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: BBC News
November 11, 2010
A painting by Roy Lichtenstein has sold at auction for $42.6m (£26.4m) - a new record for the US 'pop artist'.
The cartoon-style painting, sold to an anonymous telephone bidder at Christie's in New York, features a woman on the phone with a speech bubble containing the title.
The sale of contemporary and post-war works fetched $272.8m (£169.1m) in all.
Yet an Andy Warhol piece expected to fetch up to $50m (£31m) went for less than half that amount.
Source: Star Tribune
November 10, 2010
There have been storms with more snow. There have been storms with cruel temperature drops, screaming winds and freakish barometer readings, and storms that have killed people and paralyzed the region for days.
But 70 years later, the 1940 Armistice Day blizzard still has a firm hold on the Minnesota imagination, perhaps because it was the last truly old-fashioned blizzard.
"I'm old enough to remember it," said weather historian Tom St. Martin of Woodbury, who
Source: Deutsche Welle (Germany)
November 10, 2010
Oranienburg has more unexploded bombs in its soil than any other German town or city. This week, another bomb was removed from its soil, a reminder to residents that they still live with lethal remnants from the war.
On a grey November morning, Manfred Gellert's red fire brigade car rolled along a cobblestone street in Oranienburg.
The streets were eerily empty, and there was no one to be seen in the well-kept gardens and houses in this eastern German town.
Source: BBC News
November 9, 2010
A rare American flying jacket, a Third Reich enamel street sign and an SS officer's dress-sword are among historical items being auctioned in Gloucestershire this week.
The objects will go under the hammer at Dominic Winter auction house as part of a sale of military, aviation and motoring memorabilia.
The leather flying jacket was owned by one of the notorious 'Flying Tigers', made up of United States Army, Navy and Marine Corps pilots who defended China against Japanese for
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 9, 2010
A Daimler DB18 Drophead Coupé previously used by Sir Winston Churchill will be auctioned in December.
An ex-Winston Churchill Daimler DB18 Drophead Coupé forms the highlight of the Historics at Brooklands auction on Saturday December 4, and is currently on display at the Brooklands Museum.
Built in 1939 and featuring coachwork by Carlton Carriage Co., the Daimler was used by the British Prime Minister during his election campaigns in 1944 and 1949.
One of e
Source: BBC News
November 10, 2010
An Andy Warhol canvas of a black-and-white Coke bottle has sold for $35.36m (£22.11m) at an auction in New York.
Sotheby's said Coca-Cola [4] (Large Coca-Cola) "is a landmark in the artist's creation of his pop art style".
The artwork surpassed its original estimate of $25m (£15m).
On Monday, Warhol's Men in Her Life, a multi-image depiction of actress Elizabeth Taylor, sold for $63.4m (£39.6m) at a Phillips auction.
The Sotheby's auc
Source: NYT
November 10, 2010
BERLIN — Germans felt the push and pull of their history again on Tuesday, when Nov. 9 came up on the calendar. That is the day in 1938 when Hitler’s gangs attacked Jewish property in a prelude to the Holocaust, and the very same day 51 years later when the wall dividing East and West was breached, signaling the end of the cold war.
Germans take the business of remembering very seriously, and so Nov. 9 has always presented a bit of a challenge — how to celebrate the joy of the wall’
Source: NYT
November 10, 2010
While fleeing the Nazis in 1941, an 11-year-old girl dodged airplane bombs as she crossed the Dnieper River in Ukraine, ultimately finding refuge in Donetsk, where she and her mother lived in hiding until the liberation of 1944....
[This tale was] among thousands of similar accounts given in the name of elderly immigrants who were seeking reparations from the German government through a fund established to provide help to survivors of Nazi persecution.
But many of the s
Source: Daily Mail
November 9, 2010
It is unlikely to be high up on your list of holiday destinations for summer 2011, but Iraq is poised to become a tourism hotspot, according to a travel industry report.
Tourism in the troubled Middle Eastern stat is growing rapidly, with airline and hotel capacity on the increase, according to the report released at World Travel Market, a major travel conference being held in London.
Millions of pounds have been invested in Iraq’s tourism infrastructure since the end o
Source: BBC
November 9, 2010
Cuban President Raul Castro has called the first congress of the ruling Communist Party in 14 years.
He said the congress, to be held in April next year, would address Cuba's economic problems.
The party congress is supposed to be held every five years but has been repeatedly postponed.
