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: LA Times
April 3, 2011
...As oral historians gathered to kick off the Southwest Oral History Assn.'s Conference in Little Tokyo, the story-keepers, one by one, came clean: They needed help entering the modern age.
Oral history is an ancient tradition of capturing and passing on life stories and experiences. But many of the collected words of genocide survivors, civil rights activists, war veterans and ordinary people with extraordinary pasts have yet to find their way to broad audiences.
Most
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 2, 2011
Terry Jones, the radical pastor who oversaw the burning of a Koran in his Florida church last month after a mock court hearing, may put the Islamic prophet Mohammed on trial in his next 'day of judgement', he told The Sunday Telegraph.
Such an inflammatory move would almost certainly trigger further violent protests in the Muslim world. But Mr Jones struck an unapologetic stance, insisting that his actions bore no responsibility for the murders in Mazar-i-Sharif.
The
Source: AP
April 3, 2011
Many modern armies have struggled with how to battle an enemy who uses human shields, perhaps none more so than Israel.
So Israeli leaders were especially pleased Sunday after an admission by Richard Goldstone — a Jewish U.N. investigator who became persona non grata in the Jewish state — that war crimes accusations contained in his report on Israel's offensive in Gaza two years ago should be reconsidered.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged the United Nations to nu
Source: CNN
April 1, 2011
Former President George W. Bush is worried the U.S. might pull out of Afghanistan too early to the detriment of that country's women.
In an interview with Fox News that aired Thursday, Bush warned that Afghan women will "suffer" should the Obama administration decide to downscale troop levels there.
Bush's comments came the same day he and former first lady Laura Bush kicked off a two-day conference at Southern Methodist University focusing on women's ri
Source: NYT
March 30, 2011
When Richard C. Holbrooke died in December, he left behind the notes for a project he never had time to finish.
Mr. Holbrooke, a prominent diplomat in Democratic administrations since the 1960s, had planned to write a memoir, the story of a life that spanned numerous international conflicts, many of which he saw up close.
Now the keys to that archive have been handed over to George Packer, the author and a staff writer for The New Yorker, who has signed a deal with Knop
Source: LA Times
April 1, 2011
Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina dreamed for years of putting a cultural center and museum on the historic old plaza near Olvera Street downtown. If only she and the rest of the project's planners had taken as long to research the site.
Last year, as the work got under way, a crew disturbed the eternal sleep of those buried in L.A.'s first Catholic cemetery.
In all, some 118 remains were dug up and carted away before community protests brought the digging to
Source: BBC
April 1, 2011
Poland is postponing moves to partially compensate families who lost property during the upheavals of Nazi occupation and communism.
Poland's chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, criticised the government's decision to suspend work on a law designed to address the historical property claims of Jews and other Polish citizens.
Earlier this month the Polish treasury ministry announced it had completed work on a compensation bill but it would not be sent to parliament because it
Source: BBC
April 1, 2011
Scots artist Frank To has opened a new exhibition in Edinburgh of paintings inspired by medieval plague doctors.
The strange costumed figures, who wore long pointed masks, would have been a familiar, but unwelcome, sight on the streets of Scotland in the middle ages.
As part of the show, he will be dressing up as a plague doctor in public places.
The Human Condition, featuring 22 paintings at the Leith Gallery, finishes on 30 April.
A plague do
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 1, 2011
An eight-hour series envisaged as an epic portrayal of President John F Kennedy, his wife Jackie and their life in Camelot will be shown on an obscure cable channel this weekend amid scathing reviews.
With Greg Kinnear as Mr Kennedy, Katie Holmes as his First Lady and a budget of $30 million, expectations had been high. Now, it is widely considered a disaster on the eve of its airing on the ReelzChannel beginning on Sunday.
The History Channel decided to drop the seri
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 1, 2011
Court life in the dying days of Imperial China was a hotbed of sex and scandal, according to a salacious memoir by a British sinologist that has lain unpublished for more than half a century.
'Décadence Mandchoue', written by Sir Edmund Trelawny Backhouse, a homosexual British sinologist who claimed to have slept with Oscar Wilde and raised money to fund the writer's legal defence, paints a pornographic portrait of Manchu officials, court eunuchs and the bordellos and bathhouses th
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 2, 2011
A set of X-rays of the Royal family's teeth have been withdrawn from an auction following a request from the Royal household.
