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
Jun 1, 2012
THOUGH it is something the Red Queen might have said, it was actually uttered by Elizabeth II. “I have to be seen to be believed,” the queen of England remarked, according to her most recent biographer, Sally Bedell Smith. Far from being a goofball tautology, that declaration is a shrewd assessment of monarchy management in an era when image rules supreme.It was in the 1953 Order of Coronation that England’s newly crowned ruler was referred to as “Queen Elizabeth, Your Undoubted Queen.” Over the decades that followed — and that culminate this week in her Diamond Jubilee celebrations — that undoubted queen diligently fulfilled a role she considered fateful. She simultaneously forged the definitive image of a monarch at a time when most monarchies were reduced to ceremonial nothingness or else had gone kaput.
Source: WaPo
May 31, 2012
It was reputed to be America’s loveliest Colonial-era plantation house, a jewel of Georgian architecture. Its interiors, with opulent walnut and yellow pine paneling, parquetry and grand staircase — the work of a master joiner summoned to Colonial Virginia from England — are lauded in its National Historic Landmark paperwork as the most beautiful in the South.For the better part of three centuries, Carter’s Grove rested serenely on the northern bank of the James River. It was built in 1750 by Carter Burwell, grandson of Robert “King” Carter, the English colony’s early land baron, to awe visitors with physical evidence of the bountiful riches that could be wrung from the New World wilderness.Before the house, the land was the site of Martin’s Hundred plantation and Wolstenholme Towne, an ill-fated English settlement founded in 1620, just a few years after the establishment of Jamestown five miles upriver. Wolstenholme was destroyed during a native Powhatan massacre of English settlers in 1622....
Source: HLNTV
May 31, 2012
Investigators from the Los Angeles Police Department will now be able to examine some audio tapes that they say could link Charles Manson followers to other murders.A bankruptcy judge has released hours of recorded conversations Manson’s right-hand man Tex Watson had with his attorney in 1969."The LAPD has information that Mr. Watson discussed additional unsolved murders committed by followers of Charles Manson," said a letter signed by Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck and Lt. Yana Horvatich, acting commanding officer of the robbery-homicide division....
Source: Washington Examiner
May 30, 2012
Policing the History Channel now appears to be a pet project for Congress — with bipartisan support. After months of Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, tweeting his fury with the cable channel over its “lack of history,” Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., has taken up the mantle.Connolly tells Yeas & Nays that he has been “bitterly disappointed” in the History Channel’s programming. “I only got cable television a few years ago,” he said. “One of the great draws was that I could watch this channel called the History Channel.” A self-described history buff who says he reads a history book a week, Connolly has watched in dismay as the channel moved into reality TV territory....
Source: The Grio
May 30, 2012
Emory University has secured one of the largest photo libraries of black history ever assembled. The collection holds over 10,000 photographs of intimate moments of African-American life dating back to the late 19th century. The anthology contains photos of several notable black Americans, such as William Monroe Trotter, Marcus Garvey, and sculptor Selma Burke, but the uniqueness of this collection lies in the photos that capture rare moments in the lives of everyday black Americans.A number of photographs in the collection were taken by African-American photographers themselves and range in subject matter from shots of cabaret life to pictures chronicling the civil rights movement. Emory University Provost Earl Lewis, who is also a professor of history and African-American studies, is very proud to have a collection of this magnitude at Emory....
Source: Newsbusters
May 30, 2012
Comparing conservatives to Hitler is old-and-busted. The new hotness, if you ask Martin Bashir, is comparing them to Stalin.A few months ago, you may recall, Bashir compared Rick Santorum to the long-dead Soviet dictator. Now it's the state of Florida, more specifically, the conservative Republican Rick Scott, who is getting the honors. "Why is the Sunshine State in the midst of a purge that even Josef Stalin would admire?" Bashir rhetorically asked on the way out to an ad break on today's program. The "purge," by the way, is one admitted by a Democratic official in Broward County, Florida, to be "very, very microscopic" in nature....
