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: Yahoo News
January 26, 2011
BOISE, Idaho – Republican lawmakers in nearly a dozen states are reaching into the dusty annals of American history to fight President Obama's health care overhaul.
They are introducing measures that hinge on "nullification," Thomas Jefferson's late 18th-century doctrine that purported to give states the ultimate say in constitutional matters.
GOP lawmakers introduced such a measure Wednesday in the Idaho House, and Alabama, Kansas, Maine, Missouri, Montana, O
Source: Yahoo News
January 26, 2011
VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI says public officials today would do well to model themselves on Joan of Arc, the French saint who was tried for heresy and burned at the stake for her convictions.
Benedict highlighted the life of the 15th century mystic in his Wednesday audience, which over the past several months he has used to highlight important women in the church's history....
January 19, 2011
The Chickahominy are still vibrant as a community on land between the Chickahominy and James River in Charles City County, Virginia, near where their ancestors lived.
The tribe has over 800 members, making it the second largest of Virginia’s Indian tribes. Hundreds of its members live within a few miles of each other -- the tribe owns about 110 acres subdivided into family lots.
At the center of tribal life are the Chickahominy Tribal Center and Samaria Baptist Church,
Source: Haaretz
January 25, 2011
The Israel Antiquities Authority has completed an archaeological dig of a tunnel that will enable visitors to cross under the walls of Jerusalem's Old City, not far from the Temple Mount.
The tunnel, which was uncovered during excavations conducted over the past few months, was formerly used for drainage and dates back to the Second Temple. It links the City of David in Silwan with the Archaeological Park & Davidson Center, which is located near the Western Wall.
Source: Jerusalem Post
January 26, 2011
BRUSSELS – The European Parliament on Tuesday honored the 6 million Jews martyred on European soil by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II, in a ceremony ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which takes place on Thursday.
Representatives from around the continent and the Jewish world, including Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs Minister Yuli Edelstein, World Jewish Congress President Ron Lauder and European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor, at
Source: Jerusalem Post
January 25, 2011
Yad Vashem, Israel's central Holocaust memorial and documentation center, launched on Sunday a new YouTube channel in Farsi in what officials said was a bid to counter Holocaust denial in Iran, which has become bon ton under the country's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The channel, mainly featuring video clips of survivors' testimonials with Farsi subtitles, will join Yad Vashem's channels in English, Hebrew, Russian, Spanish and Arabic. The museum website already has a page in Fars
Source: AP
January 27, 2011
...The ancient gods and fantastical creatures going on show in Berlin this week have made an unlikely comeback from near-destruction.
Unearthed in present-day Syria a century ago, the 3,000-year-old basalt statues and stone reliefs in the exhibition, "The Tell Halaf Adventure," shattered into thousands of pieces when their Berlin home was destroyed by bombing in 1943.
The rubble was rescued, then slumbered in the vaults of the capital's Pergamon Museum, then i
Source: The Boston Globe
January 27, 2011
For years it has been buried, swallowed up by layers of earth, muck, and water, a once-prominent landmark concealed by time.
And the late-1700s wharf might have remained that way — embedded for the ages — had it not been for a recent accidental find.
Last June, as workers excavated portions of Newburyport’s Water Street for the city’s new waste-water operations building, they unearthed large, centuries-old slabs of granite. Based on maps and archaeological research, the
Source: BBC
January 27, 2011
JD Salinger was a fan of tennis player Tim Henman and enjoyed eating burgers, previously unseen letters written by the Catcher in the Rye author show.
Despite his reputation as a literary recluse, the collection - on display at University of East Anglia - shows he also enjoyed trips to Niagara Falls.
It consists of 50 letters and four postcards written to the late Donald Hartog, from London, from 1986 to 2002.
They are being displayed to mark the first anni
Source: BBC
January 27, 2011
Modern humans may have emerged from Africa up to 50,000 years earlier than previously thought, a study suggests.
Researchers have uncovered stone tools in the Arabian peninsula that they say were made by modern humans about 125,000 years ago.
