Source: AP (3-6-10)
A historic metal forge that made ashtrays for the ill-fated German airship the Hindenburg and did custom work for Walt Disney has been destroyed by a fire.
Saturday's fire at the Wendell August Forge workshop and gift shop is believed to have started in the workshop, where lacquer was sprayed on bronze pieces such as awards and trophies, spokeswoman Danielle Elderkin said. All employees and customers escaped unharmed.
The Wendell August Forge had been in business in Grove City, in the heart of scenic western Pennsylvania, since 1932. Its building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
Bill Mauldin stamp honors grunts' hero
Source: CNN (3-7-10)
The post office gets a lot of criticism. Always has, always will.
But the United States Postal Service deserves a standing ovation for something that's going to happen this month: Bill Mauldin is getting his own postage stamp.
Mauldin died at age 81 in the early days of 2003. The end of his life had been rugged. He had been scalded in a bathtub, which led to terrible injuries and infections; Alzheimer's disease was inflicting its cruelties. Unable to care for himself after the scalding, he became a resident of a California nursing home, his health and spirits in rapid decline.
He was not forgotten, though. Mauldin, and his work, meant so much to the millions of Americans who fought in World War II, and to those who had waited for them to come home. He was a kid cartoonist for Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper; Mauldin's drawings of his muddy, exhausted, whisker-stubbled infantrymen Willie and Joe were the voice of truth about what it was like on the front lines.
Iranian president: 9/11 was 'big lie'
Source: CNN (3-7-10)
Two days before his official trip to Afghanistan, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, a "big lie" intended to pave the way for the invasion of a war-torn nation, according to Iranian state media.
Ahmadinejad, known for his harsh rhetoric toward the West and Israel, said the attack on U.S. soil was a "scenario and a sophisticated intelligence measure," Iran's state-run Press TV reported Saturday.
The assault was a "big lie intended to serve as a pretext for fighting terrorism and setting the grounds for sending troops to Afghanistan," Press TV reported Ahmadinejad as saying.
45 years after march, Selma priest remembers Bloody Sunday
Source: CNN (3-7-10)
The Rev. Maurice Ouellet remembers the day vividly: March 7, 1965. As he walked out of church after serving Sunday Mass, he encountered silence. Then sirens.
Standing on the steps of St. Elizabeth's -- Selma, Alabama's "black" Catholic church -- the young white priest was about to witness one of the most iconic days of the civil rights era. It would come to be known as Bloody Sunday.
The sirens were coming from the Edmund Pettus Bridge, only a few miles away. Selma law enforcement and Alabama state police, led by Sheriff Jim Clark, had forced back nearly 600 marchers with tear gas and billy clubs.
In the days leading up to the historic march, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had focused his nonviolent campaign for civil rights on this rural section of Alabama. By March, Selma had become ground zero in the fight to gain voting rights for blacks.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Pre-war PM made study of Hitler
Source: Times Online (UK) (3-7-10)
Neville Chamberlain read and annotated Hitler’s Mein Kampf in its original German before he embarked on his policy of appeasement, says a new biography.
The former prime minister, who acquired a 1933 copy of the book, highlighted sections that he thought revealing of the German dictator’s mindset, and even added exclamation marks alongside some passages.
Chamberlain was struck by sections that underlined Hitler’s anti-Semitism, his faith in Aryan superiority and his sense of racial affinity with the British....
Stanford Considers Bringing R.O.T.C. Back
Source: NYT (3-5-10)
Jimmy Ruck, a Stanford University junior, wakes up at 5:20 a.m. so he can make the 15-mile journey to Santa Clara University, where he attends training as part of the Reserve Officer Training Corps, or R.O.T.C. It begins at 6:15. Promptly.
“They have a saying in the Army — ‘If you’re on time, you’re late, and if you’re five minutes early, you’re on time,” Mr. Ruck said.
He has to get up early because there is no R.O.T.C. program at Stanford. The university has not had one on campus since 1973, when the Army and the Navy terminated their programs after years of opposition from students and faculty during the height of national turmoil over the Vietnam War.
