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: ynetnews.com
Sep 15, 2007
While the country reels from the arrest of a neo-Nazi cell in central Israel, a vibrant underground trade of Holocaust-era items continues to thrive.
Bravery citations, identification papers, handguns, daggers, helmets and other wartime mementos belonging to Third Reich soldiers have all been the highlights of secretive auctions and private exchanges over the past 10 years.
An SS uniform can cost anywhere between $1,500- $10,000, medals and citations cost around $100-$2
Source: http://www.smh.com.au
Sep 15, 2007
A CACHE of charcoal, stone tools and artefacts unearthed to make way for a high-rise apartment block has been found to be 30,000 years old, more than doubling the accepted age of Aboriginal settlement in Sydney.
The discovery, to be presented to an archaeological conference opening at the University of Sydney next weekend, was the result of a dig originally set up to search for signs of convict era occupation.
It is the oldest evidence yet found of humans occupying what
Source: http://www.timesofmalta.com
Sep 15, 2007
A series of tombs and silos, probably dating back to the Bronze Age and early Roman period, have been discovered on the site set to become the new US Embassy, in Ta' Qali.
A team of nine archaeologists and students have been working at the site since August in a bid to survey the area as thoroughly as possible because a number of the structures - which are in very bad shape - may now be buried again under the new pentagon-shaped compound that will house the new embassy.
Source: AP
Sep 15, 2007
Arctic ice has shrunk to the lowest level on record, new satellite images show, raising the possibility that the Northwest Passage that eluded famous explorers will become an open shipping lane.
The European Space Agency said nearly 200 satellite photos this month taken together showed an ice-free passage along northern Canada, Alaska and Greenland, and ice retreating to its lowest level since such images were first taken in 1978.
The waters are exposing unexplored reso
Source: AP
Sep 15, 2007
EINSIEDELN, Switzerland - A librarian at this 10th century monastery leads a visitor beneath the vaulted ceilings of the archive past the skulls of two former abbots. He pushes aside medieval ledgers of indulgences and absolutions, pulls out one of 13 bound diaries inscribed from 1671 to 1704 and starts to read about the weather.
"Jan. 11 was so frightfully cold that all of the communion wine froze," says an entry from 1684 by Brother Josef Dietrich, governor and "wea
Source: BBC
Sep 15, 2007
A German archbishop has sparked controversy by calling some modern art "degenerate" - a term used by the Nazi regime in its persecution of artists.
Cardinal Joachim Meisner, Archbishop of Cologne, was speaking as the church inaugurated its Kolumba art museum.
Cardinal Meisner warned that when art became estranged from worship, culture became degenerate.
The cardinal had not intended to pay tribute to "old ideologies", a spokesman said.
Source: NYT
Sep 15, 2007
Joe O’Donnell’s glowing legacy outlived him by less than a week. The man recalled by some as “The Presidential Photographer” with a knack for having a camera to his eye at just the right moment, became instead someone described as a fraud who hijacked some of the 20th century’s most famous images and claimed them as his own.
Mr. O’Donnell, a retired government photographer, died on Aug. 9 in Nashville at age 85. Obituaries published nationwide, including one in The New York Times on
Source: NYT
Sep 15, 2007
[Darryl Pitt] was talking about meteorites. Not just any old ones, but one that will be auctioned on Oct. 28, a 30 pound chunk sliced off one of the most famous meteorites in the world, the 15 and a half-ton one that Mr. Pitt was standing next to at the museum: the Willamette meteorite.
Once again, as it was at the opening of the museum’s Rose Center for Earth and Space in 2000, the Willamette meteorite is at the center of a brouhaha. An American Indian group in Oregon heard about
Source: NYT
Sep 15, 2007
One of the most influential business books ever written is a 1,200-page novel published 50 years ago, on Oct. 12, 1957. It is still drawing readers; it ranks 388th on Amazon.com’s best-seller list. (“Winning,” by John F. Welch Jr., at a breezy 384 pages, is No. 1,431.)
The book is “Atlas Shrugged,” Ayn Rand’s glorification of the right of individuals to live entirely for their own interest.
For years, Rand’s message was attacked by intellectuals whom her circle labeled
Source: NYT
Sep 15, 2007
Alan Greenspan, who was chairman of the Federal Reserve for nearly two decades, in a long-awaited memoir, is harshly critical of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and the Republican-controlled Congress, as abandoning their party’s principles on spending and deficits.
