Breaking News

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: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
September 11, 2011

For sale: Historic mansion on site of John Brown's hanging Read more:

A few weeks before Christmas of 1859, John Brown, the fiery abolitionist convicted for treason, swung from a gallows in Charles Town, W.Va.John Gibson, who commanded the first troops to battle Brown after his ill-fated raid on a federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, built a mansion on that historic ground more than 30 years later.Now, the five-bedroom, 6 1/2-bath home, which has undergone a restoration overseen by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, will be offered for sale today in an Internet auction that starts at 6 p.m. EST. The minimum bid is $950,000. The website is historichometeam.net.Located on a one-acre corner lot, the home was built in 1891 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Current owners Gene Perkins, a contractor and entrepreneur, and his wife, JoAnn, are moving to Florida.A previous owner, Mrs. Augustin Jacquelin Todd, donated it to the trust in 1982. In November of 1989, the Perkinses submitted a successful sealed bid to buy the property from the National Trust....

Source: LA Times
September 22, 2011

Once-controversial Islamic center opens in New York

An Islamic community center that fueled angry demonstrations because of its proximity to the site of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has opened quietly in Lower Manhattan, drawing no protesters but bringing words of regret from the developer for not consulting with Sept. 11 survivors during its planning.The scene at Wednesday's official opening at the building on Park Place, about 2 1/2 blocks from the former World Trade Center towers, was far different from a year ago, when the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks became a platform for groups trying to prevent the center from going forward. Previously, the towering building housed a Burlington Coat Factory, which was damaged in the 2001 attacks and subsequently closed.The new owner's decision to use the building for an Islamic center, including a prayer space, divided politicians and survivors of Sept. 11 victims, with some saying the project was an insult because it is so close to ground zero. They labeled the center the "ground zero mosque."

Source: LiveScience
September 21, 2011

Before Troy Davis: A History of Contested Death Penalty Cases

...Of course, every death penalty case comes wrapped in some degree of debate, given deep disagreement over whether the death penalty is ever moral. Here is a by-no-means-exhaustive list of some of the most controversial cases of the 20th and 21st centuries:Sacco and Vanzetti: Italian Anarchists (1927)Death penalty controversy is not a new phenomenon. Italian immigrants Ferdinando Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed in 1927 after a highly contested series of trials over the shooting death of two men during a 1920 armed robbery. [The History of Human Aggression]

Source: Baltimore Sun
September 17, 2011

Some want Maryland State House dome returned to multicolor scheme

Imagine driving into Annapolis along Rowe Boulevard or sailing into the city's harbor, glancing up toward the tiered State House dome, and seeing that it's colored not in the brick red and Colonial white you've known your entire life, but in lemon gold, muted blue and honey bordering on apricot. Sound like something from a weird dream? It's not. When George Washington strode inside to resign his commission in 1783, when the Continental Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris there, ending the Revolutionary War, and when the British sailed up the Chesapeake to sack Baltimore in 1814, those were the colors they saw. So found a team of workers as they stripped away paint layers during an $800,000 maintenance project this summer.

Source: BBC
September 21, 2011

Sada Mire: Uncovering Somalia's heritage

Sada Mire fled Somalia's civil war as a child, and lived as a refugee in Sweden. But now she is back in the Horn of Africa as an archaeologist, making some incredible discoveries.Sada Mire is only 35, but she has already revealed a dozen sites that could be candidates for Unesco world heritage status.She has a fellowship in the department of art and archaeology at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and is head of the department of antiquities in the breakaway territory of Somaliland, in the north-west region of Somalia. She is the only archaeologist working in the region.It's a remarkable journey for a girl who fled Mogadishu in 1991, aged 14, as Somalia descended into the chaos of civil war.Driving her forward is the urge to uncover and preserve a cultural heritage that has been systematically looted, both in colonial times and more recently by warlords trading national heritage for guns....

