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: NYT
July 18, 2011
BERLIN — A court in Hungary on Monday acquitted a 97-year-old man accused of taking part in a massacre during World War II, Hungarian news reports said.The court found the man, Sandor Kepiro, not guilty of war crimes in connection with the deaths of 36 people in the northern Serbian city of Novi Sad in 1942. Mr. Kepiro had been convicted twice before of taking part in the massacre, known as the Racija, the Serbian word for raid.Mr. Kepiro had previously acknowledged to reporters that he took part as a junior police officer in rounding up people before the massacre, but denied killing anyone or giving the order to shoot victims. More than 1,200 civilians, mostly Jews but also Serbs and Roma, were killed, their bodies dumped in Danube River.
Source: National Post
July 17, 2011
Under a non-descript Old Montreal parking lot, archaeologists are combing for evidence of an early Canadian parliament burned down by rioters in 1849.
The building was burned down by an English-Canadian mob following the passage of the Rebellion Losses Bill, a controversial bill that gave government compensation to participants in an 1837 anti-government uprising. Mobs used a fire truck to smash their way through the building’s locked doors and began flipping over tables and slashing paintings. The fire erupted when a protester hurled rocks at a gas chandelier.
Canadian parliament buildings are remarkably flammable. In 1854, just months after their completion, fire consumed a set of replacement parliament buildings constructed in Quebec City. Most recently, in 1916, an unattended cigar burned down a set of 1866-vintage Parliament buildings on their current site....
Source: Discovery News
July 18, 2011
If your heritage is non-African, you are part Neanderthal, according to a new study in the July issue of Molecular Biology and Evolution. Discovery News has been reporting on human/Neanderthal interbreeding for some time now, so this latest research confirms earlier findings.
Damian Labuda of the University of Montreal's Department of Pediatrics and the CHU Sainte-Justine Research Center conducted the study with his colleagues. They determined some of the human X chromosome originates from Neanderthals, but only in people of non-African heritage.
The ancestors of Neanderthals left Africa about 400,000 to 800,000 years ago. They evolved over the millennia mostly in what are now France, Spain, Germany and Russia.
Source: BBC
July 18, 2011
One July day in 1941 as war raged in Europe four women made history when they took to the skies in RAF fighter aircraft.
Winnie Crossley, the Hon Margaret Fairweather, Rosemary Rees and Joan Hughes made 15-minute flights in a Hawker Hurricane from Hatfield Aerodrome, in Hertfordshire.
Aged just 23 in 1941, Ms Hughes had been flying since she was 15, and held the record for the youngest person to fly solo.
They were the first of 168 women who were recruited to fly aircraft during World War II from factories to airfields as part of the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA).
A new exhibition in Maidenhead, Berkshire, is commemorating their previously unsung achievements on the 70th anniversary of the first flights, which took place on 19 July 1941....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 15, 2011
An Argentine court on Thursday sentenced two former army officers to life in prison for their role in abuses that took place at a notorious torture camp during the 1976-1983 military regime.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 18, 2011
Millions of South African schoolchildren sang happy birthday to Nelson Mandela as he turned 93 on Monday, while politicians and ordinary citizens did charity work to support his call to do good.
For the third year, at the request of his charitable foundation, July 18 is observed as Mandela Day, recognised by the United Nations as a global call to volunteer for good causes for 67 minutes – representing each year of Mandela's life in active politics.
The nation's 12.5 million schoolchildren sang "Happy Birthday" before starting class on Monday, with television and radio stations urging the nation to join in the special rendition of the song, given an African twist by a local composer....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 18, 2011
A former Libyan foreign minister has admitted the country was involved in the Lockerbie bombing but said for the first time it was part of a wider conspiracy.
The former minister, Abdul Rahman al-Shalgham, who was ambassador to the United Nations when he defected in February, revealed a new theory about who was responsible for the explosion on board Pan-Am Flight 103 in an interview with an Arabic newspaper.
He went on to say that the compensation payment to the families he helped negotiate on behalf of the regime – while disclaiming responsibility – angered the Libyan leader, Col Muammar Gaddafi.
