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 20, 2011
Serbian authorities have arrested Goran Hadzic, the last remaining fugitive war crimes suspect sought by the UN tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.Mr Hadzic, now 52, led Serb separatist forces during Croatia's 1991-1995 war.He has been charged with the murder of hundreds of Croats and other non-Serbs and is expected to be transferred to The Hague in the coming days.The arrest comes less than two months after Serbia caught former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic.Serbian President Boris Tadic confirmed Mr Hadzic's arrest at a news conference....
Source: BBC
Jul 19, 2011
A team of international experts has concluded that the former president of Chile, Salvador Allende, killed himself during the 1973 military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet.A detailed report was released two months after Mr Allende's body was exhumed as part of an inquiry into his death.Mr Allende's family has always accepted the official version.But some of his supporters suspected he had been killed by soldiers.Allende, who was 65, died in La Moneda presidential palace on 11 September 1973 as it was being bombed by air force jets and attacked by tanks...
Source: USA Today
Jul 19, 2011
So much for Hagar the Horrible, with his stay-at-home wife, Helga. Viking women may have equaled men moving to England in medieval invasions, suggests a look at ancient burials.Vikings famously invaded Eastern England around 900 A.D., notes Shane McLeod of the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Western Australia in the Early Medieval Europe journal, starting with two army invasions in the 800's, recounted in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. The Viking invaders founded their own medieval kingdom, 'the Danelaw', in Eastern England....
Source: Tampa Bay online
Jul 19, 2011
Imagine last summer's Deepwater Horizon oil spill happening in slow motion, millions of gallons of oil fouling beaches and fishing grounds over decades instead of months.That's the kind of long-term disaster federal environmental officials say could happen as thousands of World War II-era shipwrecks erode in coastal waters around the world.After nearly 70 years under the sea, those ships have reached the point where their steel fuel tanks and cargo holds could soon give way, emptying their contents into the surrounding water.One of the ships on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's watch list is the Joseph M. Cudahy, which rests in the Gulf of Mexico off southwest Florida.Three days out of Houston, the oil tanker was bound for Pennsylvania with 77,444 barrels of fuel and lubricating oil....
Source: BBC News
Jul 19, 2011
Croatia has put its former Prime Minister Ivo Sanader behind bars after his night-time extradition from Austria.He is due to be questioned this week over allegations of corruption and abuse of power.He was driven across the Croatian border in a silver Mercedes van under police escort, Reuters reported.Mr Sanader, 57, denies any wrongdoing, and says the charges are politically motivated. He was in power in 2004-09.He was arrested in Austria in December, on a Croatian arrest warrant, a day after Croatia had lifted his immunity from prosecution.There are suspicions that Mr Sanader diverted state budget money into a secret slush fund for his conservative Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ)....
Source: BBC News
Jul 19, 2011
Recent protests in Israel highlight the differences between the country's religious and secular Jewish communities.Hundreds of right-wing Jews have taken part in demonstrations outside Israel's Supreme Court over the brief detention of two prominent rabbis in the last few weeks.There were clashes with police on horseback on the nearby Jerusalem streets and several arrests were made.Rabbis Dov Lior and Yacob Yousef had endorsed a highly controversial book, the King's Torah - written by two lesser-known settler rabbis. It justifies killing non-Jews, including those not involved in violence, under certain circumstances.The fifth chapter, entitled "Murder of non-Jews in a time of war" has been widely quoted in the Israeli media. The summary states that "you can kill those who are not supporting or encouraging murder in order to save the lives of Jews"....
Source: NYT
Jul 19, 2011
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — A new autopsy has determined that President Salvador Allende of Chile killed himself with an assault rifle, Chilean officials said Tuesday, dispelling doubts that have persisted for 37 years about the exact circumstances of his death, including whether troops storming the presidential palace had murdered him.The forensic analysis, overseen by a team of Chilean and international experts, did not find any evidence that others were involved in Mr. Allende’s death, concluding that the head injuries he sustained were consistent with bullets fired from a single AK-47 assault rifle.Even as leftist supporters like Fidel Castro declared that Mr. Allende died in a gun battle on Sept. 11, 1973, the day of the coup, his family members had long found credible the original autopsy and accounts of witnesses, including palace detectives and doctors, who said he had taken his own life before the military entered the palace....
