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: Daily Mail (UK)
Jan 24, 2010
A French mayor has insulted the memory of hundreds of British soldiers who died liberating his village by displaying a portrait of a notorious Nazi collaborator.
Bernard Hoye, civic leader of Gonneville-sur-Mer, in Normandy, insists on honouring Philippe Petain, the Vichy leader who brought shame on his country during the Second World War.
This is despite the fact that British commandoes including the Royal Marines and SAS spent days fighting off the town's German ga
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 24, 2010
President Barack Obama is seeking inspiration from Bill Clinton, the last Democratic incumbent of the White House, in an effort to fight back from the lowest point of his year-old administration.
Despite their bitter fall-out during the bitter primary campaign with his wife Hillary Clinton, Mr Obama is this weekend looking at how Mr Clinton put his presidency back on track after the Democrats suffered disastrous mid-term congressional results in 1994, two years after he came to pow
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 24, 2010
Military veterans who served in the Second World War are to be given priority healthcare on the NHS for the rest of their lives.
Under government plans announced over the weekend all veterans, also including those who fought in Northern Ireland, the Falklands, Iraq and Afghanistan, will be allowed to jump to the top of the waiting list.
Mike O'Brien, the health minister, said that meetings with those wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan convinced him veterans needed specia
Source: CNN
Jan 24, 2010
A new audio tape allegedly from al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden claims responsibility for an attempt to blow up a plane en route to Michigan on Christmas Day and warns the United States of more attacks.
CNN could not independently confirm the authenticity of the message, but the CIA has in the past confirmed Al-Jazeera reports on tapes from the al Qaeda leader.
Bin Laden had six messages in 2009. The last was on September 25 and was "to the European people."
Source: Green Bay Press-Gazette
Jan 24, 2010
While most teenagers are bragging about their cell phones, MP3 players and other gadgets, 16-year-old Courtney Van Goethem of Kewaunee [Wisconsin] is most proud of a letter she received from a 100-year-old Dutch woman.
The letter, written by Miep Gies, came in April and was in response to Van Goethem's own handwritten inquiry. Gies helped hide Anne Frank's family, as well as another family and a dentist, for two years during World War II. After the Franks were captured by the Nazis,
Source: The Sunday Times (UK)
Jan 24, 2010
Scientists seeking permission to exhume the remains of Leonardo da Vinci plan to reconstruct his face to discover whether his masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, is a disguised self-portrait.
A team from Italy’s National Committee for Cultural Heritage, a leading association of scientists and art historians, has asked to open the tomb in which the Renaissance painter and polymath is believed to lie at Amboise castle, in the Loire valley, where he died in 1519, aged 67.
The iden
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 23, 2010
A nun who fought for women's rights in the seventeenth century and was imprisoned for being a heretic was honoured by Britain's most senior religious leaders.
Almost 400 years after her death, Mary Ward is now recognised as a highly significant figure in the Catholic Church and is on the way to becoming the UK's first new female saint for 40 years.
She was imprisoned by Pope Urban VIII who believed that she was dangerous, but Pope Benedict XVI has declared her to be '
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 23, 2010
Tatyana Yumasheva, daughter of Boris Yeltsin, is ruffling feathers in Russia with her blog.
Tatyana Yumasheva was the "Lady Rasputin" who wielded huge and unaccountable power from behind her father's tottering throne for years.
But after disappearing from public view for more than a decade, the daughter of the late Russian president Boris Yeltsin, is back. And, in what many believe may be the opening salvo in her own bid for
Source: Sky News
Jan 23, 2010
A multi-million dollar collection of forged art seized by police went on public display for the first time Saturday.
The exhibition, at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), featured more than 100 fake works from Lowry paintings to Barbara Hepworth sculptures.
Some forgers inserted letters, invoices and other documents into archives to invent a history for their work to make it appear authentic.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 23, 2010
George Orwell has been named as the most popular Penguin novelist in its history in a survey of its current stable of writers.
The publisher asked 50 of its authors to name their favourite book from its back list.
Orwell garnered four nominations. No other author gained more than one.
Orwell's continued dominance as a writer and thinker comes despite the fact that he died 60 years ago this January.