Source: Irish Times
September 16, 2011

Archaeologists warn against delisting of post-1700 historical structures

HOLY WELLS, bridges, milestones, vernacular buildings, lime kilns and other industrial sites that post-date 1700 will be “left without any protection” following moves to “delist” them, the Institute of Archaeologists of Ireland has claimed.In what it described as a “very worrying proposal”, the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht is seeking to exclude all post-1700 archaeological and historical structures and sites from the national Record of Monuments and Places (RMP).Finola O’Carroll, the institute’s chairwoman, said this arose from “a perverse Civil Service sense of fair play” because of discrepancies between counties, with Cork having a “very comprehensive record” of monuments and others having little or none at all.“Instead of seeking to apply the Cork standard across the board, they are instead opposing to level out the playing field by delisting the lot,” she said. “We are very concerned because this would not be regarded as best practice [in archaeology].”...

Source: NYT
September 22, 2011

With Help From Friends, Folk Art Museum Will Stay Open

The quilts will live to see another day.Having seriously weighed dissolving and transferring its collections to another institution because of financial problems, the American Folk Art Museum on Wednesday evening decided to continue operating at its current location at Lincoln Square in Manhattan with the help of financial infusions from trustees and the Ford Foundation.“We are confident that we’re embarking on a prudent course with the facilities that we have and the staff that we have,” Edward Blanchard, who was elected the museum’s new president on Wednesday, said in an interview. “I think we’re going to do some very exciting things.”Mr. Blanchard declined to specify the dollar amount of the donations that appear to have saved the day....

Source: NYT
September 21, 2011

Century After It Was Banned, Place of Honor for Twain Tale

CHARLTON, Mass. — It took only 105 years, but “Eve’s Diary” is back on the shelf.Richard Whitehead was researching his new role as a trustee of the public library here when he stumbled on an old, forgotten controversy about the book, Mark Twain’s sly interpretation of the Adam and Eve story.In 1906, he learned, the library’s trustees voted to ban “Eve’s Diary” because the illustrations, by Lester Ralph, showed a naked (though not graphically so) Eve exploring the wonders of Eden.“There’s nothing outrageous about them,” Mr. Whitehead said. “It’s kind of a shame that for what seems to me like very good artwork, a great piece of literature was banned.”

Source: Guardian (UK)
September 22, 2011

Bloody Sunday victims' families to receive MoD compensation

The British government is to pay compensation to families of those killed or wounded on Bloody Sunday, the Ministry of Defence announced on Thursday.More than a year after David Cameron apologised to the victims and described the 1972 Derry shootings as "unjustified and unjustifiable", the Ministry of Defence has said it is in contact with the lawyers of victims' relatives and is preparing to make amends where required."We acknowledge the pain felt by these families for nearly 40 years, and that members of the armed forces acted wrongly. For that, the government is deeply sorry," said an MoD spokesman. "We are in contact with the families' solicitors and where there is a legal liability to pay compensation we will do so."Thirteen unarmed civilians died in the Bloody Sunday shootings, when paratroopers opened fire during a civil rights protest in the Bogside area of Derry in January 1972. A 14th man died of his wounds several months later....

Source: Connection
September 15, 2011

New Battle over Fort Ethan Allen

The men who built and manned Fort Ethan Allen for four years in the Civil War might enjoy the notion that a 150 years later a bunch of civilians are fighting over what to do with their lonely and sometimes scary gun emplacement.Fort Ethan Allen was built in 1861 and became one of the 68 forts and batteries that surrounded Washington after Union troops were defeated at the First Battle of Bull Run, which resulted in what Arlington Historic Preservation Coordinator Michael Leventhal calls the "great skedaddle. The 32-mile foot race" back to Washington.President Lincoln ordered the military to immediately build a series of forts to surround the nation’s capital and defend it against being overrun by Southern Forces. In the end, Washington became the most fortified city in the United States.Many of these forts never had to fire in anger any of the 1,120 guns distributed around the city, but for the Virginia perimeter forts there were other hazards. The pickets and rifle pits manned to screen the guns were raided by rebel guerilla bands and of course, there was disease, one of greatest killers in the Civil War and certainly so at Fort Ethan Allen, where in one summer alone Ohio units had 200 men disabled by disease and 50 died....