Source: NYT
Jul 19, 2011
Even as schools aim to better prepare students for a global work force, fewer than one in three American students are proficient in geography, with most eighth graders unable to explain what causes earthquakes or accurately describe the American Southwest, according to a report released Tuesday morning.Over all, high school seniors demonstrated the least proficiency on a 2010 test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the nation’s geography report card, with 20 percent found to be proficient or better, compared with 27 percent of eighth graders and 21 percent of fourth graders.The average test score for 12th graders declined to 282 (on a scale of 500) from 284 in 2001 when the test was last given. It remained essentially unchanged for eighth graders during that period, though there were gains among the lowest-performing students. Fourth graders had the largest gains, with the average score rising to 213, up five points from 2001....
Source: The Australian
Jul 19, 2011
AS the relatives of Australian casualties gather in France today for the 95th anniversary of the battle of Fromelles, a German historian has called for a re-evaluation of the common perception that the Diggers suffered a wave of atrocities at the hands of their enemies. The Battle of Fromelles has long been seen as the darkest day in Australian military history, not just because it was the highest single day of casualties in the nation's history but also because of reports of German brutality.Tom Weber, a historian at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, said the Australian perception that the enemy had behaved badly in abusing prisoners and shooting some of the wounded was an exaggeration that might have grown up as an attempt "to make sense of the enormous sacrifices that Australia suffered".Dr Weber said he formed his "more balanced view" of the tragedy at Fromelles while researching his book Hitler's First War, which discredits the Nazi leader's World War I record....
Source: Lee White at the National Coalition for History
Jul 19, 2011
Legislation has been introduced in the House of Representatives to eliminate the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), the grant-making arm of the National Archives. H.R. 2531, the “Stop Wasting Archive Grants Act of 2011,” was introduced by Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah).Chaffetz introduced a bill during the previous session of Congress to restrict the grant-making authority of the NHPRC. During an oversight hearing on the NHPRC in June 2010, Chaffetz attempted to discredit the witnesses from the historical and archival communities, and made numerous unsubstantiated claims about grants he alleged had received NHPRC funding in the past. He maintained that the NHPRC duplicates existing programs at the National Endowment for the Humanities.Last year, legislation to reauthorize the NHPRC at a $20 million level from fiscal year 2011 to fiscal year 2015, died in the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Source: WaPo
Jul 18, 2011
RICHMOND, Va. — Virginia is rolling out its custom 18-wheel Civil War HistoryMobile for the 150th anniversary commemoration of the Battle of First Manassas.The big rig contains what Virginia tourism officials call a high-tech immersive experience detailing the state’s pivotal role in the Civil War.As visitors walk through the rolling exhibit, they will experience a battlefield that is intended to convey the bewildering sense of chaos experienced by soldiers. The 18-wheeler also shares with visitors the experiences of people on the home front.The walk-through museum is the work of the Virginia Sesquicentennial of the Civil War Commission. It will make its debut Thursday at Manassas National Battlefield....
Source: BBC
Jul 18, 2011
Archaeologists believe the remains of burned oak uncovered at the site of the first Sainsbury's in the Highlands to be evidence of an ancient "rest stop".
The supermarket and a filling station are being constructed on the outskirts of Nairn, at a cost of about £20m.
Headland Archaeologists investigated the site ahead of building work.
They radiocarbon-dated the hearth to the Mesolithic period, which started as the last Ice Age ended about 12,000 years ago.
In a report published on Highland Council's Historic Environment Record site, the archaeologists said the fire appeared to have been made to provide heat and not cooking, because no food waste was found....
Source: Emory University
Jul 18, 2011
Emory University’s Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library (MARBL) has a new collecting focus: African Americans in sports. The collection brings to light the effect athletes and others in the sports world had on the civil rights movement and their struggle to be recognized for the impact of their achievements on society.Former NFL player Pellom McDaniels III, who is MARBL’s consultant curator for the collection, says many African American athletes were instrumental in the civil rights movement, including Muhammad Ali, Arthur Ashe, Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Curt Flood, and 1968 Olympic track and field medalists Tommie Smith and John Carlos. McDaniels, who earned master’s and Ph.D. degrees in American studies from Emory’s Graduate Institute of Liberal Arts, is also an author and an assistant professor of history and American studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Jul 18, 2011
The number of descendants of the first humans to leave Africa shrank to little more than 1,000 before expanding rapidly, a study has revealed.Scientists discovered the population of the ancestors of modern Asian and European people dwindled to just 1,200 who were 'actively reproducing'.They also found that African populations crashed to around 5,700 people....
