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: Time Magazine
Apr 6, 2009
You might not expect the arrival in Munich of a retired auto mechanic from Cleveland, Ohio, to excite much attention. But when John Demjanjuk finally lands in Germany, the nation's press will be waiting for him. Sentenced to death over 20 years ago by the Israeli authorities as a Nazi war criminal but later freed when fresh evidence undermined the basis of his conviction, Demjanjuk again expects to face charges, this time alleging that he helped to murder many thousands of Jews at a Nazi death c
Source: New York Times
Apr 6, 2009
The earthquake in Abruzzo did not spare the region’s artistic patrimony, though government officials said Monday that it was too soon to determine the extent of the damage to historical buildings or works of art.
In L’Aquila, the regional capital, the earthquake caused “significant damage to monuments,” said Giuseppe Proietti, secretary general of the Italian Culture Ministry. The rear part of the apse of the Romanesque basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio, much of which was resto
Source: NYT
Apr 6, 2009
The earthquake in Abruzzo did not spare the region’s artistic patrimony, though government officials said Monday that it was too soon to determine the extent of the damage to historical buildings or works of art.
In L’Aquila, the regional capital, the earthquake caused “significant damage to monuments,” said Giuseppe Proietti, secretary general of the Italian Culture Ministry. The rear part of the apse of the Romanesque basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio, much of which was resto
Source: Times (UK)
Apr 6, 2009
The Khmer Rouge's most notorious prison chief told a Cambodia war crimes court today US policies in the 1970s contributed to the rise of Pol Pot's genocidal regime.
Kaing Guek Eav, or 'Duch,' the brutal director of the infamous torture centre S-21 said he believed the Khmer Rouge regime would have died out had the US not supported the right wing military government that removed Prince Norodom Sihanouk from power in a 1970 coup.
Duch, who is on trial charged with crime
Source: History Today
Apr 6, 2009
A menu, due to be auctioned this month, has revealed Churchill’s dissatisfaction with the breakfast provided on board a BOAC flight to the United States, in June 1954. It was Sir Winston Churchill’s last flight to the United States as Prime Minister and he was accompanied by his Foreign Secretary Sir Antony Eden.
Unhappy with the existing menu, Churchill initially tried to write over the printed menu. His amended menu was too long, however, and he consequently wrote his own new menu
Source: BBC
Apr 6, 2009
Some 800,000 people were killed during the genocide, with many of the bodies thrown into Rwandan rivers.
Nearly 11,000 of them were eventually recovered from Lake Victoria in Uganda and buried by villagers.
Rwanda's ambassador to Uganda said they will now receive proper burials in three permanent mass graves.
Source: BBC
Apr 6, 2009
Schindler's list helped hundreds of Jewish workers escape death in the Holocaust during World War II.
It was found in research notes which belonged to the Australian author of Schindler's Ark - the basis for the Oscar-winning film, Schindler's List.
The document was found at the New South Wales Library in Sydney.
Source: BBC
Apr 6, 2009
Many who fought Nazi Germany during World War II did so to defeat the vicious racism that left millions of Jews dead.
Yet the BBC's Document programme has seen evidence that black colonial soldiers - who made up around two-thirds of Free French forces - were deliberately removed from the unit that led the Allied advance into the French capital.
By the time France fell in June 1940, 17,000 of its black, mainly West African colonial troops, known as the Tirailleurs Sene
Source: The Virginian-Pilot
Apr 5, 2009
It's not quite Eleanor Dare's jewelry box, but the artifacts that archaeologists recently dug up at Fort Raleigh National Historic Site might hold some historic dazzle.
"We definitely found a historic site from the Colonial period," said Nick Luccketti, a founding member of the nonprofit First Colony Foundation. "It's a candidate for the first permanent English settlement on Roanoke Island, but I certainly wouldn't want to bet on it at this point."
L
Source: Times (UK)
Apr 5, 2009
Did five, or even six, of the republican prisoners who were on hunger strike in the Maze prison in 1981 die to advance the political strategy of Sinn Fein?
Did Gerry Adams and other members of the IRA kitchen cabinet snub a conciliatory offer from Margaret Thatcher, then the British prime minister, which met the substance of the prisoners’ demands, just to ensure that Sinn Fein would win a crucial by-election to Westminster?