In the 500-page book, “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World,” Mr. Greenspan describes the Bush administration as so captive to its own political operation that it paid little attention to fiscal dis
Source: Press Release--Ascribe
Sep 14, 2007
"To Illuminate the World," a full day of events celebrating the life of literary legend James Baldwin, will be held at Hampshire College on Saturday, Oct. 13. Baldwin spent several years as a visiting scholar at Hampshire before his death in 1987. A program established in the spirit of his ideals, the James Baldwin Scholars Program, is an integral part of the day, which ends with a dinner kicking off a drive to endow the program.
"The questions which one asks
Source: Newsday
Sep 14, 2007
Anthony Manno stood proud and teary-eyed, surrounded by his newly reacquainted family and holding the medals of his older brother, who was killed in World War II more than 60 years ago.
Army Pfc. Joseph Manno was one of two World War II veterans honored Friday with medals commemorating their service. For Anthony Manno, 80, the event in Rep. Tim Bishop's Coram office also was a family reunion, after having gone six decades without seeing his brother's family.
"All t
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education (CHE)
Sep 14, 2007
It was good of God, a catty observer wrote more than a century ago, to marry Thomas and Jane Carlyle together, “and so make only two people miserable instead of four.”
That’s a famously unkind cut at two of the central figures of the Victorian era, prolific writers who captured the spirit of this time of burgeoning industrialism and empire in their many letters. But readers can now decide for themselves whether the Carlyles were shallow creeps or keen observers (or both) because Du
Source: Jeff Stein in Congressional Quarterly
Sep 14, 2007
No matter President Bush’s assurances of an “enduring relationship” with Iraq, it’s not soon to plan for a swift evacuation of Baghdad, says the CIA man at the center of the chaos when the Vietnam War ended three decades ago.
The swift retreat of the South Vietnamese Army in the face of an enemy offensive was as much of a surprise to American commanders in Saigon as a complete Iraq government collapse is unimaginable to U.S. leaders today, says Frank Snepp, who was the CIA’s top ana
Source: http://www.qciobserver.com
Sep 14, 2007
While scrambling around on Huxley Island doing an archeological survey in August, grad student Jenny Storey made an exciting discovery - a new cave under the roots of a blown down tree. Upon entering the cave she found an ancient stone knife blade lying on top of bare rock. "A drip of water coming down from the cave roof had washed away the dirt and exposed the knife blade," said Daryl Fedje, Parks Canada coastal archeologist and leader of a team working on a project to uncover evidenc
Source: Discovery Channel News
Sep 14, 2007
he ancient Egyptians were not the only ones to mummify their dead, according to a study in this month's Antiquity Journal that claims prehistoric Scottish people created mummies too.
The researchers do not think the Egyptians influenced the Scots, but that mummification arose independently in the two regions.
Source: http://www.thelocal.se
Sep 14, 2007
A bout of torrential rain left a surprising legacy in the garden of one Swede: a Viking treasure trove.
Two coins were uncovered by the rain on the lawn of farmer Tage Pettersson, on the island of Gotland, in early August. He called in Gotland's archaeologists, who last week found a further 52 coins on the site.
Most of the coins are German, English and Arabic currency from the late 900s and early 1000s. But archaeologists are most excited about the presence of six very
Source: Bloomberg News
Sep 14, 2007
One man may delay preparations for the 2012 London Olympics: Adolf Hitler.
Construction crews are scouring the 500-acre Olympics site for bombs dropped by the Luftwaffe during World War II that failed to explode, adding time and expense to a project whose costs have already more than tripled to 9.3 billion pounds ($19 billion).
Of the 19,000 tons of bombs that pounded London during the Blitz in 1940-41, about 10 percent didn't explode and remain buried around the city,
Source: AP
Sep 14, 2007
Carrol "Red" Walsh didn't know what to expect when his patrol came across a train stopped along a hillside during the U.S. Army's dash across northern Germany in the final, chaotic days of World War II.
In and around the abandoned line of freight cars milled some 2,500 emaciated and ragged Jewish prisoners from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. There were scores of children.
"They were just jammed, crammed in there," said Walsh, a 24-year-old tan
Source: BBC
Sep 14, 2007
One of the oldest courts in Wales or England, where Charles Dickens is reputed to have sat at the press bench, is reopening - but only for a day.
At the request of Wales's senior judge, Mr Justice Roderick Evans, two appeals will be heard at Beaumaris court in Anglesey, which is now a museum.
Built in 1614, it reopens as a court occasionally to preserve its status.
"The court has played an important part in the history of Anglesey and Wales," Mr J
