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: Hollywood Reporter
Dec 2, 2010
Angelina Jolie is defending her directorial debut against a group of Bosnian women that called her "ignorant."
The Women Victims of War -- who faced sexual violence during the 1990s conflict-- wrote a letter to the United Nations refugee agency, for which Jolie is a goodwill ambassador, that read, "Angelina Jolie's ignorant attitude towards victims says enough about the scenario and gives us the right to continue having doubts about it.”...
Source: German Herald
Dec 2, 2010
SWEDEN’S royal family - recovering from revelations of the secret affair the king enjoyed with a pop singer - has been thrown into fresh turmoil over the Nazi past of the queen’s father.
Swedish TV4’s investigative programme Kalla fakta has broadcast the first of a two-part documentary detailing how Queen Silvia‘s late father grew rich producing armaments in a factory stolen from the Jews.
When she married in 1976 the Queen’s German father Walter Sommerlath denied he ha
Source: Reuters
Dec 2, 2010
LONDON (Reuters Life!) – Archaeologists believe they have found evidence of the first use of firearms on a British battlefield after fragments of shattered guns were unearthed on a site that saw one of the bloodiest battles ever fought on English soil.
The bronze barrel fragments and a very early lead shot were discovered by a metal detectorist working closely with a team that has been trying to unlock the secrets of the 1461 battle of Towton, in Yorkshire, northern England.
Source: NY Daily News
Dec 2, 2010
A painting by Edgar Degas stolen more than three decades ago from a museum in Normandy is finally going home to France, Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch said Thursday.
The masterpiece came to the attention of law enforcement officials last month when it surfaced in Sotheby's catalog of Impressionist & Modern Day Art and was immediately pulled from the auction block....
Source: NBC Montana
Dec 1, 2010
MISSOULA, Mont. -- University of Montana archaeologists are using DNA technology to get to the bottom of the Donner Party's deadly migration to the West.
The surviving travelers are rumored to have resorted to cannibalism, but recent research has turned up no proof.
Local scholars tell me many questions still remain.
In 1846, The Donner Party dreamed of gold and land in the West.
"They were going on the trail west for manifest destiny,&quo
Source: BBC
Dec 1, 2010
Peruvian foraging societies were already chewing coca leaves 8,000 years ago, archaeological evidence has shown.
Ruins beneath house floors in the northwestern Peru showed evidence of chewed coca and calcium-rich rocks.
Such rocks would have been burned to create lime, chewed with coca to release more of its active chemicals.
Writing in the journal Antiquity, an international team said the discovery pushed back the first known coca use by at least 3,000 yea
Source: BBC
Dec 1, 2010
The former president of the Central African Republic, Jean-Bedel Bokassa, has been formally rehabilitated by presidential decree.
President Francois Bozize published the decree as part of the country's 50th anniversary of independence, returning Bokassa "all his rights".
Bokassa was overthrown in 1979 after 14 years in power and died in 1996.
He was variously accused of being a cannibal and feeding opponents to lions and crocodiles in his personal
Source: CNN.com
Dec 1, 2010
(CNN) -- An act of civil disobedience 55 years ago -- Rosa Parks' refusal to move to the back of a city bus -- made the seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama, a pivotal symbol in America's civil rights movement.
Wednesday marks the 55th anniversary of the civil disobedience on December 1, 1955.
Parks did not intend to get arrested as she made her way home from work that day. Little did the 42-year-old seamstress know that her acts would help end segregation laws in the Sout
Source: CNN.com
Dec 1, 2010
Paris, France (CNN) -- A retired French electrician who revealed that he has 271 previously unknown works by artist Pablo Picasso did not steal them, his lawyer told CNN Tuesday.
"He kept them with love," Evelyne Rees said....
Le Guennec contacted the Picasso estate by mail in January to request certification of authenticity for the works: a collection of cubist collages, drawings, lithographs, notebooks and a watercolor.
Along with the letter, Le
Source: Examiner
Dec 1, 2010
Next month on January 19, 2011, the 150th anniversary of Georgia’s secession from the Union, the Georgia Historical Society will dedicate a historical marker at the site of Georgia’s 1861 statehouse in Milledgeville.
The marker will include a statement that Georgia’s secession was directly related to the recent election of an anti-slavery Republican president, Abraham Lincoln.
