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
Oct 6, 2009
Robert Thomas handed over the two books, both 400 years old, to the German ambassador during a ceremony at the US national archives in Washington.
The texts were taken from a salt mine in western Germany, where they were being kept safe during allied bombing.
The 83-year-old former soldier said they were in a similar condition to when he had discovered them.
Source: BBC
Oct 6, 2009
The Munich state court has set aside 35 trial days for the process, beginning on 30 November and ending in May 2010.
The 89-year-old retired car worker, who was deported from the US in May, could face 15 years in prison if convicted.
Mr Demjanjuk has denied accusations that he was a guard at the Sobibor death camp and helped murder Jews.
He says he was captured by Germans in his native Ukraine while fighting for the Red Army and kept as a prisoner of war
Source: Guardian (UK)
Oct 6, 2009
For almost four decades General Francisco Franco was someone Spaniards could not escape. He was there in school books, church prayers, statues, plaques, street names and thousands of other reminders of a violent insurrection that led to a vicious civil war.
Now his face and name are being erased from public view. Even the army, where nostalgia for the dictator survived long after his death in 1975, has pledged to remove all plaques, statues and monuments to the regime of a man it on
Source: Guardian (UK)
Oct 6, 2009
It was a moment that went a long way to putting Afghanistan and its cultural heritage back on the map. In a small space in a once bombed-out building on the southern edge of Kabul, Afghan dignitaries and western diplomats squeezed past each other to see into the display cases: bronze age digging implements, pieces of carved marble and elaborate metal goods spanning Afghanistan's rich history.
It was only a two-room exhibit and much of the rest of Afghanistan's National Museum remain
Source: Guardian (UK)
Oct 6, 2009
Archaeologists have discovered evidence of what they believe was a second Stonehenge located a little more than a mile away from the world-famous prehistoric monument.
The new find on the west bank of the river Avon has been called "Bluestonehenge", after the colour of the 25 Welsh stones of which it was once made up.
Excavations at the site have suggested there was once a stone circle 10 metres in diameter and surrounded by a henge – a ditch with an external
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 6, 2009
From gherkins to trainers and toothpaste to cola drinks, the consumer goods of a lost nation are now top of the shopping lists for millions of people - who are spending €100 million (£92 million) a year on former East German goods.
Zeha trainers are a case in point: once ridiculed by the Nike and Adidas-wearing West, the athletic shoes of the masses in the German Democratic Republic are now sold from a specialty shop on Kurfurstendamm, Berlin's most expensive shopping mile.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 6, 2009
But the simple cross which has been in place for 75 years is at the heart of a bitter constitutional battle which will reach the US Supreme Court on Wednesday.
In a case with ramifications for war memorials across the United States, judges will consider whether, as an overtly religious symbol, the Mojave Memorial Cross violates the First Amendment which provides for a separation of church and state.
The 8ft Latin cross sits in the government-owned Mojave National Pres
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 6, 2009
Ugandan police working with Interpol said they had arrested the suspect, who they described as one of the "top four" men accused of directing Rwanda's 1994 genocide.
Nizeyimana, nicknamed the Butcher of Butare, is accused of ordering the execution of the revered Queen of Rwanda, Rosalie Gicanda, the symbolic head of the Tutsi tribe.
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) indicted him in 2000 on five counts of genocide, complicity in and incitem
Source: WSJ
Oct 6, 2009
The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for the release of thousands of pages of sealed documents concerning sexual abuse by priests in the Catholic diocese of Bridgeport, Conn.
The court's decision Monday effectively lifts a stay that has delayed the release of the documents since 2006, when four newspapers persuaded a Connecticut court to unseal them.
The materials were filed in 23 lawsuits against the Catholic diocese by parishioners during the 1990s, alleging that th
Source: Austrian Times
Oct 5, 2009
Archaeologists claim to have made a "sensational" find after they unearthed a 3,000-year-old wooden box used in central Europe’s biggest copper-mining operation at the Mitterberg mountain in Salzburg’s Pongau region.
They said the box from the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, which was discovered using the latest high-tech research methods including laser scanning, dated to between 1,500 and 1,000 B.C...
