Breaking News
Highlights
- Secret Nazi mission saw German U-boats land men on American soil
- Illegal immigration: What's the real cost to taxpayers?
- Dutch archive finds stock share from 1606
- Archaeologists Uncover London's Moby Dick
- Reopening History of Storied Norse Chessmen
- LA Protests Are Latest in a History of Street Battles
- This year, a political 9/11
- Genetic Scars of the Holocaust: Children Suffer Too
- Appomattox museum project to break ground this month
- Political controversy over Islam surrounds 9/11 anniversary
WEEK OF SEPTEMBER 6, 2010
Secret Nazi mission saw German U-boats land men on American soil
Joan Miro work to be displayed for first time in 50 years at Tate Modern
Critics, Proponents Spar Over 'Islamic Symbols' in Flight 93 Memorial Design
Plumber unearths WWII prisoner of war camp for 10,000 German soldiers in his back garden
The lightweight reading choices of leading Nazis who loved to pose as intellectuals
UN chief in Rwanda to discuss threatened peacekeeper pullout over UN Congo genocide report
Sinn Fein chief says he met Catholic priest involved in 1972 bombing, didn't discuss it
German journalist's fight for secret govt files on Nazi Adolf Eichmann heads back to court
Turkish exhibit displays coup-era torture instruments ahead of constitutional referendum
US reporter who met with Castro says he repeatedly criticized Ahmadinejad as anti-Semitic
Mediterranean Shipwrecks Reveal Shift to Modern Shipbuilding
Battle of Britain and Blitz spirit remembered at St Paul's service
Air Force hero's actions in Laos finally recognized after 42 years
Poems and messages from injured WW1 soldiers emerge after 92 years
Greco-Roman city becomes tourist attraction in Egyptian resort town
Ancient city threatened by dam does not actually exist, claims Turkish minister
Dresden mayor 'to lobby against building of Bomber Command memorial’
Scientists find evidence discrediting theory Amazon was virtually unlivable
Condoleezza Rice 'ordered Bush to stay out of Washington' after 9/11
Dresden mayor 'to lobby against building of Bomber Command memorial’
Rare color footage of London blitz found on eve of 70th anniversary of WWII bombing raids
Egyptian government officials to be tried in theft of Van Gogh painting
WEEK OF AUGUST 30, 2010
Former Saddam confidant says he'll likely die in prison, citing old age and long sentences
Who will define ground zero? 9 years after 9/11, tug of war over 'sacred ground' grows heated
Scientists find evidence discrediting theory Amazon was virtually unlivable
Jerome M. McCabe, survivor of Korean War's Battle of Chosin Reservoir, dies at 84
Report: Ground Zero Mosque Investor Contributed to Designated Terror Group
Fidel Castro dons military duds for 1st time since stepping down; possible sign of larger role
Natural History Museum's Origins of Western Culture hall will close for a 3-year renovation
Marcel Albert, Air Ace of France in World War II, Dies at 92
Rare German wartime bomber found in UK seabed to be raised for museum display
French Teacher Suspended for Spending Too Much Time Teaching Holocaust
Winston Churchill 'ordered assassination of Mussolini to protect compromising letters’
Archaeologists in Jordan say they have unearthed a 3,000-year-old temple
New York art courier loses $1.3 million painting on night out
Dig uncovers fort built by the British during the Revolution
Meat-eating 'dragon' terrorised Romania 80 million years ago
Israeli archaeologists say ancient shards of flint might be world's oldest disposable cutlery
Nearly 15,000 people still missing from 1990s Balkan wars, Red Cross says
Vietnam War-era artillery shell explodes in southern Vietnam, killing man and injuring wife
Seeking clues to Bolivar's death, Venezuela exhumes bones of independence hero's sisters
Former Argentine military officer fights extradition from US over 1972 massacre
Daniel Libeskind memorial to mark Canada's refusal of Jews in 1939
Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera to be reunited on 500-peso bill
RAF relied on German sea rescue service during Battle of Britain
Friday, September 10, 2010
Secret Nazi mission saw German U-boats land men on American soil
Source: Telegraph (UK) (9-9-10)
Nazi U-boats dropped saboteurs onto American shores as part of a secret mission during the Second World War, a documentary has claimed.
Eight men landed on beaches off Long Island and Florida with the intention of sabotaging targets across the country over a period of up to two years.
Four men arrived ashore near Manhattan on June 13, 1942 carrying weapons, explosives and primers.
On 17 June 1942 a further four men landed off Ponte Verda Beach in Florida.
The German documentary, called Attack on America – Hitler's 9/11 will be shown on Saturday on the anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York.
The programme-makers, Spiegal TV, claim the men intended to attack economic targets such as Penn Station, hydroelectric plant at Niagara Falls and aluminium factories in Illinois and Tennessee.
A spokesman for Spiegel TV told the Daily Mail: "It has surprising parallels with 9/11 because the Nazis' goals were the same – to kill as many people as possible while crippling economic installations."
The chief of the German Abwehr counter-intelligence service, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, came up with the plan which was code-named Operation Pastorius after the first German to organise a settlement of his countrymen in the US, Francis Pastorius....
Illegal immigration: What's the real cost to taxpayers?
Source: WaPo (9-9-10)
In 1909, at the height of the last great immigration wave, when immigrants reached a peak of almost 15 percent of the U.S. population, they made up about half of all public welfare recipients.
They were two-thirds of welfare recipients in Chicago.
In the country's 30 largest cities, meanwhile, more than half of all public school students were the children of immigrants. They were three-fourths in New York.
This history is forgotten in the angry debate over the cost to taxpayers of unauthorized immigrants and their children today. My recent column reporting that unauthorized immigrants were making unexpectedly large contributions to Social Security, for example, led to denunciations that I was being misleading by not looking at the total fiscal picture....
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Dutch archive finds stock share from 1606
Source: AP (9-9-10)
An archive in the Netherlands has uncovered what it says is the oldest known share of stock in a company.
The West Fries Archive says the share in the Dutch East India Company is dated Sept. 9, 1606. That's more than two weeks before what had been the oldest known share in the corporation, which is held by a group of German investors....
Archaeologists Uncover London's Moby Dick
Source: Time (9-9-10)
A remarkable discovery along the River Thames in London, has uncovered the remains of an incredible creature, equal in both size and proportion to Herman Melville's legendary whale, Moby Dick.
“Moby”, it's believed, has been stranded in Greenwich, along the shore of the River Thames, for almost three centuries. The remains of the colossal creature, buried two meters beneath the earth, also reveal how the animal was butchered for its valuable oils and bones, a common game from the period, using its resources for fuel and lighting.
The Greenwich area used to be a base for whaling fleets that combed the far north of the Atlantic searching for just prey. To find one on their doorstep, delivered for nothing, would have been a godsend....
Reopening History of Storied Norse Chessmen
Source: NYT (9-8-10)
The Lewis Chessmen are the most famous and important chess pieces in history. They have a long historical and scholarly record, part of which is that they were made in Norway roughly 800 years ago. But now two Icelandic men are challenging that belief and trying to prove that the pieces came from their country.
The pieces were discovered on the Isle of Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland, in 1831 — hence their name. Carved mostly out of walrus tusk, they were found inside a sand dune in a small carrying case made of stone. There are different theories about how they ended up there, including that they were left over from a shipwreck or that they were stolen and buried on the island and then forgotten....
LA Protests Are Latest in a History of Street Battles
Source: AOL News (9-9-10)
Two nights of violent street demonstrations over the police shooting of a Guatemalan-born day laborer is the legacy of long-simmering distrust between residents in an immigrant neighborhood west of downtown and a police department trying to shake off a dark legacy, experts said today....
And it was in keeping with Los Angeles' long history of civic unrest, from the Watts riots of the 1960s through the Rodney King riot in 1992 to occasional rambunctious, window-breaking street demonstrations that come with Los Angeles Lakers victories in the National Basketball League championship.
This week's protests began with the shooting death of Manuel Jamines, 37, around 1 p.m. Sunday by one of three bicycle-riding officers responding to reports that a man was threatening people with a knife. The Los Angeles Times reported that Jamines had been drinking. Police said one of the officers, Frank Hernandez, a 13-year veteran, fired twice at Jamines when he refused demands in English and Spanish to drop the knife and instead raised it over his head and moved toward the officers....
Here's a selected list of Los Angeles street confrontations over the past half-century:
August 1965: What should have been a routine traffic stop in Watts escalated into six days of rioting in which 34 people were killed and more than 1,000 injured....
This year, a political 9/11
Source: Politico (9-9-10)
This year, September 11 is going to include something different — politics, and lots of it.
On the eve of the ninth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on Washington and New York, all evidence suggests that the once-sacrosanct nature of a day when candidates used to clear their schedules except for the most solemn and intimate of events and take down their television ads has fundamentally changed....
