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: Guardian (UK)
Dec 3, 2010
The solid, 16th-century Basque farmhouse known as Caserío Zabalaga sits among green fields and ancient oaks on farmland between the towns of Hernani and Lasarte, a tranquil refuge from the busy industrial fringe of Spain's northern Guipuzcoa province.
Chillida-Leku, as the farm is now called, houses the museum of one of Spain's most famous and beloved 20th-century artists – the sculptor Eduardo Chillida, a man whose place in art resembles that of Britain's Henry Moore.
Source: Guardian (UK)
Dec 3, 2010
As director-general of the heritage department of Italy's culture ministry, Roberto Cecchi must choose his words carefully. The latest cuts in the budget approved last month were not so much unfair, he ventures, as "insufficiently considered".
Unlike Spain, Italy is cutting from an extraordinarily low existing level of support for its heritage. A country sprinkled with aqueducts and amphitheatres, medieval piazzas and renaissance palazzos devotes far less of its budget to
Source: Guardian (UK)
Dec 3, 2010
The 12th-century arched doorway is about all that remains intact of the church of Saint Peter at Becerril del Campo, in the central Spanish province of Palencia.
The doors themselves are gone. The roof has largely disappeared. Water floods in and the inside is full of rubbish. "Deterioration of its nave increases daily, virtually all the baroque plasterwork and vaults having already been lost," reports the Hispania Nostra conservation group....
Traditionally,
Source: ABC News
Dec 3, 2010
Israeli conductor Daniel Barenboim says the perception of Richard Wagner is unjustly influenced by the fact he was Hitler's favorite composer, infuriating a Holocaust survivors group which blasted the argument as a "moral failure."
"We need one day to liberate Wagner of all this weight," Barenboim told reporters Friday. He is conducting Wagner's "Die Walkuere" for the gala premiere of La Scala's season in Milan next week.
"I think a bi
Source: Press Release
Dec 3, 2010
WASHINGTON - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director John Morton presented 21 historical documents to the Ambassador Sergey I. Kislyak of the Russian Federation to the United States, in a ceremony at the Russian Embassy in the nation's capital. The documents, many of them signed by czars and czarinas, emperors and empresses, ranged from the 18th to the 20th century and were reported stolen from national archives in Moscow and St. Petersburg between 1994 and 2002.I
Source: BBC Magazine
Dec 3, 2010
During World War II, the Nazis fell for an audacious British plot to pass off a dead tramp as an officer carrying secret documents. How - and are such tactics still in use today?
Rat poison does not furnish the desperate with an easy death. But this was how Glyndwr Michael, jobless and homeless in the winter of 1943, ended his life.
Found in an abandoned warehouse in King's Cross, London, one cold January night, his death certificate noted the cause of death as "ph
Source: CNN
Dec 3, 2010
A "suspect" discovery at Arlington National Cemetery has led to a criminal investigation into how eight sets of human remains ended up in a single grave at America's most famous military burial ground.
It is the first criminal investigation after a series of recent revelations of misplaced human remains at Arlington.
The cemetery was tipped off this fall about a possible problem involving urns found in a pile of dirt several years ago by a contractor working a
Source: BBC
Dec 3, 2010
Lisburn City Council are seeking families of fallen soldiers for a new plaque at the war memorial in the city.
In a newspaper advert the council said they are "compiling a list of those citizens of the city "not already recorded who fell in the First and Second World Wars, also those who fell in the Korean, Falklands, Gulf, Iraq and Afghnaistan Wars".
The names will be engraved on a plaque on the existing memorial on Castle Street.
Councillor
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 3, 2010
Norway's Supreme Court on Friday cancelled the sentencing for war crimes of a Bosnian-born man, saying the country's war crimes law could not be applied retroactively.
Mirsad Repak, 44 and a former member of the Croatian HOS military, has lived in Norway since 1993 and became a citizen in 2001.
He was sentenced in December 2008 to five years in jail for his 1992 crimes against Serbs and ordered to pay damages to his victims, but an appeals court reduced the sentence b
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 3, 2010
Charles Manson, the former cult leader, was among thousands of prisoners in California who have been found with mobile phones in their prison cells.
Manson, 76, who orchestrated a murderous spree by his followers four decades ago, was able to make phone calls and send text messages from behind bars.
