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: Press Association
Jan 3, 2011
A hospital graveyard in western Austria could contain the remains of up to 220 people killed by the Nazis.
The hospital holding company said it became aware of the possibility during planning to dig up the graveyard in Hall, Tyrol province, to make way for a construction project....
Source: The Daily Mail (UK)
Jan 3, 2011
The eldest son of Hitler‘s deputy Martin Bormann has been accused of sexually abusing a young boy when he was a priest 50 years ago.
Martin Bormann Jr., 80, who has struggled to come to terms with the murderous past of his father all his life, is said to be 'destroyed' by the allegations.
A 63-year-old man said his mistreatment at the hands of Bormann took place in the early 60s when he was a Catholic priest teaching at the Hearts of Jesus monastery in the Austrian city
Source: Newsweek
Jan 3, 2011
In early November a building where athletes once trained to fight collapsed into a pile of rubble. Since then, structures have been tumbling down at an astonishing rate. Huge sections of a garden wall around the House of the Moralist fell on two separate occasions. In early December an ancient shop and the House of the Small Lupanare were reduced to heaps of mortar. Shelves regularly fall from the moldings, and a wooden scaffolding put in place a half-century ago is visibly rotting. Reports in t
Source: NYT
Jan 3, 2011
Serbian prosecutors say they believe that Goran Hadzic, a former Croatian Serb rebel leader wanted for war crimes, may have tried to raise money for his life in hiding by selling a painting by Amedeo Modigliani, The Associated Press reported....
Source: NYT
Jan 3, 2011
TREMBLOIS-LÈS-CARIGNAN, France — The municipal council here on the edge of the Ardennes Forest recently voted to change a third of the village’s street names.
Tremblois has only three streets, and they are named for three French heroes of World War I: Marshals Ferdinand Foch, Joseph Joffre and Philippe Pétain.
The problem is that Marshal Pétain had a second act as head of state during World War II, when his administration in the unoccupied part of the country that was k
Source: NYT
Jan 3, 2011
JIMIJMA, Iraq — The damage done to the ruins of ancient Babylon is visible from a small hilltop near the Tower of Babel, whose biblical importance is hard to envision from what is left of it today.
Across the horizon are guard towers, concertina wire and dirt-filled barriers among the palm trees; encroaching farms and concrete houses from this village and others; and the enormous palace that Saddam Hussein built in the 1980s atop the city where Nebuchadnezzar II ruled.
Source: NYT
Jan 2, 2011
Researchers scanning the genomes of African-Americans say they see evidence of natural selection as their ancestors adapted to the harsh conditions of their new environment in America.The scientists, led by Li Jin of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai, report in the journal Genome Research that certain disease-causing variant genes became more common in African-Americans after their ancestors reached American shores — perhaps because they conferred greater, offsetting benefits. Other gene variants have become less common, the researchers say, like the gene for sickle cell hemoglobin, which in its more common single-dose form protects against malaria. The Shanghai team suggests the gene has become less common in African-Americans because malaria is much less of a threat.
Source: FoxNews
Jan 2, 2011
An ancestor to the horned dinosaur Triceratops roamed the earth millions of years before its famous descendant, making it the earliest discovered member of the family, scientists say.
The newly named species, Titanceratops, weighed in at around 15,000 pounds and had an 8-foot-long skull. The ancient dinosaur lived during the Cretaceous period, about 74 million years ago in the American Southwest.
The finding, which will feature in the journal of Cretaceous Research, sug
Source: National Parks Traveler
Jan 2, 2011
We usually think of the National Park Service as being in charge of campsites, not camp sites. As part of its mandate to preserve and protect sites of historical and cultural significance, the Park Service's Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program has awarded $3,895,000 in federal funds to private nonprofit organizations; educational institutions, and; state, local, and tribal governments to preserve and provide interpretation resources to the 10 relocation camps scattered in the West.
Source: CS Monitor
Jan 2, 2011
That generation of Americans raised on “Leave It to Beaver,” who came of age during the battles over racial segregation, fought in (or over) the Vietnam War, joined the Peace Corps, marched for women’s rights, and populated suburbia with their offspring are now senior citizens.
We’re talking about baby boomers here – people born between 1946 and 1964, the first of whom turned 65 on New Years Day.
