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: Nature News
Nov 5, 2009
Archaeologists claim to have found the oldest known artefact in the Americas, a scraper-like tool in an Oregon cave that dates back 14,230 years.
The tool shows that people were living in North America well before the widespread Clovis culture of 12,900 to 12,400 years ago, says archaeologist Dennis Jenkins of the University of Oregon in Eugene.
Studies of sediment and radiocarbon dating showed the bone's age. Jenkins presented the finding late last month in a lecture a
Source: International Business Times (UK)
Nov 5, 2009
A survey conducted by a veterans charity has found startling evidence that school children are increasingly ignorant of the history of the Second World War, with one in twenty believing Adolf Hitler to be a former national football team coach of Germany and one in six thinking that Auschwitz is a theme park.
The survey, conducted by Erskine, which takes care of around 1,350 war veterans, asked 2,000 children aged nine to 15 a number of questions about the Second World War and got so
Source: BBC
Nov 5, 2009
The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 thrilled most East Germans - though not manufacturers, whose goods became suddenly uncompetitive. But 20 years on, reports Lucy Hooker, some former East German brands are going strong.
Madeline Achterberg still harbours a fondness for many aspects of life in the old East Germany, especially the food, even though she wasn't even born in 1989.
"These things have a special spirit to them. They have a feeling of telling sto
Source: NYT
Nov 5, 2009
PARIS — Judges ordered Thursday that a lawyer be imposed on Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader on trial in The Hague for war crimes and genocide, but halted the trial until March 1, to give a lawyer time to get ready.
Their decision effectively gave Mr. Karadzic, who has insisted on representing himself, almost four additional months to prepare his defense, which is more than an appeals court gave him when it ordered the case to begin.
“We need time to dig
Source: NYT
Nov 5, 2009
BERLIN — A young East German physicist named Angela Merkel was on her way home from her weekly trip to the sauna and a beer with a friend when she was swept up in the ecstatic crowds crossing the border at Bornholmer Street on the night of Nov. 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell.
Now, as chancellor of a reunited Germany, Mrs. Merkel is presiding over a series of events commemorating the 20th anniversary of that day. In a talk with reporters here on Thursday she shared her recollecti
Source: CNSNews.com
Nov 5, 2009
Washington (AP) - Making good on a campaign promise to hold a yearly summit with American Indians, President Barack Obama told tribal leaders Thursday gathered in Washington that he is determined to reverse the federal government's history of marginalizing Indian nations.
"You will not be forgotten as long as I'm in this White House," Obama said during opening remarks at the all-day conference of tribal leaders and government officials.
Obama said the meeting
Source: PRweb
Nov 5, 2009
Himmler’s WWII Third Reich Gold & Red Velvet Tapestry goes to auction on December 5th, 2009. This rare and desirable U.S. 101st airborne war capture piece is an original one-of-a-kind museum quality German Third Reich WWII antiquity. Originally hung in the Reichstag, later moved to Himmler's personal residence following a fire at the Reichstag. Captured by the United States Allied forces from Himmler's residence in 1945. Complete provenance and authenticity to accompany this war treasure.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 5, 2009
An ashtray that belonged to Prime Minister Winston Churchill is due to be sold at auction in Norfolk, with experts estimating the silver dish could fetch £1,500.
The silver dish used by Churchill is expected to fetch a premium price when it goes under the hammer in Norfolk, owing to its famous connections.
Churchill, a keen smoker who was frequently pictured with a cigar clamped between his teeth, used the ashtray at The Other Club – a political dining club he co-founde
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 5, 2009
Organisers of a pub crawl which led to a student urinating on a city centre war memorial should have been prosecuted with him, a judge has suggested.
Philip Laing, 19, an ex-public schoolboy, pleaded guilty to outraging public decency when he appeared at Sheffield magistrates’ court and was warned he could face jail.
District Judge Anthony Browne told him: “I have no doubt whatsoever it was the vast amount of alcohol you consumed that led you to behave that way.
Source: Daily Mail
Nov 5, 2009
The owner of the house where Adolf Hitler was born wants to put it on the market with a likely asking price of over £2million.
But the local authority in Braunau-am-Inn, Austria, has vowed to try to find a way of blocking any sale because it fears it could land up in the hands of extreme right-wingers who would turn it into a grotesque shrine to his memory.
