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: BBC News
Jul 25, 2011
The Israeli Chamber Orchestra will break with tradition to play a work by Hitler's favourite composer, Richard Wagner, in Germany.Roberto Paternostro will conduct classical piece Siegfried Idyll on Tuesday at Bayreuth's Wagner festival.It is rare for Israeli musicians to play the anti-Semitic composer's work, which was appropriated by the Nazis.Paternostro said that while Wagner's ideology was "terrible", the aim was "to divide the man from his art".An unofficial ban on Wagner was introduced in 1938 by the Palestine Orchestra - now the Israel Philharmonic - after Jews were attacked by the Nazis in Germany....
Source: BBC News
Jul 25, 2011
Actress Linda Christian, a 1940s Hollywood starlet who went on to become the first Bond girl, has died aged 87.She died last Friday in Palm Desert, California, after suffering from colon cancer, her daughter said.Christian starred as Vesper Lynd, the love interest of James Bond in the first TV adaptation of Ian Fleming's debut novel, Casino Royale, in 1954.The actress's curvaceousness led Life magazine to nickname her the "anatomic bomb."Born Blanca Rosa Welter in Mexico, Christian was discovered by Errol Flynn in Acapulco before pursuing an acting career in Los Angeles and eventually signing a contract with MGM.She made her film debut alongside Danny Kaye in the 1944 musical comedy Up In Arms....
Source: Minnesota Public Radio
Jul 25, 2011
St. Paul, Minn. — Workers are already laying track for the Central Corridor Light Rail line between downtown Minneapolis and downtown St. Paul. The west end of the line will stop at Target Field.The east end of the line line will be the Union Depot in St. Paul, and the renovation of that historic building has begun in earnest....Passenger trains haven't been on the depot's platform since the last Burlington Northern Zephyr pulled out of the station on April 30, 1971.Passenger rail had already been declining when the depot was built in the 1920s, according to John Diers, a railroad buff who's writing a history of the station."Some of the railroad presidents didn't want to build a fancy depot like this. They thought it was a waste of money," Diers said. "And it turned out they were right. Because by the time it was completed in 1924, the passenger train was already in decline."...
Source: AP
Jul 24, 2011
GRAND FORKS, N.D. -- North Dakota political leaders are asking the NCAA to back off and let the state's flagship university keep its Fighting Sioux name and logo, even at the risk of potential blacklisting and scorn by other universities and its own conference.Lawmaker involvement is a strategy even some University of North Dakota boosters question, and is unique among schools forced to decide whether to drop American Indian nicknames deemed hostile and abusive or accept penalties for keeping them.North Dakota's debate appeared to be resolved when the state Board of Higher Education agreed in 2009 to drop the Fighting Sioux logo and nickname and UND agreed to phase them out by this Aug. 15....
Source: Watertown Daily Times (WI)
Jul 24, 2011
In this Friday, July 22, 2011 photo, Ed Jorgensen, of Woodward Design, inspects one of three sections of Nazi Germany's Atlantic Wall, as they are offloaded at the Port of New Orleans, where they will be on display at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. The slabs are part of Nazi Germany's Atlantic Wall, a variety of defenses that stretched 3,200 miles from France to Norway and were designed to stop, or at least slow, the Allies from advancing inland during an invasion.
Source: NYT
Jul 24, 2011
PBS has announced plans to commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11 with a mixture of new programs and repeats. The schedule, starting in the week leading up to the anniversary, is to include “America Remembers — 9/11,” a “PBS NewsHour” presentation exploring the lasting effects that the terrorist attacks have had across the United States....
Source: New York Times
Jul 24, 2011
The 14th Amendment states that "the validity of the public debt of the United States ... shall not be questioned."
