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 News
Oct 15, 2010
A Damien Hirst artwork created entirely from thousands of butterfly wings has been auctioned in London for £2.2m.
I am Become Death, Shatterer of Worlds - previously owned by the city's Gagosian Gallery - had been expected to fetch between £2.5m and £3.5m.
The title of the work - Hirst's largest using butterfly wings - echoes words scientist J Robert Oppenheimer said after the first atomic bomb exploded.
Christie's sale of post-war and contemporary art cont
Source: BBC News
Oct 15, 2010
A rare sheet of 10 stamps showing film star Audrey Hepburn smoking is expected to fetch at least 400,000 euros (£350,000) at an auction next week.
The German Postal Service printed 14 million of the stamps in 2001 depicting the actress as Holly Golightly in the film Breakfast at Tiffany's.
But after Hepburn's son refused to grant copyright, all but a few sheets were destroyed.
Proceeds from the sale in Berlin next week will got to charity.
The
Source: BBC News
Oct 15, 2010
The title is important: Hitler and the German People. The first ever big exhibition in a major German museum to focus on Hitler is not just about him but about his relationship with the people.
And that, of course, makes for discomfort. After all, the people who come to the German Historical Museum in Berlin are the grandchildren and, occasionally, the children of those who participated in the poisonous relationship in the 1930s and early 40s. This is not an exhibition where the vis
Source: BBC News
Oct 15, 2010
Dutch prosecutors have recommended acquitting leading anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders on all five charges of hate speech.
They said his comments had targeted Islam, not Muslims, and he had the right to comment on social issues.
The trial will continue next week and judges may still disagree with the prosecution and convict Mr Wilders.
Prosecutors were obliged to look at the case again after an appeals court decision last year.
The trial of
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 15, 2010
A giant collaborative version of Botticelli's Birth of Venus has been created to raise awareness of breast cancer.
Everyone Is Art features the faces of 1,096 men and women from all over Europe. The number 1,096 was chosen because this is the average number of women diagnosed with breast cancer in Europe each day.
The images were all uploaded to www.morethantalk.eu, a website created as a centre of support for people affected
Source: Discovery News
Oct 14, 2010
An Italian researcher may have discovered a huge network of earthworks representing birds, snakes and other animals in Peru, according to a study published on the Cornell University physics website arXiv.
Amelia Carolina Sparavigna, assistant professor at the department of physics of Turin's Polytechnic University, used Google satellite maps and AstroFracTool, an astronomical image-processing program which she developed, to investigate over 463 square miles of land around Peru's Tit
Source: Ynet News
Oct 14, 2010
Sixty-five years have passed since the end of the Second World War, but even today it would seem that many Germans still cling to the prejudice and racism which the Nazi party identified with.
A new poll conducted by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation for Political Education, a foundation with close ties to the German Social Democratic party, has found that one in 10 Germans wants "a new Fuehrer to lead the country with an iron fist", and that every third German thinks all fo
Source: CNN
Oct 14, 2010
In Allianoi, an ancient Roman spa town near Bergama in Turkey, workers have been busy heaping sand onto the ruins.
It's the opposite of what you would normally see at a recently discovered archaeological site.
But Allianoi is being buried in preparation for flooding that will occur when the multi-million-dollar Yortanli dam, which is sponsored by Turkish State Hydraulic Works, opens.
The site dates as far back as the second century and features exquisite ar
Source: The Local (Germany)
Oct 14, 2010
A famous 1914 photo showing a young Adolf Hitler in the thick of the crowd at a First World War rally – which the Nazis later used as a propaganda picture – was probably faked, German media said Thursday.
Düsseldorf historian Gerd Krumeich has studied the picture and its history and concluded that Hitler was superimposed to lend credibility to the image of the Nazi leader as a patriot and a man of the people, daily Die Welt reported Thursday.
The photo was taken by Muni
Source: NYT
Oct 14, 2010
For more than 50 years, George Vujnovich was a mild-mannered salesman working away at his small business in Queens and living a quiet life on a quiet block in Jackson Heights. He never spoke, even to his closest friends, about his secret role organizing one of the greatest rescue missions of World War II.
“There was a strict rule in the O.S.S. and not talk about these things — they teach you to compartmentalize them and lock them away,” Mr. Vujnovich said.