The 15 or so Stanford students who participate in R.O.T.C. programs now go to University of California, Berkeley; San Jose State; or, like Mr. Ruck, Santa Clara.
But that may change. For a while, Stanford officials have been discussing bringing back R.O.T.C. An apparent prerequisite for its return is a repeal of the current law barring openly gay people from serving in the military....
Napoleon-era sea walls blamed for French storm deaths
Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-1-10)
Decaying sea walls going back to the time of Napoleon were being blamed for the deaths of at least 50 people in violent storms which ravaged France.
In a growing scandal, those left homeless by the disaster on the western coast said proper Atlantic defences could have saved everybody.
"The sea was being held back by puny walls which were hundreds of years old," said a Gilles Aucoin, who lives near the town of L'Aiguillon-sur-Mer.
"Massive waves were able to crash through our streets and drown people. This should have been predicted a long time ago and dealt with by proper town planning.
"A mobile home park was near one of the sea walls and that’s where a lot of people drowned."...
Lufthansa embarrassed after Russian 'Stalingrad' hijack
Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-6-10)
Lufthansa, the German airline, was left embarrassed after a competition to name a new aeroplane was rigged by Russians who nominated "Stalingrad," the site of one of Nazi Germany's worst defeats.
Lufthansa launched the online poll last month in order to find a name for one of a batch of new Airbus A380s it will start using soon. It offered the person who dreamt up the winning name the "glittering prospect" of acquiring one million air miles, enough to fly round the world twice in first class.
Almost immediately, a Russian woman nominated "Stalingrad," the Russian city where Nazi Germany suffered a crushing defeat in 1943 at the hands of the Red Army with the loss of up to one million troops.
Within days, almost 10,000 people had voted for "Stalingrad" making it the favourite to win by a huge margin. The airline apparently thought Russian pranksters were behind the incongruous result, suspecting they had rigged the voting with the help of a special computer programme....
Partisanship in Washington was worse in the past
Source: AP (3-6-10)
The current partisan divide is as stark and nasty as any in recent history and on almost every issue — from health care to energy independence to reviving the economy — there's little or no effort to find common ground.
But fierce political battle is also a tradition ingrained in American history. If today's hostile environment is particularly intense, it's downright genteel compared to many battles of the past.
The Civil War, when anti- and pro-slavery forces split the nation, is the most extreme example. But there's also the beginning of the 20th century, when the country was becoming more urban and trust-busting Teddy Roosevelt was redefining the role of government.
The current economic troubles have collided with President Barack Obama's efforts to change government amid waves of public anger and protest movements like the tea party.
The angry mood was so discouraging for Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh that the Democrat recently said "I do not love Congress" as he announced he would not run for re-election.
His sentiments have been heard before....
Search on to decipher Gothic text
Source: BBC (3-6-10)
A Gothic inscription recently discovered hidden behind a monument at Salisbury Cathedral is now thought to date from the 15th Century.
The text was found in January when experts moved the Henry Hyde monument from the south aisle wall to clean it.
Archaeologist Tim Tatton-Brown said: "The basic questions of what exactly the words are and why it was written on the cathedral wall remain unanswered.
Avatar director James Cameron defends Hiroshima author
Source: BBC (3-4-10)
James Cameron has not ruled out making a film of a book about the atomic bombing of Japan which was pulled because of concerns over accuracy.
Publisher Henry Holt and Co ceased production of Charles Pellegrino's Last Train From Hiroshima on Monday.
It said Pellegrino "was not able to answer" questions about its accuracy or the reliability of his sources.
Mikhail Gorbachev accuses Russia of rolling back reform
Source: BBC (3-5-10)
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev has accused the Russian authorities of rolling back the democratic reforms he began in the 1980s.
In a speech to mark the forthcoming 25th anniversary of perestroika, he said the current government "wants to carry out its programme of modernisation practically without the people".
He criticised the ruling United Russia party, led by the Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, as "like the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, only worse" and accused authorities of creating a "monopoly of the party of power".
First lady donates dress to Smithsonian
Source: CNN (3-5-10)
First Lady Michelle Obama on Tuesday will donate her 2009 inaugural gown to the National Museum of American History, the Smithsonian and the White House announced.
