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: NY Times
December 6, 2010
They came in throngs. On Friday afternoon hundreds of residents from this tiny hilltop town in eastern Sicily excitedly trekked up the steep slope to the town’s archaeology museum to celebrate the return to Aidone of a treasure trove that was buried nearby some 2,200 years ago and illegally whisked away in more recent times.
This year this cache of 16 Hellenistic silver-gilt objects known as the Morgantina silver was on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. For decades
Source: Ynet News
December 7, 2010
He was a senior assistant to SS and Gestapo Commander Heinrich Himmler, and befriended Adolf Hitler as well. He was responsible for signing the first order of the Reich instructing the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews, later turning into the Nazi systematic extermination machine.
But for the past 65 years since the end of World War II, Dr. Bernhard Frank managed to hide his direct involvement with the Jewish genocide, walking around freely in Germany and never being pros
Source: CNN
December 7, 2010
Journalists occupy a unique place in history.
They are observers paid to chronicle history, and many of them did when Mark David Chapman stepped from the shadows and gunned down musical legend John Lennon late on December 8, 1980.
In honor of the 30th anniversary of the ex-Beatle's death, a few journalists shared their recollections of that fateful night and the roles they played in the coverage.
Donna Cornachio is a professor of journalism at Purchase Coll
Source: BBC News
December 7, 2010
A statue of former Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin has been bombed in a suburb of St Petersburg in Russia.
Police said the blast had seriously damaged the monument and shattered windows of nearby apartments.
The city governor linked the explosion to another attack last year on a larger Lenin statue in central St Petersburg.
Correspondents say statues of the Bolshevik revolutionary remain numerous in Russia, nearly 20 years after the collapse of the Soviet Unio
Source: BBC Magazine
December 6, 2010
A bipartisan agreement has been reached to extend soon-to-expire Bush era tax cuts to all Americans, President Barack Obama has announced
Referring to the bitter wrangling over the issue, Mr Obama said he would not "let working families become collateral damage for political warfare".
Some Democrats have said the deal, which must be voted on by Congress, is too generous to the wealthy.
Unemployment benefits will also be renewed under the agreement
Source: BBC News
December 7, 2010
A Japanese discount chain has said it will remove a Nazi costume from its shelves after receiving a complaint from a Jewish group in the US.
The costume is on sale at Don Quijote Co for about 5,000 yen (£38; $60) in at least two stores in Tokyo.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles sent a letter on Monday, requesting the costume be withdrawn from sale immediately.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews and others during World War II.
The centr
Source: NYT
December 6, 2010
Long before its history was marked by the sound of bullets, thousands of fragrant flowers and crowds grievously singing “Imagine,” the Dakota was just another historic Manhattan co-op where among its famous inhabitants lived a musician named John Lennon.
Before he was gunned down in front of the building 30 years ago Wednesday, he was the seventh-floor resident who brought sushi to the building’s October potluck. He was known as a protective father and an enterprising real estate c
Source: NYT
December 7, 2010
Nineteen years ago, Peter Robyn’s 10-year-old son came home from school on a day that, for Mr. Robyn, will live in infamy.
It was Dec. 7, 1991, the 50th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Mr. Robyn asked his son if he had learned about the event in class. He was surprised when his son said no.
“My father served in World War II, and it was very important to him,” Mr. Robyn said. “That day should have been remembered.”
Fifteen years later, Mr. Rob
Source: CHE
December 5, 2010
In medieval times, Lichfield, England, was a thriving cultural and religious center. As time marched on, though, modern innovations left it behind. The canals of the 18th century, the railroads of the 19th, and the highways of the 20th all passed it by.
Now a literary scholar and a computer scientist from the University of Kentucky have brought 21st-century digital imaging to Lichfield, to study and help preserve one of its most ancient treasures: the eighth-century illustrated Lat
Source: CHE
December 6, 2010
Harvard University has made the first substantial changes in its primary governing board since 1650, when the university was chartered. In a report released on Monday, Harvard said it would nearly double the size of the seven-member Harvard Corporation, and would also create committees and impose term limits on board members.
The corporation's self-imposed modifications follow a bumpy financial ride for the nation's wealthiest university, which saw its endowment value plummet by mor
Source: UPI
December 3, 2010
ORKNEY, Scotland, Dec. 3 (UPI) -- British researchers say they've found the remains of at least eight people at an ancient Neolithic tomb site discovered in Scotland in October.