Source: NYT
Jul 24, 2011
PORT GAMBLE S’KLALLAM RESERVATION, Wash. — The canoe journeys are a new tradition for a very old people, but they already have one rigid rule that everyone knows not to break.That thing you are paddling is called a canoe. Do not call it something else.“If you call it a boat,” said Mariah Francis, 16, of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, “you’re either supposed to jump in the water or you’ll get thrown in.”And as paddlers are reminded each year, the water here is cold.For the 23rd summer in a row, a growing number of American Indians from tribes scattered across coastal regions of Washington State and British Columbia have climbed into traditionally designed cedar canoes and paddled as many as 40 miles a day, sometimes more, over two or three weeks, camping at a series of reservations until they converge at the home of a host tribe. There, several thousand people welcome them for a week of traditional dancing, singing and celebration....
Source: BBC
Jul 24, 2011
The 600th anniversary of a famous Aberdeenshire battle has been remembered.The Battle of Harlaw was a clash between Scottish clans which was fought on 24 July, 1411, just north of Inverurie.Hundreds of men died in the fierce combat.A service was held at the Kirk of St Nicholas in Aberdeen before wreaths were laid at the Battle of Harlaw monument at Chapel of Garioch.The Lord Provost of Aberdeen, Peter Stephen, and the Provost of Aberdeenshire, Bill Howatson, were joined by representatives from clans involved in the battle...
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 24, 2011
Nelson Mandela, the former South African president, is to remain at his birthplace, his rural home in the Eastern Cape indefinitely, his family have confirmed.The 93-year-old flew to Qunu ahead of his birthday last week along with his wife Graca and a phalanx of doctors and staff.His family have confirmed that he asked to remain there and will not now return to his home in Houghton, Johannesburg as was expected....
Source: CNN
Jul 24, 2011
America's political leaders are paralyzed. The government is reeling from debt. Corrupt bankers foreclose on people's homes as a brutal recession sweeps the land.We're talking, of course, about the great debt standoff of 1786: Shays' Rebellion.Nervous Americans glancing at the upcoming August 2 deadline for raising the debt ceiling are being told that the nation is entering uncharted territory. But historians say they've seen this movie before.Many of the same issues driving this modern-day standoff -- disagreement on how to handle the national debt, ineffective government and a populist citizen's revolt -- drove the 18th-century uprising that's been called America's first civil war.Historians say the lesson that can be drawn from Shays' Rebellion and other transformative events in U.S. history is this: Protracted political gridlock is seldom resolved through compromise. It comes when one political party finally beats the other down.Many Americans, however, have told pollsters that they want the political parties to work together to solve the debt ceiling crisis. Yet political stability doesn't always come through give-and-take, some historians say....
Source: AP
Jul 23, 2011
Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the Army's flagship hospital where privates to presidents have gone for care, is closing its doors after more than a century.Hundreds of thousands of the nation's war wounded from World War I to today have received treatment at Walter Reed, including 18,000 troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.President Dwight Eisenhower died there. So did Gens. John J. Pershing and Douglas MacArthur.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 23, 2011
Ettinger preferred to style himself an "immortalist", since he argued that whole body or head-only freezing ("neurological suspension") was only one means of achieving indefinite life. His rationale for pursuing this goal was contained in his book The Prospect Of Immortality (1964), which revealed him as an unquenchable optimist about mankind's technological future.He drew on his experience as a physics teacher and his interest in science fiction to predict the evolution of machines which would manufacture from raw atoms all that man needed. He foresaw intergalactic settlement, and argued that science would produce medical machines which would cure all diseases.What now seemed to be a fatal illness would be no more than a twinge by 2050. From this it followed that the dead might be "cured" by the doctors of the future.
Source: CNN
Jul 23, 2011
The iconic World Trade Center cross -- two intersecting steel beams that held up when the Twin Towers collapsed on September 11, 2001 -- was moved Saturday to its new home at the nearby 9/11 Memorial and Museum.Recovery workers and their families were among those invited to attend a ceremonial blessing before the cross, which was uncovered in the rubble of the collapsed buildings. The service was led by Father Brian Jordan, a Franciscan monk who ministered to workers clearing the area after the 9/11 attacks.This September 11 will mark the 10th anniversary of the attacks, and the memorial will be dedicated that day. It will open to the public the following day. A museum at the same site will open in 2012...