The gown, designed by New York designer Jason Wu, is the one-shoulder, white-chiffon dress that the first lady wore to all 10 inaugural balls the evening of President Obama's inauguration.
According to Melina Machado at the history museum, the frock will be the center point of a new gallery entitled "A First Lady's Debut." It will be surrounded by 10 other gowns, nine of which are also gowns worn at the first inaugurals of previous presidents.
Rove: Bush didn't 'lie us into war'
Source: CNN (3-6-10)
Karl Rove, often described as President George W. Bush's brain, defended the former president in a new book against claims that he lied to the American public in order to invade Iraq in 2003.
Rove, a long-time political advisor who joined Bush in the White House after the 2000 campaign, said the U.S. wouldn't have gone to war with Iraq if the administration knew that weapons of mass destruction wouldn't be found.
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, Rove argued, may have destroyed most of his WMD stockpiles or possibly moved them to other countries such as Syria before the war.
A Chance for Closure for One WWII Widow
Source: AOL News (3-6-10)
For more than 66 years, Ruth Garmong has thought daily of her beloved Bill, the high school sweetheart she wed just before he left for World War II and died in a plane crash in Burma.
Garmong, now 85, was pregnant when Staff Sgt. William C. Fetterman perished in 1943. She remarried and had two more children, but her late second husband, with whom she shared most of her life, "always knew he was second choice."
Because of a second tragedy, though, Garmong was never able to bury Fetterman. In 1946, his remains were unearthed along with about 40 other American war dead buried in Burma by Japanese occupiers. They were put on a plane headed to India en route to the U.S. for a stateside burial, but that aircraft crashed too and was never found.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Liberals rap Kremlin as Stalin is worshipped
Source: Reuters (3-5-10)
Communist Party chiefs led a procession of largely elderly people across Red Square on the 57th anniversary of Stalin's death, laying flowers at his grave by the Kremlin wall.
The solemn visit is an annual tradition for communists steeped in nostalgia for the Soviet era. But this year, it comes as Russia's bitter debate over Stalin's legacy sharpens ahead of May 9 celebrations marking 65 years since the Nazi defeat.
For the first time in decades, Stalin's image may appear among the banners and posters that Moscow authorities put up for Victory Day, which will draw foreign leaders to Moscow as guests of the government.
City plans to set up 10 information stands describing Stalin's role in the war have deepened animus between Russians who loathe him and their compatriots who love him.
Celebrities root through family history
Source: Boston Globe (2-5-10)
But on NBC’s “Who Do You Think You Are?’’ celebs with perfectly hued hair including Sarah Jessica Parker and Brooke Shields will be seeking their own genealogical roots. The new show, which premieres tonight at 8 on Channel 7, represents the reality-TV extension of the urge that Alex Haley stoked in the mid-1970s with “Roots’’ and that now flourishes on websites such as ancestry.com, genealogy.com, and myheritage.com. People remain driven to understand who they are in terms of where they came from, to feel a sense of grounded identity in this relentlessly fast-paced, present-tense, and digitized world.
Based on a popular British series with the same title, “Who Do You Think You Are?’’ is the People magazine version of PBS’s “Faces of America With Henry Louis Gates Jr.’’ Each episode is devoted to a single star, as he or she travels from expert to historian to family member for factual ancestral information. Tonight, Parker traces her family tree back and back, traveling from New Jersey, where we meet her mother, to Cincinnati to California to, finally, Boston and Salem. Turns out Parker may be related to someone involved in the Salem witch trials.
True to its reality-TV roots, “Who Do You Think You Are?’’ is presented in heavily dramatized terms. The narration is over-baked and, at times, unintentionally funny, such as when the narrator announces, “Coming up, Sarah Jessica finds out whether her ancestor was accused of being a witch.’’ The soundtrack music and montages are also manipulative and intrusive. And each discovery Parker makes is an opportunity for her to appear stunned, blown away, moved, and touched - to perform just a little bit.
