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
Feb 3, 2011
A blue and white Chinese Ming Dynasty vase that arrived at a Dorset auction house in a cardboard box is expected to sell for more than £1m.
The 11.5in (29cm) vase is the largest ever recorded from a rare group of early Ming "moonflasks" from 1403-1424, Duke and Son auction house said.
The Dorchester-based firm said it was believed to be one of the most exciting works of art to come to light in years.
The seller, a retired Cadbury's worker aged 79
Source: CNN
Feb 3, 2011
In his upcoming memoir, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld describes a Bush administration marred by chaos and disorder during the months leading up to the Iraq War – the prime reason, he says, why the postwar transition was so poorly planned.
Rumsfeld writes a key point of disagreement revolved around how quickly to hand power to a new Iraqi government. The Pentagon, he writes, favored a quick transition to power while the more-wary State Department said a slower process
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Feb 3, 2011
[Editor's Note: Click on the link in the source line to see the slideshow.]
The eerie Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo were constructed after the death of Silvestro of Gubbio, a famous 16th century monk. Four long limestone corridors underneath the Capuchin Church hold about 8,000 mummies, lying in repose or hung from hooks by their necks and feet and wearing their best clothes.
Source: USA Today
Feb 3, 2011
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has often paid tribute to Ronald Reagan.
CAPTION
By Getty Images
The U.S. Senate will pay tribute today to Ronald Reagan, in one of many events tied to the centennial of the 40th president's birth.
Reagan would have turned 100 on Sunday, Feb. 6.
Senators will deliver speeches honoring Reagan from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. today.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has often spoken about the impact Reagan had on his political li
Source: WaPo
Feb 3, 2011
OSWIECIM, Poland -- The red brick barracks that housed starving inmates are sinking into ruin. Time has warped victims' leather shoes into strange shapes. Human hair sheared to make cloth is slowly turning to dust.
Auschwitz is crumbling - the world's most powerful and important testament to Nazi Germany's crimes falling victim to age and mass tourism. Now guardians of the memorial site are waging an urgent effort to save what they can before it is too late.
Officials l
Source: Times of India
Feb 3, 2011
WASHINGTON: An immigration judge ordered a former Ukrainian Nazi policeman's removal from United States for his participation in Nazi-sponsored acts of persecution during World War II.
John (Ivan) Kalymon of Michigan served as an armed member of the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police (UAP) in Nazi-occupied Lvov, Ukraine.
The removal orders were issued by US Immigration Judge Elizabeth Hacker in Detroit, Assistant Attorney General Lanny A Breuer of the criminal division, the dep
Source: Lee White at the National Coalition for History
Feb 2, 2011
On February 2, the Department of Education announced that it was inviting applications for new awards under the Teaching American History (TAH) Grant Program for fiscal year (FY) 2011. However, the notice in the Federal Register makes clear that the Administration’s FY 2011 budget request did not include funding for the TAH program. It states, “We are inviting applications for the TAH program to al
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Feb 2, 2011
For those who remain, the beaches of Normandy will forever be sacred, echoing with the cries of those young men cut down as they waded ashore to defend our freedom.
Now, 66 years on, the dwindling band of D-Day veterans faces a new battle against an unexpected invader.
A giant offshore windfarm within sight of the beaches where 2,500 allied soldiers died is being planned by French president Nicolas Sarkozy.
The proposal for 80 525ft high windmills off Juno
Source: Reuters
Feb 2, 2011
The pursuit of a gang of grave robbers has led to the discovery of an ancient church outside Jerusalem that may contain the burial place of the biblical prophet Zechariah, Israeli authorities said Wednesday.
The hill-top church was destroyed by an earthquake some 1,300 years ago and lay partly buried until detectives from Israel's Antiquities Authority, pursuing a gang of antiquity thieves, noticed an elaborate doorpost poking through the earth. The robbers got away -- they were cau
Source: MyFoxDetroit
Feb 2, 2011
DETROIT - The Detroit Yacht Club has been notified that it will be placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The club that's located on Belle Isle in the Detroit River said Tuesday that the designation will take effect on or around March 1, when the Department of Interior gives it the official listing.
