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: NYT
Jul 10, 2008
With the pillars of the Brandenburg Gate looming in the background, tens of thousands of adoring Berliners turn out to greet Senator Barack Obama with wild cheering. It may have seemed like the perfect campaign stop on the candidate’s highly anticipated European tour, an ideal way to burnish his foreign policy credentials.
Instead, the plan — widely dissected in the German news media but never confirmed by the Obama campaign — has exposed fissures in the German government, with the
Source: AP
Jul 10, 2008
Most tourists to Istanbul inevitably make their way to
its historic core along the Golden Horn, a peninsula rich in relics and
monuments from the mighty Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman empires.
These days, the area is host to a modern-day battle over the expansion of
a five-star hotel amid the ruins of an ancient palace.
The dispute pits government-backed developers of a site housing the luxury
Four Seasons Hotel, occupying a converted, Ottoman-era prison, against
critics who say
Source: LAT
Jul 10, 2008
From Rose Mary Woods' tape recordings in the Nixon White House to Karl Rove's e-mails during the Bush administration, congressional investigators and political historians are forever seeking records of White House communications, often against the wishes of the sitting president.
Hoping to boost their efforts, the Democratic-controlled House moved Wednesday to impose new rules to preserve e-mails from the White House and other federal agencies, acting in defiance of a veto threat fr
Source: BBC
Jul 10, 2008
A statue symbolising the mythical origins and power of Rome, long thought to have been made around 500BC, has been found to date from the 1200s.The figures of Romulus and Remus have already been shown to be 15th Century additions to the statue.
In a front page article in the Italian newspaper, La Repubblica, Rome's former top heritage official, Professor Adriano La Regina, said about 20 tests were carried out on the she-wolf at the University of Salerno.
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
Jul 10, 2008
The Jewish community says it is "greatly concerned" NSW students can pass through school without learning about the Holocaust.
NSW Education Department head Michael Coutts-Trotter learned a month ago that the Holocaust had been omitted from the state's mandatory history course.
"You can get through compulsory schooling in NSW and never know that the Holocaust, the destruction of Jews in Europe, actually happened," he said in a speech to high school p
Source: WaPo
Jul 10, 2008
The country's largest medical association is set to issue a formal apology today for its historical antipathy toward African American doctors, expressing regret for a litany of transgressions, including barring black physicians from its ranks for decades and remaining silent during battles on landmark legislation to end racial discrimination.
The apology marks one of the rare times a major national organization has expressed contrition for its role in the segregation and discriminat
Source: Guardian
Jul 10, 2008
A newly discovered collection of more than 3,000 aerial photographs of Germany before and during the allied bombing campaign of the second world war presents the most comprehensive record yet of how devastating the campaign was on the country's cultural heritage, historians claim.
Experts have called "spectacular" and "unique" a wooden box full of negatives found in an attic in the northern city of Kiel, describing them as an inventory of 1940s Germany which thro
Source: NYT
Jul 9, 2008
Two former secretaries of state, concluding that a 1973 measure limiting the president’s ability to wage war unilaterally had never worked as intended, proposed on Tuesday a new system of closer consultation between the White House and Congress before American forces go into battle.
Their proposal would require the president to consult senior lawmakers before initiating combat expected to last longer than a week, except for covert operations or rare circumstances requiring emergency
Source: AP
Jul 9, 2008
Some Prince William County residents and lawmakers are upset that preservation efforts at Manassas National Battlefield Park are leading to the destruction of many trees.
Authorities at the Civil War battlefield have cut down 130 acres of trees in a section of the park named Deep Cut.
Park Superintendent Ed Clark says they need clear vistas to help visitors understand and appreciate the historical site. He says they're working to preserve the park's viewsheds to help
Source: LiveScience
Jul 9, 2008
Scientists set off this week to study the wrecks of three German submarines sunk by U.S. forces in 1942 off the coast of North Carolina during the Battle of the Atlantic.
"This expedition is the first part of a larger multi-year project to research and document a number of historically significant shipwrecks tragically lost during World War II, including U.S. and British naval vessels and merchant marine vessels," said David W. Alberg, expedition leader and superintendent
Source: Reuters
Jul 9, 2008
In their zeal to remove the Berlin Wall, German authorities were ruthlessly efficient in eliminating almost all traces of the hated symbol of the Cold War within months of its opening in 1989.