Castro and Guevara photos sold in Gloucestershire
Source: BBC (3-5-10)
Rare and intimate photographs taken of the leaders of the Cuban revolution during its early years have sold for £31,730 at auction in Gloucestershire.
The 14 black-and-white photos include images of President Fidel Castro and fellow communist leader Che Guevara.
Dating from 1959 to the early 1960s, 12 were taken by Mr Castro's official photographer Alberto Korda.
The prize lot, a picture of Mr Guevara game fishing, fetched £6,600 at Dominic Winter Auctioneers, in Cirencester.
Iraq inquiry: Gordon Brown says war was 'right'
Source: BBC (3-5-10)
Gordon Brown has told the Iraq inquiry the war had been "right" - and troops had all the equipment they needed.
The PM also insisted he had not been kept in the dark by Tony Blair despite not being aware of some developments.
His own intelligence briefings had convinced him that Iraq was a threat that "had to be dealt with", he said.
But the main issue for him was that Iraq was in breach of UN resolutions - and that "rogue states" could not be allowed to flout international law.
Ex-Bosnian leader Ejup Ganic back in British jail
Source: BBC (3-5-10)
Former Bosnian president Ejup Ganic will remain in jail in London while his application for bail is considered.
Mr Ganic, 63, was arrested at Heathrow Airport on Monday at the request of Serbia, where he is wanted on war crimes charges.
But the Bosnian authorities say he should be extradited there instead.
Thousands of Bosnians protested outside the British and Serbian embassies in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo demanding his release.
US administration to block vote on Turkey 'genocide'
Source: BBC (3-5-10)
The Obama administration has said it will seek to block a controversial bill describing as genocide the World War I killing of Armenians by Turks.
A congressional panel on Thursday approved the resolution, paving the way for a possible vote by the House.
But US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the administration would "work very hard" to prevent this.
Turkey voiced strong protests after the vote and recalled its ambassador from Washington for consultations.
Rove-elations: Former Bush Adviser Opens Up About Katrina, WMDs, Obama
Source: Fox News (3-5-10)
President Obama thinks Karl Rove "hates" him; President Bush should have declared a "federal takeover" in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina; and the Iraq war never would have happened without those pesky WMDs -- which were never found.
Those are just some of the "Rove-elations" Republican strategist and longtime Democratic antagonist Karl Rove provides in his new book, "Courage and Consequence."
Rove writes that the Bush administration mishandled several aspects of the response to Katrina, including allowing the president to survey the devastation from Air Force One. Rove says it was a mistake to allow Bush to fly over the storm-ravaged area, which resulted in a photograph of Bush that critics said showed him as aloof in his response.
Rove: Cheney 'squirmed' when offered VP spot
Source: CNN (3-5-10)
A new memoir by Karl Rove details the circumstances that led to the selection of former Vice President Dick Cheney as President George W. Bush's running mate.
The highly anticipated release of "Courage and Consequence," purchased by CNN Friday at a Washington area bookstore ahead of its release date next week, is a wide-ranging look at Bush's rise in politics as seen through the lens of his longtime strategist and aide. Rove also chronicles his life and political career.
The parts of the 516-page book that cover the selection of Cheney as Bush's running mate suggest that the longtime Republican insider was not comfortable when offered the position.
White House considers military trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
Source: CNN (3-5-10)
White House advisers are considering recommending alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed be tried in a military court instead of a civilian one in New York City, a senior administration official told CNN on Friday.
In November, Attorney General Eric Holder announced his intention to try Mohammed in a New York civilian court.
A firestorm of opposition erupted from both New York officials and top Republicans after Holder's announcement.
New York police have estimated the cost to the city would exceed $200 million per year in a trial that could last years. They have said, among other things, that they would need to install more than 2,000 checkpoints in Lower Manhattan.
Chile earthquake may have slightly shortened th
Source: SPACE.com (3-2-10)
The massive 8.8 earthquake that struck Chile may have changed the entire Earth's rotation and shortened the length of days on our planet, a NASA scientist said Monday.
The quake, the seventh strongest earthquake in recorded history, hit Chile Saturday and should have shortened the length of an Earth day by 1.26 milliseconds, according to research scientist Richard Gross at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
"Perhaps more impressive is how much the quake shifted Earth's axis," NASA officials said in a Monday update.
