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: Slovak Spectator
Jan 31, 2011
The former dictator of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, lost his honorary citizenship of Nová Baňa in Banská Bystrica region after 64 years, as the newly-elected municipal council took the decision to withdraw the honorary citizenship from Stalin at its first meeting, the TASR newswire wrote....
Source: Polskie Radio
Jan 31, 2011
Veteran Polish film director Feliks Falk has said that many women were punished unjustly for charges of collaboration with Nazi Germans during World War II.
Falk discussed the theme in Kielce on Saturday at a special screening of his latest film, Joanna. The movie won two of the top awards at last year's Polish Film Festival in Gdynia....
Source: Russia IC
Jan 31, 2011
Monument to Victims of Holocaust in Palmniken of 1945 was unveiled in Yantarny Settlement on the Kaliningrad coast of Baltic Sea yesterday.
It was here, on ice and in ice-cold water of Baltic Sea, on the outskirts of Settlement Palmniken, where the Nazi shot down several thousand people - Jewish prisoners of concentration camps and ghettos - on the night of February, 1st, 1945....
Source: AP
Jan 31, 2011
PARIS — A delegation of envoys — including many from Muslim countries — plans to visit the former Nazi extermination camp at Auschwitz on Tuesday in a trip billed as the first of its kind.
With U.N. backing, the trip has been organized by The Aladdin Project — a group formed in 2009 to raise awareness about the Holocaust and counter racism, Islamophobia and intolerance....
Source: Boston Unversity
Jan 31, 2011
...Boston’s infamous Big Dig construction project, which rerouted the city’s central artery, unearthed a trove of archaeological treasures in a 19th-century brothel’s outhouse. Buried there were items of importance to the women who made their living outside the margins of polite society: hairbrushes, medicines, and vaginal syringes used for self-medicating and cleaning.
Now, a team of archaeology students from BU is studying these artifacts to find out what they reveal about how th
Source: Physorg
Jan 31, 2011
It looked to be a routine excavation of what was thought to be a burial mound. But beneath the mound, archaeologists from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s Museum of Natural History and Archaeology found something more: unusual Bronze Age petroglyphs. 

"We believe these are very special in a Norwegian context," says museum researcher and project manager Anne Haug.
The excavation in Stjordal, just north of Trondheim, was necessitated
Source: BBC
Jan 31, 2011
Three of the most senior surviving leaders of the Khmer Rouge have appeared in court in Cambodia.
Nuon Chea, Ieng Thirith and Khieu Samphan attended a hearing at the UN-backed war crimes tribunal to request release from pre-trial detention.
They and another senior figure face charges of genocide for their roles in the deaths of about two million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979.
The elderly defendants have all been in detention since 2007....
Source: BBC
Jan 31, 2011
The body which runs Glasgow's museums and art galleries has mislaid a number of exhibits which were donated to the city's transport collection.
Glasgow Life said it was trying to trace part of a tram which had been donated by an enthusiast in 1975.
Other items which staff are attempting to find include tickets, time boards and film footage.
Last week, Glasgow Life admitted more than 80 paintings had been mislaid or lost from its collection.
The
Source: BBC
Jan 31, 2011
Families of people killed on Bloody Sunday are to seek the prosecution of soldiers responsible for the deaths.
Thirteen people died when British paratroopers opened fire on a civil rights march in Londonderry in January 1972. A fourteenth died later.
The Saville Report, published last year, found that the dead and injured were innocent.
The 39th and final march took place in Derry on Sunday.
A number of options are now being considered to mark
Source: AP
Jan 31, 2011
A Washington businessman is loaning the first U.S. map printed in North America to the Library of Congress after buying it for $1.8 million.
The library announced Monday that David Rubenstein bought the 1784 map at auction in December. It had been held by the New Jersey Historical Society since 1862.
The map by Abel Buell is considered the best preserved of the few copies that still exist. It is the first map copyrighted in the United States and was published just six
Source: CNN
Jan 31, 2011
Former South African president and anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela is "responding to medication and treatment," but doctors are concerned about the number of people visiting him, the nation's acting president said in a statement Monday.