Source: NYT
Jul 18, 2011
BERLIN — A court in Hungary on Monday acquitted a 97-year-old man accused of taking part in a massacre during World War II, Hungarian news reports said.The court found the man, Sandor Kepiro, not guilty of war crimes in connection with the deaths of 36 people in the northern Serbian city of Novi Sad in 1942. Mr. Kepiro had been convicted twice before of taking part in the massacre, known as the Racija, the Serbian word for raid.Mr. Kepiro had previously acknowledged to reporters that he took part as a junior police officer in rounding up people before the massacre, but denied killing anyone or giving the order to shoot victims. More than 1,200 civilians, mostly Jews but also Serbs and Roma, were killed, their bodies dumped in Danube River.
Source: Discovery News
Jul 18, 2011
If your heritage is non-African, you are part Neanderthal, according to a new study in the July issue of Molecular Biology and Evolution. Discovery News has been reporting on human/Neanderthal interbreeding for some time now, so this latest research confirms earlier findings.
Damian Labuda of the University of Montreal's Department of Pediatrics and the CHU Sainte-Justine Research Center conducted the study with his colleagues. They determined some of the human X chromosome originates from Neanderthals, but only in people of non-African heritage.
The ancestors of Neanderthals left Africa about 400,000 to 800,000 years ago. They evolved over the millennia mostly in what are now France, Spain, Germany and Russia.
Source: BBC
Jul 18, 2011
One July day in 1941 as war raged in Europe four women made history when they took to the skies in RAF fighter aircraft.
Winnie Crossley, the Hon Margaret Fairweather, Rosemary Rees and Joan Hughes made 15-minute flights in a Hawker Hurricane from Hatfield Aerodrome, in Hertfordshire.
Aged just 23 in 1941, Ms Hughes had been flying since she was 15, and held the record for the youngest person to fly solo.
They were the first of 168 women who were recruited to fly aircraft during World War II from factories to airfields as part of the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA).
A new exhibition in Maidenhead, Berkshire, is commemorating their previously unsung achievements on the 70th anniversary of the first flights, which took place on 19 July 1941....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 18, 2011
Millions of South African schoolchildren sang happy birthday to Nelson Mandela as he turned 93 on Monday, while politicians and ordinary citizens did charity work to support his call to do good.
For the third year, at the request of his charitable foundation, July 18 is observed as Mandela Day, recognised by the United Nations as a global call to volunteer for good causes for 67 minutes – representing each year of Mandela's life in active politics.
The nation's 12.5 million schoolchildren sang "Happy Birthday" before starting class on Monday, with television and radio stations urging the nation to join in the special rendition of the song, given an African twist by a local composer....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jul 18, 2011
A former Libyan foreign minister has admitted the country was involved in the Lockerbie bombing but said for the first time it was part of a wider conspiracy.
The former minister, Abdul Rahman al-Shalgham, who was ambassador to the United Nations when he defected in February, revealed a new theory about who was responsible for the explosion on board Pan-Am Flight 103 in an interview with an Arabic newspaper.
He went on to say that the compensation payment to the families he helped negotiate on behalf of the regime – while disclaiming responsibility – angered the Libyan leader, Col Muammar Gaddafi.
Source: National Parks Traveler
Jul 18, 2011
For months, beginning in mid-1864 and continuing on into the following Spring, Union troops tried again and again and again to throttle the Confederacy once and for all and end America's Civil War.From lines established near Petersburg, Virginia, and with supplies assured via a massive depot near today's Hopewell, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant embarked on a nearly 10-month siege on Petersburg with the end goal of breaking through to Richmond, the Confederate capital. It was a demoralizing time for the Confederate troops, who by February 1865 were outnumbered nearly 2-1.If nothing else, Roderick Davidson stirred the hopes of at least some of the Confederate troops defending Richmond with his Artis Avis, a flying machine he believed could save the South."I was very anxious to see that man stampede the Yankee army," noted one soldier after Mr. Davidson roamed the Rebel lines at Petersburg seeking donations to enable his "bird" to take flight....
