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: Los Angeles Times
May 12, 2009
JERUSALEM -- Pope Benedict XVI's pilgrimage to the Holy Land veered into controversy today when the Vatican's spokesman issued varying statements about the pontiff's activities during World War II.
The differing accounts came after some Israeli officials voiced disappointment that Benedict's speech at their Holocaust memorial had failed to acknowledge his witness of Nazi terror as a teenage German conscript.
Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi first declared th
Source: Herald Sun (Australia)
May 12, 2009
A SET of ancient Aboriginal remains found during a clearout of a house in northern England are soon to be returned to Australia.
Workers stumbled across the two femurs, three skulls and an assortment of other bones while sorting through the Cheshire home of university professor John Kempster, a former Aboriginal Rights Association president, after he moved to New Zealand in 2008.
Source: http://www.hurriyet.com
May 12, 2009
A king’s grave was uncovered during construction in İzmir’s Kemalpaşa district. The area has been taken under protection and İzmir Museum Directorship officers have started an inspection of the grave and its contents.
The king’s grave was found in a 211-square-meter area owned by Behçet Aktaş in Kemalpaşa’s Atatürk neighborhood. It was discovered when a construction digger struck a rock that was part of the grave during excavation work f
Source: Science Daily
May 12, 2009
The oldest submerged town in the world is about to give up its secrets — with the help of equipment that could revolutionise underwater archaeology.
The ancient town of Pavlopetri lies in three to four metres of water just off the coast of southern Laconia in Greece. The ruins date from at least 2800 BC through to intact buildings, courtyards, streets, chamber tombs and some thirty-seven cist graves which are thought to belong to the Mycenaean period (c.1680-1180 BC). This Bronze Ag
Source: BBC
May 12, 2009
A row has flared over Pope Benedict XVI's membership as a teenager of the Hitler Youth, as he paid a historic visit to Jerusalem's holy sites.
A Vatican spokesman said the pontiff had "never, never, never" belonged - contradicting the Pope's own admission.
The comments came as he visited the Dome of the Rock - the first pontiff to do so - and then the Western Wall, one of Judaism's holiest places.
Pope Benedict then said Mass for thousands in the
Source: LA Times
May 12, 2009
Wildfires destroy, but they can also reveal. For years, a monument marking the site of one of Orange County's most infamous killings sat largely obscured amid a thicket of mustard plants a hundred yards or so from the Foothill toll road.
But when the 2007 Santiago fire ripped through the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains, firefighters discovered something that longtime residents of the rural area and local historians already knew.People were lynched there.
A few mont
Source: BBC
May 12, 2009
More than 100 marks left by a lizard called Isochirotherium - also known as the hand-beast - 270 million years ago have been uncovered on an island.
Dr Neil Clark, who has previously found evidence of ancient reptiles and dinosaurs on Skye, made the finds along with amateur enthusiasts on Arran.
The komodo dragon-sized creature English name was inspired by its unusual hand-like prints.
Footprints were previously found on Arran, but the latest discoveries
Source: BBC
May 12, 2009
A museum in Wiltshire is aiming to raise £500,000 to pay for a high security gallery to exhibit rare Bronze Age artefacts discovered 200 years ago.
The Bush Barrow tomb, near Stonehenge, was excavated in 1808, and is considered to be one of Britain's most important Bronze Age burials.
The skeleton of a man was uncovered along with several items including a large "lozenge-shaped" piece of gold.
The items are locked in a bank vault - unseen by the
Source: BBC
May 12, 2009
Pope Benedict XVI is visiting sites in Jerusalem holy to Muslims, Jews and Christians on the second day of his visit to the Holy Land.
He visited the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, becoming the first pontiff to see the site, and then the Western Wall, one of Judaism's holiest places.
Later, he will pray where Christ is said to have eaten his last meal before crucifixion.
Source: BBC
May 12, 2009
A new John Lennon exhibition, due to open in New York later, will feature a paper bag containing the bloody clothes from the night he was shot dead.
The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Annex display also features the piano from his apartment and handwritten lyrics.
His widow Yoko Ono, who has created the display, said the clothes were "hard to include" and she feared she "might be criticised as well" for including them.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
May 12, 2009
Pope Benedict visited holy sites in Jerusalem as part of a pilgrimage marred by Jewish disappointment over his remarks on the Holocaust.