OK, so it’s mainly a big deal for demographers, wonkishly charting and gra
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 2, 2011
Archaeologists have unveiled the treasures of a 2,600-year-old Celtic tomb containing a wealth of art in Germany.
An ancient hill fort at Heuneburg found the 13-by-16-foot burial chamber in an excellent state of preservation and still containing gold and amber jewellery placed there seven years before the birth of Christ.
The jewellery allowed archaeologists to pinpoint a precise date - the first time they’ve been able to do so with early Celtic remains. It also stron
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 2, 2011
Robin Hood, the archetypal English hero, may actually have been Scottish, according to new research.
Nottinghamshire is generally thought to have been the home of the outlaw who stole from the rich to give to the poor, with neighbouring counties Yorkshire and Leicestershire also claiming links.
But historical novelist Jack Whyte claims that the roots of the character forever associated with Sherwood Forest may be north of the border.
He found what he cla
Source: CNN
Jan 2, 2011
President Barack Obama signed the 9/11 health bill into law in Hawaii on Sunday, White House spokesman Bill Burton said.
Obama signed the bill during his Hawaiian vacation, with no signing ceremony held. In a statement issued later, the president said he was "honored" to sign the bill, which pays for health care for responders believed to have been sickened by pollution at the ruins of the World Trade Center in New York.
The bill made a long journey in order
Source: HistoryExtra (BBC)
Jan 1, 2011
South Sudan, currently in the news because of its secession referendum, is not the only area of Sudan with a troubled history, as David Keys investigates.
Between 2003 and 2008, in a terrible conflict and humanitarian catastrophe, the Darfur region (in the western part of the country), up to 400,000 civilians were killed, another two to three million driven from their homes and 1,000–2,000 villages razed to the ground. Last year the international criminal court in the Hague made it
Source: NYT
Jan 1, 2011
The Brooklyn Museum is preparing to return about 4,500 pre-Columbian artifacts taken from Costa Rica roughly a century ago.
Costa Rica had made no claim to the objects, which were exported in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Minor C. Keith, a railroad magnate and a founder of the United Fruit Company. And there were none of the conflicts, legal threats or philosophical debates that sometimes accompany arguments between museums and countries that claim ownership of antiquiti
Source: CNN
Jan 1, 2011
Brazil's first female president was sworn in Saturday amid cheers and tears from supporters, many of whom followed her rise from freedom fighter brutally persecuted in the 1960s to leader of her country.
Addressing the nation as president for the first time, Dilma Rousseff said she felt the historic weight of her presidency.
Rousseff, 62, replaces Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the most popular president in Brazil's recent history. Rousseff served as his chief of staff.
Source: LA Times
Dec 31, 2010
ATLANTA — Murals of slaves harvesting sugar cane on a Georgia plantation and picking and ginning cotton are coming off the walls of a state building on the order of a new agriculture commissioner.
The murals are part of a collection of eight works painted by George Beattie in 1956 depicting an idealized version of Georgia farming, from the corn grown by prehistoric American Indians to a 20th century veterinary lab. In the Deep South, the history in between includes the use of slave
Source: AOL News
Dec 31, 2010
When National Park Service rangers fired a New Year's cannon shot at this Civil War battleground to hail the arrival of 2011, they also ushered in the start of a four-year commemoration of the war's 150th anniversary.
The events include a multitude of battle re-enactments, lecture series, readings, concerts and plays that will be held on the battle fields tended to by the Park Service and in private estates from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico to New York.
But the slat
Source: BBC
Dec 31, 2010
Sri Lanka's government has decided to change the names of all state institutions still bearing the nation's former British colonial name, Ceylon.
The government wants the country's modern name to be used instead. The decision comes 39 years after the country was renamed Sri Lanka.
The change will be made as early as possible in 2011.
Reaction has been mixed to the new year's resolution that gets rid of what some see as a vestige of colonialism.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 31, 2010
Survivors of the Holocaust have warned of the first stirrings of neo-fascism in Israel following the emergence of a Right-wing campaign to cleanse Arabs from predominantly Jewish parts of the country.
Until this month, the shadowy Lehava organisation was best known for issuing an eccentric demand in March urging Bar Refaeli, an Israeli model, not to marry Leonardo DiCaprio, the American actor, because he is a gentile.
But in recent weeks it has taken on a more siniste