After the phone was discovered under his mattress it was established that he had contacted people in California, New Jersey, Florida and Canada.
Manson is said
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 3, 2010
The US army said on Friday it had launched a criminal investigation after it found eight sets of cremated remains in the grave of an "unknown" soldier at Arlington National Cemetery.
The botched burial is the latest in a series of mishaps at the US military cemetery, which sees four million visitors a year and is the resting place of president John F. Kennedy, a dozen Supreme Court justices, other famous Americans and casualties of all US wars.
The Army Nati
Source: CNN
Dec 3, 2010
A near two-century-old copy of "The Star Spangled Banner" sold for $506,500 Friday at Christie's auction house in Manhattan.
The famed sheet music is one of 11 known first edition copies of Francis Scott Key's patriotic tune, said to have been written after he witnessed the British naval bombardment of Fort McHenry during the War of 1812.
The iconic manuscript was sold to a telephone bidder, who was not immediately named.
Key, then a young lawyer
Source: Independent (UK)
Dec 2, 2010
Sweden's royal family has been rocked by a new scandal which has exposed the hidden Nazi past of the Queen's father, only weeks after its reputation was shattered by lurid disclosures about the king's secret sex life.
The latest revelations concern Walther Sommerlath, the late father of Sweden's German-born Queen Silvia. He has been unmasked by an investigative television documentary as a Nazi party member who grew rich during the Second World War running an armaments factory that h
Source: Fox News
Dec 2, 2010
WASHINGTON -- The Army has opened a criminal investigation after revelations that eight sets of cremated remains were buried under a single headstone labeled "unknown" at Arlington National Cemetery.
The discovery was a result of an investigation of suspicious practices following a series of stories on misplaced graves by WTOP radio this summer, according to Army spokesman Gary Tallman.
It also follows a critical report by the Army's Inspector General that fou
Source: NYT
Dec 2, 2010
When the Oakland Museum of California was founded in 1969 as a “museum for the people,” there was no question about who would pay for it. The museum’s land was owned by the city, its building was operated by the city and its collection belonged to the city. Admission, now $12, was free.
But the fiscal crisis affecting governments across California is changing the way museums operate. The Oakland museum recently announced that it would seek to radically alter its relationship with Oa
Source: BBC
Dec 2, 2010
After a series of wall collapses at Italy's ancient city of Pompeii, a team from UN cultural organisation Unesco has arrived to examine the site.
One wall gave way on Tuesday and two more the next day, three weeks after the House of Gladiators crumbled.
Officials blamed Wednesday's wall collapses on heavy rain but Unesco says concerns have been raised about Pompeii's state of preservation.
The UN team will assess the World Heritage site for further problems
Source: BBC
Dec 2, 2010
Archaeologists have recovered remains from at least eight people after initial excavation at a Neolithic tomb site in Orkney discovered in October.
A narrow, stone-lined passageway leads to five chambers, two of which have been part-excavated so far.
Fragments of skull and hipbone have been unearthed, some carefully placed in gaps in the stones, suggesting the 5,000-year-old site is undisturbed.
The bones point to a range of ages at death including a child
Source: BBC
Dec 2, 2010
The man who invented the neutron bomb, Samuel Cohen, has died in California, at the age of 89.
The neutron bomb was a small tactical nuclear weapon, which produced lethal tiny particles to kill enemy soldiers while leaving buildings largely undamaged.
Mr Cohen called it "the most sane weapon ever devised".
It was developed in the US in the 80s, but was soon condemned for making nuclear warfare more likely.
Only a small number of ne
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 2, 2010
A full-size Noah's Ark is to be built in Kentucky, as part of a £100m creationism amusement park.
The planned complex is also expected to feature a walled city, a replica of the Tower of Babel and a recreation of a first-century Middle Eastern village.
There will also be a 500-capacity theatre, an aviary, and a "journey through biblical history" section.
The park is expected to open in 2014 and draw 1.6 million visitors a year....
Source: CNN
Dec 2, 2010
A 19th-century artwork by French artist Edgar Degas will be returned to France nearly four decades after it was stolen, officials said Thursday.
The painting, "Blanchisseuses souffrant des dent" ("Laundry Women with Toothache,") was taken in 1973 from the Malraux Museum in Le Havre, in Normandy, France, according to a statement from the US District Attorney in Eastern New York.
It had been on loan from the French government, which considers the paint
