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
Mar 24, 2013
“This will be easy to see,” said Annelise, our guide, flipping off the lights in the chilly sandstone beer cellar that had been converted to an air-raid shelter during World War II. A small plaque on the wall glowed with electric-lime phosphorescence. It was, she told us, an emergency exit sign for the 50,000 civilians who had fled — two to a square meter — to these cellars-cum-bunkers during Allied firebombings.The sign was a small but poignant reminder of how hundreds of years of beer brewing in Nuremberg — a city that was 90 percent destroyed during the war — linked past and present.Just over an hour by direct train from Munich, Nuremberg (population 510,000) is Bavaria’s often-overlooked second city. Of course, the locals say Bavaria has little to do with the place; a greater allegiance is owed to the smaller administrative district of Middle Franconia, which has its own dialect, history and cuisine. Not to mention beer....
Source: Guardian (UK)
Mar 23, 2013
'I was saved by the grace of the devil," Holocaust survivor Perla Ovitz told us. Again and again, she recounted in detail how she and her family were taken to the gas chamber and ordered to strip naked. A heavy door opened and they were pushed inside. "It was almost dark and we stood in what looked like a large washing room, waiting for something to happen. We looked up to the ceiling to see why the water was not coming. Suddenly we smelled gas. We gasped heavily, some of us fainting on the floor. With our last breath we cried out. Minutes passed, or maybe just seconds, then we heard an angry voice from outside – 'Where is my dwarf family?' The door opened, and we saw Dr Mengele standing there. He ordered us to be carried out and had cold water poured on us to revive us."
Source: BBC News
Mar 23, 2013
Archaeologists in Mexico say they have uncovered three ancient playing fields at a pre-Hispanic site in the eastern state of Veracruz.They found the courts, dating back some 1,000 years, at the Tajin World Heritage site by using laser scanners (LiDAR). They believe the fields would have been used to play pelota, a game in which players used their hips to propel a rubber ball through stone hoops. The sport was widely played by Mayan and other pre-Columbian people. Experts from the National Institute for Anthropology and History (INAH) said the use of aerial photography, remote sensors and laser scanners had made it possible to find the ancient structures, hidden by layers of soil and dense vegetation....
Source: Ahram Online
Mar 23, 2013
Al-Hamam Antiquities Inspectorate has succeeded to remove encroachment on Al-Bordan archaeological site, located on Alexandria-Marsa Matrouh highway, in collaboration with Egypt’s tourism and antiquities police. The site includes remains of Graeco-Roman fortresses, roads, temples and cemeteries.The encroachment on the Al-Bordan archaeological site, located on kilometre 67 on Alexandria-Marsa Matrouh highway, started Friday when a large truck invaded the site with a construction bulldozer, which on its turn damaged a cluster of authentic structures that date back to the Graeco-Roman era, according to director of Marina Al-Alamein Antiquities Khaled Abul-Magd. Abul-Magd accused Yasser Khalil, owner of a contractor company, and truck driver Mohamed Abdel Sattar of violating and damaging the archaeological site. The tourism and antiquities police arrested both accused, but they denied all charges. Both are in custody until the completion of investigations....
Source: NYT
Mar 23, 2013
WASHINGTON — When the Supreme Court hears a pair of cases on same-sex marriage on Tuesday and Wednesday, the justices will be working in the shadow of a 40-year-old decision on another subject entirely: Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that established a constitutional right to abortion.Judges, lawyers and scholars have drawn varying lessons from that decision, with some saying that it was needlessly rash and created a culture war.Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal and a champion of women’s rights, has long harbored doubts about the ruling.“It’s not that the judgment was wrong, but it moved too far, too fast,” she said last year at Columbia Law School....
Source: NYT
Mar 23, 2013
...They live a grim existence — a routine of trying to eat, to stay warm and dry, to gather firewood and water out in the elements, all while listening for the sounds of incoming planes and artillery shells.Explanations of the origins of these underground shelters, many of which are set among other Roman ruins, vary from squatter to squatter. Some say they once were pens for livestock. Others say they were temporary quarters, occupied while more impressive dwellings were built in the centuries before Jesus. Perhaps some were crypts.Whatever the intention of those who first dug them, Syria’s caves have become essential once more, restored to modern use because their thick walls offer a chance of survival to a population under fire....
