This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: WaPo
October 18, 2011
A group that includes Illinois senators Richard J. Durbin (D) and Mark Kirk (R) is urging Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar and the National Park Service to restore the Ulysses S. Grant Memorial that stands at the foot of Capitol Hill.In the sculpture, the Civil War general credited with saving the Union sits astride a horse on top of a 40-foot pedestal; below him, two horizontal pieces show soldiers in battlefield conditions with charging horses, careening cannons and screaming men.The long-neglected bronze memorial, which has anchored the east end of the National Mall since 1922, has discolored over time and the deteriorated metal has taken on a blue-green hue. The discoloration of the bronze figures has spread to the three white marble pedestals, which look as though a careless house painter has let buckets of paint spill on them.
Source: NJ.com
October 24, 2011
PRINCETON TOWNSHIP — A plan to build 15 new houses on a disputed plot of land next to Princeton Battlefield State Park could be approved as early as Dec. 1, when the Princeton Regional Planning Board will decide whether to allow the project to go ahead despite the opposition of local preservationists.The site plan submitted by the Institute for Advanced Study, which owns the land, includes the development of 7.3 acres east of Mercer Road near the intersection of Maxwell Lane and Stone House Drive, and calls for building eight townhouses and seven single-family homes, which will serve as affordable housing for faculty members of the institute and their families.According to the site plan, the development will be built beyond a 200-foot buffer zone made up of trees and hedgerows that will separate the houses from Princeton Battlefield State Park and shield the new neighborhood from view on the historic site. Still, some local conservationists are worried that, even at that distance, the construction would be encroaching on historic ground....
Source: Guardian (UK)
November 1, 2011
When he decided to build his palace in the fields outside Rome in the second century AD, the emperor Hadrian wanted to escape the sounds and the smells of the capital.Little did he imagine that 18 centuries later the stench of the city would follow him there thanks to plans to build an emergency rubbish dump near the villa, as Rome runs out of space to bury its trash.But now, another Roman noble has stepped in to defend Hadrian's villa near Tivoli from the garbage trucks, which are expected in the new year. Prince Urbano Barberini, an actor, farmer and descendant of a 17th century pope, is mustering local farmers for a fightback against a scheme he claims will ruin the Unesco-listed ruins."This is like dumping rubbish next to the pyramids – what if tourists have to time their visits according to which way the wind is blowing?" said Barberini, who produces olive oil locally. "And should people attending the concerts held at the ruins bring masks?"...
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
November 2, 2011
The SS indulged their bloodlust on men, women and children alike. While homes and shops blazed around them like some hellish inferno, women were violated and those who were pregnant were stabbed in the guts. Small babies were bayoneted in their cribs. The village priest was beheaded.By the time Hitler’s men had left the Greek village of Distomo near the ancient town of Delphi on that bloody day in June 1944, 218 people were dead.The Waffen-SS was pleased with its work: the local partisans who had dared to attack a German unit had been taught a bitter lesson in revenge.The slaughter at Distomo was such an outrage that, in 2003, even a German Federal Court judge described it as ‘one of the most despicable crimes of World War II’....
November 8, 2011
A new book has been released in Germany that details how Soviet secret agents kidnapped Nazi diplomats after the war so that they could imprison, torture and secretly try them in Moscow.'The Diplomatic Secrets of the Third Reich' draws on hitherto sealed Russian archives concerning the dreaded Lubianka jail in Moscow where the former top servants of Hitler were brought.Alexei Matweyewitsch Sidnyew was the general in Soviet intelligence tasked in the early summer of 1945 to exact vengeance on Stalin's behalf against the diplomats he believed plotted the war against Russia.Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union had a pact that kept the peace until Hitler decided to invade the country in June 1941....
Source: BBC
November 7, 2011
Scientists have found evidence that leopard-spotted horses roamed Europe 25,000 years ago alongside humans.Until now, studies had only recovered the DNA of black and brown coloured coats from fossil specimens.New genetic evidence suggests "dappled" horses depicted in European cave art were inspired by real life, and are less symbolic than previously thought.The findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences....