In New York City, dueling rallies are planned by opponents and supporters of the controversial Islamic center proposed for two blocks from ground zero. And in Alaska, tea party superstars Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin are planning a joint appearance in a big Anchorage arena, apparently to celebrate their shared conservative faith-based values and commemorate the attacks, while in Washington, a coalition of tea party groups is planning a march on the National Mall....
There are countless other more run-of-the-mill political events taking place across the country that wouldn’t raise eyebrows had they turned up on any other campaign season Saturday, but that rarely occurred during any Sept. 11 since the terror attacks....
“The sanctity of observance tied to events, no matter how catastrophic, tends to erode over time,” said David Birdsell, a political science professor at New York’s Baruch College. “It doesn't take too long and, in this case, we can see a really quite short lead time," he added, contrasting the upcoming anniversary with post-World War I Memorial Day observances.
Instead, he said partisans have quickly taken Sept. 11 “into the political realm” by channeling the anger, grief and frustration associated with the attacks “and steer(ing) those emotions into the cause you're trying to promote at the time.”...
Related Links
Wine-Cult Cave Art Restored in Petra?
Source: National Geographic (9-8-10)
Filled with other Cupid-like figures, intertwined vines and flowers, and brightly colored birds, the wall paintings provide important new insights into the mysterious culture of the builders of Petra, the Nabataeans, said art conservator Lisa Shekede. The artwork, she added, suggests the cave was a refuge for a cult focused on the ancient Greek god of wine, Dionysus.
The art is "remarkable in the extent of its palette and the intricacies of its painting," added Shekede, who worked on the project for London's Courtauld Institute of Art. "The sheer quality of the painting is magical."
First discovered the 1980s, when the site was occupied by local Bedouin tribes, the ancient Greek-style artwork is "quite unique in Petra," said Aysar Akrawi, executive director of the Petra National Trust, which instigated the restoration work with the Courtauld Institute of Art....
Hump-backed dinosaur may yield clues to origin of birds
Source: BBC News (9-8-10)
Spanish palaeontologists have uncovered a new dinosaur with what may be the earliest evidence of feather follicles.
The researchers, whose findings are published in Nature, located the fossils near Cuenca, central Spain.
They named the reptile Concavenator corcovatus, meaning "meat eater from Cuenca with a hump". The type of dinosaur that was found is known as a theropod.
Theropods are mainly known from the ancient southern landmass, Gondwana.
Over time, Gondwana and other ancient landmasses broke up, forming the continents we see today.
Recently a team from Cambridge, UK, and the US showed that the theropods may have originated in the Northern landmass, Laurasia.
The most primitive forms have been found in England and now Spain. These finds date from the Lower Cretaceous, somewhere between 100 and 146 million years ago
Theropods are a very important group of dinosaurs because it is from this group that birds are known to originate. Most theropods, like the one found in Spain, are meat-eaters, though some were omnivores.
"They are a very important group of dinosaurs because within this group there are the birds. This world would not be the same without birds. Birds are really a kind of specialised winged and flying theropod dinosaur," said Professor Jose Sanz of the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid....
Joan Miro work to be displayed for first time in 50 years at Tate Modern
Source: BBC News (9-8-10)
Works by Joan Miro are to be displayed at the Tate Modern, the first time a major retrospective of the artist has been held in nearly 50 years.
The Ladder of Escape, which opens in April next year, will bring together over 150 of the Spanish surrealist's pieces from all over the world.
Miro's "dream" paintings and experimental techniques were an influence on abstract expressionism.
Tate Modern said his work was noted "for its serene, colourful allure".
Among the work that will be displayed will be a painting once owned by US novelist Ernest Hemingway.
The exhibition will also look at Miro's "varying degrees of engagement over his lifetime".
Meanwhile, a show by Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte has been scheduled for Tate Liverpool, and a major watercolour exhibition is to be shown at Tate Britain.
Works by JMW Turner, William Blake and Tracey Emin will be displayed alongside historic watercolours by amateur artists, who used the medium to document and record historical landscapes.
The forthcoming shows were announced during the annual Tate report at the Tate Britain gallery....
Genetic Scars of the Holocaust: Children Suffer Too
Source: Time (9-9-10)
The Holocaust is a crime that never seems to quit. Even as the ranks of survivors grow smaller each year, the impact of that dark passage in history continues to be to be felt. And it's not just the victims who feel the effects; it's their children too.
Psychologists have long been intrigued by the emotional profile of so-called second-generation Holocaust survivors. Parents who lived through the camps were forever changed by the horrors they witnessed. In the 21st century, many - probably most - would be recognized as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Back then, the absence of such a diagnosis meant the absence of effective treatments too. As a result, a generation of children grew up in homes in which one, and sometimes both, parents were battling untold emotional demons at the same time they were going about the difficult business of trying to raise happy kids. No surprise, they weren't always entirely successful.
Over the years, a large body of work has been devoted to studying PTSD symptoms in second-generation survivors and it has found signs of the condition in their behavior and even their blood - with higher levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, for example. The assumption - a perfectly reasonable one - was always that these symptoms were essentially learned. Grow up with parents afflicted by the mood swings, irritability, jumpiness and hypervigilance typical of PTSD and you're likely to wind up stressed and high-strung yourself....
Fort Dobbs' new manager ready to surge ahead
Source: Statesville Record & Landmark (9-4-10)
At a time when other historic sites around the country are shutting down, new site manager Doug Brown compares Fort Dobbs to a phoenix rising from the ashes.
Just two days after starting the job, Brown sat in a conference room in the small gray house that quarters the historical site’s offices and stared out the window, almost as though he could see the fort standing there.
Brown is no stranger to transormations -- Fort Dobbs will be the third large-scale historic site project he has worked on in his career.
“It’s like capturing lightning in a bottle,” he said. “I wanted to do it one more time.”
Brown started out with the National Park Service Ranger at Fort Necessity in Pennsylvania. Since then, he’s helped develop several sites, including Pricketts Fort in Fairmont, W. Va.; Heritage Hill State Historical Park in Green Bay, Wisc.; and most recently the Division of Historic Sites for the Morris County Park Commission in Morristown, N.J....
Critics, Proponents Spar Over 'Islamic Symbols' in Flight 93 Memorial Design
Source: Fox News (9-8-10)
Nine years after the heroes of Flight 93 rebelled against the terrorists who hijacked their plane -- crashing it into a field in Shanksville, Pa., instead of allowing it to smash into an unknown, high-profile target in Washington, D.C. -- the design of a memorial to honor the 40 passengers and crew who died remains a subject of bitter controversy.
Since 2005, when plans for the Flight 93 National Memorial were unveiled, a group of critics, including the father of one of the heroes who died, have protested loudly that the memorial's design is rife with Islamic symbols. They haven't wavered in their protest -- even though some design elements have been changed -- and they plan to run a full-page ad opposing the design in a local newspaper on Friday and Saturday, when the nation will pause to remember September 11.
But the National Park Service says the critics -- whom it calls "conspiracy theorists" -- are expressing concerns that are baseless, and that it's already changed the design to remove any symbols that might be considered "Islamic."...
Merkel honours Danish Muhammad cartoonist Westergaard
Source: BBC News (9-8-10)
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has defended Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, whose cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad caused anger in 2006.
A depiction of Muhammad's turban as a fused bomb sparked global outrage when it was published in Denmark.
Presenting him with a press freedom award, Mrs Merkel said Mr Westergaard was entitled to draw his caricatures.
"Europe is a place where a cartoonist is allowed to draw something like this," she said.
German banker causes race storm
Danish paper apology over cartoon
"We are talking here about the freedom of opinion and the freedom of the press," Ms Merkel said at the ceremony in the German city of Potsdam.
The offending cartoon - which led to a groundswell of Muslim anger in many countries around the world - was one of 12 first published by Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005.
'Place of freedom'
Mrs Merkel, who grew up in communist East Germany, added that German people clearly remembered the implications of a lack of freedom and should therefore cherish it....
620,000 tree plantings planned by Civil War anniversary
Source: The Daily Progress (NC) (9-6-10)
CULPEPER — The Journey Through Hallowed Ground wants to lay down roots — lots of them — in its remembrance of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.
Starting next year through 2015, the Waterford-based history organization will set out to plant 620,000 trees — about one for each soldier who died in the war — along the 180-mile route from Monticello to Gettysburg, Pa.
The National Heritage Area and national scenic byway on which JTHG focuses its preservation efforts has the country’s largest concentration of Civil War battlefields.
A Culpeper Town Council committee endorsed the tree-planting plan at a meeting last week, and the green idea also previously gained support from the boards of supervisors in Culpeper, Fauquier, Albemarle and Spotsylvania counties....
Plumber unearths WWII prisoner of war camp for 10,000 German soldiers in his back garden
Source: Daily Mail (UK) (9-7-10)
Turning over the soil in his back garden, David Murray spotted something glinting in the sunlight.
