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: Telegraph (UK)
October 12, 2010
Demi Moore is selling two 19th century European paintings at auction, including a French work the actress says inspired her because of the artist's depiction of strong women.
William Bouguereau's Frère et Soeur, an oil painting of a young woman tenderly holding her baby brother, could fetch up to $1.5 million (£950,000) at Sotheby's on November 4.
It was painted in 1887 by the French artist, whose work is enjoying renewed interest.
Moore's other painting,
Source: AP
October 12, 2010
An Egyptian court convicted 11 officials from the Culture Ministry, including the deputy minister, of gross negligence and incompetence in the theft of a Vincent Van Gogh painting that embarrassed the government.
The defendants received sentences of three years in prison and will have to post a bond of $1,800 to stay out of prison until the appeal.
The "Poppy Flower," valued at $50 million was stolen in broad daylight from Cairo's Mahmoud Khalil Museum. Subseq
Source: CNN
January 12, 2010
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton landed Monday night in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo for the first leg of a diplomatic swing through three Balkan states.
After visiting Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo, Clinton is expected to conclude her visit with a stop in Brussels, Belgium, where she is scheduled to meet with high EU and NATO officials, including U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
The U.S. secretary of state's agenda focuses on the U.S. commitment to all Balkan st
Source: CNN
October 11, 2010
Eulalia Garcia Maturey has outlived two husbands, her two children and decades of bygone immigration laws. At 101, Maturey will become a U.S. citizen on the 101st anniversary of her crossing into the United States from Mexico.
The naturalization ceremony will take place Tuesday afternoon in a federal courtroom in Brownsville, Texas, according to the Department of Homeland Security's Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Eulalia Maturey's path to citizenship is a tale th
Source: CNN.com
October 12, 2010
Condoleezza Rice's personal memoir of her family history hits the book stands Tuesday. In "Extraordinary, Ordinary People," the former U.S. Secretary of State recalls much of her family's time during the Civil Rights era in Birmingham.
Rice has said that she will write a memoir about her eight years in the White House but felt she could not do so until people understood the "personal and implausible journey" she had taken from being born in 1950s segregated Alaba
Source: Spiegel Online
October 12, 2010
US President Jimmy Carter and German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt seemed like good friends in public. Behind the scenes, however, they didn't much care for each other. Indeed, not having to deal with Schmidt anymore, Carter wrote in his diary, was the only positive aspect to losing to Ronald Reagan in 1980.
Helmut Schmidt was Germany's chancellor from 1974 to 1982, and Jimmy Carter was the president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. Though they have both grown older now, they are
Source: Spiegel Online
October 12, 2010
The Israel Chamber Orchestra plans to play music by Richard Wagner, the composer revered by Hitler, during the annual Wagner Festival in Bayreuth next year. The move is controversial in Israel, where the composer's work has been shunned for decades.
The music of Richard Wagner, Hitler's favorite composer, is hated in Israel and has been unofficially banned there for decades. But the Jewish Austrian conductor Roberto Paternostro, the musical director of the Israel Chamber Orchestra,
Source: NewsLeader.com (VA)
October 12, 2010
CHARLOTTESVILLE — Letters, military strategies, meeting notes, journals and other historical documents from the Founding Fathers that illustrate the building of the United States of America more than 200 years ago will be made available to the general public for free, thanks to a cooperative agreement between the University of Virginia Press and the National Archives.
The agreement will create a new website to provide free access to the fully annotated published papers of key figure
Source: Birmingham Post (UK)
October 11, 2010
If history had taken a different turn then Hitler may well have been living in Apley Hall, a glorious historic hall in the heart of the Shropshire countryside.
The Führer is thought to have set his heart on making the hall his home once the intended invasion of Britain was complete.
Clearly the war time leader had a taste for style.
The Grade II* listed house, built with Grinshill stone in a Gothic style, is a breathtaking country home that has been lovingl
Source: Deutsche Welle
October 12, 2010
What are memorials, and is it important that they occupy public space? Certainly they're a call to remembrance and reflection, but does a "digital memorial" leave out something important by letting people choose when they observe it?