Source: BBC
November 7, 2011
France has laid claim to a 17th Century painting currently being displayed by a London gallery at an art fair in Paris.The Carrying of the Cross by the French master Nicolas Tournier was bought last year for 400,000 euros ($550,000) by the Weiss Gallery of London.But the French government says it is stolen property and that its whereabouts had been a mystery for nearly 200 years.France has put an export ban on the work to prevent it leaving the country.Tournier's life-sized study of Christ carrying the cross once hung in the chapel of the Company of the Black Penitents in the southern French city of Toulouse....
Source: San Antonio Express-News
November 8, 2011
All across Texas, the bones of history lie in watery graves. From the ribs of sunken ships to the grave sites of prehistoric Texans, uncounted treasures abound beneath the surface of rivers and lakes. For state archaeologists, these sites are untapped treasures — hard to reach but relatively protected.But now, with the state in the grip of devastating drought, such sites are emerging from receding waters and — for the first time in years, experts worry — becoming vulnerable to looters and vandals.Since midsummer, the Texas Historical Commission, which oversees such locations, has on average learned of a newly exposed site each month, said Pat Mercado-Allinger, the agency's archaeology director.Among the sites are four cemeteries, including an apparent slave burial ground in Navarro County, southeast of Dallas. In Central Texas, fishermen recovered a human skull thought to be thousands of years old.
Source: Austrian Times
November 7, 2011
Oetzi the prehistoric iceman may not have been murdered, say scientists, who now believe he could be the world's first known mountaineering victim.The ancient natural mummy was believed to have died 5,300 years ago when he was hit by an arrow during a hunting trip.Scientists - who examined his frozen remains when they were discovered frozen in the Alps between the Austrian and Italian border 20 years ago - thought he had then been finished off with a vicious club blow to the head....
Source: Guardian (UK)
November 5, 2011
The late Muammar Gaddafi was fond of insisting on the links between his republic and sub-Saharan Africa. He was less interested, however, in celebrating the black African civilisation that flourished for more than 1,500 years within what are now Libya's borders, and that was barely acknowledged in the Gaddafi-era curriculum.Now, however, researchers into the Garamantes – a "lost" Saharan civilisation that flourished long before the Islamic era – are hoping that Libya's new government can restore the warrior culture, mentioned by Herodotus in his Histories, to its rightful place in Libya's history.For while the impressive Roman ruins at Sabratha and Leptis Magna – both world heritage sites – are rightly famous, Libya's other cultural heritage, one that coexisted with its Roman settlers, has been largely forgotten....
Source: LiveScience
November 3, 2011
A miniature photograph of the moon, beard hairs whose owner has been dead for centuries, a shaving of Egyptian mummy bone, flowerlike patterns constructed from butterfly scales and algae called diatoms, and engravings of biblical text.During a good part of the 19th century, called the Victorian times, a peek through a microscope could reveal very different sights than ones we'd expect to see today. In the mid- to late-1800s, microscopes were not only instruments of scientific discovery, but they were tools for popular entertainment, particularly in Britain. And an industry of inventive slide makers sprung up to feed the public appetite for this new way of seeing.
Source: LiveScience
November 3, 2011
Frontier settlers, who "live on the edge," may be more likely to have larger families than those who stay snuggled at the core of a settlement, based on new research of how the French settled Quebec centuries ago.A study of Quebecois records determined that the women among the families at the outskirts of the population were about 15 percent more fertile than those who lived in more-established settlements, and consequently their families contributed much more to Quebec's modern gene pool....
Source: LA Times
November 6, 2011
Reporting from Carnac, France—St. Cornelius, known as Cornély in France, opens his arms in blessing from a niche above the old stone church in Carnac. Legend has it that he was persecuted by Rome for his opposition to animal sacrifice and chased by soldiers all the way to the Brittany coast. Trapped, he turned around and changed them into 3,000 rough-hewn stones that still stand in military rows on a chain of fields just north of here. There are other hypotheses about the Carnac boulders, carbon dated to 4000 to 2000 BC. They mark one of Caesar's camps during the Gallic Wars from 58 to 50 BC. Or they were snake worship sites for ancient Celts whose territory included parts of England and Ireland as well as Brittany. Or maybe they were goblin lairs and fairy treasures. But St. Cornelius works for me.