When he realised it was a dog tag from a Second World War German prisoner, he asked his landlord if he could dig a little deeper - literally.
In the following months, Mr Murray unearthed a treasure trove of wartime memorabilia. The 2,000 items include coins featuring Nazi emblems, dog tags, buttons from uniforms and even a live grenade that had to be destroyed by an RAF bomb disposal unit....
The lightweight reading choices of leading Nazis who loved to pose as intellectuals
Source: Daily Mail (UK) (9-6-10)
A new book published this week in Germany exposes the 'literary-lite' reading tastes of Hitler and his cronies during the Third Reich.
While all pretended to be intellectuals consuming weighty tomes about race, culture and war, the hierarchy of Nazism were often the equivalent of today’s consumer of books with racy covers bought at airport shops.
Hermann Goering, the fat architect of the Blitz on London, liked detective novels and sci-fi books by Jules Verne....
Academic Christian Adam, who researched the reading habits of the elite of the regime for his book entitled ‘Reading under Hitler; Authors, Best-sellers and Readers in the Third Reich,’ said the need for escapist literature increased as the war went on.
Read more:
WWII German bomber recovered from beneath the sand
Source: Digital Journal (9-6-10)
A German bomber is to be raised from a sandbank off Britain’s south eastern coast 70 years after it crash-landed there during the Battle of Britain.
The Daily Mail said the twin-engine Dornier Do-17 bomber first emerged from Goodwin Sands, a ten-mile stretch of coastline near Deal in Kent two years ago. The Royal Air Force (RAF) Museum and Wessex Archaeology have been working on a full survey of the crash site. Once the survey is complete, the bomber will be recovered and exhibited at the Battle of Britain Beacon project....
The plane was described as being in “remarkable” condition and is essentially intact with its main tyres still inflated....
Appomattox museum project to break ground this month
Source: The News and Advance (9-6-10)
The Museum of the Confederacy has unveiled drawings of its planned museum in Appomattox and announced plans for a Sept. 23 groundbreaking at the site after raising $6 million toward the $7.5 million project.
Construction is expected to end by spring 2012 on the 11,700-square-foot museum near the intersection of Virginia 24 and U.S. 460, housing Civil War artifacts where they were made famous.
“There’s nowhere better to do it than Appomattox,” said S. Waite Rawls III, CEO and president of the Museum of the Confederacy. “The very word ‘Appomattox’ carries so much meaning in history.”...
Ancient gold bracelets nearly discarded at dig
Source: Kent News (9-5-10)
Two gold bracelets unearthed after almost 3,000 years were spotted by chance.
For around 2,700 years they were buried under the Kent soil, but after a leading archaeological expert visited an excavation site, he spotted them on top of earth already moved during the big road dig.
The bracelets join some 10,000 other important finds unearthed by volunteers and experts on the East Kent Access site between Ramsgate and Sandwich, the biggest archaeological excavation in the country this year....
Colonial Williamsburg seeks world heritage designation
Source: AP (9-7-10)
Colonial Williamsburg is seeking the designation of the Historic Triangle as a World Heritage Site.
The historic area says it is partnering with Preservation Virginia and working with the National Park Service to seek the designation. The Historic Triangle is comprised of Jamestown, Williamsburg and Yorktown....
Demjanjuk health issues taking over trial
Source: AP (9-8-10)
John Demjanjuk attends most sessions of his trial in a hospital bed set up in the courtroom, wearing dark sunglasses and a hat pulled down over his face.
The case of the retired Ohio autoworker accused of serving as a Nazi death camp guard — which resumes next week after a monthlong summer break — broke potentially precedent-setting ground when it opened last year.
But it has become increasingly dominated by the 90-year-old defendant's failing health.
Nazi hunters have taken keen interest in the Demjanjuk saga because it's the first time German authorities have prosecuted such a low-ranking suspect on the premise that, even without evidence of a specific crime, simply working at a death camp was enough to be an accessory to murder....
Political controversy over Islam surrounds 9/11 anniversary
Source: WaPo (9-9-10)
For almost a decade, the annual commemoration of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has been seen as a day of national unity and sober remembrance. This year, contentious issues of religious freedom and national identity threaten to color the ninth anniversary of those tragic events.
Controversies over calls to burn the Koran and an ongoing debate over a proposed mosque and Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero in New York are drawing particular attention as the anniversary nears, sparking questions about how 9/11 became so politicized.
The reality is that, with rare exceptions, the meaning of those attacks has rarely been free of political overtones or debate. Common ground in the months after the attacks quickly gave way to partisan division over combating terrorism. What may be different this year is that earlier debates about who was "strong" in the fight against terrorism and who was not have been supplanted by questions about Islam and religious freedom....
Highway deaths fall to lowest level since 1950
Source: AP (9-9-10)
The number of people dying on the nation's roads has fallen to its lowest level in six decades, helped by a combination of seat belts, safer cars and tougher enforcement of drunken driving laws.
The Transportation Department said late Wednesday that traffic deaths fell 9.7 percent in 2009 to 33,808, the lowest number since 1950. In 2008, an estimated 37,423 people died on the highways....
Year-to-year declines in highway deaths have occurred in previous economic downturns, when fewer people are out on the road. Traffic deaths decreased in the early 1980s and early 1990s when difficult economic conditions led many drivers to cut back on discretionary travel....
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Purported Franklin Expedition records found
Source: CBC News (9-7-10)
An Inuit family says a box that was hidden for over 80 years in the Arctic contains documents linked to the doomed Franklin Expedition.
Over the weekend, the Porter family in Gjoa Haven, Nunavut, dug up the small box with the help of an archeologist.
The exact contents of the unopened, sand-filled box will not be known until the Canadian Conservation Institute carefully examines it, which should take about three weeks.
The box was buried years ago by George Washington Porter Jr. below a large stone cairn. Inside, he carefully placed some documents believed to be connected to the British Franklin Expedition — Sir John Franklin's attempt to navigate the Northwest Passage in the 1840s....
Roman burial chamber unearthed near Faversham
Source: Kent Online (9-7-10)
Archaeologists have made exciting discoveries at a site just outside Faversham where a late Roman burial ground has been found.
The 4th century sarcophagus is built from chalk blocks and Kentish ragstone with a terracotta lid covering the grave slot.
Its alignment shows it is a Christian burial.
The discovery has been made in pasture land at Syndale Park, an area which has attracted attention from as early as the 18th century....
UK's 'oldest woman' Annie Turnbull dies aged 111
Source: BBC (9-8-10)
A woman who was believed to have been the oldest person in Britain has died at the age of 111.
Annie Turnbull was born in Lanarkshire on 21 September 1898, when Queen Victoria was on the throne.
Brought up in West Lothian, Mrs Turnbull moved to Edinburgh when she was 16 to become a housekeeper. She retired in 1974 at the age of 76.
She died at Victoria Manor care home in Leith on Friday, two weeks short of her 112th birthday....
UN chief in Rwanda to discuss threatened peacekeeper pullout over UN Congo genocide report
Source: AP (9-8-10)
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met with Rwanda's president Wednesday after he threatened to withdraw thousands of Rwandan peacekeepers if the United Nations publishes a report accusing Rwanda's army of possible genocide in the 1990s.
The joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur is commanded by a Rwandan, Lt. Gen. Patrick Nyamvumba, and Rwanda has more than 3,200 troops and 86 police in the nearly 22,000-strong force.
U.N. officials and diplomats have said a Rwandan pullout from Darfur would be a major blow at a time of increasing violence and fresh efforts to end the seven-year conflict....
Romanian Gypsy Leader Compares Sarkozy to Nazis
Source: AP (9-8-10)
A Romanian Gypsy leader on Wednesday compared French President Nicolas Sarkozy to Romania's pro-Nazi wartime leader, following the expulsion of hundreds of Gypsies from France.
Speaking during an annual Gypsy feast held on a hill at the foots of the Carpathian Mountains, Iulian Radulescu told the Associated Press that Gypsies -- also known as Roma -- are being unfairly expelled from France.
France has sent back about 1,000 Gypsies to Romania and Bulgaria in recent weeks as part of its crime fighting measures. Sarkozy has linked Roma to crime, calling the camps in which some of them live, sources of trafficking, exploitation of children and prostitution....
Sinn Fein chief says he met Catholic priest involved in 1972 bombing, didn't discuss it
Source: AP (9-8-10)
The senior Sinn Fein politician in Northern Ireland's government acknowledged Wednesday that he did meet a Catholic priest responsible for a 1972 triple car bombing that killed nine civilians but insisted they never discussed the IRA attack.
A British government-sanctioned report last month into the Claudy bombing found that police, government and church leaders conspired to shield the priest, James Chesney, from prosecution amid fears that his arrest would deepen community divisions and increase violence.