Source: AFP
September 20, 2011

Birthplaces of Hitler, Stalin mull heritage

VIENNA — Representatives from the birthplaces of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Joseph Stalin will meet at the weekend in Austria to discuss the heritage of their towns, an organiser said Tuesday.Saturday's meeting in the town of Braunau in Upper Austria, where Hitler was born, will also draw representatives from Gori in Georgia -- Stalin's birthplace -- and Predappio, Mussolini's native town in Italy....

Source: BBC
September 20, 2011

Coventry cathedral ruins in danger of collapse

Parts of Coventry's cathedral ruins are in danger of collapse, the site's director has said.An urgent fundraising campaign has been started to raise money to repair the weather-damaged wall adjoining Bayley Lane, currently held up by scaffolding.The estimated cost of repair to the structurally-unsafe 14th Century building is £250,000.Cathedral executive director, Jane Woodward, said a crack had "suddenly appeared" through part of the stone.She added: "You could see daylight through the crack, so we took immediate steps to put scaffolding up and the road had to be closed."We carry out an ongoing survey of the cathedral but this damage has taken us by surprise and it's very upsetting."...

Source: CNN
September 20, 2011

Former Ukrainian Nazi, 90, loses deportation appeal in Michigan

Washington (CNN) -- A 90-year-old Michigan man who officials say rounded up and shot Jews in Nazi death camps during World War II is a step closer to being deported, the Justice Department announced Tuesday.In January, a judge found John Kalymon of Troy, Michigan, to have been an armed member of the Nazi-sponsored Ukrainian Auxiliary Police from 1941 to 1944.Tuesday, an appeals board dismissed Kalymon's attempt to block his deportation from the United States. Kalymon immigrated to America from Germany in 1949 and became a U.S. citizen in 1955. A federal judge in Detroit revoked his U.S. citizenship in 2007."John Kalymon and his Ukrainian Police accomplices were indispensable participants in Nazi Germany's campaign to exterminate the Jews of Europe during World War II," said Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer. Breuer said tens of thousands of Jewish men, women and children were murdered in L'viv or rounded up and shipped to the Nazi death camp in Belzec or to Nazi forced labor camps....

Source: LA Times
September 20, 2011

The cold, cold case of Jack the Ripper

Reporting from London—It's been called the world's most famous cold case, a source of endless fascination and speculation ever since the first mutilated victim was found in a bloody heap 123 years ago on the gas-lighted streets of East London. So why is Scotland Yard suppressing information that some crime buffs think could offer fresh leads on the identity of Britain's most notorious serial killer, Jack the Ripper? That's the question baffling Trevor Marriott, a retired homicide detective who's been waging a solitary legal battle to force "the Yard" to release uncensored versions of information recorded in thick Victorian ledgers that are gathering dust in an official archive.

Source: NYT
September 19, 2011

Sampling the Tastes of the Civil War

Daniel Mowles preparing roasted rabbits for a tasting of Civil War-era food at the Roger Smith Hotel on Monday. The chef, it turned out, was from southwest Virginia and grew up in a household that, he said, had inherited some of Robert E. Lee’s silverware.Those were just coincidences at a tasting of dishes from the Civil War era, prepared according to recipes adapted from cookbooks published between 1861 and 1865.Here was another coincidence. The tasting was organized by Andrew F. Smith, a faculty member at the New School and the editor in chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, who said he was distantly related to a Miss Leslie.He said she was famous among culinary historians as a 19th-century cookbook writer from Philadelphia. And it was her stewed mutton chops that were on the tasting menu, right after “Captain Sanderson’s boiled pork-and-bean soup” and before “Mrs. Haskell’s 1861 mashed potatoes.” That accompanied the roast rabbit....