The computer model used by Gross and his colleagues to determine the effects of the Chile earthquake effect also found that it should have moved Earth's figure axis by about 3 inches (8 cm or 27 milliarcseconds).
The Earth's figure axis is not the same as its north-south axis, which it spins around once every day at a speed of about 1,000 mph (1,604 kph).
The figure axis is the axis around which the Earth's mass is balanced. It is offset from the Earth's north-south axis by about 33 feet (10 meters).
Strong earthquakes have altered Earth's days and its axis in the past. The 9.1 Sumatran earthquake in 2004, which set off a deadly tsunami, should have shortened Earth's days by 6.8 microseconds and shifted its axis by about 2.76 inches (7 cm, or 2.32 milliarcseconds).
Dutch Prince Bernhard 'was member of Nazi party'
Source: Telegraph (UK) (3-5-10)
Prince Bernhard, the father of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, was a member of the Nazi party, a new book has claimed, contracting the German-born Dutch war hero's life-long denials.
"Bernhard, a secret history" has revealed that the prince was a member of the German Nazi party until 1934, three years before he married Princess Juliana, the future queen of the Netherlands.
Annejet van der Zijl, a Dutch historian, has found membership documents in Berlin's Humboldt University that prove Prince Bernhard, who studied there, had joined Deutsche Studentenschaft, a National Socialist student fraternity, as well as the Nazi NSDAP and its paramilitary wing, the Sturmabteilung....
Cushing to be honored with Medal of Honor
Source: Living Lake Country (WI) (3-3-10)
Alonzo Cushing - one of four brothers for which an elementary school and city park are named for - will be posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for gallantry during the Battle of Gettysburg in which he was killed on July 3, 1863, according to U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin).
Secretary of Army John McHugh notified Feingold's office last week that Cushing would receive the country's highest military honor, according to Matt Nikolay, veterans' affairs case worker and regional coordinator in Feingold's La Crosse office.
Nikolay credited local historian Margaret Zerwekh with initiating a campaign seven years ago to have Cushing awarded the medal posthumously. Nikolay said several other constituents had also urged Feingold to recommend Cushing for the award.
"It was a big surprise. It has been a slow process," Nikolay observed....
From political maverick to historical footnote in Scotland
Source: BBC News (3-2-10)
So who was Scotland's first female MP?...
Katharine (Kitty) Murray, the Duchess of Atholl and the MP for Kinross and West Perthshire from 1923 to 1938.
She certainly seems to be a woman of contradictions at first sight.
She maintained a woman's place was in the home, even speaking against votes for women - but ended up in the most prestigious boys' club of them all, becoming our first MP....
When she first entered Westminster she was one of only eight women elected as MPs from across Britain....
Jewish group: The 'Armenian Resolution' Should be Opposed and Defeated
Source: Armenian Weekly (3-2-10)
Like swallows returning to Capistrano, Congress’s annual determination to debate the history of the Ottoman Empire is a sign of spring. The Turkish government’s approach to the American Jewish community to help sink the proposed congressional resolution officially recognizing the horrific killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in the early 20th century as genocide is a similar ritual. Unlike the swallows, however, both Congress and the Turks are out of their habitat.
During the flowering of Turkish-Israeli political and security relations, it was easy for representatives of the “organized” Jewish community to speak on behalf of its Turkish friends and against the resolution. As the Turkish government began to slide—and then rush—away from its relationship with Israel and slide—and then rush—toward new accommodations with Syria and Iran, the Jewish community has become less inclined to use its organizational skill on behalf of the agenda of a country that is less inclined toward the Western side of the great divide. It doesn’t help that the Turkish “request” for “help” has begun to sound more like a threat of damage yet to come....
To the extent that either side believed opposition to the resolution was a test of loyalty, or tied it to extraneous issues, they made a mistake. The Armenian resolution—driven largely by the Armenian American community—should be opposed and defeated. But the reasons stand without regard to the (increasingly difficult) behavior of the Turkish government and without regard to (increasingly difficult) Turkish-Israeli or Turkish-American relations....