The report put a renewed focus on Martin McGuinness, deputy leader of Northern Ireland's peacemaking coalition of Irish Catholics and British Protestants, who has long sidestepped his own record as the senior Irish Republican Army commander in the area at the time....
FP nominates world's worst history textbooks
Source: Foreign Policy (9-7-10)
Russia
Lesson plan: Buddy Stalin
Subject matter: It can't be easy to put a positive spin on Stalin, under whose leadership more than 20 million Russians lost their lives. But that's what's being attempted in Russia today. Encouraged by wilderness enthusiast and former KGB agent Vladimir Putin, the country's curriculum is engaging in a re-Stalinizing process called "positive history." Aleksandr Filippov, the author of a new Kremlin-approved textbook told the Times, "It is wrong to write a textbook that will fill the children who learn from it with horror and disgust about their past and their people."
His book devotes 83 pages to Joseph Stalin's industrialization plans, but only one paragraph to the Great Famine of 1932 to 1933 in which millions starved as a result of deeply flawed agricultural policy. The book also minimizes the role played by the Soviet Union's allies during Word War II, saying that they "limited themselves mainly to supplying arms, materials and provisions to the USSR."...
Other Nominees
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Iraq displays hundreds of recovered artifacts
Source: AP (9-7-10)
Iraqi officials displayed hundreds of recovered artifacts Tuesday that were among the country's looted heritage and span the ages from a 4,400-year-old statue of a Sumerian king to a chrome-plated AK-47 bearing the image of Saddam Hussein.
The 542 pieces are among the most recent artifacts recovered from a heartbreaking frenzy of looting at Iraqi museums and archaeological sites after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and in earlier years of war and upheaval. The thefts swept a stunning array of priceless antiquities into the hands of collectors abroad.
So far, 5,000 items stolen since 2003 have been recovered, and culture officials hoped Tuesday's display would encourage more nations to cooperate in the search for 15,000 pieces still missing from the Iraqi National Museum, one of the sites worst-hit by looters after the fall of Baghdad seven years ago....
Ancient city by the sea rises amid Egypt's resorts
Source: AP (9-7-10)
Today, it's a sprawl of luxury vacation homes where Egypt's wealthy play on the white beaches of the Mediterranean coast. But 2,000 years ago, this was a thriving Greco-Roman port city, boasting villas of merchants grown rich on the wheat and olive trade.
The ancient city, known as Leukaspis or Antiphrae, was hidden for centuries after it was nearly wiped out by a fourth century tsunami that devastated the region.
More recently, it was nearly buried under the modern resort of Marina in a development craze that turned this coast into the summer playground for Egypt's elite....
Shipwrecks reveal shift to modern shipbuilding
Source: Live Science (9-7-10)
Three recently discovered shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea could give archaeologists new insights into the transition between medieval and modern shipbuilding.
The remains of the three craft — all dating from between 1450 and 1600 — were found in the straits between Turkey and the Greek island of Rhodes. One ship appears to be a large English merchant ship, while the other two are smaller — perhaps a patrol craft from Rhodes and a small trading boat that could have been Turkish, Italian or Greek.
Though the three shipwrecks were discovered near each other, they are not thought to be related, or to have foundered in the same event....
Service at St Paul's to remember the Blitz 70 years on
Source: BBC (9-7-10)
A service at St Paul's marked the 70th anniversary of the start of the raids.
Thousands of people across the UK were killed and injured in the raids by German forces in 1940 and 1941.
Blitz, the German word for "lightning", was applied by the British press to the tempest of heavy and frequent bombing raids carried out over Britain.
This concentrated direct bombing on industrial targets and civilian centres, with heavy raids on London....
Argentine court reopens Franco probe
Source: BBC (9-4-10)
An Argentine court has reopened an investigation into crimes against humanity in Spain during the rule of Gen Francisco Franco.
The appeals court overturned a previous ruling that blocked a suit brought by Argentine relatives of two Spaniards killed under Franco.
It said they had a right to know if the case was being investigated.
Crimes committed under Franco and during the 1936-39 civil war are covered by an amnesty law in Spain.
The Argentine appeals court said a diplomatic request should be sent to Spain to ask what action it was taking to investigate crimes against humanity between 1936 and 1977....
Obama to Mark 9/11 Anniversary at Pentagon
Source: AP (9-7-10)
The White House says President Obama will mark the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks at the Pentagon.
Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs says Vice President Joe Biden will travel to New York for Saturday's anniversary. First Lady Michelle Obama will join former first lady Laura Bush in Pennsylvania for ceremonies marking the crash of United Flight 93....
German journalist's fight for secret govt files on Nazi Adolf Eichmann heads back to court
Source: AP (9-7-10)
Germany's intelligence service has turned over thousands of files on top Nazi Adolf Eichmann's whereabouts after World War II to a journalist who sued for them. But with so many passages blacked out and pages missing, she's taking the matter back to court.
An attorney for freelance reporter Gabriele Weber said Tuesday he was confident that she would win greater access eventually, even though Chancellor Angela Merkel's office has argued that some Eichmann files should stay secret.
Last week, Weber went to see the government files on the man known as the "architect of the Holocaust" for coordinating the Nazi's genocide policy. She was surprised to find some 1,000 pages missing, despite a federal court's order in April that the intelligence agency, the BND, could not keep all of the documents secret....
Turkish exhibit displays coup-era torture instruments ahead of constitutional referendum
Source: AP (9-7-10)
A wooden pole used to suspend suspects by their arms. A baton used to beat prisoners on the soles of their feet. Cables used to give electric shocks.
All are displayed at an exhibit ahead of a referendum on changes to the constitution that was crafted in the wake of Turkey's 1980 military coup, which was marked by torture and other abuses.
On Sept. 12, the coup's 30th anniversary, Turks will vote on a package of 26 reforms that the government says will strengthen democracy and bring the 1982 constitution more in line with European norms — a key plank in the nation's EU bid....
Vatican Paper Slams Koran Burning on 9/11
Source: AP (9-7-10)
The Vatican newspaper says Christians around the world are protesting a plan by an American minister to burn the Koran on the Sept. 11 anniversary.
Pastor Terry Jones of the small, evangelical Dove World Outreach Center has said he will go ahead with plans to burn copies of Islam's holy book to protest the Sept. 11 attacks, despite a warning from the top U.S. general in Afghanistan that U.S. troops would be endangered as a result....
US reporter who met with Castro says he repeatedly criticized Ahmadinejad as anti-Semitic
Source: AP (9-7-10)
Fidel Castro criticized Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for what he called his anti-Semitic attitudes and questioned his own actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 during interviews with an American journalist he summoned to Havana to discuss fears of global nuclear war.
Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for The Atlantic, blogged on the magazine's website Tuesday that he was on vacation last month when the head of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington — which Cuba maintains there instead of an embassy — called to say Castro had read his recent article about Israel and Iran and wanted him to come to Cuba.
Goldberg said their first meeting lasted five hours and featured appearances by Castro's wife, Dalia, his son Antonio, and several bodyguards, two of which held his elbow to steady Castro when he moved....
John Lennon's killer is denied parole for the 6th time
Source: CNN (9-7-10)
Mark David Chapman, John Lennon's killer, was denied parole for the sixth time Tuesday, according to the New York State Division of Parole.
A three-member panel of parole board commissioners conducted a video conference interview with Chapman from their offices in Rochester.
Chapman's latest request for freedom comes just months short of the 30th anniversary of the death of the former member of the Beatles....
WWII-era mass grave discovered in Slovenia
Source: AP (9-7-10)
The bodies of about 700 people killed in the wake of World War II have been discovered in a mass grave in Slovenia, 65 years after they were herded into the woods and slain by antifascists seeking revenge on Nazi collaborators, an official said Tuesday.
Marko Strovs, who heads the government's commission for exhuming mass graves, told The Associated Press that researchers examined a pit in a forest near the town of Prevalje in the country's northeast last week and found the remains.
"Based on what we've heard from local people and what we've seen so far, there could be about 700 bodies buried inside," Strovs said....
Mediterranean Shipwrecks Reveal Shift to Modern Shipbuilding
Source: Live Science (9-7-10)
Three recently discovered shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea could give archaeologists new insights into the transition between medieval and modern shipbuilding.
The remains of the three craft – all dating from between 1450 and 1600 – were found in the straits between Turkey and the Greek island of Rhodes. One ship appears to be a large English merchant ship, while the other two are smaller – perhaps a patrol craft from Rhodes and a small trading boat that could have been Turkish, Italian or Greek.
Though the three shipwrecks were discovered near each other, they are not thought to be related, or to have foundered in the same event.
"The real import of those vessels were they just happen to be from that period when you're moving from those oared vessels that had guns on them to sailed vessels that had guns on them," said archaeologist Jeffrey G. Royal of the RPM Nautical Foundation in Key West, Fla. "We were fortunate to find several vessels that spoke to that era."...