... Groh said the objects found at the sites, which cover an
Source: LA Times
Oct 5, 2009
Reporting from Martinez, Calif. - It used to be that to run the National Park Service, the director in Washington would simply open the front gates on a system that was intended to protect treasured landscapes, preserve history, and serve as a refuge for wildlife and a salve for visitors seeking the peace of wild places.
In contemporary times, however, the job of overseeing John Muir's "cathedrals of nature" requires presiding over fights of partisanship, science, religio
Source: St. Louis Today
Oct 5, 2009
An Illinois man pleaded guilty Monday to a federal felony and admitted illegally digging up and selling prehistoric artifacts for years.
Leslie Jones, of Creal Springs, pleaded guilty to the unauthorized excavation, removal or damage of archaeological resources in federal court in Benton. As part of the plea, Jones admitted digging up and selling pottery fragments and other artifacts from the Cypress Creek National Wildlife Refuge from 2004-2007. The refuge is located in southern Il
Source: Rasmussen Reports
Oct 5, 2009
Fifty-five percent (55%) of likely voters say the nation’s current economic problems are due to the recession which began under President George W. Bush, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.
Thirty-seven percent (37%) say the current economic problems are caused by the policies President Obama has put in place since taking office. These findings have remained relatively stable since May.
Eighty-seven percent (87%) of Democratic voters bla
Source: The Daily Beast
Oct 5, 2009
The tyrannosaurid family just keeps growing. Following the surprise discovery last month of a human-sized Tyrannosaurus ancestor, paleontologists have unearthed yet another T. rex cousin from the Gobi desert. Previously unknown to scientists, Alioramus altai had eight horns, a long snout, and a sleek physique: "Instead of [its] big bad boy... relatives, this one is more like a ballerina," said American Museum of Natural History’s Stephen Brusatte. Alioramus had two horns above each eye
Source: boston.com
Oct 5, 2009
BOSTON—Massachusetts, which boasts a history of abolitionism, is considering legislation to determine how much the state and local institutions profited from the African slave trade.
A bill before the legislature would require some of Massachusetts oldest banking, financial and insurance companies to look deep into their history -- and the histories of subsidiaries and predecessor companies -- to uncover links to the slave trade, as a condition of doing business with the state.
Source: Toronto Star
Oct 5, 2009
JERUSALEM – Unknown vandals damaged an ancient ruin in the Israeli desert recognized by the United Nations as a World Heritage site, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority said Monday.
One official called the damage to Avdat, an ancient Nabatean city dating back to the third century B.C., "irreversible."
The vandals sprayed black and yellow graffiti, destroyed signs, tipped over ancient stone pillars and destroyed a 1,700-year-old marble altar, spokesman Omri
Source: BBC
Oct 5, 2009
A new UK project is digitising nearly 300 Royal Navy captains' logs from voyages dating back to the 1760s.
They include the voyages of Charles Darwin on HMS Beagle, Captain Cook's log from HMS Discovery and Captain Bligh's journal from The Bounty.
The logbooks will be available on the National Archives website next year.
But scientists are already transcribing the data as part of a project led by the University of Sunderland.
Source: AFP
Oct 5, 2009
BERLIN - THE bust of legendary Egyptian beauty Nefertiti, believed to be 3,400 years old, has been moved gingerly to its new home in Berlin before it is to go back on display this month, the city's museum authority said on Monday.
The bust was transferred on Sunday 'with extreme care' to its final resting place, the newly renovated Neues Museum, where it will take pride of place with its own display room, the authority said in a statement.
Nefertiti, renowned as one of
Source: Live Science
Oct 5, 2009
The first century B.C. was one of the most culturally rich in the history of the Roman Empire — the age of Cicero, Caesar and Virgil. But as much as historians know about the great figures of this period of Ancient Rome, they know very little about some basic facts, such as the population size of the late Roman Empire.
Now, a group of historians has used caches of buried coins to provide an answer to this question.
During the Republican period of Rome (about the fifth t
Source: Truthout
Oct 5, 2009
Buenos Aires, Argentina - Prosecutors here in Argentina have framed former Gen. Jorge Olivera Rovere as Argentina's Adolf Eichmann: a mid-level official who dutifully helped execute orders to exterminate opponents of Argentina's last military dictatorship. Yesterday, Rovere's attorneys defended the aging military man, 83, saying that the trial of the former general threatened to disrupt the "social peace" generated by amnesty laws and pardons passed in the 1980's.
Rove