Mandela, 92, was discharged from a Johannesburg hospital on Friday after treatment for an acute respiratory infection, South Africa's surgeon general, Veejay Ramlakan, said.
The team looking after Mandela, headed by Ramlakan
Source: CNN
Jan 31, 2011
Myanmar convened its first parliament in more than two decades on Monday in the capital, Naypyidaw.
Members are expected to vote for chairman and vice chairman during the session.
November's elections, which were also the first in 20 years, drew fire from critics, who said the voting was aimed at creating a facade of democracy.
The regime refused to allow international monitors to oversee the elections and would not allow international journalists to cover
Source: WSJ
Jan 31, 2011
KENNESAW, Ga.—When Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman arrived here in June 1864, he wrote to his superiors, "The whole country is one vast fort."
Gen. Sherman and his 100,000 men encountered 65,000 Confederates dug in along 12 miles of earthworks at Kennesaw Mountain. After fierce fighting, the rebels retreated to nearby Atlanta. Several more battles ensued before Union forces took the city, dealing a crippling blow to the South.
The detritus of war—bullets, unifor
Source: WaPo
Jan 31, 2011
Archaeologists expressed deep concern on Sunday that many of Egypt's historical treasures were threatened by looters after the political uprising, while Egypt's top antiquities official said that all 24 national museums are now under the protection of the Army and that damage to the main Cairo museum housing thousands of priceless artifacts appears limited.
Officials in Egypt and American Egyptologists said they were worried, however, about reports of ongoing looting at Saqqara, an
Source: The Independent (UK)
Jan 31, 2011
Penny Feiwel was the last of the British women who served as volunteers on the side of the Spanish Republic during the civil war of 1936-39.
She was one of about 75 women from Britain who joined the International Brigades following the military coup launched by Francisco Franco and other generals with backing from Hitler and Mussolini. Like Feiwel, known in Spain by her maiden name of Phelps, most of them were nurses and worked in makeshift frontline hospitals in conditions of great
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 31, 2011
Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, has likened the values of the whistle-blowing website to those of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America.
In a CBS interview with 60 Minutes aired on Sunday night Mr Assange, who is currently under US criminal investigation over the leaking of hundreds of thousands of secret military reports and diplomatic cables, also denied that he was motivated by a dislike of America.
“Our founding values are those of the US r
Source: BBC News
Jan 31, 2011
Composer John Barry, famous for his work on Born Free, Out of Africa and the James Bond films, has died in New York of a heart attack aged 77.
Born John Barry Prendergast in 1933, the York-born musician first found fame as leader of the John Barry Seven.
His arrangement of Monty Norman's James Bond theme led to him composing scores for 11 films in the series, among them Goldfinger and You Only Live Twice.
His work saw him win five Oscars, while he received
Source: Discovery News
Jan 30, 2011
Egyptians are bravely defending their cultural heritage, according to a statement from Ismail Serageldin, librarian of Alexandria and director of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.
“The young people organized themselves into groups that directed traffic, protected neighborhoods and guarded public buildings of value such as the Egyptian Museum and the Library of Alexandria,” he said.
“The library is safe thanks to Egypt’s youth, whether they be the staff of the Library or the
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 30, 2011
It’s a masterpiece of design but, says Hugh Aldersey-Williams, the familiar grid of elements has ruined many a chemistry lesson.
All children have posters on their bedroom walls – favourite bands, favourite teams, cars, animals. Not me. I had the periodic table of the elements. In fact, I went one better. My periodic table was a 3D affair with little cubicles for actual specimens of the chemical elements themselves, which I began to collect. I found quite a few around the house. Cop
Source: Ocala.com (Florida)
Jan 30, 2011
Sixty-six years ago, during World War II, Everett Harris saw something he only spoke of sparingly to family members and a few close friends. EV, as he is known around the Summerfield retirement community where he lives, thought it might be time, at age 89, to reveal his experience without reprisal.
Calling it "The Mystery Spheres," Harris composed a three-page account of that experience. Part of the account reads, "... another pilot and I were flying in close formatio
