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: AP
Aug 8, 2011
Nine former soldiers and officials have turned themselves over to a court in El Salvador after being indicted in Spain in the 1989 killings of six Jesuit priests and two other people during the Central American country's civil war.
The Defense Department said Monday the nine soldiers turned themselves in at a military base and were handed over to a Salvadoran court.
A tenth suspect in the Spanish case has since died, and 10 other suspects have not been located....
Source: Fox News
Aug 8, 2011
In 1979, as the U.S. was reeling from skyrocketing interest rates, high unemployment and an energy crisis, President Jimmy Carter delivered a televised address that would later infamously be labeled, “the malaise speech." He never used the word, but rather blamed the poor economy in part on a "crisis of the American spirit."
In hindsight, that speech now seems like a hard lesson on the political liabilities of the blame game -- something critics say President Obama has failed to grasp more than 30 years later.
This tactic from the Obama administration is not new. Five days ago, the president suggested "messy democracy” bore some blame for economic stagnation.
Source: NYT
Aug 8, 2011
HAVANA — The hair and accents were wrong, but the audience cared about just one thing: the house band was singing the Beatles, here, in a new bar called the Yellow Submarine, in Cuba, where such an act might have led to arrests in the mid-1960s.Better yet, perhaps because of that history, the band played like rebels. Fast and raw, they zipped up and down the bass lines of “Dear Prudence” as if the song were new. They raced through “Rocky Raccoon,” and when they reached the opening words of “Let It Be” — “When I find myself in times of trouble” — the entire crowd began singing along, swaying, staring at the band or belting out the chorus with their eyes closed in rapture.“If there’s no Beatles, there’s no rock ’n’ roll,” said Guille Vilar, a co-creator of the bar. “This is music created with authenticity.”
Source: LA Times
Aug 7, 2011
Martin Luther King Jr., she admits, looked a little funny at first.His head was too big, his cheekbones were too low, his eyes were kind of lopsided. And his lower lip? "Let's not even go there," Karen Collins, 60, said with a laugh....Her pint-size creations fill nearly every inch of her living room in Compton. On her carpet slaves in chains await their transatlantic voyage. On her fireplace mantel, protesters gather for the Montgomery bus boycott. And on her entertainment center, Malcolm X preaches to the Nation of Islam.She calls it the African American Miniature Museum, and it took her nearly 15 years to build. Soon, she will have a permanent display place at Leimert Park Village....
Source: NYT
Aug 7, 2011
NAGASAKI, Japan — In 1945, Masahito Hirose saw the white mushroom cloud rise from the atomic bomb that incinerated this city and that left his aunt to die a slow, painful death, bleeding from her nose and gums. Still, like other survivors of the attacks here and in Hiroshima, he quietly accepted Japan’s postwar embrace of nuclear-generated power, believing government assurances that it was both safe and necessary for the nation’s economic rise.That was before this year’s disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in northern Japan confronted the survivors once again with their old nightmare: thousands of civilians exposed to radiation. Aghast at the catastrophic failure of nuclear technology, and outraged by revelations that the government and power industry had planted nuclear proponents at recent town hall-style meetings, the elderly atomic bomb survivors, dwindling in numbers, have begun stepping forward for the first time to oppose nuclear power.
Source: BBC
Aug 7, 2011
From feral child to "human pet" at court in Georgian England, Peter the Wild Boy caused a sensation. And new analysis of his portraits may have solved the mystery of his unusual characteristics.
No-one knows if his name was really Peter - he couldn't talk. Nor did he walk, preferring to scamper on all fours, picking the pockets of courtiers and stealing kisses.
Peter had been found living alone and naked in a German forest in 1725, presumably abandoned by parents who struggled to cope.
There was much fanciful speculation that he had been raised by wolves - or perhaps bears - and this was why he ate with his hands, disliked wearing clothes and could not be taught to speak, says Lucy Worsley, curator of Historic Royal Palaces.
Source: Huffington Post
Aug 7, 2011
WASHINGTON -- Nearly a year after two alpha males on Capitol Hill slew a bill to allow a National Women's History Museum here, the head of the nascent project has quietly taken steps to placate conservative critics.A former executive director of the Eagle Forum, which led the fight to defeat an Equal Rights Amendment for women, is among several conservative women who have been added to the museum's board...."We have an obligation to represent a wide range of voices, to be inclusive," Joan Wages, NWHM's president, told The Huffington Post in an interview. "We're hoping we took steps to address their issues."Wages was referring to Republican Sens. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Jim DeMint of South Carolina. The two men slapped a hold on a bill that would have allowed the museum to use private funds to buy an oddly shaped lot off Independence Avenue -- straddling a busy expressway leading under the National Mall. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the sale would have generated up to $60 million for the federal government....