Egyptian papyrus found in ancient Irish bog
Source: Daily News (Egypt) (9-7-10)
Irish scientists have found fragments of Egyptian papyrus in the leather cover of an ancient book of psalms that was unearthed from a peat bog, Ireland's National Museum said on Monday.
The papyrus in the lining of the Egyptian-style leather cover of the 1,200-year-old manuscript, "potentially represents the first tangible connection between early Irish Christianity and the Middle Eastern Coptic Church", the Museum said.
"It is a finding that asks many questions and has confounded some of the accepted theories about the history of early Christianity in Ireland."
Raghnall O Floinn, head of collections at the Museum, said the manuscript, now known as the "Faddan More Psalter", was one of the top 10 archaeological discoveries in Ireland.
It was uncovered four years ago by a man using a mechanical digger to harvest peat near Birr in County Tipperary, but analysis has only just been completed.
O Floinn told AFP the illuminated vellum manuscript encased in the leather binding dated from the 8th century but it was not known when or why it ended up in the bog where it was preserved by the chemicals in the peat.
"It appears the manuscript's leather binding came from Egypt. The question is whether the papyrus came with the cover or if it was added.
"It is possible that the imperfections in the hide may allow us to confirm the leather is Egyptian.
"We are trying to track down if there somebody who can tell us if this is possible. That is the next step."
O Floinn said the psalter is about the size of a tabloid newspaper and about 15 percent of the pages of the psalms, which are written in Latin, had survived.
The experts believe the manuscript of the psalms was produced in an Irish monastery and it was later put in the leather cover.
"The cover could have had several lives before it ended up basically as a folder for the manuscript in the bog," O Floinn said.
"It could have travelled from a library somewhere in Egypt to the Holy Land or to Constantinople or Rome and then to Ireland."...
Plumber unearths WWII prisoner of war camp
Source: Daily Mail (UK) (9-7-10)
Turning over the soil in his back garden, David Murray spotted something glinting in the sunlight.
When he realised it was a dog tag from a Second World War German prisoner, he asked his landlord if he could dig a little deeper - literally.
In the following months, Mr Murray unearthed a treasure trove of wartime memorabilia. The 2,000 items include coins featuring Nazi emblems, dog tags, buttons from uniforms and even a live grenade that had to be destroyed by an RAF bomb disposal unit.
The 39-year- old plumber has discovered that the edge of his rented bungalow is on the site of a former prisoner-of-war camp that once held 10,000 people.
'It was a huge shock when I found the tag,' said Mr Murray, from Much Hadham in Hertfordshire.
'The grenade was a complete shock, too. I spotted it in the ground and didn't realise what it was. It didn't look like the ones you see in films.
'I tried to defuse it a couple of times but I couldn't get the screws off the top. It's a good job because the RAF said it was very unstable.
'They weren't very happy with me when I told them I'd been holding it next to my ear and listening to see if it would go bang.
'It's really incredible to think that 70 years ago, 10,000 prisoners of war were walking around in my back garden.'
The Wynches Camp opened in 1939 and held Italian prisoners, but later took Germans. It was also used for Allied training and accommodated U.S. soldiers and Gurkha units as they prepared for war.
After the war, former prisoners were able to come and go as they pleased and some stayed there until 1947, working as farmhands in the area.
The 40-acre site was pulled down in 1950 and houses built on it over the next 20 years.
Anniversary images bring the Blitz up to date
Source: Telegraph (UK) (9-7-10)
An amazing new set of pictures has brought the horror of the Blitz right up to date on its 70th anniversary.
n a merging of old and new imagery wartime destruction across Britain is shown in the exact spots as they exist today.
One picture shows a huge crater next to the Bank of England headquarters in London - perfectly blended with the background of the same location in 2010.
Well-dressed businessmen from seven decades ago are seen discussing the damage in the foreground, while modern city-goers dwell behind them in colour.
Another striking fused photograph shows in black and white how workers repaired a huge hole in the pavement just yards from Buckingham Palace.
Meanwhile the outer edges of the picture show tourists in colour visiting the world landmark more recently.
Elsewhere in Britain, a black and white shot of Birmingham's Newton Street near to the city's Children's Hospital crumbles after being hit by the Luftwaffe, while a more peaceful colour photo shows how it looks now.
In Bristol, firemen in 1942 try to pull a car that has slipped into a crevice in the centre of city road Park Street, casting a ghostly image as they are surrounded by current day shoppers going about their business, unaware of the devastation that once brought Britain's cities almost to their knees.
Battle of Britain and Blitz spirit remembered at St Paul's service
Source: Telegraph (UK) (9-7-10)
The courage and sacrifice of those who fought off the Nazis to win the Battle of Britain was remembered today.
On the 70th anniversary of the day the first German bombs fell on London, 2,500 people packed into St Paul's Cathedral to remember the Blitz spirit.
The service remembered all those who contributed during the Battle of Britain with former pilots and other military personnel standing alongside firefighters, nurses and ambulance workers from the era.
The Duke of Kent and the Lord Mayor of London, Nick Anstee, were among the dignitaries who joined the remembrance event at the cathedral which survived the Blitz and became a symbol of British defiance.
The Duke took the royal salute outside the cathedral after the service as air cadets and current servicemen and women joined veterans for a parade.
Onlookers packed the streets to watch while office workers crowded by windows to catch a glimpse of the Dakota, Spitfire and Lancaster aircraft which flew overhead.
A Spitfire aircraft also stood at the bottom of the cathedral steps.
The Duke, who holds the rank of Honorary Air Chief Marshal in the RAF, wore military uniform for the event.
It was June 18, 1940 when then prime minister Winston Churchill warned the nation: "The Battle of France is over. The Battle of Britain is about to begin."
Four days later France surrendered to Germany and the following month the German air force tried to gain superiority over the RAF with a view to Nazi forces invading Britain.
Orange County Is No Longer Nixon Country
Source: NYT (8-30-10)
Orange County has been a national symbol of conservatism for more than 50 years: birthplace of President Richard M. Nixon and home to John Wayne, a bastion for the John Birch Society, a land of orange groves and affluence, the region of California where Republican presidential candidates could always count on a friendly audience.
But this iconic county of 3.1 million people passed something of a milestone in June. The percentage of registered Republican voters dropped to 43 percent, the lowest level in 70 years.
It was the latest sign of the demographic, ethnic and political changes that are transforming the county and challenging long-held views of a region whose colorful — its detractors might suggest zany — reputation extends well beyond the borders of this state....
Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera to be reunited on Mexican bill
Source: LA Times (8-30-10)
The Bank of Mexico said Monday it would place in circulation a new 500-peso bill featuring the well-known faces of two of the country's best-known artists, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. In the bank's official video to promote the bill's anti-counterfeiting features (embedded above in Spanish), two figures resembling the celebrity couple stroll in costume around traditional and modern sites in Mexico.....
Carnforth man finds hoard of Roman coins near Arnside
Source: Westmoreland Gazette (UK) (9-2-10)
A METAL-detecting historian has made an exciting discovery of rare Roman coins at a South Lakeland caravan park.
John Harrison, 60, uncovered a hoard of 30 ancient Barbarous Radiates coins, thought to date back to 250AD, while walking with his metal detector at Holgates Caravan Park, near Arnside.
Experts described the find as ‘historically significant’.
Mr Harrison, from Carnforth, also found 10 bronze Roman trumpet brooches – dating back to between 75-150AD – at what he believes to be an ancient Roman worshipping ground....
Air Force hero's actions in Laos finally recognized after 42 years
Source: CNN.com (9-3-10)
President Obama will award the Medal of Honor, the military's highest award for bravery, to Air Force Chief Master Sgt. Richard Etchberger for his valor in saving the lives of three wounded comrades at a then-secret base in Laos in 1968, the White House announced Friday.
After Etchberger saved his fellow airmen, he was shot and killed by enemy fighters.
His heroics were kept a secret for years because the United States wasn't supposed to have troops in Laos during the Vietnam War. President Lyndon Johnson rejected a nomination for Etchberger to receive the Medal of Honor at the time because of the political trouble it could have stirred up....
New 1981 hunger strike documents disclosed
Source: Irish Central (9-2-10)
Never before seen documents related to the hunger strikes in Belfast in 1981 have been kept secret until now.
The recently discovered documents, which were released by the Northern Ireland Office, revel how the English government dealt with the IRA hunger strike.
The documents, which were released under the Freedom of Information Act, show how the Margaret Thatcher's government was determined to present a strong face in public while trying to come to an arrangement with the IRA in secret.
It had been alluded to in the past that the IRA sacrificed the hunger strikers to boost their electoral strategy and that they never told the strikers about offers provided by England to end the strikes....