Source: University of Bristol
Jul 23, 2011
In a special issue of one of the world's leading medical journals, The Lancet, Gareth Williams, Professor of Medicine at the University, tells the story behind the greatest ever coup in the history of preventative medicine — the eradication of smallpox.The article, which forms part of an issue devoted to vaccination and is published today [23 July] explores the story of doctor and polymath, Edward Jenner, who successfully defeated smallpox, a disease once so feared it was known as the ‘angel of death’. The disease killed millions of people throughout history until, thirty years ago, it became the first – and, so far, only – disease to be eradicated from the planet.Professor Williams offers glimpses into Jenner’s life through his residence, The Chantry in Gloucestershire, now a museum dedicated to his pioneering work, where on 14 May 1796 he performed the first properly recorded vaccination, on his gardener’s eight-year-old son....
Source: Silicon Valley Mercurcy News
Jul 23, 2011
NEW ORLEANS—The gray, concrete, heavily scarred slabs that arrived at the National World War II Museum this week are more than just chunks of an old wall to historians. The slabs are part of Nazi Germany's Atlantic Wall, a string of defenses ordered by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler in 1940. The defenses, also known as "Hitler's wall," stretched 3,200 miles from France to Norway and were designed to stop, or at least slow, the Allies from advancing inland during an invasion. Allan Millette, a history professor and director of the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans, said the relic is a portal to studying what happened in 1944 and 1945, when Allied forces penetrated the wall and the tide began to turn against Germany....
Source: WSJ
Jul 23, 2011
The Oslo attacks come as European counterterrorism officials say terror groups are shifting their targets to countries where attacks have been less common, and perhaps more unexpected.A confidential June report by the European police agency Europol described the shift. Favored targets include Scandinavian countries, one senior intelligence official said, noting a string of recent incidents.In December, a suspected suicide bomber blew himself up among Christmas shoppers near a busy street in the center of Stockholm.In September, an Iraqi Kurd, one of three men arrested in July in the Oslo area and in the German city of Duisburg, confessed to planning a terrorist strike that may have targeted Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper known for publishing controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad....
Source: BBC
Jul 22, 2011
The top half of the Weary Herakles statue, which was bought by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1982, is to be returned to its native Turkey.After an ongoing dispute, the MFA will reunite the bust with its lower half at the Antalya Museum later this year.The announcement is seen as a victory for Turkey which is trying to retrieve artefacts it believes have been looted throughout the years.It is thought the full statue will return to Boston on a short-term loan.The top half of the sculpture of weary demigod Hercules was purchased in 1981 from a German dealer, by the MFA and late New York art collecter Leon Levy....
Source: Fox News
Jul 22, 2011
NABLUS, West Bank – What happens when biblical history and modern turmoil collide? Archaeologists in tumultuous Palestine are digging up the ruins of Shekem, where Abraham once stopped, Jacob once camped -- and today litter is strewn.The biblical ruin lies inside a Palestinian city in the West Bank, where modern researchers are writing the latest chapter in a 100-year-old excavation that has been interrupted by two world wars and numerous rounds of Mideast upheaval.Working on an urban lot that long served residents of Nablus as an unofficial dump for garbage and old car parts, Dutch and Palestinian archaeologists are learning more about the ancient city of Shekhem -- and preparing to open the site to the public as an archaeological park next year....
Source: Star Tribune
Jul 22, 2011
In a remarkable testament to new technology, the remains of three Minnesotans who died within weeks of one another as prisoners in the Korean War -- their whereabouts unknown for 60 years -- will be back at home within a month of each other.In a remarkable testament to fate, two of them may have been in the same prison camp at the same time in early 1951.One was James Sund, an Army corporal whose remains will be flown Friday evening to the airport in Fargo, N.D., and receive military honors. He will be buried Tuesday in his hometown of Highlanding, Minn. The other was Ralph Carlson, an Army sergeant and tank driver who was buried last month in his hometown of Braham, Minn.The third was Army Master Sgt. Michael C. Fastner, a 31-year-old St. Paul native who died about the same time at another prison camp about 120 miles away. Fastner, a prisoner of war in both World War II and the Korean War, will be buried Friday at Fort Snelling following a funeral service at the Church of St. Agnes in St. Paul....