Source: NYT
Mar 23, 2013
THIS MONTH MARKS the 50th anniversary of the completion of Park Avenue’s Pan Am Building, later renamed the MetLife Building, an occasion that a cursory Google search indicates is receiving no particular celebration. What is to be marked, really, is a half-century of evinced distaste, though some of it waning under the grip of nostalgia, for a building that existed as an assault on Grand Central Station, its visual foundation bifurcating and marring views of Park Avenue and casting dark shadows on crowded streets beneath it. The enmity actually dates back further. From the moment designs for the building were presented, the response in the architectural press was one of displeasure and reproof. Long in its development phase, enormous, expensive, controversial, denounced, the building became, in a sense, the city’s structural “Ishtar.”...
Source: Guardian (UK)
Mar 22, 2013
Some of Margaret Thatcher's closest policy advisers voiced strong concerns that the Falklands Islands were not worth the fight, from the earliest days of the campaign, according to the latest release of files from the former Conservative prime minister's personal papers.The papers show that, contrary to the jingoistic spirit at the time, the divisions over the Falklands went to the very heart of Downing Street with both Thatcher's senior economic adviser, Sir Alan Walters, and her chief of staff, David Wolfson, proposing schemes offering to buy-out the 1,800 islanders rather than send a taskforce to the South Atlantic. The scepticism extended to the head of the Downing Street policy unit, Sir John Hoskyns, who voiced the fear of making "almighty fools of ourselves" and worried that an essentially minor issue could precipitate the downfall of the Thatcher government.
Source: Universitat Tuebingen
Mar 22, 2013
Recent measurements of the rate at which children show DNA changes not seen in their parents -- the "mutation rate" -- have challenged views about major dates in human evolution.In particular these measurements have made geneticists think again about key dates in human evolution, like when modern non-Africans split from modern Africans. The recent measurements push back the best estimates of these dates by up to a factor of two. Now, however an international team led by researchers at the University of Tübingen and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, present results that point again to the more recent dates. The new study is published in Current Biology. The team, led by Johannes Krause from Tübingen University, was able to reconstruct more than ten mitochondrial genomes (mtDNAs) from modern humans from Eurasia that span 40,000 years of prehistory. The samples include some of the oldest modern human fossils from Europe such as the triple burial from Dolni Vestonice in the Czech Republic, as well as the oldest modern human skeletons found in Germany from the site of Oberkassel close to Bonn....
Source: BBC News
Mar 22, 2013
An archaeological dig in Cambridge has revealed the site's history from the Bronze Age to its role in World War II.Excavation of the site in the north-west of the city began in October, ahead of a large-scale University of Cambridge development. Roman roads and World War II practice trenches were amongst the discoveries. Christopher Evans of Cambridge Archaeological Unit said: "Something that is going to be vibrant in the future was also vibrant in the past."...
Source: Yahoo News
Mar 22, 2013
Workers in Rome have stumbled across a top-secret bunker once belonging to former Fascist leader Benito Mussolini, hidden underneath the historic Palazzo Venezia.The discovery is the 12th such bunker as is said to have been the “most secret” of the former strongman’s hideouts, according to the Italian publication La Stampa.And in what has become a tradition of sorts, the bunker will soon go on display for the public to tour and document, as has been done with other recently discovered Mussolini bunkers. City officials plan to install lighting, a touchscreen system and an air siren, meant to simulate the sounds of an impending air raid....
Source: YahooNews
Mar 22, 2013
Contrary to reports by famous Greek historian Herodotus, the ancient Egyptians probably didn't remove mummy guts using cedar oil enemas, new research on the reality of mummification suggests.
The ancient embalmers also didn't always leave the mummy's heart in place, the researchers added.
The findings, published in the February issue of HOMO – Journal of Comparative Human Biology, come from analyzing 150 mummies from the ancient world....
Source: NYT
Mar 22, 2013
President Obama, who has been criticized for favoring oil and gas development over land conservation in his first term, on Monday will designate five new national monuments, according to officials briefed on the decision.They are the First State National Monument in Delaware and Pennsylvania; the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument in New Mexico; the San Juan Islands National Monument in Washington State; Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument in Ohio and a monument commemorating Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railway in Maryland....
Source: Politico
Mar 22, 2013
JERUSALEM — President Barack Obama on Friday pledged that with the “survival” of Israel, “the Holocaust will never happen again.”“Here on your ancient land, let it be said for all the world to hear,” Obama said at a service held at Israel’s Holocaust memorial and museum, Yad Vashem. “The state of Israel does not exist because of the Holocaust, but in the survival of a strong Jewish state of Israel the Holocaust will never happen again.”Obama’s third day of his trip to Israel got off to a solemn start on Friday with the Yad Vashem trip as well as trips to grave sites of Israeli heroes....