Poems and messages from injured WW1 soldiers emerge after 92 years
Source: Telegraph (UK) (9-6-10)
A pocket book which was passed between injured soliders to record their poems and messages by a First World War nurse has emerged after 92 years.
The unknown nurse kept the book on her uniform while she worked in auxiliary hospitals in England throughout the conflict.
As she built up a bed-side relationship with the soldiers she treated, the unnamed nurse asked them to write their thoughts down in the little book....
Sapper J Gray, of the Royal Engineers, dedicated a moving poem to his colleagues who died in battle.
It read: "Let them rest quietly there on the field, where they fell fighting but never would yield. While their great spirits heard heaven's great call, bravely to conquer on, bravely to fall."...
Show in historic Istanbul seminary stirs hope
Source: Reuters (9-7-10)
An Istanbul seminary closed in 1971 is hosting its first public event in 40 years, raising hopes it may shortly be reopened by Turkey and once again educate priests for the Greek Orthodox community.
The European Union and the United States have pressed EU membership hopeful Turkey to reopen the historic school, which occupies a beautiful and commanding site at the top of the island of Heybeliada, or Halki in Greek.
"Tracing Istanbul," an exhibition of works by Greek artists inspired by the city, has filled the school's evocative, abandoned classrooms with paintings and brought life back to the corridors.
"This exhibition sends an invitation -- come and see the classrooms which need students and the blackboards which need teachers," said Anastasia Manou, one of the Greek organizers of the show, which is due to move to Athens in a month.
Greco-Roman city becomes tourist attraction in Egyptian resort town
Source: AP (9-7-10)
MARINA, Egypt – Today, it's a sprawl of luxury vacation homes where Egypt's wealthy play on the white beaches of the Mediterranean coast. But 2,000 years ago, this was a thriving Greco-Roman port city, boasting villas of merchants grown rich on the wheat and olive trade.
The ancient city, known as Leukaspis or Antiphrae, was hidden for centuries after it was nearly wiped out by a fourth century tsunami that devastated the region.
More recently, it was nearly buried under the modern resort of Marina in a development craze that turned this coast into the summer playground for Egypt's elite....
Ancient city threatened by dam does not actually exist, claims Turkish minister
Source: Daily News & Economic Review (Turkey) (9-1-10)
Controversy over plans to bury an ancient city in western Turkey with sand ahead of a new dam project was overshadowed Wednesday by revelations from Turkey’s environment minister that the site did not, in fact, exist.
“There is no such place as Allianoi. It is just a hot spring that was recently restored called ‘Paşa Ilıcası,’” said Minister Veysel Eroğlu in response to a reporter’s question about the controversial plans to bury the ancient city, which is located near Bergama in the Aegean province of İzmir.
Eroğlu’s belief in the site’s non-existence, however, has been challenged by archaeologists and the Culture and Tourism Ministry, which describes Allianoi on its website as an ancient site that was noted for its health center....
The search for the historic Applegate Trail
Source: KDRV.com (9-1-10)
NEAR WOLF CREEK, Ore. - A nearly $50-million project to add hill-climbing lanes for trucks on Interstate 5 north of Grants Pass has archeologists looking for traces of the historic Applegate Trail.
Volunteers and professionals are scouring the hills and canyons between Grants Pass and Wolf Creek mapping the 160-year old route. More than a 150 years of road building has all but wiped out much of the pioneer route....
Dresden mayor 'to lobby against building of Bomber Command memorial’
Source: Telegraph (UK) (9-6-10)
The mayor of the German city of Dresden has flown into London under pressure from fellow politicians to try to get a planned memorial to Second World War bomber crews scrapped.
Helma Orosz, 57, is officially in Britain to open an exhibition on the bombing of London, her city and that of its twin, Coventry, during the war.
She is under pressure however to get the memorial, which is to recognise the courage of RAF bomber crews, scrapped....
Scientists find evidence discrediting theory Amazon was virtually unlivable
Source: WaPo (9-3-10)
To the untrained eye, all evidence here in the heart of the Amazon signals virgin forest, untouched by man for time immemorial - from the ubiquitous fruit palms to the cry of howler monkeys, from the air thick with mosquitoes to the unruly tangle of jungle vines.
Archaeologists, many of them Americans, say the opposite is true: This patch of forest, and many others across the Amazon, was instead home to an advanced, even spectacular civilization that managed the forest and enriched infertile soil to feed thousands.
The findings are discrediting a once-bedrock theory of archaeology that long held that the Amazon, unlike much of the Americas, was a historical black hole, its environment too hostile and its earth too poor to have ever sustained big, sedentary societies. Only small and primitive hunter-gatherer tribes, the assumption went, could ever have eked out a living in an unforgiving environment....
All the presidents' best-sellers
Source: AP (9-7-10)
Already in distinctive company as an American president, George W. Bush seeks to join an even more select group: president and top-selling author.
Since The New York Times began its weekly lists of best-sellers in 1942, only six of the 13 men who have served as the nation's chief executive have placed a book at the top spot for nonfiction, none while president.
Two of them, Dwight D. Eisenhower and Barack Obama, did it before they were in the Oval Office. Two others, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, did it after they had returned to private life. John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan also reached the height of the best-seller list, albeit posthumously....
Back from the USSR, Judaism enjoys German renaissance
Source: AFP (9-3-10)
Judaism is making a comeback in Germany 65 years after the Holocaust, thanks largely to immigration from the ex-Soviet Union, as shown by the ordination in Leipzig this week of two rabbis.
The ordination as Orthodox rabbis of the men originally from Uzbekistan and Lithuania was Germany's second since 1945, underscoring the growth of the eastern city's Jewish community that 20 years ago numbered only 30.
More than 300 German and foreign Jewish leaders attended the ceremony in a brightly coloured 19th century synagogue that somehow managed to survive the 1938 "Kristallnacht" Nazi pogrom....
The 12th-century facebook of Angkor Wat
Source: Independent (UK) (9-6-10)
Amid the splendour of the 12th-century temple at Angkor Wat, they stand and stare like silent sentinels, sensuous rather than erotic, carved with elegance and care. But exactly who are these 1,786 mysterious women and why, more than a century after Cambodia's famed Hindu temple was rediscovered byWestern archaeologists, did it take the efforts of an amateur researcher from Florida to push experts into trying to resolve the puzzle?
Though Kent Davis had lived in South-east Asia during the 1990s, he did not have an opportunity to see Angkor Wat until 2005. Like most visitors to the huge complex in the centre of the Cambodia, for many years cut off from the outside world because of the presence of theKhmer Rouge, he was mesmerised by the experience.
But he was also left with a flurry of questions. "I went to Angkor as a tourist and I was startled when I got there to notice these women," said Mr Davis, 54, a publisher and writer who now lives near Tampa, Florida. "I was not prepared for it. The human element of them struck me and I wanted to know who they were. I asked one of the guides and he said they were there to serve the king after he went to heaven."
Mr Davis's interest was tweaked, so he wanted to know more. He vowed he would return to the US and investigate. Yet when he got home he found there was essentially nothing written about these women, who appear throughout the temple complex in full body carvings....
For E. B. White’s Willow Tree, Chapter Ends
Source: NYT (9-6-10)
In the 1940s, when E. B. White, the author and columnist for The New Yorker, looked out of his back windows onto the private Turtle Bay Gardens along East 48th Street in Manhattan, an old but picturesque willow tree commanded his view.
He draped the tree in metaphor and imbued it with immortality by writing about it in the concluding lines of his 1949 book, “Here Is New York.”...
But now, the tree is gone. In 2009, the thoroughly bald and rotted tree was chopped down to save it the indignity of cracking and collapsing on its own. There was a small ceremony at the time, and this summer, the enclave’s garden committee had the remains of its trunk dug out and removed as well; now the sun shines down on the garden’s nearby fountain a bit more brightly.
So what of the city?...
Putin, Citing Roosevelt, Hints at a 3rd-Term Bid
Source: NYT (9-6-10)
For months, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin has done nothing to dampen speculation that he is seriously considering a bid to return to the presidency in the 2012 election. On Monday night, he offered another hint at his plans by referring to the political career of a former president of a different country: Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Mr. Putin, asked whether he would damage Russia’s political system if he chose to run again, noted that Roosevelt was elected four times in the United States because at the time, it was allowed under the Constitution....
In Russia, a Shortage Triggers Soviet Habits
Source: NYT (9-7-10)
...As if the summer’s brutal heat, forest fires and drought were not enough, this country is now suffering through one final bit of weather-related misery, a scarcity of a beloved staple that is causing a kind of national time warp. Russians like Ms. Galina Litvyak, 72, a retired bookkeeper, are falling back on scrounging habits honed under Communism. And not liking it....