These are the explosive questions raised fo
Source: Times (of London)
Apr 5, 2009
Medieval knights hid and secretly venerated the Shroud of Turin for more than 100 years after the Crusades, the Vatican said today in an announcement that appeared to solve the mystery of the relic’s missing years.
The Knights Templar, an order which was suppressed and disbanded for alleged heresy, took care of the linen cloth, which bears the image of a man with a beard, long hair and the wounds of crucifixion, according to Vatican researchers.
The Shroud, which is kep
Source: The Sunday Times (London)
Apr 5, 2009
The former Iraqi dictator's palatial boudoir is being offered to newlyweds for £150 a night.
Some might think it macabre but Iraq is offering honeymooners the chance to spend their wedding night in Saddam Hussein’s bed.
As the country gingerly begins to revive a war-ravaged tourism industry, the former dictator’s bedroom is on offer for £150 a night in a presidential palace that is undergoing renovation in the town of Hillah, some 60 miles south of Baghdad.
Source: Press Release--Duke University Press
Apr 4, 2009
Duke University Press will publish a book by S. Ann Dunham, the
mother of President Barack Obama, in December 2009. Dunham, who died in 1995,
completed the dissertation in anthropology for the University of Hawaii in 1992.
The book is based on Dunham’s research, over a period of 14 years, among the rural
craftsmen of Java. At the request of Dunham’s daughter, Maya Soetoro-Ng, two anthro-
pologists — Alice G. Dewey, Dunham’s graduate adviser, and Nancy I. Cooper, a fellow
graduate stu
Source: Deutsche Welle
Apr 4, 2009
Police said the protests, attended mostly by leftist parties and trade unionists, were peaceful. Three demonstrators were detained.
"We will not allow the NPD to misuse this place with its disgusting ideology," said Green Party chairwoman Claudia Roth, standing in front of the town hall.
Further protests are expected after a regional administrative court ruled on Friday that the City of Berlin could not block the neo-Nazi group from holding its party conventio
Source: NYT
Apr 4, 2009
HERE’S a scary thought in the midst of the financial crisis. Although there was a time when Argentina and the United States were serious economic rivals, that changed with the Great Depression. America recovered and became the world’s richest nation. Argentina ended up a mess.
How did such a reversal of fortune happen? In “False Economy: A Surprising Economic History of the World” (Riverhead, 321 pages), Alan Beattie writes that the answer had a lot to do with the two nations’ radic
Source: NYT
Apr 4, 2009
RIO DE JANEIRO — The lines of Argentines waiting to see the body of former President Raúl Alfonsín stretched for more than six city blocks in Buenos Aires last week. As day turned to night the lines only seemed to swell. Not even a rainstorm kept the public away....
Argentines, like most people, tend to worship their leading citizens more once they die. But that was only one reason Mr. Alfonsín, who steered Argentina from dictatorship to democracy but failed to right the economy, wa
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 4, 2009
They are the bloody fields on which the nation's history was forged.
But, over the centuries, many of England's battlefields have faded into obscurity, often lost under concrete.
Now, a major new project is under way to find the country's "lost" battlefields, from the Roman invasion to the Jacobite Rebellion in the eighteenth century, in order to preserve what is left of them.
Source: NYT
Apr 4, 2009
ONE hot June morning in 1953, a retired couple from western Missouri packed their Chrysler New Yorker with 11 suitcases and started driving east. A few hours later, they stopped at a diner in Hannibal, Mo., and ordered fruit plates and iced tea.
“We thought we were getting by big as an unknown traveling couple until we went to the counter to pay the bill,” Harry Truman later wrote of that lunch. “Just as we arose from the table some county judges came in and the incog was off.”
Source: NYT
Apr 4, 2009
In the past week, Egypt marked the historic 30-year anniversary of its peace treaty with Israel without any public celebration and only the barest public mention.
It is not surprising, really, that there was no cheering here. The timing could hardly have been worse, with memories still fresh of the Israeli offensive in Gaza.
But mention of the anniversary also served as a reminder of promises unfulfilled. Egyptians were told that the treaty would lead to a comprehensive
Source: AFP
Apr 4, 2009
A Nazi death camp guard accused of helping to kill some 29,000 Jews during World War II has won the right to remain in the United States for now, an immigration judge has ruled.
A Virginia judge said late Friday that John Demjanjuk, 89, who faces expulsion to Germany on war crimes charges, can remain at his Ohio home while the case is further examined.