The tools were unearthed at the site of Jebel Faya in the United Arab Emirates, a team reports in the journal Science.
The results are controversial: genetic data strongly points to an exodus from Africa 60,000-70,000
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 27, 2011
Europe's Roma will be represented for the first time at Germany's official Holocaust memorial ceremony, almost seven decades after up to half a million members of the community were exterminated in Nazi death camps.
Dutch born Zoni Weisz, a Roma Holocaust survivor, will address Germany's Bundestag on Thursday, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp by Soviet troops on January 27, 1945. Germany marks the day with official memorial ceremonies for Holoca
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 27, 2011
Google has partnered with Israel’s Yad Vashem museum, to help digitise the largest collection of Holocaust photos and documents in the world, to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
The search giant is working with the Jerusalem-based archive to properly index and store in Google’s cloud 130,000 photographs, some of which are currently available on Yad Vashem’s website, but until now have been difficult to locate and discover online.
Google is also applying t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 27, 2011
Former South African President Nelson Mandela was hospitalised overnight for routine medical tests, reigniting fears over the health of the frail 92-year-old anti-apartheid campaigner.
Mandela was admitted to a Johannesburg hospital on Wednesday for what his foundation described as routine tests but Talk Radio 702 reported that Mandela had been seen by a specialist pulmonologist, who treats respiratory systems.
Several of Mandela's family members, including his wife G
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 27, 2011
British troops in Iraq were denied resources because Tony Blair’s cabinet could not accept that the country was at war, the former head of the Armed Forces has said.
Admiral Lord Boyce suggested that ministers were unhappy about the decision to topple Saddam Hussein and as a result were unable to take on the responsibility for funding the conflict properly.
Giving evidence before the Iraq Inquiry, Lord Boyce singled out Gordon Brown, the then-chancellor, for criticism
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 27, 2011
Apple has removed a Nazi Party anthem from the German version of its iTunes online music store, a spokesman for the US firm has said.
The marching song "Horst Wessel Lied," named after a young party activist killed in 1930, was the unofficial anthem of the Nazis.
The availability of Nazi anthems on iTunes and internet retalier Amazon was first reported by the Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung daily on Wednesday.
Apple's iTunes store also sold son
Source: Fox News
January 27, 2011
Holocaust survivors often refer to the "banality of evil" when describing how remarkably ordinary even the highest-ranking Nazis seemed after their capture for aiding the mass murder of more than 6 million Jews during World War II.
At a gathering for International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which marks the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps, Rafi Eitan looks like any other aging great-uncle: hearing aids, thick glasses, and a gray sweater under his blazer. Hi
Source: Fox News
January 27, 2011
Usually famous Hollywood stars and athletes get piles upon piles of fan mail, but a former Hitler bodyguard?
Rochus Misch, the 93-year-old former bodyguard of Adolf Hitler, says he can no longer respond to the deluge of fan mail he receives from around the world, according to Reuters.
Misch previously would send fans autographed copies of wartime photos of him in his SS uniform....
Source: HNN Staff
January 26, 2011
Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) has courted controversy after giving a speech to an Iowa tax reform group in which she implied that the founding fathers ended the institution of slavery.BACHMANN: We know that was slavery that was still tolerated when the nation began. W
Source: National Parks Traveler
January 27, 2011
Artifacts associated with famous people and events are important visual connections to the past, and one of them—the coat Abraham Lincoln wore to Ford's Theatre on the night of his assassination—is returning to the Theatre for public display. Where has it been?
The answer is found in one of the dilemmas facing curators and managers responsible for historical objects: What's more important, maximum protection for artifacts or public access?
In the case of the Lincoln ove
Source: CNN
January 27, 2011
Hidden in a basement in central Tel Aviv, amidst the smell of sawdust and varnish, is a musical workshop whose owner and son have spent the last 15 years tracking down violins played by Jewish Holocaust victims and bringing the instruments back to life.
"The Germans confiscated from the Jewish people every violin, viola, cello they could and we are talking about thousands, gone with the wind," said Amnon Weinstein, working amongst the dozens of violins and bows hanging fro