Source: NYT
September 19, 2011

Ex-I.R.A. Leader to Seek Irish Presidency

DUBLIN — Declaring himself a “peacemaker who can be trusted,” a former commander in the Irish Republican Army began a campaign on Monday to become Ireland’s next head of state.The former commander, Martin McGuinness, who is currently the deputy first minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly, was jailed in the 1970s in the Republic of Ireland for possession of bomb-making equipment and ammunition. He was the I.R.A. commander in the city of Londonderry and was reputedly the leader of the overall organization in Northern Ireland for many years.

Source: NYT ArtsBeat Blog
September 19, 2011

Commentary Magazine Archive Given to University of Texas

Before Philip Roth announced his tortured feelings about his own Jewishness to the world in “Goodbye, Columbus” (1959) and “Portnoy’s Complaint” (1969), he described to Martin Greenberg, the editor of Commentary magazine, his difficulty in writing about the subject. “If fiction isn’t hard enough to write, personal dilemmas — my own Jewishness — don’t help it any,” he wrote in a January 1958 letter.That letter is part of a collection of documents and correspondence that Commentary has donated to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin. The archive, which spans 1945 to 1995, includes letters by and to Bernard Malamud, Norman Mailer, Amos Oz, Elie Wiesel and Isaac Bashevis Singer, as well as the revisions of essays written for the magazine by George Orwell, Pearl S. Buck and Jean-Paul Sartre....

Source: History.com
September 20, 2011

Human Skulls Mounted on Stakes Found at Stone Age Burial Site

Stone Age hunter-gatherers in southeast Sweden mounted the skulls of their dead on stakes and buried them in a lake, according to a team of archaeologists. The researchers unearthed remains and artifacts estimated to be 8,000 years old—including the skulls of 11 individuals—at a site thought to have served as a ceremonial gathering place.Two years ago, archaeologists found what they believed to be a Stone Age settlement near what was once a shallow lake in Motala, a town in southeast Sweden. Conducted to pave the way for a new railway line, the excavation took an unexpected turn when the researchers discovered skulls and skull fragments from 11 individuals, including men, women, children and infants. Recent carbon dating determined that the items unearthed at the site, which is known as Kanaljorden, are roughly 8,000 years old.

Source: Time Magazine
September 20, 2011

Mongolia by Horseback: Traveling with Genghis Khan's Descendants

For much of the year, Mongolia covers up under a thick layer of snow and ice, lacerated by glacial winds that make its frigid expanses as uninviting to potential visitors as they are punishing for the thousands of nomads who call the country's wilderness their home.But for a few months each summer, that freezing grip disappears long enough for the warm, green bustle of life to return to the enormous steppes, sweeping hills and rushing streams of Mongolia's sub-Siberian outback.It's during this brief period that outsiders can seize the opportunity to strike out into the far reaches of Mongolia's pristine heartland. Once there, they will experience the kindness and unhesitating hospitality of its nomadic inhabitants and partake in the centuries-old, equestrian-based culture that the nation's traveling horse breeders embody and honor as part of their daily activities. Our group of 10 riders did just that for two weeks in August, when we swapped our modern French routines for full immersion into the lives and passions of our Mongolian hosts....

Source: AFP
September 18, 2011

Crucial mummy found 20 years ago Monday

AFP - Twenty years ago Monday, a German couple hiking the Italian Alps veered off a marked footpath and stumbled upon one of the world's oldest and most important archeological finds: Oetzi, "The Iceman".Oetzi fast became a sensation, not just because he proved to be more than 5,000 years old, but because his remains were so well-preserved, allowing paleontologists to uncover new details about the Stone Age in Europe.On September 19, 1991, Helmut and Erika Simon from Nuremburg were hiking at an altitude of 3,210 meters (10,500 feet) in the Italy's South Tyrol alps, according to an account published online by the South Tyrol Museum of Archeology....