The O.S.S. wa
Source: NYT
Oct 14, 2010
Cementing its decision to shift its focus from the Upper East Side to the meatpacking district, the Whitney Museum of American Art on Thursday sold the six brownstones next to its signature Marcel Breuer building on Madison Avenue as well as two town houses around the corner on 74th Street.
The transaction makes it virtually impossible for the museum to expand in the neighborhood it has called home since 1966. “This is a major step toward the realization of a long-sought-after new f
Source: AFP
Oct 14, 2010
China has shown strong interest in buying a massive haul of shipwreck treasures found off Indonesia after a final auction Thursday in Jakarta failed to attract a single bidder, a senior official said.
Like the two previous auctions held by the Maritime Affairs Ministry earlier this year, no investors paid the hefty 16-million-dollar deposit required to bid.
The auction committee's secretary at the ministry, Aris Kabul, said the Chinese government was interested in the h
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 14, 2010
History in schools is being put under threat as thousands of children are allowed to drop the subject at the age of 14 for “trivial reasons”, according to a leading academic.
Dr Sean Lang, senior lecturer in history at Anglia Ruskin University, criticised the “absolutely ludicrous” system in Britain that requires pupils to choose subject options half-way through secondary education.
He said many children were pushed into abandoning vital components of the curriculum f
Source: AP
Oct 14, 2010
— A landmark decision striking down an Indonesian book-banning law that has been used since the days of ex-dictator Suharto to clamp down on dissent was welcomed Thursday by historians, authors and rights activists.
For more than four decades, the attorney general's office could unilaterally prohibit publication or distribution of books deemed "offensive" or a "threat to public order."
A group of authors and publishers whose books were banned last ye
Source: BBC
Oct 14, 2010
The owner of a stolen World War I medal which was recovered has come forward after a police appeal.
The Military Medal, presented to non-commissioned soldiers for bravery until 1993, was awarded to an I.W. Grinter from Roath Road in Cardiff.
The battle honour was recovered with accompanying paperwork dated 2 June, 1919, revealing that Mr Grinter served with the Royal Warwickshire Regiment.
The medal was discovered following an arrest by Dyfed-Powys Police i
Source: BBC
Oct 14, 2010
The National Library of Wales has been inundated with information after an appeal about a Gwynedd man who left home to hitch-hike across the world.
Islwyn Roberts, from Llanbedr, near Harlech, left in 1958, but little was known of what became of him.
The library, which is staging a travel exhibition in Aberystwyth, said people from South America who remembered Mr Roberts had been in touch.
It has emerged he returned from his trip and died in 1993, aged 79..
Source: BBC
Oct 14, 2010
The relief at Chile's mine rescue has captured the world's imagination and underlined the dangers facing those who work underground.
One tiny south Wales community - the Aber valley in Caerphilly county - has long lived with the risks and on Thursday is coming together for a service to remember two tragedies.
More than 500 men and boys died in 1901 and 1913 at the Universal Colliery in Senghenydd.
The second explosion, on 14 October 1913, was to remain the
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 14, 2010
A rare first edition of George Orwell's bleak totalitarian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four has been found in a charity donation bin in Australia.
The 1949 British hardback was found at the bottom of pile of 200 books in the town of Wollongong, one hour's drive south of Sydney.
Its red dust cover, though slightly dog-eared, was still intact.
First editions of Nineteen Eighty-Four sell for thousands of pounds, as there was an initial print run by publishers Sec
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Oct 14, 2010
A steam-powered computer designed by the 19th century mathematician Charles Babbage could finally be built after a campaign was launched to bring his dream to life.
The Analytical Engine – conceived in 1837 – remains one of the greatest inventions that never was as Babbage died before he could see out its construction.
However, John Graham-Cumming, a programmer and science blogger, now hopes to realise Babbage’s vision by raising £400,000 to build the giant brass and i
Source: Yahoo News
Oct 14, 2010
OXFORD, Miss. – After all that, it's a bear.
It has been more than a decade since the University of Mississippi began stripping away its images of the Old South. Confederate battle flags were first to go. Next was mascot "Colonel Reb," the goateed Southern planter who cheered on the Rebels from the sidelines since 1979.
After seven years and plenty of bickering, his successor was named Thursday: "Rebel Black Bear" won 62 percent of the vote in a fina
