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: Bloomberg News
Feb 7, 2008
Russia's government has revealed details of 46,000 artworks missing after Nazi looting.
A new Internet database will help scholars, law enforcement agencies and the art market locate cultural treasures, said the government's Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography.
A Web site, http://www.lostart.ru , is in Russian with printed editions in English. Thirteen volumes have the 46,000 artworks from 13 museums, and another volume list
Source: AP
Feb 7, 2008
A man credited with helping save hundreds of Jews during World War II has agreed to repay a fellow Holocaust survivor that he and his wife were accused of swindling out of about $260,000.
Aron Bell, 80, and his wife, Henryka, 58, were charged last year with scheming to defraud 90-year-old Janina Zaniewska, exploitation of the elderly and theft.
In a plea deal, the Bells agreed to repay Zaniewska $260,000, according to court documents released Tuesday. Authorities said
Source: http://www.portsmouth.co.uk
Feb 7, 2008
Skeletons which have been dug up in the city during developments, some dating back to the Bronze Age, will now form a vital part of new research into TB.
Academics from Durham and Manchester universities have asked permission to remove bits of bone and teeth to analyse as part of their research project into how tuberculosis evolved through the ages.
Source: http://www.presstv.ir
Feb 7, 2008
The owners of the mine where the Zanjan salt men were discovered have renewed their contract with Iran's Mines and Industries Ministry.
The contract will enable the company to resume salt exploitation for another ten years, beginning this week, which could severely damage and ultimately destroy invaluable information about the historic mine.
As very few salt mummies have been found, Iran's salt men are considered extremely unique with the mystery surrounding the manne
Source: WaPo
Feb 7, 2008
Add another date to crowded spring calendar. The founders of the Newseum, a state-of-the-art museum about the news industry, will announce today that they plan to open April 11, about six months later than originally announced.
"That is when everything will be done," said Charles L. Overby, the chief executive officer of the museum. By everything Overby means the seven levels with 250,000 square feet of exhibition space, including 15 theaters, 14 galleries, two broadcast s
Source: NYT
Feb 7, 2008
After more than 50 failures and almost 50 years, the United States Senate is finally poised to again produce a president.
With the Democratic race for the nomination reduced to a two-senator battle between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, and Senator John McCain tightening his grip on the Republican nod, it is becoming more likely that a member of the current Senate will do something no other senator has done since 1961: move straight from Congress to the White House.
Source: http://www.ft.com
Feb 7, 2008
BBC Radio 4 is to produce a 90-part history of the US aimed at altering UK perceptions of the country. "The US has become a stranger country to the British sensibility, so to try to do a contemporary version of US history would be a sensible thing to do," Mark Damazer, Radio 4's controller, said yesterday.
The series, timed to mark the centenary of the birth of Alistair Cooke, who broadcast from America for 67 years, will consist of 15-minute programmes delivered by Prof D
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 7, 2008
The German government is considering whether to ban a children's book in which Jews are portrayed in a way likened to anti-Semitic caricatures from the Nazi era.
The book, which has been described as being Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion for children, conducts a highly critical tour of Christianity, Islam and Judaism.
Not one of the priest, imam or rabbi emerges creditably from the story, called How Do I Get to God, Asked the Small Piglet, by Michael Schmidt-Salomon,
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 7, 2008
After 500 years, one of Renaissance Italy's most enduring murder mysteries has been solved by forensic scientists.
Ever since Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, a mystical and mercurial philosopher at the court of Lorenzo de' Medici, suddenly became sick and died in 1494, it has been rumoured that foul play was involved.
Pico's fame has faded, but he was a celebrated figure at the Medici court.
He gained notoriety when, at the age of 23, he offered to defend 90
Source: Australian
Feb 7, 2008
A BRITISH archeologist has been hired to conduct exploratory excavations to resolve the question of whether the bodies of World War I Diggers lie in pits in a field in northern France.
The Australian Army has re-engaged battlefield archeologist Tony Pollard of the Glasgow University Archaeological Research Division (GUARD), despite criticism of his report of earlier work at the site, Pheasant Wood.