Source: LA Times
July 17, 2011
Reporting from London —— Londoners could never decide whether they loved or hated the huge red Gothic Revival St. Pancras railway station and hotel. A fantastical pile better suited to Hollywood than North London, the hotel was closed to the public in 1935; much later the site was used as a location for "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" and "Batman Begins."A few years ago, the station was redeveloped as the terminus for Eurostar, the high-speed train that whisks passengers from London to Paris in just over two hours. Then this spring, after a meticulous $250-million, seven-year restoration of its high Victorian glories, the hotel reopened as the St. Pancras Renaissance, London's newest luxury lodging, operated by Marriott....
Source: WaPo
July 17, 2011
The USS Arthur W. Radford, a 563-foot naval destroyer, once rode the waves. Now it will break the tides.Private contractors are preparing to sink it into the Atlantic Ocean, the latest addition to a Navy recycling program that turns outworn battleships into marine life habitats.The Radford will go down 20 miles east of Fenwick Island, where officials are hoping it will prove a powerful lure for fish — and tourists — on the sandy sea floor.“It should dramatically increase the use of dive boats operating on all three states’ ports,” boosting tourism for Delaware, Maryland and New Jersey, said Jeff Tinsman, Delaware’s artificial reef coordinator....
Source: NYT
July 17, 2011
They were three fabric scraps trimmed from the flag later planted on the moon by Neil Armstrong during the Apollo 11 mission. They never made it to the moon, but rather were discarded in a trash bin and recovered by Thomas Moser, a NASA engineer. And now — mounted to a poster with a nice photograph, and signed by Mr. Armstrong himself — they have sold for $45,000.The price was less than Mr. Moser had hoped for. As the featured attraction in an auction of space memorabilia in Beverly Hills, Calif., on July 9, the flag pieces had been offered for a minimum of $100,000. When the highest bid — about $50,000 — fell far short of that, Mr. Moser and the auction house changed plans and instead offered the scraps to the highest bidder in a private sale....
Source: National Parks Traveler
July 18, 2011
For months, beginning in mid-1864 and continuing on into the following Spring, Union troops tried again and again and again to throttle the Confederacy once and for all and end America's Civil War.From lines established near Petersburg, Virginia, and with supplies assured via a massive depot near today's Hopewell, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant embarked on a nearly 10-month siege on Petersburg with the end goal of breaking through to Richmond, the Confederate capital. It was a demoralizing time for the Confederate troops, who by February 1865 were outnumbered nearly 2-1.If nothing else, Roderick Davidson stirred the hopes of at least some of the Confederate troops defending Richmond with his Artis Avis, a flying machine he believed could save the South."I was very anxious to see that man stampede the Yankee army," noted one soldier after Mr. Davidson roamed the Rebel lines at Petersburg seeking donations to enable his "bird" to take flight....
Source: Daily Mail
July 18, 2011
A crack team of ten commandos who lead a secret underwater mission ahead of the D-Day invasions are to be honoured for the first time.The ten elite troops spent five days underwater in tiny crafts as they lay in wait on the seabed ahead before the invasion of Normandy in 1944.Their task was to spy from their 'X-crafts' on Nazi troops before guiding Allied forces across the treacherous rocky shoreline....
Source: Bloomberg
July 18, 2011
“Here, put these gloves on first. We must have some rules.” With that, ordnance expert Peter Ewler grins, then allows me to dip my hands into a bin of high explosives and lift out a 50-pound unexploded bomb.The rusted thing, from World War II, is of Russian origin and was found near the Polish-German border. If my hand slips, the concrete storage bunker we’re in probably would blow up.Unexploded bombs are still big business in Germany. Almost two million tons were dropped there by the U.S., Russia and Britain during World War II. An estimated 10 percent to 15 percent never exploded and now, seven decades later, are prolonging war into the 21st century.In Brandenburg alone, the area surrounding Berlin that I visited and the most infested of Germany’s states, around 350 tons of unexploded munitions are destroyed annually, including grenades, mortars, artillery shells, mines and aerial bombs. Some are found in fields, others in residential areas near homes and schools built after the war....