The images of the Queen's teeth, as well as those of her mother and father, King George VI, were taken between 1942 and 1946. They were found by Alastair Sealy in a house he bought in Surrey.
The property was packed full of items hoarded by the previous owner, a dental nurse called Betty Jacques, deceased....
Source: AP
April 2, 2011
A British man whose daughter died in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish town of Lockerbie says former Libyan Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa may be able to shed new light on the attack.
Jim Swire noted Saturday that Koussa had not been accused in Britain of playing any role in the Lockerbie bombing but could help Scottish investigators look again at the conviction of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi.
Koussa defected to Britain from Libya last week. Scottish pr
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
March 30, 2011
As he lies dead on a makeshift bed, his school- masterly round glasses still perched on his nose, it is hard to believe that this pathetic figure of a man was responsible for one of the largest genocides in history.
Taken just minutes after he had bitten down on a cyanide capsule, this previously unseen picture shows the still warm body of Heinrich Himmler, head of the dreaded SS and the twisted mastermind of the Holocaust.
It was taken by Corporal Guy Adderley of the
Source: Hurriyet (Turkey)
March 31, 2011
Officials in Ankara have held a ceremony following the return of archaeological artifacts that had previously been smuggled out of Anatolia to Serbia.
Turkish Culture and Tourism Minister Ertuğrul Günay attended the ceremony at his ministry's opera building on the occasion of the return of 1,865 artifacts that had been illegally transported to Serbia, as well as 17 others that had been taken to Britain.
Günay said his ministry attached great importance to cultu
Source: National Geographic
March 30, 2011
Marks on a clay tablet fragment found in Greece are the oldest known decipherable text in Europe, a new study says.
Considered "magical or mysterious" in its time, the writing survives only because a trash heap caught fire some 3,500 years ago, according to researchers.
Found in an olive grove in what's now the village of Iklaina (map), the tablet was created by a Greek-speaking Mycenaean scribe between 1450 and 1350 B.C., archaeologists say.
The
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
March 31, 2011
Hitler's propaganda stressed the importance of keeping fit and abstaining from drink and tobacco to keep the Aryan race strong and pure.
But in reality his soldiers were taking addictive and damaging chemicals to make them fight longer and more fiercely.
A study of medicines used by the Third Reich exposes how Nazi doctors and officers issued recruits with pills to help them fight longer and without rest.
The German army's drug of choice as it overran Polan
Source: Bloomberg
March 30, 2011
Austria plans to spend 1.7 million euros ($2.4 million) to restore and redesign the Mauthausen concentration camp, where 200,000 people were imprisoned by the Nazis between 1938 and 1945.
The project, to run through 2013, includes renovating the station building, revamping the main exhibition, adding a new display on the Holocaust and creating a “room of names” to commemorate the camp’s victims, the Austrian Interior Ministry said in a statement on its website today.
“W
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 1, 2011
The Kennedy family is the closest thing Americans have had to a Royal family.
From their Hyannis Port compound, where the rambunctious Kennedy children would play touch football and go sailing while Joseph Kennedy planned world political domination for his talented children, they seemed a family blessed with ambition, intelligence, athleticism and good looks.
They embodied the American dream: an Irish immigrant family that in a mere two generations achieved the most po
Source: BBC News
April 1, 2011
The United Nations' top court has dismissed a case filed by Georgia that accuses Russia and separatist rebels of ethnic cleansing.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague said it could not examine Georgia's complaint because negotiations had not taken place.
Georgia said Russia and the rebels had used ethnic violence against Georgians in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Russia took control of the two Georgian regions in a brief war in August 2008.
Source: BBC News
April 1, 2011
The author of a book on Mahatma Gandhi has said it is "shameful" that it has been banned in India's western state of Gujarat.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Joseph Lelyveld said the book was banned on the basis of newspaper reviews.
He said the reviews had sensationalised his account of Gandhi's friendship with a German man, who may have been homosexual.
Although legal, homosexuality still carries a stigma in India.
Gujarat's state ass
