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: Daily Mail
Feb 28, 2011
A Canadian tourist who thought it was amusing to give a Heil Hitler! salute outside the Reichstag in Berlin has ended up behind bars.
The 30-year-old man, from Quebec, was standing on the steps of the German parliament building with his right arm raised as his girlfriend photographed him in the forbidden pose.
Police arrived within seconds, clapped him in handcuffs and took the chip card from his 29-year-old girlfriend's digital camera.
He risked being form
Source: Baxter Bulletin (Arkansas)
Feb 28, 2011
Bombs that fell from Jack's Hack and eight other B-29 bombers on Aug. 14, 1945, onto Japanese naval arsenals at Hikari are believed to have broken the back of the Japanese Navy and placed an exclamation mark after Victory In Japan Day, Aug. 15.
Niel Eskildsen, 86, of Bull Shoals and Henry Chodacki, 91, of Mountain Home put their lives on the line for each other, their country and fellow crew members on Jack's Hack, the bomber that flew 20 combat missions during World War II against
Source: CNN
Feb 28, 2011
Frank Buckles, the last U.S. World War I veteran, has died, a spokesman for his family said Sunday. He was 110.
Buckles "died peacefully in his home of natural causes" early Sunday morning, the family said in a statement sent to CNN late Sunday by spokesman David DeJonge.
Buckles marked his 110th birthday on February 1, but his family had earlier told CNN he had slowed considerably since last fall, according his daughter Susannah Buckles Flanagan, who lives at
Source: BBC News
Feb 28, 2011
Bob Dylan's former girlfriend Suze Rotolo, the inspiration for some of the singer's love songs, has died at 67.
Rotolo also appeared with Dylan on the iconic cover of his 1963 breakthrough LP The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.
She inspired such songs as Don't Think Twice, It's All Right, Boots of Spanish Leather and Tomorrow Is a Long Time.
Her friend and Village Voice critic Jim Hoberman wrote that she died in her New York apartment "and the arms of her husb
Source: Guardian (UK)
Feb 27, 2011
The archaeologist stares down into the enormous hole that edges up to the back of Rome's rugby stadium and gestures helplessly. "Make no mistake, this Roman necropolis we have found stretches right under the pitch."
Marina Piranomonte is talking about the Stadio Flaminio, after seeing how the "City of the Dead" she has dug up behind Gate 7 has fared under the winter rains. With 23 funeral inscriptions, dozens of bronze coins, oil lamps and more than 1,000 ceramic
Source: Guardian (UK)
Feb 27, 2011
In Utah, women used to marry young. In particular they married Brigham Young, leader of the Mormon Church. The religious leader had 55 wives by whom he had 56 children before he died, aged 76, in 1877. His followers had similar polygamous marriages.
But scientists have now uncovered an odd fact about 19th-century Mormons: the more women in a household, the lower the average birthrate. In other words, the more sister-wives a Mormon woman had, the fewer children she was likely to prod
Source: BBC News
Feb 27, 2011
A 14th Century moat which was covered with rubbish in the 1920s is being excavated at Fulham Palace.
The work is part of an £8m improvement programme to the palace and adjoining Bishops Park.
The first known reference to the moat dates back to 1392, although some historians believe it may date back to the Iron Age.
Archaeological consultant Phil Emery said it was important to preserve the moat for future generations....
Source: University of South Carolina
Feb 27, 2011
For more than a century, archaeologists have believed that ancient Mesopotamian cities – places like Uruk and Ur – were born along the banks of the great rivers of the Middle East and depended mainly on irrigation of surrounding deserts for their survival.
Dr. Jennifer Pournelle, a research assistant professor in the School of the Environment at the University of South Carolina, has a different theory. She believes that the great cities of southern Iraq grew and thrived in vast lowl
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 27, 2011
A tourist who thought it was amusing to have himself photographed outside the Reichstag in Berlin giving the Heil Hitler! salute has been arrested.
The 30-year-old Canadian was standing on the steps of the German parliament building with his right arm raised as his girlfriend, 29, photographed him in the forbidden pose.
Police arrived within seconds, handcuffed him and took the memory card of the camera.
He risked being formally charged with making a forbi
Source: Fox 40 (Sacramento)
Feb 27, 2011
A group of people looking to wipe a racial epithet off of headstones in the Negro Hill section of the Mormon Island Relocation Cemetery met Sunday afternoon to come up with a game plan.
The "N" word has been on 36 headstones in the El Dorado Hills cemetery since 1954 when the federal government relocated the tombstones to create Folsom Dam and Folsom Lake.