Source: BBC
Aug 7, 2011
The tail wheel of a WWII Spitfire has finally made it home to the runway it took off from 70 years ago.
In 1941 an American RAF pilot was returning to base after an afternoon sortie when he had to jettison from his Spitfire as its engines failed.
The pilot landed safely, just 13 miles from his intended destination - RAF Eglinton, now City of Derry airport.
His spitfire crashed into the peat bog of the Inishowen peninsula, County Donegal, and remained there until earlier this summer....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 7, 2011
Nearly 500 years after Florence ditched Michelangelo’s grand design for the exterior of San Lorenzo Basilica, the city’s mayor wants to finally realise the artist’s vision.
It is one of the oddest looking churches in Europe, its rough, unfinished facade of bricks resembling giant slabs of crumbling biscuits.
Matteo Renzi has called for a referendum to be held in which Florentines can vote on whether to dust off plans for the church’s facade which last saw the light of day in 1515, when they were presented by Michelangelo to Pope Leo X, one of the Medici popes.
The project was shelved by the pontiff because of concerns over cost - Michelangelo wanted to use expensive Carrara marble rather than cheaper marble from the hills near Florence.
Source: Fox News
Aug 6, 2011
Jacqueline Kennedy-Onassis believed Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was behind the assassination of her husband, according to tapes recorded by the former first lady just months after President John F. Kennedy's death, the Daily Mail reports.The tapes, which are set to be released by ABC News, reportedly reveal that Kennedy-Onassis believed then-vice president Johnson, along with businessmen in the South, planned the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination of her husband in Dallas, Texas.The tabloid reports about the content of the tapes are totally erroneous," an ABC News spokesperson said in a statement to FoxNews.com....
Source: AP
Aug 6, 2011
There are girls with ribbons in their hair, boys in short pants or wool jackets (one even wears a discarded Hitler Youth uniform). There are teens and toddlers. There are kids who look happy, sad, scared, tense and relieved — greatly relieved.There are few hints in the photos, aside from some weary eyes or bony arms, of the hardships they endured to get to this moment: hiding in strangers' homes, stealing scraps of bread to survive, gasping for air in cramped cattle cars.These are children who'd come through the fire, survivors of the Holocaust photographed by social service agencies across Europe soon after World War II. There are more than 1,100 pictures, long stashed away and forgotten in the mists of history.Until now.More than 65 years later, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is reaching out around the world to find the people in these extraordinary photos. It has posted the pictures online and spread the word that the search is on....
Source: Boston Globe
Aug 5, 2011
BALTIMORE—A presidential historian charged with conspiring to steal valuable documents from archives throughout the Northeast will be allowed to return to his New York City apartment, after a federal judge in Maryland denied prosecutors appeal of his release Friday.Prosecutors argued that Barry Landau, who could be released as soon as Monday, poses a flight risk and could destroy more documents the government has not yet found.Landau and his assistant, 24-year-old Jason Savedoff, are charged with stealing valuable historical documents from the Maryland Historical Society and conspiring to steal documents from other archives. Landau pleaded not guilty Thursday. Savedoff was released on bail last week and has yet to enter a plea....
Source: WSJ
Aug 4, 2011
Few companies in corporate America have as complicated a history as Kraft Foods, the owner of Oreo cookies, Ritz crackers and Oscar Mayer lunch meats. Today, Kraft announced plans to split up, marking yet another shimmy in its background as a mélange of corporations, including Philip Morris, General Foods and RJR Nabisco.Here is an annotated guide for how Kraft came to be:1903: James L. Kraft begins selling cheese from a horse-drawn wagon in Chicago. By 1914, his company begins manufacturing cheese on its own. Over the ensuing decades, Kraft starts or acquires brands including Vegemite, Philadelphia cream cheese, Tombstone pizza and Kraft macaroni and cheese.
Source: BBC
Aug 4, 2011
A chance discovery of coins has led to the bigger find of a Roman town, further west than it was previously thought Romans had settled in England.
The town was found under fields a number of miles west of Exeter, Devon.
Nearly 100 Roman coins were initially uncovered there by two amateur archaeological enthusiasts.
It had been thought that fierce resistance from local tribes to Roman culture stopped the Romans from moving so far into the county.