The New York Times reports that Todd Groce, president of the historical society stated that:
Source: Mirror (UK)
Dec 1, 2010
Members of a charity group loyally devoted to helping their old friends met in secret last weekend.
They arrived in ones and twos at the nicely painted house with a well-tended lawn - ever on the look-out for any hidden observer who may have threatened their anonymity.
In most countries they would have passed for modest do-gooders anxious to conduct their benevolent work out of the public gaze.
But there is nothing humanitarian about this shadowy organisati
Source: AP
Dec 1, 2010
ROME – Two more walls have given way inside Pompeii's 2,000-year-old archaeological site, Italian officials said Wednesday — the second collapse at the popular tourist attraction in as many days.
Officials sought to play down the latest collapses, saying they only concerned the upper parts of two walls that had no artistic value. But the repeated damage at one of the world's most important archaeological sites is proving an embarrassment for Italy, and giving credence to accusations
Source: Global Arab Network
Nov 30, 2010
The Syrian archaeological mission working at al-Gharia village unearthed nine cemeteries and a number of findings from the Byzantine and Roman eras.
Hussein Zein-Eddin, head of the mission, said the findings included coins, pottery lanterns, bronze jewelry, beads, wood decorative pieces and a large pottery plate.
The uncovered cemeteries, however, were found to contain remains of semi-complete skeletons, as well as bones and skulls still in shape, added Zein-Eddin.
Source: News Channel 5
Nov 30, 2010
FRANKLIN, Tenn. - It's where thousands of soldiers were killed, where the civil war neared its end.
Now, the piece of land in Franklin is home to a Domino's Pizza. But it turns out money can go a long way in restoring the past.
In this case, a group of very excited people hope that a newly awarded million dollar grant will help reveal another piece of Franklin's rich history.
Consider Columbia Pike the dividing line between two eras. On one side, the Carter
Source: NYT
Nov 30, 2010
BERLIN — The past still thrusts itself back into the headlines here, occasionally as an unexploded bomb turning up somewhere. Now it has reappeared as art.
In January workers digging for a new subway station near City Hall unearthed a bronze bust of a woman, rusted, filthy and almost unrecognizable. It tumbled off the shovel of their front-loader.
Researchers learned the bust was a portrait by Edwin Scharff, a nearly forgotten German modernist, from around 1920. It seem
Source: NYT
Nov 30, 2010
Joan Rosenbaum, who has led the Jewish Museum since 1981, will step down as director at the end of June, the museum plans to announce on Wednesday.
Joan Rosenbaum
“Thirty years is a very good run,” Ms. Rosenbaum, 67, said in an interview. “The museum is well-positioned now to take on the next stage of its life.”...
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 30, 2010
A new £21m museum dedicated to Scotland's national bard is set to open its doors to the public.
The Robert Burns Birthplace Museum (RBBM) in Alloway, Ayrshire, aims to attract visitors from across the world.
The project, which has taken six year to complete, will feature more than 5,000 artefacts, including original manuscripts, written by the poet.
The official opening of the museum is due to take place on Burns Night on 25 January.
In additio
Source: BBC
Nov 30, 2010
Scotland's oldest Highland bagpipe chanter has been donated to National Museums Scotland after it was taken to Canada 205 years ago.
The instrument had belonged to composer Iain Dall MacKay, who was born at Talladale on Loch Maree in 1656 and trained as a piper on Skye.
His grandson John Roy MacKay took the chanter with him to Nova Scotia when he emigrated from Scotland in 1805.
It has been put on display at Glasgow's National Piping Centre.
Gr
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 30, 2010
A Polish fire brigade has rebelled against its commander after an alleged campaign of humiliation and abuse of power that saw him force them to greet each other with a "Heil Hitler" each morning.
Angered by their commander's behaviour the firemen from a station in the eastern city of Augustow went over his head and made a plea to regional command to have him removed.
In a letter to regional headquarters the firemen at the station listed 27 allegations of abus
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 30, 2010
An American art historian claims to have discovered the original model created by Michelangelo for one of his greatest works – the 'Pieta' statue in St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican.
The terracotta model, which is about 12 inches tall and dates from the late 1400s, was found in a mouldy box in an antiques shop by an Italian art collector.
After subjecting it to extensive analysis, Roy Doliner believes it is the long-lost model for Michelangelo's Pieta, the huge marbl