Source: LA Times
November 7, 2011
War films have always been a staple of cinema — providing the inspiration for some of the greatest and most honored films ever....On Veterans Day on Friday, the U.S. pays homage to the military men and women who have served our country in past and current conflicts. For this occasion we asked writer and film producer Steven Jay Rubin, author of the book "Combat Films: American Realism, 1945-2010," to select Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea and Vietnam combat films he most admires. Civil War "Gettysburg," 1993. Directed by Ronald F. Maxwell; stars Jeff Daniels, Tom Berenger.
Source: Independent (UK)
November 7, 2011
"You'd think after 40 years things would have changed, wouldn't you?" said Jo Robinson, waving placards as her friends shouted: "Shame on you" at the dinner-jacketed crowds on the way into the Miss World beauty pageant.The competition, won at London's Earls Court yesterday by Ivian Sarcos (Miss Venezuela), is 60 years old this year, and Ms Robinson is a few months shy of her 70th birthday. It is 41 years since she spent a night in the cells and a morning in the magistrates' court after storming the 1970 contest at the Royal Albert Hall. Stink bombs, smoke bombs and flour bombs were thrown. And now she is back to register her opposition again."Look what happens," she said. "What society expects from young women. There is terrible pressure put on them to look a certain way. I wear make-up, I want to look nice, but to go to such an extent as to have operations performed on yourself?"...
Source: Independent (UK)
November 5, 2011
A hundred years ago, Captain Scott led his men in an ill-fated race towards the South Pole. But it is only now that his personal photographs of that legendary expedition can be revealed....
Source: NYT
November 7, 2011
PARIS — He has lost much of his hair and, after a 10-day prison hunger strike last month, a bit of his signature paunch. But as he prepares to stand trial on Monday for a series of bombings he is accused of orchestrating in the early 1980s, Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal, seems to have lost little of his bravado.Although forbidden from communicating with anyone other than his family and his lawyers, Mr. Ramírez managed to organize interviews last month with a French newspaper and a radio station that were conducted using a smuggled mobile phone. In those conversations, the 62-year-old Venezuelan came across as combative and rambling, attacking unspecified “falsifications” in the case against him, though refusing to either admit to or deny the allegations.“I am not in the habit of making egocentric declarations,” Mr. Ramírez told the newspaper, Libération, when asked whether he was responsible for the bombings. “Nor will I play the prosecution’s pitiful games.”...
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
November 6, 2011
For Star Trek, it truly was the final frontier.More than 40 years after it was filmed, an episode of the famous show in which Spock and Captain Kirk dress up as Nazis has been shown in Germany for the first time.The Patterns of Force episode was never screened in 1968 because it was little more than two decades after the downfall of Hitler's regime.Although broadcaster ZDF showed it for the first time, it was not on until after 10pm - and viewers were warned that no-one under the age of 16 should see it.In the episode the Starship Enterprise visits planet Ekon where the citizens have begun behaving like Nazis. The swastika is displayed throughout the episode....
Source: Fox News
November 4, 2011
Republican lawmakers and conservative activists are expressing outrage after the Obama administration announced its objection to adding President Franklin Roosevelt's D-Day prayer to the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. The objection was noted during a congressional hearing on Rep. Bill Johnson's, R-Ohio, bill -- the "World War II Memorial Prayer Act of 2011." "It is unconscionable that the Obama administration would stand in the way of honoring our nation's distinguished World War II veterans," Johnson said. "President Roosevelt's prayer gave solace, comfort and strength to our nation and our brave warriors as we fought against tyranny and oppression." Roosevelt asked the nation to join him in prayer as U.S. and allied troops launched the invasion that led to the defeat of Nazi Germany. He asked God to give the allied troops courage and faith, saying, "With thy blessing we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy."...
Source: CBS News
November 3, 2011
This is a remarkable story of one of the enduring tragedies of the Holocaust: the shattering of so many families. Parents, brothers and sisters vanished -- their fates unknown.
Seven decades later, as CBS News correspondent Anthony Mason reports, there's now an effort to piece together the stories before they're lost forever.
Pulled from the archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington are photos of children -- more than 1,100 of them who were orphaned or displaced by the Nazi persecution.
These portraits were taken by aid workers trying to reunite the children with surviving families.
"Most of them were in hiding during the war and after the war, they were put into children's homes all over Europe," said Lisa Yavnai, who heads a new project called "Remember Me."