The German-born pope visited the Western Wall, a remnant of the Roman-era Temple complex that is Judaism's holiest place, after meeting the Grand Mufti, Palestinians' senior Muslim cleric, at the Dome of the Rock which dominates the Old City.
With the mufti, he recalled the common roots of all three monotheistic religions in the story
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
May 12, 2009
Survivors of a Nazi death camp were shot at and abused as they gathered to remember their liberation.
Masked neo-Nazi thugs screamed 'Heil Hitler!' and 'This way for the gas!' at ten elderly Italian men and women, who returned to the site of the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.
The gang also fired air guns at a group of 15 French survivors, many dressed in the striped pyjama-style uniforms they wore as inmates. One suffered a head wound while another was inju
Source: Spiegel Online
May 12, 2009
It is the end of long and bitter legal battle: The alleged Nazi war criminal John Demjanjuk has finally landed in Germany after months of fighting his deportation from the US. The 89-year-old landed at Munich airport on Tuesday morning. He could now face the last big Nazi trial in Germany.
The aircraft taxied directly into the Lufthansa hangar at 9.15 a.m. local time accompanied by police cars and ambulances. Demjanjuk was brought to the remand prison at Stadelheim in Munich, where
Source: BBC
May 12, 2009
For David Edwards, a veteran of the Berlin Airlift, there is one memory that sums up the contradictions faced by Allied forces struggling to supply a city they had recently tried to wipe off the map.
He and his unit had saved their sweet rations and were holding a Christmas party for local Berlin children. As he lifted a young boy onto a chair, he saw the boy only had one arm.
With a sickening flash he realised that only three years earlier the allies had bombed the v
Source: Washington Post
May 12, 2009
CHICAGO -- The man has been in the White House for only three months-and-change, but in the old neighborhood, his regular barber chair is on display like Churchill's top hat or Elvis's piano. The confirming autograph is right there in big looping letters, Barack Obama.
"He signed it. He sat in it. I'm pretty sure there's some of his DNA in it," barber Krs Golden was explaining when Betty Harris hurried into the Hyde Park Hair Salon and asked whether there were any Obama so
Source: Washington Post
May 12, 2009
BERLIN -- Two decades after they triumphantly tore down the infamous wall that divided their city, Berliners are having some regrets.
The Germans did such a thorough job of demolishing the hated barrier that visitors to the capital have a hard time finding any trace of it. For years, residents were eager to move beyond a painful chapter in Berlin's history and focused on building a new metropolis for a new century.
But as Germany prepares to celebrate the 20th anniversa
Source: AP
May 11, 2009
From busting up John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Trust in 1911 to going after Microsoft's use of its Windows monopoly, antitrust policy has been an important element of the U.S. regulatory landscape.
Now, in tough recession times, the Obama administration is swinging back the pendulum, maintaining that lax enforcement over the past decade has worsened economic woes and hurt consumers by failing to protect business competition.
What are antitrust laws and how can such
Source: NYT
May 11, 2009
Justice David H. Souter’s retirement may deprive the Supreme Court of a careful judge, but he was never good material for newspaper columnists looking for scraps of color. For that, you want to keep up with Justice Antonin Scalia.
In the last couple of weeks, Justice Scalia has explained to a law student why she will probably never serve as a law clerk on the Supreme Court, had an interesting tussle with Justice John Paul Stevens and cited foreign law to boot. May he never retire.
Source: MSNBC
May 11, 2009
Two decades after they triumphantly tore down the infamous wall that divided their city, Berliners are having some regrets.
The Germans did such a thorough job of demolishing the hated barrier that visitors to the capital have a hard time finding any trace of it. For years, residents were eager to move beyond a painful chapter in Berlin's history and focused on building a new metropolis for a new century.
But as Germany prepares to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the
Source: National Geographic
May 11, 2009
Stone Age humans were adept chemists who whipped up a sophisticated kind of natural glue, a new study says.
They knowingly tweaked the chemical and physical properties of an iron-containing pigment known as red ochre with the gum of acacia trees to create adhesives for their shafted tools.
Archaeologists had believed the blood-red pigment—used by people in what is now South Africa about 70,000 years ago—served a decorative or symbolic purpose.