Buckwheat is not as central to the Russian diet as wheat, but it is considered more of a distinctly Russian food, a hearty plant that flourishes on the Siberian steppes. Generations of children have been raised on the stuff, which is valued for its nutrients, and school lunchrooms seem to go through it by the ton. (While buckwheat is much less popular in the United States, people of Eastern European descent might know it as kasha, often served with mushrooms, onions or bowtie noodles.)...
Irina Yasina, an economist and commentator, said the buckwheat shortage demonstrated how Russians were scarred by Soviet hardships.
“The reaction to this is absolutely Soviet — it is a classic, Soviet-style panic,” Ms. Yasina said. “Remember, it has been only 20 years since the Soviet collapse. I am 46 years old. For 20 years, I have lived under normal conditions. But the rest of the time, I lived under conditions of total shortages. And habits acquired during childhood are stronger than any others. It becomes almost a reflex.”...
Monday, September 6, 2010
Aerial archaeology reveals undiscovered settlements
Source: BBC (9-6-10)
A previously unknown Bronze Age monument has been found in countryside near Cottingham.
The find was one of many made by English Heritage, who used an aircraft to survey East Yorkshire over the summer.
Archaeologist Dave MacLeod made dozens of flights over the region when the prolonged dry weather meant hidden underground features became visible.
Many of the discoveries were homesteads; small farming settlements, some dating back 3,000 years.
The dry spell at the start of the summer aided the search by displaying formerly hidden constructions....
Japanese stem cell researcher wins Balzan prize
Source: AP (9-6-10)
...Shinya Yamanaka's prize is one of four — two for sciences, two in humanities — awarded this year by the foundation, with the goal of highlighting new or emerging areas of research and to sustain fields of study that may have been overlooked elsewhere.
The humanities prizes go to Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg, the father of microhistory, the study of the past based on a focus on the small scale, for his contributions to the study of ordinary people in Europe, and to German Manfred Bauneck for his history of the European theater.
Bauneck, of the University of Hamburg, was awarded the price for his history of the European theater spanning 2,500 years and his research on trends in world theater....
Climate shifts 'not to blame' for African civil wars
Source: BBC (9-6-10)
Climate change is not responsible for civil wars in Africa, a study suggests.
It challenges previous assumptions that environmental disasters, such as drought and prolonged heat waves, had played a part in triggering unrest.
Instead, it says, traditional factors - such as poverty and social tensions - were often the main factors behind the outbreak of conflicts.
The findings have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in the United States....
Author and war hero dies aged 97
Source: BBC (9-6-10)
A former journalist, commando, writer and poet has died at his home near Porthmadog in Gwynedd at the age of 97.
Michael Burn, who worked for The Times, lived in Wales for 60 years where he wrote numerous books and novels.
A commando during World War II, he was caught after a raid at St Nazaire in France and later sent to the infamous Colditz.
He wrote a book about his experiences which is being turned into a film....
Condoleezza Rice 'ordered Bush to stay out of Washington' after 9/11
Source: Telegraph (UK) (9-6-10)
Condoleezza Rice ordered George Bush not to return to Washington after the 9/11 attacks before hanging up the phone, the former national security advisor revealed in a documentary interview.
In a heated exchange, Ms Rice had to argue with the US President in Florida not to return to the White House because it was a potential terrorist target.
Ms Rice also revealed that the bunker beneath the White House, where she was sheltering with Vice President Dick Cheney, began to run out of air.
Meanwhile, the government communication systems were failing and even Mr Bush resorted to an unsecured line to talk to Washington....
Dresden mayor 'to lobby against building of Bomber Command memorial’
Source: Telegraph (UK) (9-6-10)
The mayor of the German city of Dresden has flown into London under pressure from fellow politicians to try to get a planned memorial to Second World War bomber crews scrapped.
Helma Orosz, 57, is officially in Britain to open an exhibition on the bombing of London, her city and that of its twin, Coventry, during the war.
She is under pressure however to get the memorial, which is to recognise the courage of RAF bomber crews, scrapped.
Planners at Westminster City Council approved in May the proposed Ł3.5 million memorial for the 55,573 bombers who were killed in the Second World War. Daily Telegraph readers helped raise more than Ł1.8 million towards the cost of the monument, which will be built in Green Park, central London....
Rare color footage of London blitz found on eve of 70th anniversary of WWII bombing raids
Source: AP (9-6-10)
Rare color footage of the bomb damage inflicted on London during World War II has surfaced on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the Blitz.
The dramatic footage shows the destruction of several London landmarks, including the flagship John Lewis store on Oxford Street.
The film was found in the attic by the family of an air raid warden who shot it on the home movie equipment in use in the 1940s....
Egyptian government officials to be tried in theft of Van Gogh painting
Source: AP (9-5-10)
Eleven culture officials from Egypt's government have been formally charged in last month's theft of a Vincent van Gogh painting from a Cairo museum that had no functioning security alarms.
The public prosecutor says he has referred the eleven Culture Ministry officials to trial on charges of negligence and harming state property. Among them is a deputy minister who says he appealed to his boss for funds to make security upgrades before the Aug. 21 theft but received little assistance.
The $50 million painting, titled "Poppy Flower," was stolen in the middle of the day from the Mahmoud Khalil Museum, where investigators found that no alarms and only seven of 43 security cameras were working....
'Little Rock Nine' member Jefferson Thomas dead at 67
Source: CNN (9-6-10)
Jefferson Thomas, one of the so-called "Little Rock Nine," the nine students who integrated Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957, has died, according to Carlotta Walls LaNier, president of the group's foundation. He was 67.
Thomas died of pancreatic cancer on Sunday, the Little Rock Nine Foundation said in a statement. He was living in Columbus, Ohio.
As a 15-year-old, Thomas was one of the nine African-American students who braved segregationist mobs to integrate the all-white school under the protection of military forces....
Olympia, 2-war naval veteran, battles for survival
Source: AP (9-6-10)
The USS Olympia, a one-of-a-kind steel cruiser that returned home to a hero's welcome after a history-changing victory in the Spanish-American War, is a proud veteran fighting what may be its final battle.
Time and tides are conspiring to condemn the weathered old warrior to a fate two wars failed to inflict. Without a major refurbishment to its aging steel skin, the Olympia either will sink at its moorings on the Delaware River, be sold for scrap, or be scuttled for an artificial reef just off Cape May, N.J., about 90 miles south.
The 5,500-ton Olympia's caretakers monitor every inch of its deteriorating lower hull and deck, already covered with hundreds of patches. Independent inspectors have concluded that the ship could decay to a point beyond saving within a few years if nothing is done.
"It's an absolute national disgrace. It's an appalling situation," said naval historian Lawrence Burr, author of a book on Olympia. "She is a national symbol, and she marks critical points in time both in America's development as a country and the Navy's emergence as a global power."...
For Ellis, a Long, Strange Trip to a No-Hitter
Source: N YT (9-4-10)
...Forty years ago, Dock Ellis of the Pittsburgh Pirates raised the degree of difficulty to new, well, heights. He threw a no-hitter with Richard M. Nixon calling balls and strikes and Jimi Hendrix, wielding a Fender Stratocaster instead of a Louisville Slugger, digging in at home plate.
Or at least that is what he thought while pitching under the influence of LSD.
Ellis walked eight and hit a batter but beat the Padres, 2-0, before 9,303 fans who turned up at San Diego Stadium on June 12, 1970, for the opener of a doubleheader.
“I do think it’s a singularly majestic feat,” said Chris Isenberg, who last year produced “Dock Ellis and the LSD No-No,” an animated short film by James Blagden on Ellis’s no-hitter. “I have one experience on acid, and it involved staying up 72 hours straight and nearly having a nervous breakdown. I can’t imagine pitching a no-hitter on it. It’s like a perfect game times a million.”...
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Worcester auction has historians and collectors abuzz
Source: The Boston Globe (9-5-10)
An extraordinary collection of items belonging to Worcester native Andrew Haswell Green — a visionary who helped remake New York City in the 19th century — will be sold this week in an unprecedented four-day auction at the DCU Center in Worcester. Among the thousands of documents, artworks, china, clothing, and toys being sold are handwritten correspondence to and from four presidents and a rare, printed copy of George Washington’s will.
From Green’s death in 1903 until 2009, virtually none of the items had ever been uncrated and examined. Packing boxes sealed more than a century ago were opened only after the death last summer of Julia Green, his great-great-grandniece and distant heiress.
What was discovered has collectors and historians buzzing: an 1810 letter from President James Madison to James Monroe containing the first reference to a White House gardener, a rare 1850 daguerreotype of Green, and an 1875 George Inness oil painting of Mount Washington, among other treasures.
It was a time capsule buried in plain sight for a hundred years....
Llandudno to bid farewell to Neolithic skeleton Blodwen
Source: BBC (9-5-10)
A prehistoric woman's skeleton which went back to her north Wales roots for the first time in more than 100 years will return to a Lancashire museum.