Source: Times (UK)
Jan 23, 2010
On the surface it is a typical picture-postcard Alpine community, with wooden chalets, flower tubs and the ice-clad Zugspitze mountain looming over the valley.
If Garmisch-Partenkirchen is to realise its dream of hosting the 2018 Winter Olympics, it has some serious rebranding to do. This Bavarian ski resort has a history of anti-Semitism and last hosted the Games in 1936.
Next month a German government delegation will head to Vancouver to set out Garmisch’s joint bid
Source: Times (UK)
Jan 23, 2010
A multimillion-pound collection of forged artwork seized by police will go on display for the first time today. More than 100 fakes, from Lowry and Banksy paintings to Barbara Hepworth sculptures, form part of an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
The garden-shed workshop of one of the most diverse art fakers in British history, Shaun Greenhalgh, has also been re-created. The master forger was jailed for four years and eight months in 2007 after police discovered an aston
Source: Fox News
Jan 22, 2010
President Barack Obama is marking the 38th anniversary of the Supreme Court's landmark decision on abortion by calling the procedure a constitutional right he's committed to protecting.
Obama also said in a statement Saturday that he remains committed to policies designed to prevent unintended pregnancies. And he called on Americans to recommit themselves to ensuring that, in the president's words, "our daughters have the same rights, the same freedoms, and the same opportuniti
Source: AOL News
Jan 22, 2010
The bullhorn President George W. Bush used to speak to rescue workers three days after the Sept. 11 attacks and the pistol taken from Saddam Hussein when he was captured in Iraq two years later are among the artifacts featured in a new exhibit opening Saturday at a museum in Dallas.
The collection at the Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University amounts to a preview of what will become the Bush presidential library center on the campus. Groundbreaking for the center is schedul
Source: National Trust for Historic Preservation
Jan 22, 2010
On Dec. 23, 2009, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed legislature reducing the state parks budget by $8.6 million. In the face of these cuts, last week the Arizona State Parks Board voted to close 13 of its 27 state parks by June.
"It's a seismic change to our department," says Renée Bahl, executive director of the Arizona State Parks Board. "Basically, we'll have zero dollars at the end of this year."
By the end of March, seven of Arizona's eight sta
Source: WPCVA.com
Jan 22, 2010
The Civil War preservation trust has raised $65,000 and has used that money to recently purchase the Appomattox Station Battlefield property.
The purchase of 47 acres of property will secure the preservation of the land where once Civil War skirmishes took place in April 1865.
The Appomattox Station Battlefield land is located on the Jamerson Trucking Property.
Preserving the property is a key step in telling the full story of the final days of the Civil Wa
Source: AP
Jan 22, 2010
A Van Gogh painting at the center of a dispute between Yale University and a man who believes the artwork was stolen from his family during the Russian Revolution is worth $120 million to $150 million, the man's attorney told The Associated Press on Friday.
The evaluation is the first public estimate of the painting's value, and the lawyer, Allan Gerson, said it comes from a top auction firm.
Gerson represents Pierre Konowaloff, the purported great-grandson of industria
Source: Seattle Times
Jan 22, 2010
They were mavericks of their day, taking to the skies when the nation was at war and most women were at home caring for families. At a ceremony this spring, 11 Washington women will join the 200-some surviving Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) in receiving Congressional Gold Medals for service during World War II.
Sixteen more medals will be given to local WASPs posthumously.
Congressional Gold Medals have been awarded nearly 150 times since the nation was born in 1
Source: AP
Jan 22, 2010
Some U.S. military veterans are finding work helping sort through a massive government archaeological collection that has been neglected for decades.
The collection dates to the 1930s, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers started building dozens of locks, dams and reservoirs, and the ground beneath them was excavated for archaeological treasures.
It's part of the corps' effort to find American Indian cultural items and return them to tribes or their descendants -- some
Source: The Capital (Annapolis)
Jan 22, 2010
A construction crew working on a parking lot between West and Northwest streets in downtown Annapolis has unearthed pieces of pottery, china, bottles and bones that date to about 1760....
The artifacts were found buried in a long-abandoned privy behind the house at 26 West St. The construction crew alerted city officials as soon as the brick outline of the privy became visible Wednesday.
Thomas W. Bodor - a consulting archaeologist retained by the Historic Preservation