Since then, countless millions of visitors to the formerly divided city have been asking: "Where's the Wall?"
The city, belatedly realizing it threw away a bit too much of what was its most important tourist attraction, has belatedly come up with at least a partial answe
Source: Press Release posted on IraqCrisis list
Jul 9, 2008
More than a thousand archaeologists from all over the world gathered in Dublin
at the end of June to attend the 6th World Archaeological Congress (WAC). WAC
is the only archaeological organisation with global elected representation, and
one which places particular emphasis on archaeological ethics.
(www.worldarchaeologicalcongress.org).
In the final plenary session on Friday 4 July 2008, the delegates passed a
resolution which not only opposes any military attack on Iran, but also ur
Source: McClatchy
Jul 9, 2008
A court forensics expert said Wednesday that former Chilean President Eduardo Frei Montalva was assassinated in January 1982 after a simple hernia operation during the rule of dictator Augusto Pinochet.
The statement by Carmen Cerda, the chief of the forensics team investigating the case, confirmed longtime suspicions that Frei Montalva, who was Chile's elected president from 1964 to 1970, had died of foul play at age 71. Medical officials had said that infection related to the surgery was
Source: NYT
Jul 9, 2008
After a year and a half of controversy and intense opposition by preservationists and neighborhood groups, the New-York Historical Society at 77th Street and Central Park West has abandoned its pursuit of a $100 million, 23-story luxury condominium tower, along with a five-story annex that would have risen above an adjacent empty lot the society owns at 7-13 West 76th Street.
Instead, the society has embarked on a $55 million, three-year renovation of its galleries, entrance and fac
Source: BBC
Jul 9, 2008
A refurbished WWII bomber has completed a historic flight from the US to Duxford in Cambridgeshire.
The American B-17 Liberty Belle was flown on the journey by the son of one of its original crew members.
The flight aims to commemorate the thousands of US airmen who died while serving at bases around East Anglia.
Source: NYT
Jul 9, 2008
Ruth Greenglass, whose damning testimony in the Rosenberg atomic-bomb spy case of the early 1950s helped lead to the execution of her sister-in-law Ethel Rosenberg, died on April 7. She was 84.
Mrs. Greenglass’s testimony was later called into question.
Along with her husband, David Greenglass — Ethel’s brother and a central figure in the case — Mrs. Greenglass had lived in the New York metropolitan area under an assumed name for more than four decades. Her death was re
Source: Independent (UK)
Jul 9, 2008
Neglectful owners of historic landmarks risk being named and shamed by English Heritage, which has placed one fifth of all the nation's monuments and battlefields on a register of threatened structures and warned that they are in danger of being lost.
The country's steward of significant historical and archaeological sites has put 1,680 sites on its annual "at risk" register – a rise since last year of 87 grade I and II listed buildings, eight battlefields, and 10 underwat
Source: Time
Jul 8, 2008
As the road dips and rises through the Hebron hills, white etched with the glowing green of vineyards, the turn-off to Edna village is marked by the grey, concrete watchtower of an Israeli checkpoint. But it doesn't deter Israeli-Arab lawyer Khaled Kasab Mahameed from his quixotic mission: He has come to the West Bank to educate Palestinians about the Jewish Holocaust.
Many Palestinians have never heard that the Nazis killed 6 million Jews during Word War II — it doesn't rate a ment
Source: AP
Jul 8, 2008
It flew on a daring but unsuccessful raid to free U.S. POWs
in North Vietnam in 1970. Thirty-eight years later, after subsequent tours
in Bosnia and Iraq, helicopter No. 357 is being retired — with honor.
The 88-foot-long special operations chopper has made its final landing at
the National Museum of the United States Air Force, where it went on
permanent display Monday."It's been a busy aircraft," said museum historian Jeff Underwood."It
absolutely encompasses U.S. military hist
Source: BBC
Jul 8, 2008
Hours after flying on a rickety 19-seater propeller plane and landing on a
dirt strip, you get to the village of San Buenaventura in the heart of the
Bolivian Amazon.
Here, in a simple one-storey brick house next to a row of wooden shacks,
is the home of Antonio Garcia Baron.
He is the only survivor still alive of the anarchist Durruti column which
held Francoist forces at bay in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War
(1936-1939) and the founder of an anarchist community in the h
