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: BusinessWeek
November 9, 2010
John Demjanjuk says he's in too much pain to follow his trial on charges he served as a guard at a Nazi death camp.
The 90-year-old told the Munich state court in a rare statement Tuesday that he belongs "in the hospital and not the courtroom."...
Source: CNN
November 9, 2010
The fields are being harvested and burned. A crumbled shack from the "quarters," once home to slaves, then sharecroppers, still stands amid overgrown trees and weeds.
This is home to some of the great characters of American literature, from books such as "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman" and "A Gathering of Old Men." To author Ernest Gaines, it's his home and the home of "my early heroes" -- the aunt who raised him, his brothers, his ne
Source: CNN.com
November 9, 2010
(CNN) -- After staying largely mum on the political scene since leaving office almost two years ago, former President George W. Bush will reveal his thoughts on the most historic -- and controversial -- parts of his presidency with the release of his memoir Tuesday.
In the 481-page book, Bush shares his thoughts on the 9/11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina and what he calls the "worst moment" of his presidency.
The 43rd president also takes responsibility for giving
Source: NYT
November 8, 2010
The images have been scattered about in dusty and moldy warehouses, relics of the pre-Internet age when photography was integral to selling music, and the photographers — names like Irving Penn, Annie Leibovitz, Lee Friedlander and Robert Mapplethorpe — went on to become nearly as famous as the subjects they captured and defined.
“Every day is like, what am I going to find today?” said Grayson Dantzic, the archivist for Atlantic Records in New York. With colleagues at Warner Music G
Source: NYT
November 8, 2010
BAIKALSK, Russia — When the aging paper mill in this Siberian town is transforming logs into rolls of cardboard that resemble giant thread spools, Eduard Merkulov not only has a paycheck but also faith in the future. Maybe there is a place in the new Russia for a middle-aged laborer like him, calloused hands and all.
His wife, brother-in-law and many of his neighbors also work there, and feel the same way. “There is nothing else here,” Mr. Merkulov said. “Without the factory, I don’
Source: The Atlantic
November 8, 2010
Fifty years ago today, John F. Kennedy won election to the White House, beating Richard Nixon by one-tenth of one percent. The youngest person and only Catholic ever elected president, Kennedy captured the imagination of Americans with this dashing good looks and beautiful wife, Jackie. While his 1,000 days in office are well-documented, Life magazine has just released never-before-published photos that cover the campaign of 1960....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 7, 2010
A Spitfire soaring majestically into the sky has been selected as the winning design for a national memorial to the wartime aircraft.
The design by Nick Hancock, an architect, was chosen from hundreds of entries in a public contest, backed by The Sunday Telegraph, to create a permanent tribute to the Spitfire in Southampton, the city where it was designed and first built.
Mr Hancock, 36, who has a studio in north London, said he was "over the moon" after lear
Source: WTOP
November 7, 2010
A war is being waged on two fronts to save two pieces of the Wilderness Battlefield from being lost forever.
This Civil War battlefield straddles Spotsylvania and Orange counties in Virginia. It's where Civil War giants Grant and Lee clashed for the first time. Now there's a modern day clash - Walmart versus concerned citizens.
The battle will play out in court in January. A lawsuit was filed to stop Walmart from building a superstore on land that an expert says was par
Source: AP
November 8, 2010
Nearly a dozen sculptures considered by the Nazis to be "degenerate" artwork and believed to have been lost or destroyed after World War II have been unearthed during construction near Berlin's city hall and were shown to reporters Monday.
The terra-cotta and bronze statues were found during a dig to lay down a new subway line. They belonged to a collection of 15,000 works condemned by Hitler's regime for containing "deviant" sexual elements, anti-nationalistic t
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
November 8, 2010
For 66 years, the brave young Spitfire pilot’s final resting place had been a mystery.
Flight Lieutenant Henry Lacy Smith was shot down by the Germans five days after D-Day on a mission supporting the Allied invasion in Normandy.
His last radio message to comrades was: ‘I’m going to put this thing down in a field.’
But the Australian’s plane then nose-dived into the sea and he was designated ‘missing believed killed’.
Now, however, the puzzle has be
Source: Scotsman
November 6, 2010
No-one will ever know who the man who fell at the Seelow Heights outside of Berlin was. Denied an honourable burial as five million men of the Red Army marched on the Nazi capital in 1945, he was disinterred last month to be plundered of his papers and army insignia.