The mayor of Braunau, Gerhard Skiba, said ideally the town council would like to purchase it and so control its fu
Nov 5, 2009
PARIS -- In retirement, former French President Jacques Chirac has achieved something that eluded him while in office: popularity.
Days after he was ordered to stand trial on embezzlement charges, Mr. Chirac is rated as France's most admired political figure, according to French polling agency Ifop. During Mr. Chirac's presidency, from 1995 to 2007, his approval ratings slipped to 30% as he struggled with issues such as unemployment and crime.
The publication of his mem
Source: WSJ
Nov 5, 2009
The Haight-Ashbury neighborhood is history. At least, so think two groups of residents who are planning museums to capture memories of the 1960s hippie movement before they fade with its aging participants.
One, led by Haight-Ashbury Free Clinics founder David E. Smith, will function as a "library museum" of the free-clinic movement, which began in the Haight in the 1960s to provide free health care to residents. The other effort, led by local artist David Wills, will chro
Source: Yahoo News
Nov 5, 2009
CONCORD, N.H. – The infamous photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald holding a rifle in his backyard would have been nearly impossible to fake, according to a new analysis by a Dartmouth College professor.
Oswald, who was shot to death days after being charged with the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, claimed the photo of him holding a rifle in one hand and Marxist newspapers in the other had been doctored. Over the years, many others have pointed out what appear to be incon
Source: WSJ
Nov 5, 2009
An Italian court convicted 23 U.S. intelligence operatives on charges of kidnapping an Egyptian imam on a Milan street, prosecutors and lawyers said. The decision is a landmark ruling on the controversial U.S. practice of abducting suspected terrorists and flying them to other countries for interrogation.
Robert Seldon Lady, a former Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Milan, was sentenced Wednesday in absentia to eight years in prison, according to his court-appointed lawy
Source: NYT
Nov 4, 2009
EDINBURGH — Come April a small team of experts from the Glasgow School of Art and the government heritage entity Historic Scotland will fly to South Dakota at the behest of an organization called CyArk and the United States National Park Service. They will make laser scans and computer models of Mount Rushmore.
Aside from the wee bit of Scottish blood in three of the four enshrined presidents (Lincoln’s the odd man out, in case you’re wondering), there is of course nothing whatsoev
Source: WSJ
Nov 4, 2009
GRAFENAU, Germany -- It has been 20 years since the Berlin Wall fell. But deep in the forest here, a red deer called Ahornia still refuses to cross the old Iron Curtain.
Ahornia inhabits the thickly wooded mountains along what once was the fortified border between West Germany and Czechoslovakia. At the height of the Cold War, a high electric fence, barbed wire and machine-gun-carrying guards cut off Eastern Europe from the Western world. The barriers severed the herds of deer on th
Source: Google News
Nov 4, 2009
LUXOR, Egypt — A German expert will attend talks next month to discuss Cairo's demand for the return of a 3,400-year-old statue of Queen Nefertiti, Egypt's antiquities chief said on Wednesday.
The bust of the Egyptian beauty is the centrepiece of Berlin's "Neues Museum", which reopened last month 70 years after it was closed following heavy bomb damage during World War II.
"The director of the Egyptian antiquities department at the Berlin museum will come
Source: Leicester Mercury (UK)
Nov 4, 2009
Archeologists have unearthed an 8,000-year-old weapons factory.
The find, near Melton, is the biggest ever mid-Stone Age discovery in Leicestershire, with fingernail-sized flint pieces, burned animal bones and evidence of tents.
The bonus for the University of Leicester team is the site has not been churned up by ploughs, like most county land has.
It has remained undisturbed since the time before Britain became an island.
The dig took place pr
Source: BBC
Nov 4, 2009
The Segontium Roman Museum in Caernarfon, Gwynedd is on a site which experts call one of the best preserved Roman fortresses in the world.
But cash from a five-year funding deal is running out, and the trust says it may not be able to open in the spring.
The Welsh Assembly Government says it hopes a solution can be found to save the centre from closure.
Segontium Cyf, a trust made up of local people, took over the running of the centre from National Museum
Source: NYT
Nov 4, 2009
MAN on the premises!
Martha Morales, the evening supervisor at the Webster Apartments, a large, brick home to 370 women of varying ages and occupations, strode down a long corridor lined with identical doors. She zeroed in on one of them and knocked.
“Can I come in your room?” she called out politely — and then got straight to the point. “We think you have a man in there.”
A young woman opened the door.
There was no man to be seen in the small,