Archaeologists have discovered five chambers at the 5,000-year-old site on the Orkney Islands, two of which have been partially excavated, the BBC reported Thursday.
Bones found carefully placed in gaps in the stones inside the chambers suggest the ancient burial site has never been disturbed, t
Source: BBC News
December 4, 2010
Nearly two months on from the toxic sludge spillage, Hungary is to use its communist heritage to benefit the victims of the disaster.
Dozens of images of Lenin jostle for space on the brick wall of a gallery in the Hungarian capital, Budapest. An imposing life-size bust of a historic communist leader looks on from its spot in the corner....
The paintings, photographs and sculptures, a legacy of Hungary's communist era, are to be auctioned by the government to raise fund
Source: Portsmouth News (UK)
November 27, 2010
A MULTI-MILLION pound project to restore HMS Alliance has been given the go-ahead.
Work to repair the vessel, which is the UK's only remaining Second World War submarine, is set to begin in May, at a cost of £7m. It will be Alliance's biggest restoration since the 1960s.
Under the plans, which were passed by a regulatory meeting at Gosport Borough Council, the project will involve new mechanical and electrical plants being installed to help conserve Alliance, and the construc
Source: Fox News
December 2, 2010
WASHINGTON -- The Army has opened a criminal investigation after revelations that eight sets of cremated remains were buried under a single headstone labeled "unknown" at Arlington National Cemetery.
The discovery was a result of an investigation of suspicious practices following a series of stories on misplaced graves by WTOP radio this summer, according to Army spokesman Gary Tallman.
It also follows a critical report by the Army's Inspector General that fou
Source: Guardian (UK)
December 3, 2010
As director-general of the heritage department of Italy's culture ministry, Roberto Cecchi must choose his words carefully. The latest cuts in the budget approved last month were not so much unfair, he ventures, as "insufficiently considered".
Unlike Spain, Italy is cutting from an extraordinarily low existing level of support for its heritage. A country sprinkled with aqueducts and amphitheatres, medieval piazzas and renaissance palazzos devotes far less of its budget to
Source: Guardian (UK)
December 3, 2010
The solid, 16th-century Basque farmhouse known as Caserío Zabalaga sits among green fields and ancient oaks on farmland between the towns of Hernani and Lasarte, a tranquil refuge from the busy industrial fringe of Spain's northern Guipuzcoa province.
Chillida-Leku, as the farm is now called, houses the museum of one of Spain's most famous and beloved 20th-century artists – the sculptor Eduardo Chillida, a man whose place in art resembles that of Britain's Henry Moore.
Source: Guardian (UK)
December 3, 2010
The 12th-century arched doorway is about all that remains intact of the church of Saint Peter at Becerril del Campo, in the central Spanish province of Palencia.
The doors themselves are gone. The roof has largely disappeared. Water floods in and the inside is full of rubbish. "Deterioration of its nave increases daily, virtually all the baroque plasterwork and vaults having already been lost," reports the Hispania Nostra conservation group....
Traditionally,
Source: ABC News
December 3, 2010
Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim says the perception of Richard Wagner is unjustly influenced by the fact he was Hitler's favorite composer, infuriating a Holocaust survivors group which blasted the argument as a "moral failure."
"We need one day to liberate Wagner of all this weight," Barenboim told reporters Friday. He is conducting Wagner's "Die Walkuere" for the gala premiere of La Scala's season in Milan next week.
"I think a bi
Source: Guardian (UK)
December 5, 2010
A country palace given to Spain's former fascist dictator, General Francisco Franco, to use as his summer house is to be expropriated from his family and donated to the people of the country town of Sada, north-west Spain.
The town hall of Sada has passed a motion that it claims will permit it to take control of the Pazo de Meirás, a crenellated country pile with views over the verdant countryside of Galicia.
Town councillors have decreed that the palace, built in the 1
Source: Roanoke Times
December 4, 2010
The Civil War ended in 1865, but a skirmish about the display of the losing side's flags returned Thursday to Lexington, burial ground for both Gen. Robert E. Lee and Gen. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson.
A local group of the Sons of Confederate Veterans wanted to fly Confederate flags from lampposts on downtown streets from Jan. 10 to 15 to celebrate Lee-Jackson Day, a state holiday set for Jan. 14.
Lexington City Council weighed the request Thursday night and vot