Source: NYT
May 30, 2012
LEIDSCHENDAM, the Netherlands — Charles G. Taylor, the former president of Liberia and a once-powerful warlord, was sentenced on Wednesday to 50 years in prison for his role in atrocities committed in Sierra Leone during its civil war in the 1990s.In what was viewed as a watershed case for modern human rights law, Mr. Taylor was the first former head of state convicted by an international tribunal since the Nuremberg trials in Germany after World War II.
Source: NYT
May 30, 2012
JOHANNESBURG — To the artist and a gallery director, it was a scathing piece of satire — a riff on Soviet-style propaganda aimed at a powerful president with a controversial sexual history who presides over a liberation movement-turned-political party that many here feel has lost its revolutionary appeal.But to that party, the African National Congress; many black South Africans; and, most of all, the man it depicted, President Jacob Zuma, the painting — which portrayed Mr. Zuma in a Leninesque pose with his genitals exposed — was a reminder of the pain and humiliation frequently visited on black bodies by white hands under apartheid.
Source: ThinkProgress
May 30, 2012
At a campaign rally in Las Vegas yesterday, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney touted the idea of making anyone who does not have a business background as ineligible for the White House as if they had been born in Kenya....Romney’s amendment would come as quite a shock to the last person to earn the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) graduated from the Naval Academy in 1958 and served more than two decades in the United States Navy, including more than five years as an prisoner of war. After retiring from the Navy at the rank of captain, McCain turned to politics and was elected to the House in 1983 and to the Senate in 1987. Because McCain devoted his life to serving his country, rather than to working in business, the Romney amendment would disqualify him from the White House.
Source: AFP
May 30, 2012
The White House tried to head off a diplomatic spat with Poland after President Barack Obama mistakenly called a Nazi facility used to process Jews for execution as a "Polish death camp."The linguistic faux pas overshadowed Obama's posthumous award of America's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to Jan Karski, a former Polish underground officer who provided early eyewitness accounts of the Nazi purge against Jews."Before one trip across enemy lines, resistance fighters told him that Jews were being murdered on a massive scale, and smuggled him into the Warsaw Ghetto and a Polish death camp to see for himself," Obama said....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 30, 2012
Once known as the wickedest city in the world when it was the playground of British buccaneers and explorers in the 17th century, little now remains of Port Royal....However, a campaign supported by the Jamaican government was launched this week to secure Unesco world heritage status for the sunken city to put it firmly back on the map.A seven-mile spit of golden sand arcs around Kingston bay protecting the capital. At the far end of the spit lies the small fishing village of Port Royal, which was once a bustling city and key British outpost in the 1600s.The port, which boasted a population of 7,000 and was comparable to Boston during the same period, was a playground for buccaneers like Henry Morgan, who docked in search of rum, women and boat repairs....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
May 30, 2012
The mystery of how a U.S. World War 2 fighter pilot met his grisly end after crashing in a South Pacific island jungle has been revealed - after 31 years of painstaking work.Lt Moszek Murray Zanger was initially believed to have been shot and killed immediately after being captured by the Japanese following his 4,000ft parachuting out of his Corsair.He had collided midair with his wingman while out on patrol over Rabaul, Papua New Guinea.But a dogged forensic investigation has discovered he was in fact beaten, tried to flee in an inflatable dinghy and was captured by a Japanese Navy patrol boat....
Source: Yahoo News
May 30, 2012
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Two Roman-era shipwrecks have been found in deep water off a western Greek island, challenging the conventional theory that ancient shipmasters stuck to coastal routes rather than risking the open sea, an official said Tuesday.Greece's culture ministry said the two third-century wrecks were discovered earlier this month during a survey of an area where a Greek-Italian gas pipeline is to be sunk. They lay between 1.2 and 1.4 kilometers (0.7-0.9 miles) deep in the sea between Corfu and Italy.That would place them among the deepest known ancient wrecks in the Mediterranean, apart from remains found in 1999 of an older vessel some 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) deep off Cyprus....