The Detroit Yacht Club was formed in 1868 at the site of what now is Owen Park. The current clubhouse was designed by architect George Mason and built in 1922..
Source: Yahoo News
Feb 2, 2011
HIRBET MADRAS, Israel – Israeli archaeologists presented a newly uncovered 1,500-year-old church in the Judean hills on Wednesday, including an unusually well-preserved mosaic floor with images of lions, foxes, fish and peacocks.
The Byzantine church located southwest of Jerusalem, excavated over the last two months, will be visible only for another week before archaeologists cover it again with soil for its own protection.
The small basilica with an exquisitely decorat
Source: Fox News
Feb 2, 2011
A federal court in Washington Wednesday heard arguments on a challenge to the Voting Rights Act, a year and a half after the Supreme Court issued an opinion many believe opened the door to undoing the landmark civil rights legislation.
In that 8-1 decision back in 2009, the justices seemed to clear the way for future challenges to the act, while avoiding ruling on the validity of its core provisions. It was originally drafted in 1965 to remedy racial discrimination in voting rules i
Source: Brisbane Times
Feb 2, 2011
Poland's culture minister said Tuesday he had asked museums at former Nazi death camps to drop their Polish .pl Internet suffix to help counter the false impression they were Polish-run.
The minister, Bogdan Zdrojewski, told Polish news agency PAP he had written to the directors of three museums in Poland asking them to use other suffixes for their websites, such as the more neutral, pan-European .eu.
The three memorial museums, run and largely financed by the Polish st
Source: The Canadian Press
Feb 2, 2011
MUNICH — A court-appointed expert said Wednesday that she can't confirm or reject the authenticity of John Demjanjuk's signature on a key piece of evidence at his trial on charges that he was a Nazi death camp guard.
Handwriting expert Beate Wuellbeck told the Munich state court that only three letters in Demjanjuk's alleged identity card were clearly recognizable and she could not verify the authenticity of the signature.
Prosecutors say the signature on the identity c
Source: WaPo
Feb 2, 2011
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- A federal appeals court has dismissed claims against the German government by heirs of an art dealer whose collection was seized by the Nazis and sold at auction during World War II....
Source: Time.com
Feb 2, 2011
Two British historians are leading an eight-day luxury tour of Nazi and Third Reich sites in Germany.
For $3,200, participants will visit key Hitler-related sites including the lakeside villa where the plans for the Holocaust were laid out, Hitler's vacation home in Berchtesgaden, Sachsenhausen concentration camp and the bunker where Hitler committed suicide.
The tour, "The Face of Evil: The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" is intended only for serious studen
Source: Orange News
Feb 2, 2011
Technically the Walmart case, which kicked around on the docket of the Orange County Circuit Court for more than a year, will go down as a no decision. The board of supervisors will maintain their approval of the special use permit (SUP) allowing Walmart to build near Routes 3 and 20 was done legally and appropriately. The Friends of the Wilderness Battlefield and individual plaintiffs will maintain it was not. When Walmart decided it would no longer pursue a store on that site during county at
Source: WaPo
Feb 2, 2011
More than four years after its publication, five disgruntled readers have filed a class-action lawsuit against President Jimmy Carter and his publisher, Simon & Schuster, alleging that his 2006 book “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid” contained “numerous false and knowingly misleading statements intended to promote the author's agenda of anti-Israel propaganda and to deceive the reading public instead of presenting accurate information as advertised.”
The five plaintiffs named in th
Source: NYT
Feb 2, 2011
...Italy significantly trails European Union counterparts on equality indicators like employment of women or women in leadership positions, and indignant women say the latest scandal highlights a troubling message: the way for a woman to get ahead in Italy is to sell her soul, if not her body, to powerful men.
“I don’t feel it’s a model that mirrors me in any way,” said Martina Priori, 25, a saleswoman in a shoe store in downtown Rome. “The real world is different.”
Get
Source: NYT
Feb 2, 2011
It's not an easy thing to mount a big exhibition of artifacts from China without any artifacts from China.
That’s the position the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology now finds itself in, as it prepares to open a major show on Saturday, “Secrets of the Silk Road,” which was organized by the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, Calif., last year and traveled from there to the Houston Museum of Natural Science.
The Penn Museum, as it is known, had adv
