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: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 16, 2010
Stalin-era repressions, including the Gulag camp system and the deportation of entire ethnic groups were justified according to a new history textbook published in Russia, which critics claim is anti-Semitic.
"A History of Russia, 1917-2009," written by two Moscow State University academics, Alexander Barsenkov and Alexander Vdovin, attempts to justify forced collectivisation and the mass arrests and executions of the 1930s.
Supporters say the book is filled
Source: National Parks Traveler
Sep 16, 2010
A Hollywood writer would love this plot…but it's true. The "largest, most advanced aircraft of its day," modified for a secret research mission, takes off for a flight over the desert. Painted on its nose are the words, "Cosmic Ray Research." The plane ends up at the bottom of one of the largest man-made lakes in the world, Lake Mead, where the wreck becomes a prized find for underwater archeologists.
The plane was a B-29 Superfortress, one of the last built near
Source: Spiegel Online
Sep 16, 2010
Until his death in 2005, Simon Wiesenthal was the world's best-known Nazi hunter. But a new biography finds fault with the way he pursued his quarry and asks whether his "soaring ego" and "tendency to fantasize" actually got in the way of his mission.
The Austrian police were searching for Adolf Eichmann. He was rumored to be hiding in a house at Fischerndorf 8 in the central Alpine village of Altaussee.
But the officers accidentally knocked on the w
Source: Daily Show (UK)
Sep 16, 2010
France has responded furiously to European Union criticism which linked its treatment of gipsies to the Nazi era.
President Nicolas Sarkozy’s office chose strong diplomatic language to denounce European Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding’s claim that France had broken EU law and should face legal action.
Up to 1,000 Roma gypsies have been deported from France in recent weeks, mostly to Romania and Bulgaria. Critics say the expulsions are racially motivated....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 16, 2010
Mexico is celebrating 200 years of independence as authorities attempt to stem the wave of violent crime gripping the country.
On its 200th birthday, the Central American nation wanted its citizens - and the world - to forget its vicious drug war and remember the country's epic history, music, whimsical folk art and continuing crusade for wider prosperity and democracy....
Source: Hurriyet (Turkey)
Sep 16, 2010
Ancient bodies believed to be 8,500 years old have been unearthed at a burial mound in the Akçalar area of the Marmara province of Bursa.
The five bodies, reportedly belonging to two adults and three children aged between 3 and 5, were found at the Aktopraklık mound.
“Their arms were tied behind their backs, indicating that they may have been killed or sacrificed,” said Associate Professor Necmi Karul, head of the prehistory department at Istanbul University’s
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Sep 16, 2010
Four senior Khmer Rouge leaders have been indicted for their pivotal role in deaths of 1.7 million Cambodians in the "killing fields" during the Maoist regime's four-year reign of terror three decades ago.
The UN-backed genocide tribunal said the aging quartet would face charges including war crimes and crimes against humanity in a trial likely to open by the middle of next year.
The long-awaited trial will put in the dock the regime's chief ideologue known as
Source: Slate
Sep 16, 2010
Last month, former Republican National Committee chairman Kenneth Mehlman came out of the closet, saying he'd taken 43 years to get comfortable with this part of himself. "Encouraging adults who love each other and who want to make a lifelong commitment to each other to get married" is consistent with GOP policy, he added. In a better world, conservatives would see the light, beg for forgiveness, and declare that gay-baiting was no longer a legitimate strategy for either party. But the
Source: WaPo
Sep 16, 2010
The woman cradled Lanier W. Phillips's head in her arm as if he were a baby, gently feeding the shipwrecked sailor hot soup she had brewed to help save his life. "Swallow," she said gently. "Swallow."
Phillips could scarcely believe what was happening: a white woman caring for a black man as if he were her son. Back home in Georgia, he thought, she could have been run out of town, and he could easily have been lynched.
But Phillips wasn't in Georgia
Source: Dallas Morning News
Sep 15, 2010
AUSTIN – Just when it appeared the State Board of Education was done with the culture wars, the panel is about to wade into the issue of what students should learn about Islam.
The board will consider a resolution next week that would warn publishers not to push a pro-Islamic, anti-Christian viewpoint in world history textbooks.
Members of the board's social conservative bloc asked for the resolution after an unsuccessful candidate for a board seat called on the pane
Source: National Trust for Historic Preservation
Sep 15, 2010
Quarters One, the U.S. government's second-largest house after the White House, is officially back in the Army's care. Repairs began this month on the 51-room mansion, located on an island in the Mississippi River between Davenport, Iowa, and Rock Island, Ill.
