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
May 14, 2012
ROME — Since 1983, when 15-year-old Emanuela Orlandi vanished on a street here on her way home from a music lesson, investigators have struggled to solve her disappearance. Various theories have tied the presumed kidnapping to intrigue involving the Italian secret services, organized crime, even the attempt to assassinate John Paul II — or possibly all three.On Monday, police forensic experts pursued yet another lead, exhuming the tomb of a notorious local crime boss at a Vatican church, where some speculated Emanuela might have been buried. Besides his remains, they found hundreds of other bones in an ancient ossuary nearby in the crypt. The police said they would test them to see if any might have been Emanuela’s.
Source: Salon
May 14, 2012
Perhaps you were shocked this month when you read that years ago, thanks to its association with international workers and the anarchist movement, May Day was officially named Loyalty Day by the federal government to avoid the appearance of condoning dissent. It’s creepy and Orwellian, but it’s not that unusual....But this isn’t a new American tradition. A simple search of other official national and state holidays shows that region by region, we have some pretty appalling holidays on the books. Here are just a few:Robert E. Lee’s birthday and other Confederate commemoration fetes: Several states, including Arkansas, Alabama, Florida, Georgia and Mississippi, don’t let Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday be celebrated without tacking on this commemoration of the Confederate general who led armies into the field to defend the genocidal institution of slavery. This is the first of a few official holidays in the former states of the confederacy that are a little bit sketchy....
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
May 13, 2012
The Salvadoran jurist Reynaldo Galindo Pohl died this year at age 93. A former education minister and president of El Salvador's National Constitutional Assembly, Pohl spent much of his career pressing for human rights, first as a member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and later as his country's ambassador to the United Nations. News of his death barely registered outside Latin American diplomatic circles. But the more than seven million global adherents of the Bahai faith marked it with deep sadness. They remembered Pohl as the tireless diplomat who shed light on the persecution of their co-religionists in the Islamic Republic of Iran at a time when few others were paying attention.From 1986 to 1994, Pohl served as the U.N. Human Rights Commission's special representative on Iran. The Iranian regime, he found, was subjecting its largest non-Muslim religious minority to a systematic campaign of cultural eradication. In 1993, Pohl disclosed a chilling memorandum written by Seyyed Mohammad Golpaygani, then secretary of Iran's Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution. The Golpaygani memorandum, as it came to be known, set out a national policy for dealing with the "Bahai question." The Iranian government, Golpaygani forthrightly recommended, must ensure that "progress and development are blocked" for Bahais.
Source: The Globe and Mail (Canada)
May 13, 2012
Taking advantage of Egypt’s political upheaval, thieves are preying on the country’s ancient pharaonic heritage.Illegal digs near ancient temples and in isolated desert sites have swelled a staggering 100-fold over the past 16 months since a popular uprising toppled Hosni Mubarak’s 29-year regime and security fell apart in many areas as police simply stopped doing their jobs. The pillaging comes on top of a wave of break-ins last year at archaeological storehouses — and even at Cairo’s famed Egyptian Museum, the country’s biggest repository of pharaonic artifacts....“Criminals became so bold they are digging in landmark areas,” including near the Great Pyramids in Giza, other nearby pyramids and the grand temples of the southern city of Luxor, said Maj. Gen. Abdel-Rahim Hassan, commander of the Tourism and Antiquities Police Department....
Source: National Parks Traveler
May 13, 2012
Homesteaders flooding the American heartland in the 1860s couldn't have imagined electric lights, so if it were possible for any of them to return to Nebraska on May 20, 2012, they would be astounded indeed. A celebration of the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Homestead Act at Homestead National Monument of America will feature a laser light show... and much more from May 20-25.Event organizers have planned an impressive array of activities, and the location is certainly appropriate. Homestead National Monument of America, located in southeastern Nebraska, is located on the site of what's believed to be the first land claimed under the Homestead Act. Daniel Freeman filed his claim at 10 minutes after midnight on January 1, 1863—the first day the Homestead Act was in effect—at the Land Office in Brownville, Nebraska.Freeman's claim was only the first of many. By the time settlement under the Homestead Act ended in 1986, about two million individuals had used the Act to settle approximately 285 million acres—around eight percent of all the land in the United States....