Source: Time Magazine
Mar 21, 2013
Two secret documents signed by China’s Mao Zedong during the 1930s sold for almost a million dollars at a New York auction on Wednesday, reported the state-run news agency China News Service.The rare documents are related to the famous 1936 Xi’an Incident, a turning point in Chinese history when one of Chiang Kai-shek’s most trusted generals, the “Young Marshal” Zhang Xueliang, placed him under house arrest — forcing the leader of the nationalist Chinese Republic of China to negotiate a cease-fire with Mao’s Communists, in order to fight a joint war against the Japanese invasion....
Source: Time Magazine
Mar 21, 2013
Forty years after its release, Pink Floyd’s groundbreaking album “The Dark Side of the Moon” has found a permanent home in the United States Library of Congress. The prog rock opus is one of 25 recordings being added to the National Recording Registry, the Library announced today.Since 2000, the Library has been tasked by Congress with building a registry of sound recordings that are “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” to American society and at least a decade old. The 350 recordings already in the registry span the gamut of the aural experience, from an 1888 recording of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” made for a children’s doll by Thomas Edison to “Dear Mama,” a 1995 release by hip-hop star Tupac Shakur. This year’s new additions also include “The Twist” by Chubby Checker, the soundtrack to the film Saturday Night Fever and a broadcast near the shores of Normandy on D-Day by radio correspondent George Hicks. A similar registry was established for film in 1989....
Source: Time Magazine
Mar 21, 2013
One of the most enduring myths associated with Swiss banks is the money of “unknown” origin that has been hidden in their coffers for generations. Because of a number of laws enacted in the past 15 years, Switzerland’s financial institutions are now tightly regulated, but at least one mystery still remains: who owns hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of unclaimed assets languishing in the nation’s banks — and how long will they be kept there?Earlier this month, Switzerland’s parliament set a 62-year deadline for the recovery of unclaimed assets, which are roughly estimated at anywhere from $100 million to $600 million. This means that the banks must keep inactive accounts for six decades after the last contact with the customer, and then turn the assets over to the Swiss government. The new time limit is longer than allowed in most other countries, which liquidate dormant accounts after five to 30 years. And while the deadline is part of larger reforms of the banking sector, it is born out of the scandal that erupted in the 1990s over the dormant World War II accounts stashed in Swiss banks by Jews fleeing Nazi persecution....
Source: Archaeology News Network
Mar 21, 2013
Karabournaki is located on the edge of a peninsula in the center of the Thermaic Gulf (North Aegean), in the area of modern Thessaloniki. The site preserves the remains of an ancient settlement placed on the top of a low mound, cemeteries extending in the surrounding area and a harbour. Karabournaki is probably identified with the harbour of ancient Therme, mentioned by the literary sources. The Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, under the directorship of professor Michalis Tiverios, assistant professor Eleni Manakidou and the senior researcher Dr. Despoina Tsiafaki, carries the archaeological research at the settlement from 1994 onwards. Today, the archaeologists will present the results of the 2012 excavational season at Karabournaki, within the framework of the conference about the Archaeological Work in Macedonia and Thrace. Their paper is titled “Karabournaki 2012: Excavational survey and research in the ancient settlement.”...
Source: Archaeology News Network
Mar 21, 2013
Elements for the various activities that were taking place in a Neolithic household were presented during the annual conference for the archaeological works in Macedonia and Thrace, currently in progress in Thessaloniki.Dr. Chaido Koukouli-Chrysanthaki (Director Emerita for Antiquities, Kavala), Dr Pascal Darque (Research Director at CNRS, France, Archaeology and Science of Antiquity, Nanterre), Dr. Dimitra Malamidou (Archaeologist 18th Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities), Dr Zoϊ Tsirtsoni (Researcher, CNRS France, Archaeology and Science of Antiquity) and Dr. Tania Valamoti (Assistant Professor, Department of History and Archaeology, Aristotle University of Therssaloniki) will present new evidence on Dikili Tash’s “House 1”....
Source: Sofia Globe
Mar 21, 2013
Bulgarian archaeologist Nikolai Ovcharov said on March 21 that he the recent political upheaval in the country threatened to delay the start of this year’s archaeological digs at the Perperikon site.Speaking to Focus news agency, Ovcharov, a professor of archaeology and one of the country’s most prominent archaeologists, said that a total of 1.25 million leva were promised by the previous government, which has now been replaced by a caretaker cabinet. “Until 15 or 20 days ago, we had some idea about the archaeological digs season would go. I do not know now, for the simple reason that I do not know anyone in the caretaker government and whether they know what has been done so far,” Ovcharov said....