Built in 1871 on Rock Island Arsenal, the four-story Italianate house was designed by General Thomas Rodman.
Every Arsenal commander since Rodman resided in the Quarters until 2008, when Washington, D.C.-based Fed
Source: The State (SC)
Sep 15, 2010
Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell says a picture circulating on the Internet of him dressed in a Civil War-era military uniform alongside two African-Americans outfitted in period costumes was an innocent moment among friends — nothing more.
The picture, taken during a Republican women’s conference in Charleston last week, however, has managed to capture national media attention. Some think the image callously evokes the state’s slave-holding past.
McConnell, a Charles
Source: AP
Sep 15, 2010
Egypt's antiquities chief says archaeologists have unearthed a 2,800-year-old burial chamber that boasts brightly painted astrological scenes at a site believed to house the tombs of ancient Egyptian nobles.
Zahi Hawass says in a Wednesday statement the chamber belonged to a priest named Karakhamun, whose tomb was first discovered in the 19th century but soon after disappeared under the desert sands. He says an Egyptian-American team stumbled on the burial chamber while doing restor
Source: Fox News
Sep 15, 2010
A handful of Roman Catholic convents are contradicting the decades-long slide in the number of women choosing to devote their lives to the sisterhood. And at least two of them are doing it by sticking to tradition, including the wearing of habits.
The number of nuns in the U.S. has dropped dramatically over the last several decades as more women in religious life approach retirement
and are not replaced with younger sisters.
But the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecil
Source: NYT
Sep 15, 2010
Its discovery was nearly as strange as its disappearance.
For more than a month, the whereabouts of “Portrait of a Girl,” a painting by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot of a young girl with a lace collar, a teal skirt and mournful eyes, has been shrouded in intrigue....
Then, on Sunday, the artwork suddenly materialized — under the arm of a Fifth Avenue doorman, who took it to a police station house on the Upper East Side.
The doorman, Franklin Puentes, told the
Source: NYT
Sep 15, 2010
The latest controversy over Mr. Obama’s identity involves — once again — Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, who this week accused Mr. Obama, whose father was a Kenyan economist and spoke out against the occupying force in his country, of exhibiting “Kenyan, anticolonial behavior.” Mr. Gingrich was shorthanding an essay in Forbes by the conservative theorist Dinesh D’Souza, who, in exploring Mr. Obama’s attitudes toward business, settled on the theory that Mr. Obama was taking directions fr
Source: BBC News
Sep 15, 2010
A tank which fought with Nottinghamshire's Sherwood Rangers in one of the biggest battles of the Second World War has been restored.
The 30-tonne Sherman tank named Robin Hood was used during 1944's Operation Market Garden.
It will go on display at the Dutch National Liberation Museum for the battle's 66th anniversary in September.
Seven Sherwood Rangers veterans, all over 80, plan to travel to the Netherlands to see the tank.
Martin Kerry from the Sherwoo
Source: Fox News
Sep 15, 2010
"This is the place where I wish I had grown up cause this is my heritage," said Wilson Moran, as he walked through the national wildlife refuge that was once his parents' neighborhood.
Moran wants the federal government to give back land it seized from his parents just before he was born in 1942. They were part of Harris Neck, a small community founded by former slaves, making their livings by harvesting shellfish from Georgia's coastal wetlands.
"This wa
Source: WCTI 12
Sep 15, 2010
A newly discovered map has opened up a mystery about the Battle of New Bern Historical Site. It's the best map of the battlefield anyone at the Historical Society has ever seen. It shows previously unknown brick buildings and two locations where Confederate soldiers were buried.
The Historical Society never knew about one of the burial sites. It's not clear if the remains of any soldiers are still there. Union forces buried the Confederates after the battle.
NewsChannel
Source: Guardian (UK)
Sep 15, 2010
The murderous reputation of one of Britain's best-known Roman towns has been raised by the discovery of a child's hastily buried skeleton under a barrack room floor.
Archaeologists at Vindolanda fort near Hadrian's Wall are preparing for a repeat of a celebrated coroner's inquest in the 1930s that concluded two other corpses unearthed near the site were "victims of murder by persons unknown shortly before 367AD".
The latest discovery at the frontier settlement