Source: Miami Herald
May 12, 2012
A federal judge has ruled that the last volume in a CIA history of the Bay of Pigs invasion that was written more than 30 years ago and 51 years after the ill-fated Cuban mission should remain secret.In an opinion released Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler said Volume V in the CIA’s Official History of the Bay of Pigs was a draft that was “rejected for inclusion in the final publication” and was exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.The Washington-based National Security Archive, a research institute and library, filed suit last year asking for declassification of all five volumes in the set after its previous FOIA requests were unsuccessful....Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/12/2796961/judge-keep-part-of-cias-bay-of.html#storylink=cpy////
Source: MSNBC
May 11, 2012
Travelers looking forward to a little luxury in the coming months may want to look backward instead. From Boston to Beverly Hills, iconic hotels are celebrating their 100th anniversaries with historic tours, special events and package deals.“The years between 1897 and 1912 represented a golden age of outrageous luxury hotels,” said Andrew K. Sandoval-Strausz, associate professor of history at the University of New Mexico and the author of “Hotel: An American History.”In fact, 1912 can be considered something of a watershed year. “It’s not just what came before; it’s what came after,” said Sandoval-Strausz. “The income tax was imposed in 1913 by the 16th amendment. Before that, rich folks just had a colossal amount of untaxed income and there had been a burst in hotel building to accommodate them.”...
Source: Lee White for the National Coalition for History
May 11, 2012
The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is seeking public comments on the draft guidelines for the FY 2013 Museums for America and National Leadership Grants for Museums programs. The guidelines for these programs have been revised to align with the IMLS Strategic Plan.The IMLS is seeking comments to assess how well these guidelines accomplish the following goals:
Source: Lee White for the National Coalition for History
May 11, 2012
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) recently released its 2011 Records Management Self-Assessment Report. NARA’s findings are similar to last year’s. The responses indicated that a large majority of Federal agencies that responded remain at high to moderate risk of compromising the integrity, authenticity, and reliability of their records.Key findings of the report include:
Source: Lee White for the National Coalition for History
May 11, 2012
John Gray, founding president of the Autry National Center of the American West, a consolidation of three cultural organizations in Los Angeles and Denver, has been appointed the Elizabeth MacMillan Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, effective July 23, 2012.Gray was known for his leadership in banking and government service until he became director of the Autry Museum of Western Heritage in Los Angeles. He enlarged the museum’s mission and scope, and, in 2002, merged the museum with Colorado’s Women of the West Museum and, in 2004, with Los Angeles’ oldest museum, the Southwest Museum of the American Indian. The new organization became the Autry National Center of the American West based in Los Angeles.The Autry National Center has more than 500,000 objects, a 130-member staff and an annual budget of about $16 million. It is accredited by the American Association of Museums and gained national prominence during Gray’s tenure.
Source: WaPo
May 11, 2012
BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich. — Mitt Romney returned from a three-week spring break in 1965 to resume his studies as a high school senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School. Back on the handsome campus, studded with Tudor brick buildings and manicured fields, he spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenage son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.
Source: AP
May 11, 2012
NEW YORK — Even after decades of in-depth Holocaust research, excruciating details are only now emerging about more than 1,100 German-run ghettos in Eastern Europe where the Nazis murdered hundreds of thousands of Jews.And there were nearly 200 more ghettos than previously believed, said Martin Dean, editor of the recently published “Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945, Volume II.” It’s part of a long-term effort to document every site of organized Nazi persecution, beyond the well-known Warsaw ghetto and extermination camps like Auschwitz.It “gives us information about ghettos that would slip into historical oblivion and be forgotten forever if we didn’t have this volume,” Holocaust scholar Lawrence Langer said. “Who knew there were more than 1,000 ghettos?”...
Source: National Geographic
May 11, 2012
Before the brunches, before the gifts and greeting cards, Mother's Day was a time for mourning women to remember fallen soldiers and work for peace.When the holiday went commercial, its greatest champion gave everything to fight it, dying penniless and broken in a sanitarium. Of course, Mother's Day marched on without her and is today celebrated, in various forms, on a global scale.As early as the 1850s, West Virginia women's organizer Ann Reeves Jarvis held Mother's Day work clubs to improve sanitary conditions and try to lower infant mortality by fighting disease and curbing milk contamination, according to historian Katharine Antolini of West Virginia Wesleyan College....