The decision has sidelined leading Australian experts who had offered to
Source: Seattle Times
Feb 7, 2008
Can movies or television really teach us anything useful about African-American history? It's a reasonable question to ask as we begin Black History Month.Certainly, the legacy of such famous films as "The Birth of a Nation" (1915) and "Gone With the Wind" (1939) was to give the public a distorted view of slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction while offering portrayals of African Americans that were either virulently hateful or condescending. And because of such films, says Patricia Turner, professor of African-American studies at University of California, Davis, "a lot of the public thinks that the plantation was the dominant entity on which slaves lived during the era of slavery." In fact, Turner says, "very, very few slaves lived on plantations. Most slaves lived in units that had 10 or fewer slaves on them. Very few black women were domestic servants; you had to be extraordinarily wealthy to take a woman out of the fields and to have female household servants as we see in 'Gone With the Wind,' 'North and South' and the other great plantation epics.
Source: National Geographic News
Feb 6, 2008
A newly discovered mural is one of many in 12 of Afghanistan's famed Bamian caves that show evidence of an oil-based binder. The binder was used to dry paint and help it adhere to rocky surfaces.
The murals—and the remains of two giant, destroyed Buddhas—include the world's oldest known oil-based paint, predating European uses of the substance by at least a hundred years, scientists announced late last month.
Source: http://www.thenewanatolian.com
Feb 6, 2008
Turkish archaeologists unearthed a 2000-year-old lighthouse at the ancient Roman port of Patara, near southern town of Kas, Antalya, discovering probably the oldest such structure that managed to remain intact.
The 12-meter-high lighthouse was built under the reign of Emperor Nero who ruled from 54 to 68, Professor Havva Iskan Isik, head of the excavation team reported.
Source: USA Today
Feb 6, 2008
The discovery of an ancient Roman cave has unearthed a debate about its historical purpose and delved into a deeper question for scholars: Can archaeology prove mythology?
The cave was found when a camera was lowered through a hole in Rome's Palatine Hill during restorations of the palace of the Emperor Augustus, who ruled from the late first century B.C. until his death in A.D. 14. The Palatine Hill was a seat of power in ancient Rome; today it is home to the fragile remains of pal
Source: Reuters
Feb 6, 2008
Head lice taken from 1,000-year-old mummies in Peru support the idea that the little creatures accompanied humans on their first migration out of Africa, 100,000 years ago, researchers reported Wednesday.
Genetic tests showed the lice are nearly identical to strains found around the world that have been dated to when humans first began to colonize the rest of the world.
"It tells us that this genetic type got around the globe right as humans spread and migrated aro
Source: AP
Feb 6, 2008
Harry Richard Landis, who enlisted in the Army in 1918 and was one of only two known surviving U.S. veterans of World War I, has died. He was 108.
Landis, who lived at a Sun City Center nursing home, died Monday, according to the Florida Department of Veterans Affairs.
The remaining U.S. veteran is Frank Buckles, 107, of Charles Town, W.Va., according the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. In addition, John Babcock of Spokane, Wash., 107, served in the Canadian army a
Source: http://europe.courrierinternational.com
Feb 6, 2008
For some time now, a joint Hungarian-Slovakian history textbook has been planned. Yet the textbook, following a German-French model, has not been published to date. Differences in opinion between the historians was not to blame, explains Slovakian historian Dusan Kovac in an interview with József Szilvássy. "Regarding reconciliation of the two countries, I consider the German-French example to be a model, but with one caveat. That process was initiated by the two statesmen, and only later d
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 6, 2008
Russia is steadily "unravelling" the historic arms control treaties that ended the Cold War and became cornerstones of European security, the most comprehensive survey of global military trends said yesterday.
The Military Balance 2008 portrays Russia as breaking out of the constraints imposed by treaties once considered inviolable.
John Chipman, the head of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, which published the survey, said the "next targ
Source: NYT
Feb 6, 2008
SEATTLE — Gray and green may be the colors most associated with this forward-focused city, but it has a history in other tones, too. Chinese immigrants helped build railroads, only to be driven out later. Japanese residents were forced into internment camps during World War II. Blacks surged into the city after the war for work. Hispanics are the fastest-growing group.
This year, two new museums and a new traditional gate marking the city’s Chinatown will be completed, formally ackn
Source: History Today
Feb 5, 2008
Scientists in Sweden hope to exhume the body of King Charles XII to determine if he was killed by one of his own soldiers in 1718. Researchers from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm applied in January to study the remains in the city’s Riddarholm Church to analyze the bullet-type. The King died while invading Norway but as his rule from 1697 presaged a decline in Sweden’s power, he could have been assassinated by one of his own men rather than a Norwegian weapon.