View from Gettysburg battlefield uncertain for now
Source: York Daily Record (PA) (3-5-10)
Another batch of non-historic trees is being cut down to bring the Gettysburg Battlefield closer to its 1863-appearance.
And the trees on a half-acre parcel south of the West End Guide Station on Route 30 could open the view to another place that could eventually be changing its appearance - the Gettysburg Country Club.
The area, northwest of the borough, saw significant fighting on the first day of the three-day battle. The Park Service also plans on thinning trees along Willoughby Run, where the Union Iron Brigade made its famous stand on the first day of the battle. So will there be trees blocking the view from the battlefield of whatever might come to the country club property?
The answer is yes and no, according to Park Service officials.
"I think it's a little early to say," said park spokeswoman Katie Lawhon....
War of 1812 collections scattered around world
Source: Niagara Falls Review (Canada) (3-5-10)
It is fairly commonplace throughout history for soldiers and civilians directly involved in a conflict to gather "souvenirs" of sorts.
These could include uniform parts salvaged from a battlefield, buttons, bits of ammunition and weapons from the enemy. These relics were frequently kept in a family for generations as memorials to fallen family members or of past heroic actions.
The War of 1812 was no different, soldiers who fought picked up souvenirs of certain places and actions.
In addition to those souvenirs picked up at the time of the War of 1812, in the 19th century when visiting a War of 1812 battlefield
was commonplace, relics were picked up, including musket and cannon balls, buttons, shako plates and every day items such as spoons and forks.
Many of these relics were passed down in a family from generation to generation and eventually a number of these ended up in museum collections, both in Canada and around the world. A large portion of the War of 1812 collections at the Niagara Falls Museums came from local family collections....
200 years of neglect - remains of soldiers neglected and desecrated
Source: The Spec (Canada) (3-5-10)
Every day thousands of cars rush by the stone monument just off King Street in Stoney Creek, oblivious to the cannons that point down at them.
The memorial fortification -- with corks at the end of each muzzle to keep the coffee cups and cigarette butts out -- acknowledges fallen soldiers from the bloody Battle of Stoney Creek on what is known as Smith's Knoll.
It's an island of reflection in a sea of urban sprawl that gives the impression that the horrible chapter of history has long since been laid to rest.
But nothing could be further from the truth.
Three years before the 200th anniversary, many are saying that generations of Stoney Creek citizens should feel ashamed about the handling of soldiers' remains after the battle.
Hamilton councillor Brad Clark, who represents Stoney Creek, calls it "200 years of neglect....
Principal apologizes for Black History Month celebration that included O.J. Simpson, Rodman, RuPaul
Source: LA Times (3-5-10)
In a letter addressed to parents and community members, a South Los Angeles elementary school principal apologized Thursday for “questionable decisions” about which prominent African Americans to highlight in a parade marking the culmination of Black History Month.
Lorraine Abner’s letter did not name the individuals. But her apology came after three teachers at Wadsworth Avenue Elementary School were suspended while the Los Angeles Unified School District investigates allegations that they had their first-, second- and fourth-grade students carry pictures of O.J. Simpson, Dennis Rodman and RuPaul at last Friday’s event.
“Unfortunately, questionable decisions were made in the selection of noteworthy African American role models,” the letter said. “As the principal, I offer my apology for these errors in judgment.”
Abner could not be reached for comment Thursday.
LAUSD spokeswoman Gayle Pollard-Terry said Simpson appeared on a school-approved list of Black History Month figures, which dates back to 1985. But she said the names of Rodman and RuPaul, among others, were added in pencil when teachers were selecting which prominent African Americans their classes would honor in the parade.
Pollard-Terry said the principal did not see the amended list, which LAUSD Superintendent Ramon C. Cortines called a lack of oversight. Some civil rights activists and groups, including the Los Angeles branch of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, protested Wednesday that those choices made a mockery of black history and reinforced racial stereotypes at a school that is predominantly Latino. They want the teachers, who are white, to be fired and the principal, who was not on campus last Friday, to be reprimanded....
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