In Munich, an audio map titled Memory Loops by artist and musician Michaela Melian has raised questions like these. The project is a digital memorial to the victims of National Socialism in the Bavarian capital. It draws on archival and audio
Source: Guardian (UK)
October 12, 2010
It is one of Britain's most-loved ancient hill figures, careering across the downland. Now vets are being urged to question whether the White Horse of Uffington was meant to be a horse at all.
Challenging the traditional description of the Oxfordshire landmark, retired vet Olaf Swarbrick asks whether the "beautiful, stylised" figure might instead be a dog such as a greyhound or wolfhound.
In a letter to the Veterinary Record, his profession's journal, the form
Source: WaPo
October 11, 2010
Along the meticulously spaced rows of graves at Arlington National Cemetery, the names of the nation's wars are clearly etched into the headstones: World War I, World War II, Vietnam, Korea, the Persian Gulf.
Soon, a new inscription for troops killed in Iraq could appear: "Operation New Dawn."
Unlike in past conflicts, the overwhelming majority of headstones for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan at the nation's most hallowed military burial ground use the mili
Source: WRAL
October 8, 2010
Five Union Army soldiers who died 145 years ago now have grave markers.
The Charlotte Observer reported Friday the graves had been marked only with large stones since they were killed by Confederate soldiers while scouting for supplies....
Source: Haaretz
October 8, 2010
Almost unnoticed within the confines of the large Hietaniemi area is the Helsinki Jewish cemetery. Surrounded by old moss-covered stone walls, it is separated from the predominant Christian Lutheran graves there, as are the graves of other minority religious denominations in Hietaniemi.
Passing through a gate into the Jewish cemetery, one immediately notices on the right-hand side a small area demarcated by a low fence made of heavy iron chains. Here lie Finnish-Jewish war heroes -
Source: Civil War Interactive
October 8, 2010
In honor of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War in 2011, NOAA has assembled a special historical collection of maps, charts, and documents prepared by the U.S. Coast Survey during the war years. The collection, “Charting a More Perfect Union,” contains over 400 documents, available free from NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey website.
“People are planning now for their visits to Civil War sites next year, and we want to give them an opportunity to visualize the terrain, ports, and coa
Source: Irish Central
October 12, 2010
During the Troubles, hundreds of men and women were convicted of terrorist activities on the basis of convictions that in many cases were beaten out of them in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. Among them were children as young as 14 and 16 who were tortured for days on end.
The Diplock court system allowed for convictions on the basis of confessions only, and non jury trials.A pervasive culture of forcing confessions to win convictions has now been revealed by a Guardian newspaper inves
Source: KSMU (AR)
October 8, 2010
The schoolchildren in Boyd Elementary School file in and take their seats on the auditorium floor. Many have been looking forward to meeting this special guest—they’ve been studying world history and conflict resolution.
The visitor is a pilot from World War II. Her name is Millicent Peterson Young, and she is one of the few surviving Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs.
She and over 1,000 other women flew military aircraft within the US during the war—often ferryin
Source: Agence France-Presse
October 11, 2010
The international rights to a book telling the stories of six classmates of Anne Frank, who unlike her survived the Holocaust, went up for sale on Thursday at the Frankfurt Book Fair.
"It's a very simple and dignified book, which is receiving strong interest," Robert Walsh, the literary agent
who holds the rights, told AFP.
Of the 21 children in Anne Frank's class at the Jewish school she attended in Amsterdam, 11 survived World War II and six are still
Source: Guardian (Waltham Forest UK)
October 10, 2010
THE Olympic Delivery Authority has insisted that its Stratford stadium is safe, amid claims that there could be an unexploded bomb lying beneath it.
According to Government records, a German bomb dropped in a tip on the exact site of the stadium just south of Leyton during the Blitz.
Records of bombings during the war state that a large hole was left in a rubbish shoot at the refuse site after an air-raid, but despite several searches throughout the 1940s, no bomb was
Source: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
October 12, 2010
Options are shrinking and time is running out for a small citizens group seeking to keep the historic Justice William Smith House intact and in Mercersburg.
Bids to demolish -- or possibly relocate -- the building will be opened Oct. 28.
Among the bidders is likely to be an outdoor museum in Northern Ireland that would like to disassemble the structure and ship it to Europe. Under that scenario, the stone house would be rebuilt on the grounds of the Ulster American Folk