Since taking over from his brother Fidel in 2006, Raul Castro has taken steps to reduce the state's almost total control of the economy....
Source: BBC
November 9, 2010
A mother has spoken of her fears for her son who went missing while searching for Noah's Ark in Turkey.
Donald Mackenzie, 47, from Lewis, was reported missing by a friend on 14 October after he failed to return from an expedition on Mount Ararat.
Mr Mackenzie travels to the mountain every year to pursue his passion of searching for the ark.
The Bible identifies the mountains of Ararat as the ark's resting place after the flood.
The traveller wa
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 9, 2010
George W. Bush compares North Korea's Kim Jong-il to a food-hurling tantrum thrower, Jacques Chirac of France likes to lecture, Tony Blair is a stalwart friend, and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is "cold-blooded."
Bush's "Decision Points," out Tuesday, packs his eight years in the White House into about 500 pages full of anecdotes and assessments of world leaders, some kind, others brutal, and a few perhaps designed to settle old scores....
Source: BBC News
November 9, 2010
No criminal charges will be filed against CIA officials involved in destroying videotapes of harsh interrogations of terrorism suspects, the US Justice Department has said.
The CIA destroyed 92 tapes of al-Qaeda operatives Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Nashiri being waterboarded in 2005.
Jose Rodriguez, a former clandestine officer, approved the move out of concern the tapes could harm the CIA.
The investigation has spanned nearly three years.
Mr Rod
Source: CNN
November 9, 2010
The charismatic but unpredictable lead singer of American rock band The Doors could be about to receive a posthumous pardon almost 40 years after being convicted of exposing himself on stage.
Jim Morrison had been performing with the band at a typically raucous concert at Miami's Key Auditorium on March 1, 1969 when the incident took place. Reportedly drunk and slurring obscenities at the crowd, he was accused of unzipping his pants and simulating a sex act, a charge he denied.
Source: BBC
November 9, 2010
A conservation expedition to a remote area of Paraguay poses a risk to isolated tribal groups, according to an indigenous peoples' protection group.
Scientists from London's Natural History Museum (NHM) aim to record biodiversity in the Dry Chaco region.
An open letter from Iniciativa Amotocodie (IA) to the NHM has highlighted a dilemma: how to balance the need for research against the risks of disturbing indigenous communities.
IA says the trip should be c
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 9, 2010
George W Bush has said that his first reaction when an aide told him that an aeroplane crashed into the World Trade Centre was that a "little propeller plane" was "horribly lost".
Only when, during the presentation, his chief of staff Andy Card whispered in his ear that a second plane had struck, and that "America is under attack", did the fact that an act of terrorism had taken place cross his mind.
It was then that "instinct kicked
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 9, 2010
Jewish wealth confiscated by the Nazis paid for almost a third of the German war effort, a new study has found.
Nearly 120 billion Reich marks – over £12 billion at the time – was plundered from German Jews by laws and looting.
The official study commissioned by the ministry examined the years from 1933 to 1945. Hans-Peter Ullmann, a Cologne history professor, said the tax authorities under the Nazis actively worked to "destroy Jews financially" and to loot w
Source: NY Daily News
November 7, 2010
Brooklyn sisters Ruth and Toni Usherenko were young children when Nazi storm troopers burst into their Berlin home 72 years ago, stting fire to their belongings and beating them brutally.
Ruth was struck on her back with billy-clubs and Toni still has the scar on her forehead from being pushed down the stairs by Nazi agents on Nov. 9, 1938, known as Kristallnacht, "the night of broken glass."
"I cannot forget, never," said Ruth, 80, who lives in Brig
Source: NY Daily News
November 9, 2010
Ghoulish scammers swindled $42.5 million from two funds intended to help needy Holocaust survivors, prosecutors charged Tuesday.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara and the FBI announced charges against 17 people involved in the rip-off.
Court papers said employees of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, which administered the accounts, were behind the long-running scheme.
The scammers submitted fraudulent applications in exchange fo
Source: CNN
November 9, 2010
Emilio Massera, a former admiral who was part of a military junta that ruled Argentina in the 1970s, died Monday in the hospital where he had been for some time, the state-run Telam news agency reported.
The ex-dictator carried a legacy of being one of the most brutal enforcers during the country's "Dirty War," in which the military government sought to purge leftist factions in the country.
At the time of his death he was not convicted of any charges, though