Sam Moorhead, national finds adviser for Iron Age and Roman coins for the PAS at the British Museum, said it was one of the most significant Roman discoveries in the country for many decades....
Source: ABC News
Aug 4, 2011
One of the worst droughts in Texas history is helping archaeologists unearth a small piece of American history, a graveyard for freed slaves.
While the heat may be taking a toll on crops, livestock and people's livelihoods, it has helped archaeologists uncover two graves that are believed to have been buried for more than a century.
Cemeteries were marked and moved before the Richland Chambers Reservoir in Navarro County, Texas, was filled in the 1980s, but this small cemetery without tombstones went unnoticed.
Human remains were initially discovered in 2009 by boaters when the water level was low, but the water rose quickly and archaeologists and historians have been waiting ever since for the reservoir to reveal the cemetery again....
Source: Live Science
Aug 4, 2011
It's not easy to study the elderly in a society where life was all too often cut short by disease, childbirth and injuries. But new research on people living in the Bronze Age suggests the elderly began to gain power over a 600-year period in Austria.
The findings rely on skeletal aging and a comparison of objects placed in graves of individuals of different ages. As time passed in the small farming hamlets of lower Austria, researchers reported online July 15 in the Oxford Journal of Archaeology, older men began to be buried with copper axes, a privilege not granted to younger men.
Source: WaPo
Aug 4, 2011
They came from as far away as Hawaii, silver-haired heroes converging on their nation’s capital to celebrate their place in history.But the fact that there were so many fewer of them this year was painfully obvious to the heroes.They once numbered 15,000 — 992 pilots, 200 navigators, bombardiers and administrators, as well as legions of crew members and support and medical personnel who came to be known as the Tuskegee Airmen.Seventy years later, their ranks have fallen precipitously. Only a few more than 100 of the “originals” from the Tuskegee days were among those who came to Washington this week for the 40th annual convention of Tuskegee Airmen Inc. at National Harbor’s Gaylord hotel.“We are losing so many that it is hard to keep track,” said Col. Charles H. McGee, 91, of Bethesda, who is perhaps the most famous of them and has logged more combat hours (1,151) than any U.S. pilot.McGee and the rest of the Tuskegee Airmen were pioneering aviators who broke the color barrier for black pilots in the U.S. military during World War II....
Source: NYT
Aug 4, 2011
Double dip may be back.It has been three decades since the United States suffered a recession that followed on the heels of the previous one. But it could be happening again. The unrelenting negative economic news of the past two weeks has painted a picture of a United States economy that fell further and recovered less than we had thought....If this is the beginning of a new double dip, it will have two significant things in common with the dual recessions of 1980 and 1981-82.In each case the first recession was caused in large part by a sudden withdrawal of credit from the economy. The recovery came when credit conditions recovered.And in each case the second recession began at a time when the usual government policies to fight economic weakness were deemed unavailable. Then, the need to fight inflation ruled out an easier monetary policy. Now, the perceived need to reduce government spending rules out a more accommodating fiscal policy....
Source: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Aug 4, 2011
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum today welcomed the White House announcement of a new presidential directive aimed at strengthening the U.S. government’s ability to prevent genocide and mass atrocities.“This directive has the potential to save countless lives in the future,” said Tom Bernstein, Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. “Tragically, during the Holocaust, no such mechanisms existed, and in the many decades since then, the United States and other governments have lacked the policies, structures and political will to prevent such unspeakable crimes from being committed again. Today’s presidential directive is an important step that the U.S. is taking toward realizing the vision of Never Again,” he continued.
Source: NYT
Aug 3, 2011
ON this summer afternoon, the Andy Warhol’s New York City Tour does not begin at any location where the artist lived, worked or partied. Instead, it starts at 1060 Park Avenue.That is where Truman Capote was living with his mother in 1952, and where a young worshipper from Pittsburgh, Andy Warhol, could once be spotted, standing outside.“Capote was an overnight sensation,” said Thomas Kiedrowski, the tour guide. “Andy Warhol was thinking, ‘This guy has my life.’ So Andy did what he could to be friends with Capote. He sent him postcards. He became friends with Capote’s mother. I could just see Warhol lingering here, waiting to meet him.”To say that Mr. Kiedrowski has a passion for all things Warhol would be an understatement. Bald and beaming, he owns close to 175 books about the artist, who would have turned 83 on Saturday. He has just published his own addition to the pile: “Andy Warhol’s New York City: Four Walks, Uptown to Downtown.” Vito Giallo, who ran an antiques store frequented by Warhol, contributed illustrations....