He fell victim the first time to a Soviet shell blast; the second to vultures who are at work plundering the graves of fallen warriors like him for money.
Thousands of German and Russian corpses recovered f
Source: MSNBC
November 5, 2010
Britain's enigmatic "headless Romans" lost their heads far away from home, according to a multi-isotopic analysis of the 1,800-year-old skeletal remains.
Unearthed between 2004 and 2005 in a cemetery in York, England, the remains belong to 80 individuals, almost all males, who died violently at ages ranging between 19 and 45.
At least 46 of them had been carefully decapitated, with their heads placed by or between their legs or pelvis.
Believed b
Source: b92.net
November 5, 2010
Croatian President Ivo Josipović has stated that he did apologize for the Serb victims in Paulin Dvor near Osijek and that some media were "twisting the facts".
Commenting on reports that he, unlike Serbian President Boris Tadić, did not apologize for the victims, Josipović said he was glad that such media were few.
“I think they weren’t listening carefully, watch the recording again,” he added.
The Croatian president
Source: Canada.com
November 5, 2010
A 400-year-old book described as "the first written history of Canada" — and adorned with one of the earliest and most treasured maps of the country — is to be sold this month at a British auction of rare volumes and historic manuscripts.
The 1612 edition of French adventurer Marc Lescarbot's Histoire de la Nouvelle France — the appearance of which outraged fellow Frenchman Samuel de Champlain, the famed explorer who had planned to be first to publish a history of the New
Source: Newsweek
November 5, 2010
Celebrity worship reflects a primal need that’s been present since the Babylonians: to elevate people to the status of mythic heroes, only to destroy them. “It suits us when … fame comes at a price,” Payne writes. Or as the Greeks put it, the only place to go from the top of Fortune’s Wheel is down. Achilles, hero of the Trojan War, had to choose between a long, anonymous life or a short, glorious one. There’s no middle ground: a hero must either “go out in a blaze of glory or else disappoint us
Source: Bloomberg
November 8, 2010
Eleven sculptures by artists condemned as “degenerate” by the Nazis were unearthed from World War II rubble near Berlin’s city hall, where building is about to start on a new underground train line.
The sculptures, including bronzes by Edwin Scharff, Marg Moll and Karl Knappe, survived both the vilification of the Nazis and Allied fire-bombing in the war. The last objects in the trove were unearthed at the end of last month in excavations aimed at finding remnants of medieval histor
Source: BBC
November 8, 2010
The discovery of artefacts during gas mains excavations in Monmouth has helped illustrate how the River Wye supported a Stone Age camp.
Archaeologists found flint tools and bone fragments at St James's Square and Wyebridge Street.
They indicate hunter-gatherers used the River Wye for food and transport some 6,500 to 7,500 years ago.
The late Mesolithic items show there were settlers in the area thousands of years earlier than previously thought.
Source: BBC
November 8, 2010
She was an aristocrat and an eccentric who greeted guests with a cockatoo on her shoulder.
Lady Mairi Bury of Mount Stewart, County Down, who died last year, was a colourful character who piloted her first plane aged 11 and her last at 85.
She was a close friend of politicians like Harold Macmillan. She was also one of the UK's greatest stamp collectors.
Her collection is expected to raise £2.6m at auction in Sotheby's, London, on 24 - 26 November.
Source: BBC
November 8, 2010
The family of a man who was hanged for murder in Bristol are planning to give him a proper burial, more than 180 years after he died.
Mary Halliwell, from Leigh in Greater Manchester, was researching her family tree on the internet when she discovered she was related to John Horwood - the first man to be publicly hanged at Bristol's New Gaol in 1821.
He was the brother of Mrs Halliwell's great-great-great grandfather and lived in the village of Hanham near Bristol.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 8, 2010
George W Bush's opposition to abortion was cemented after his mother Barbara showed him a dead foetus in a jar after she had suffered a miscarriage, the former president has disclosed in an interview.
Mr Bush said that his mother, the one-time US First Lady, showed her the jar when he was a teenager.
Mr Bush is beginning a media blitz in an attempt to rehabilitate his image – his approval rating when leaving office was 25 per cent. As well as the Lauer interview, he i