Source: Inside Higher Ed
May 11, 2012
WASHINGTON -- Rep. Jeff Flake tried and failed this week to get his colleagues in the House of Representatives to slash the budget of the National Science Foundation, proposing an amendment to a 2013 spending bill that would have cut more than $1 billion from the agency's funds.But unable to convince his fellow House members that the government needs less research on physics, engineering and other fields, he chose a lower-hanging target: social science studies with easy-to-ridicule titles.And this time, he was persuasive.By a vote of 218-208, the House Wednesday night backed an amendment that would bar the NSF from spending any of its 2013 funds on its political science program, which allocated about $11 million in peer-reviewed grants this year. Explaining the amendment on the House floor Wednesday evening, Flake said that given his colleagues' reluctance to slash the agency's overall budget -- the House defeated his earlier amendment by a vote of 291 to 121 -- Congress should ensure, "at the least, that the NSF does not waste taxpayer dollars on a meritless program."...
Source: WLFI
May 10, 2012
AUSTIN (KXAN) - Early next month, the Civil War Trust , an organization dedicated to the preservation of historic battlefields from the War between the States, will hand out its first ever award to a child.That child is Andrew Druart, 12, from South Austin.“They're giving me an award for junior preservation,” said Andrew. “I'm the first one to get this award for protecting battlefields at such a young age.”...
Source: NYT
May 10, 2012
The day after President Obama endorsed gay marriage, Mitt Romney found himself responding to allegations that as a teenager he harassed a prep school classmate who later came out as gay.The account put Mr. Romney, who has struggled on the campaign trail to cast off his rivals’ image of him as privileged and insensitive, on the defensive about events nearly 50 years ago.The episode, reported by The Washington Post, occurred at Cranbrook, a private school that Mr. Romney, the son of an automobile executive-turned-governor, attended in Michigan. Mr. Romney returned from spring break in his senior year to find that John Lauber, a quiet, offbeat type, had bleached his hair blond....
Source: NYT
May 10, 2012
Here’s one case where, as far as the city is concerned, crime can pay. Among the 840,000 archival images placed online recently by the city’s Department of Records are 1,326 police evidence photographs mostly taken from 1915 to 1920. The Municipal Archives gallery provides free research online and at a new visitors’ center at 31 Chambers Street behind City Hall, but a digital file or 8-by-10 print will cost $45.The crime scene photos are part of what Eileen Flannelly, a deputy records commissioner, describes as “the largest collection of criminal justice evidence in the world.”“When I look at these pictures, it’s like looking at an old gangster movie,” Ms. Flannelly said....
Source: Io9
May 10, 2012
Japan's Unit 731 is one of the best kept and most horrifying secrets of World War II. Unit 731 experimented on Japanese and Chinese civilians as well as Russian and American POWs during the Second Sino-Japanese War in the 1930s and throughout World War II.Led by the enigmatic Dr. Shiro Ishii, Unit 731 committed thousands of macabre experiments and infected hundreds of thousands with the plague in China. Most of the scientists involved with Unit 731 escaped trial and entered mainstream society at the end of the war due to an agreement with Allied commanders, but a few are speaking of the horrors they committed in their old age....During the height of World War II, Unit 731 planned similar biological attacks for the United States. One early proposed mission involved a small kamikaze plane launched from a submarine that would unleash the plague upon the port of San Diego.
Source: The Local (DE)
May 10, 2012
A rare Nazi police report on the deportation of nearly 1,000 Jews from Düsseldorf has been unearthed in a London archive. It is only the second of its kind ever found, as most such records were destroyed towards the end of the war.Police captain and SS member Wilhelm Meurin was responsible for guarding the deportation train which left Düsseldorf on November 14, 1941 in freezing temperatures, and travelled east for four days. He said that although 300 of the people on the train were no longer capable of walking, “the unloading in Minsk could be conducted at the desired speed.” He also reported that 8,000 Russian Jews had already been “removed and... shot” from the Minsk ghetto....
Source: LiveScience
May 10, 2012
The oldest-known version of the ancient Maya calendar has been discovered adorning a lavishly painted wall in the ruins of a city deep in the Guatemalan rainforest.The hieroglyphs, painted in black and red, along with a colorful mural of a king and his mysterious attendants, seem to have been a sort of handy reference chart for court scribes in A.D. 800 — the astronomers and mathematicians of their day. Contrary to popular myth, this calendar isn't a countdown to the end of the world in December 2012, the study researchers said."The Mayan calendar is going to keep going for billions, trillions, octillions of years into the future," said archaeologist David Stuart of the University of Texas, who worked to decipher the glyphs. "Numbers we can't even wrap our heads around." [End of the World? Top Doomsday Fears]...