Source: Fox News
July 18, 2011
He's hanging up the hat. After decades of popularizing Egyptology -- from exploring the pyramids to studying mummies to digging for buried treasure -- Egypt's top archaeologist has lost his post, fired Sunday under pressure from critics who attacked his credibility and accused him of being too close to the regime of ousted President Hosni Mubarak.
Source: CNN
July 18, 2011
Driving cross-country in small-bus-size hot dog is kind of a big deal.Between 1,000 and 1,500 college seniors apply for the 12 posts piloting Oscar Mayer’s six Wienermobiles. Hopefuls have been applying for the position since 1988.“The lucky dogs who cut the mustard are known as ‘hotdoggers,’ ” said Reese Brammel, a hotdogger who just graduated from the University of Kentucky with a degree in “Economnomnomics,” according to his bio on the hotdogger blog.Brammel, who plans to apply to law school after his year-long tenure with Oscar Mayer, will face much more forgiving acceptance rates at even the most selective schools.
Source: Life
July 18, 2011
No person alive has been more closely associated, for so long, with America's triumphs in space during the late '50s and early '60s than Ohio native John Glenn. Here, on the occasion of his 90th birthday (July 18), LIFE.com presents unpublished photos of the first American to orbit the earth; the decorated Marine Corps veteran (WWII and Korea); and the earnest, novice politician, taken by LIFE photographers during one of the most thrilling, inspiring, nerve-wracking eras in the nation's history: the Space Race....
Source: BBC News
July 18, 2011
Magnus Malan, the defence minister who led apartheid South Africa's resistance to black rule, has died aged 81.He led the white minority government's "total onslaught" strategy.This included bombing southern African countries which supported the overthrow of apartheid and declaring a state of emergency in South Africa to end pro-democracy protests.He became the first minister to go on trial for apartheid-era atrocities but was acquitted in 1996.Gen Malan served as defence minister for 11 years until 1991, when then-President FW de Klerk removed him under pressure from Nelson Mandela.Mr Mandela accused Gen Malan of setting up hit squads to kill ANC activists and destabilise South Africa ahead of democratic elections.These took place in 1994, with the ANC winning a landslide and Mr Mandela becoming South Africa's first black president....
Source: BBC News
July 18, 2011
A silver urn stood by the altar in the Benedictine Abbey of Pannonhalma in Hungary.It was surrounded by a wreath of flowers and leaves in red, white and green - the colours of the Hungarian flag.It contained the heart of Otto von Habsburg, Archduke of Austria, Crown Prince of Austro-Hungary, Royal Prince of Hungary and Bohemia, of Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia, Lodomeria and Illyria - to give him just a few of his pre-World War I titles.The Habsburg family once ruled over a mighty empire, which dominated central Europe for hundreds of years. But Otto, who was endowed with brains and charm, was born just a few years before the monarchy collapsed at the end of WWI....
Source: BBC News
July 18, 2011
The UN's highest court has ordered Thailand and Cambodia to withdraw troops from a disputed border region near an ancient temple complex.Cambodia had asked the International Court of Justice for a ruling after fighting broke out around the Preah Vihear temple earlier this year.The temple is in Cambodia. Both nations claim some of the surrounding area.The judgement is part of a long-running case in which the ICJ is attempting to clarify earlier border rulings.The BBC's Rachel Harvey in Bangkok says Monday's ruling is just the first round in what promises to be a lengthy and complex judicial process....
Source: BBC News
July 18, 2011
A Hungarian man, Sandor Kepiro, has been found not guilty of committing war crimes during a 1942 raid.A Budapest court acquitted the former police captain, now 97, of ordering the rounding up and execution of over 30 Jews and Serbs in Serbia in 1942.The prosecution had demanded at least a prison sentence for Mr Kepiro, but he insisted he had not killed.He previously topped the Simon Wiesenthal Center's list of most wanted Nazis.Many of the dozens of people attending the court session cheered and clapped after Judge Bela Varga read out the verdict of the three-judge tribunal, the AP news agency reported....