The question now plaguing the process to change the headstones is: who's in charge? The cemetary straddle
Source: Newsweek
Feb 27, 2011
To the casual observer, the visiting Europeans at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial in the hills above Jerusalem, looked like any other foreign delegation. In the Garden of the Righteous Among Nations, where Gentiles who protected Jews are honored, they laid a wreath and posed for a photo before signing the visitors’ book with the solemn promise: “We will want to make sure that ‘never again’ really means never again.”
But these were no ordinary travelers with Zionist sympathie
Source: Reuters
Feb 27, 2011
Libyans appear determined to safeguard their rich cultural heritage during the popular unrest against leader Muammar Gaddafi, protecting it from the looting seen in neighboring Egypt's revolution just weeks ago.
Conquered by most of the civilizations that held sway over the Mediterranean, Libya's rich cultural heritage includes Leptis Magna, a prominent coastal city of the Roman empire, whose ruins are some 130 km (80 miles) east of Tripoli.
The birthplace of emperor Se
Source: BBC
Feb 27, 2011
Exactly 22 years after violent clashes between police and protesters killed hundreds of people in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, some of the victims have been reburied in a special monument in the city's biggest cemetery.
The bloody clashes in February 1989 became known as the Caracazo - literally the big one in Caracas - as security forces loyal to the then president Carlos Andres Perez cracked down on protesters demonstrating over price rises.
Official figures put t
Source: Washington Post
Feb 27, 2011
Arnost Lustig, a Czech-born fiction writer who drew on his experience as the survivor of three concentration camps to create unsentimental portrayals of life during the Holocaust, died Feb. 26 of cancer in Prague. He was 84.
Mr. Lustig, a retired professor of literature at American University, had written more than a dozen novels and short story collections since the late 1950s. He won acclaim for his finely rendered portraits of people who confront terrible choices - and manage to
Source: BBC News
Feb 27, 2011
Turkey's first Islamist Prime Minister, Necmettin Erbakan, has died at the age of 84, one of his aides has said.
Mr Erbakan served only a year as prime minister before he was forced to stand down in 1997 by Turkey's staunchly secular military.
His Islamist Welfare Party was banned in 1998, while Mr Erbakan was barred from politics for five years for violating the constitution.
The governing AK Party, which has Islamist roots, grew out of Welfare.
Source: Guardian (UK)
Feb 27, 2011
Britain is coming under increasing pressure to provide Ukraine with an extra €50m (£43m) to construct a new contamination shield over the top of the stricken Chernobyl nuclear plant before the old one collapses.
Officials from the European commission said governments around the world were being urged to find €750m to help build a more sophisticated roof over the burnt-out reactor and storage for 200 tonnes of highly radioactive fuel.
Jean-Paul Joulia, from the commissio
Source: NYT
Feb 27, 2011
At some point, Thomas Jefferson realized, you just can’t do business with pirates any more.
For years, the infant American government, along with many others, had accepted the humiliating practice of paying tribute — essentially mob-style protection fees — to a handful of rulers in the Barbary states so that American ships crossing the Mediterranean would not get hijacked. But in 1801, Tripoli’s pasha, Yusuf Karamanli, tried to jack up his prices. Jefferson said no. And when the st
Source: NYT
Feb 27, 2011
...The politicization of science isn’t particularly new; the Bush administration was famous for pressuring government agencies to bring their vision of reality in line with White House imperatives. In response to this, and with a renewed culture war over the very nature of scientific reality clearly brewing, the Obama administration tried to initiate a pre-emptive strike earlier this winter, issuing a set of “scientific integrity” guidelines aimed at keeping the work of government scientists fre
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
Feb 27, 2011
A treasure trove of World War I photographs of soldiers relaxing away from the front has been found in France, Ross Coulthart reveals.
Thousands of photographs of Australian Diggers and other allied soldiers taken during World War I have been discovered in France, in a find hailed as "wonderful and thrilling" by military historians.
More than 3000 candid and often delightfully informal pictures of Australian, British, Canadian, US and other allied troops hav
Source: Republica
Feb 26, 2011
KATHMANDU, Feb 26: Arduous archaeological research in upper Mustang has uncovered astonishing facts about a previously unknown Himalayan cave culture, said the Department of Archaeology (DOA).
The research involving highly skilled archaeologists and other experts who rummaged through remote cave complexes for five years has come up with the remains of an ancient cave people, their arts and manuscripts, providing a new look into ancient Himalayan civilization.
According