Source: NPR
May 29, 2012
...Which presidential election in American history most resembles the coming election between President Obama and Mitt Romney — and why?1936: Franklin Delano Roosevelt vs. Alf Landon, says Alison Dagnes, who teaches political science at Shippensburg University. "The Republicans tried to attack FDR for his New Deal programs, saying they were too expensive and moved the country toward socialism — sound familiar?"...1980: Jimmy Carter vs. Ronald Reagan, says Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. He cites the similarities: "Young, unknown president is elected after an unpopular administration — Nixon/Ford, Bush — economy in the doldrums, problems with Iran, sense of malaise."...2004: George W. Bush vs. John Kerry. "Definitely 2004," says Alan Abramowitz, a political science professor at Emory University. "This year, just as in 2004, you have an incumbent president running for re-election in a polarized and closely divided electorate."...
Source: NYT
May 29, 2012
The family of Dwight D. Eisenhower on Wednesday said it welcomed some aspects of a modified design for a memorial to honor the former president on the National Mall, but still has reservations about other components.The architect Frank Gehry changed the design in response to concerns raised by the family and others. The family had primarily objected to Mr. Gehry’s sculptural depiction of Eisenhower as a young man, a characterization inspired by a speech the returning general made upon his return from World War II in which he recalled his days as a “barefoot boy.” But the family said the focus on youth had diminished Eisenhower’s other accomplishments.Under the redesign, several statues depicting Eisenhower at various stages of his career were added and the family made no mention of that issue on Wednesday except to call many of the changes “positive and welcomed.”...
Source: Star Tribune
May 29, 2012
The CARE package, a national icon after World War II, has come out of retirement -- retooled for the 21st century.The cardboard boxes stuffed with lard, egg powder, canned meat and other food essentials were a critical part of U.S. humanitarian aid to war-ravaged Europeans in the 1940s. Similar boxes were part of the war against hunger in Korea, Vietnam and other nations. But in 1967, the official CARE packages ended.Now the CARE package has been resurrected to mark its 65th anniversary. This time, however, it's a virtual package that funds modern tools to fight global poverty, such as education and health care....
Source: NYT
May 29, 2012
In hillside caves of southwestern Germany, archaeologists in recent years have uncovered the beginnings of music and art by early modern humans migrating into Europe from Africa. New dating evidence shows that these oldest known musical instruments in the world, flutes made of bird bone and mammoth ivory, are even older than first thought.Scientists led by Thomas Higham of the University of Oxford in England reported last week that improved radiocarbon tests determined that animal bones found with the flutes were 42,000 to 43,000 years old. This is close to the time when the first anatomically modern humans were spreading into Central Europe, presumably along the Danube River valley....
Source: Irish Times
May 29, 2012
Germany: A Nazi war criminal who escaped from a Dutch jail and lived as a fugitive in Germany for 60 years has died at the age of 90, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre has said.Klaas Carel Faber, number two on the centre’s list of most wanted Nazi criminals, was sentenced to death in 1947 in the Netherlands for the killings of at least 11 people at a staging post for Dutch Jews being taken to concentration camps....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
May 29, 2012
They married in secret a few days before he went to war.Frank Fearing had no idea if he would ever see young Helen again, but he made her a solemn promise. Everywhere the American GI went with his unit, he would carve their names into a tree.The first was on Salisbury Plain, where he was stationed before joining the push towards Berlin in the wake of the D-Day invasion. The rest were spread across France and Germany, carved whenever time allowed.Helen Fearing never knew if it was just a romantic bluff, or if he had simply made up the story to impress her.But they clearly didn’t reckon on the determination of British student Chantel Summerfield and her remarkable archaeological quest....
Source: LiveScience
May 29, 2012
The mysterious fall of the largest of the world's earliest urban civilizations nearly 4,000 years ago in what is now India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh now appears to have a key culprit — ancient climate change, researchers say.Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia may be the best known of the first great urban cultures, but the largest was the Indus or Harappan civilization. This culture once extended over more than 386,000 square miles (1 million square kilometers) across the plains of the Indus River from the Arabian Sea to the Ganges, and at its peak may have accounted for 10 percent of the world population. The civilization developed about 5,200 years ago, and slowly disintegrated between 3,900 and 3,000 years ago — populations largely abandoned cities, migrating toward the east.