The remains, nicknamed Blodwen, went on display in July at Llandudno Museum in Conwy county, close to the Little Orme, where they were found in 1891.
Organisers hoped they would be allowed to stay, but they say that is unlikely.
Blodwen is in Llandudno until 1 October, before going back to Bacup Museum....
Southampton Titanic Engineers Memorial unveiled
Source: BBC (9-5-10)
A newly-restored memorial marking the bravery of the engineers who died when the ill-fated RMS Titanic sank 98 years ago has been unveiled in Southampton.
Almost 550 people from the city lost their lives when the ship, which set sail on 10 April 1912 en route to New York, hit an iceberg.
The Titanic Engineer's Memorial in Andrews Park was unveiled in 1914.
Restoration work on the bronze monument began last month and the new memorial was revealed earlier....
Fidel Castro addresses first rally in four years
Source: BBC (9-3-10)
Fidel Castro has addressed a rally for the first time since handing the Cuban presidency to his brother Raul in 2006.
In a speech at Havana University, Mr Castro warned of nuclear war arising from the dispute that has pitting the United States and Israel against Iran.
Some 10,000 people gathered to listen to the 84-year-old, who wore his trademark olive-green uniform.
His speech was the latest in a string of appearances since he re-emerged in July from seclusion after surgery....
Icons stolen from Russian Orthodox church
Source: Telegraph (UK) (9-5-10)
Three ancient icons, one of which contained relics of Russia's most venerated saint, have been stolen from a church in Moscow.
Clerics at the St Trinity church in a Moscow suburb discovered the theft after a service on Saturday, according to Russian news agency RIA Novosti.
One of the icons contained relics of St Sergiy of Radonezh, a 14th century Orthodox monk who became Moscow's patron saint....
Former Saddam confidant says he'll likely die in prison, citing old age and long sentences
Source: AP (9-5-10)
The man who once served as the international face of Saddam Hussein's regime predicted Sunday that he will die in an Iraqi jail, citing his old age and lengthy prison sentence.
During a brief interview with The Associated Press on Sunday, Tariq Aziz said that considering he is 74 and faces more than two decades in prison for crimes related to his role in the former regime, he expects to die behind bars.
Aziz served for years as Saddam Hussein's foreign minister, establishing an international reputation as a vociferous defender of the late dictator's regime who was received by governments around the world. But his years in prison, repeated court cases and illness have left him frail, hobbling on a cane....
Who will define ground zero? 9 years after 9/11, tug of war over 'sacred ground' grows heated
Source: AP (9-5-10)
...In recent weeks, as debate has raged over the placement of a planned Islamic cultural center and mosque a couple of blocks from the construction, Americans have been reminded of just how many people lay claim to this place, the focal point for all those who have a stake in the legacy of Sept. 11.
There were battles over the land — over the prolonged search for victims' remains that kept turning up more tiny body parts in the soil five years later. The developer and insurance companies fought over payouts. The state and the developer haggled over financing and how many towers would be rebuilt.
Some families successfully challenged the creation of a freedom museum at the site, and some questioned whether a planned performing arts center there is appropriate. How best to pay respect to the dead?....
LA police investigate discovery of 'mummified' babies
Source: CNN (9-4-10)
Detectives are investigating the discovery of two "mummified" babies found wrapped in 1930s newspaper in the basement of a Los Angeles apartment building.
Police said this week they have identified the owner of the steamer trunk in which the babies were found and have contacted her family.
The coroner is still trying to figure out how and when the babies -- whose remains were found in two doctor's bags -- died....
Top Ten Lost Technologies
Source: Toptenz.net (8-13-10)
The world has never been more technologically advanced than it is now, but that doesn’t mean that some things haven’t been lost along the way. Many of the technologies, inventions, and manufacturing processes of antiquity have simply disappeared with the passage of time, while others are still not fully understood by modern day scientists. Some have since been rediscovered (indoor plumbing, road building), but many of the more mysterious lost technologies have gone on to become the stuff of legend. Here are ten famous examples:
10. Stradivari Violins
One lost technology of the 1700s is the process through which the famed Stradivari violins and other stringed instruments were built. The violins, along with assorted violas, cellos, and guitars, were constructed by the Stradivari family in Italy from roughly 1650-1750. The violins were prized in their day, but they’ve since become world famous for having an unparalleled—and impossible to reproduce—sound quality. Today there are only around 600 of the instruments left, and most are worth several hundred thousand dollars. In fact, the name Stradivari has become so synonymous with quality that it has come to serve as a descriptive term for anything considered to be the best in its field.
How was it Lost?
The technique for building Stradivari instruments was a family secret known only by patriarch Antonio Stradivari and his sons, Omobono and Francesco. Once they died, the process died with them, but this hasn’t stopped some from trying to reproduce it. Researchers have studied everything from fungi in the wood that was used to the unique shaping of the bodies in order to describe the famous resonance achieved by the Stradivarius collection. The leading hypothesis seems to be that the density of the particular wood used accounts for the sound. Still, some dispute the claim that the instruments are special at all. In fact, at least one study concluded that most people don’t even notice a difference in sound quality between a Stradivari violin and a modern counterpart.
Wills of Famous Figures Revealed
Source: Daily Express (8-11-10)
Records showing how Karl Marx died a poor man and Charles Darwin a millionaire have been published online for the first time.
Official summaries of more than six million wills dating from between 1861 and 1941 were scanned and uploaded by family history website Ancestry.co.uk.
The "probate calendar books" for England and Wales are an index giving details of how much the estates were worth, and in some cases who inherited them.
As well as helping people researching their own family trees, the records give a fascinating insight into the financial affairs of famous politicians and writers.
They show that Marx, the German communist philosopher who died in north London in 1883, left just ÂŁ250 (worth Ł23,000 today) to his youngest daughter Eleanor.
By contrast Darwin, the naturalist who set out the theory of evolution in The Origin Of Species, left a personal estate worth Ł146,911 (around Ł13 million today) at his death in 1882.
He was nearly twice as wealthy as the novelist Charles Dickens, who left "effects under Ł80,000" (about Ł7.1 million today) when he died in 1870.
Veronica Guerin murder suspect finally caught
Source: Irish Central (9-2-10)
The suspected murderer of Irish journalist, Veronica Guerin, has been arrested in Holland.
Dublin criminal John Traynor (62) fled from Ireland following the murder of Veronica Guerin in 1996.
Veronica Guerin was shot dead in her car by the passenger on a motorbike. The murder took place at traffic lights on the Naas Road in Dublin.
According to officials Traynor was Guerin's main contact in the underworld. He has been on the run from the law for 18 years after failing to return to custody in 1992 when he was serving seven years for fraud. He was due to return to HMP Prison Highpoint, Suffolk, after a home leave. It is understood that he has spent the last 18 years in Spain and Portugal.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Bone fragments represent unprecedented discovery
Source: William and Mary News (9-3-10)
Laboratory analysis by the College of William and Mary's Center for Archaeological Research (WMCAR) has revealed that the bone fragments found this summer in two unmarked graves on campus are the remains of dogs interred some two centuries ago.
The discovery represents a significant scholarly mystery, as researchers both at WMCAR and in the College's Department of Anthropology say that evidence of the formal interment of dogs dating from the Colonial period is unprecedented.
Joe Jones, WMCAR director, said the nature of the burial sites and the deteriorated condition of the remains pointed toward interpretation that the sites held the remains of young children. Both graves were carefully excavated rectangular shafts, consistent with human burials. In addition, Jones said the graves were aligned east and west, congruent with Christian burial practices of the Colonial period....
Ancient Nubians Drank Antibiotic-Laced Beer
Source: Discovery News (9-3-10)
A group of people who lived nearly 2,000 years ago in Sudanese Nubia took doses of tetracycline -- through their beer.
People have been using antibiotics for nearly 2,000 years, suggests a new study, which found large doses of tetracycline embedded in the bones of ancient African mummies.
What's more, they probably got it through beer, and just about everyone appears to have drank it consistently throughout their lifetimes, beginning early in childhood.
While the modern age of antibiotics began in 1928 with the discovery of penicillin, the new findings suggest that people knew how to fight infections much earlier than that -- even if they didn't actually know what bacteria were....
Human Meat Just Another Meal for Early Europeans?
Source: National Geographic News (8-31-10)
Cannibalism helped meet protein needs, keep rivals in line, study suggests.
For some European cavemen, human meat wasn't a ritual delicacy or a food of last resort but an everyday meal, according to a new study of fossil bones found in Spain.
And, it seems, everyone in the area was doing it, making the discovery "the oldest example of cultural cannibalism known to date," the study says.
The 800,000-year-old butchered bones from the cave, called Gran Dolina, indicate cannibalism was rife among members of western Europe's first known human species, Homo antecessor.
The fossil bones, collected since 1994, reveal that "gastronomic cannibalism" was commonplace and habitual—both to meet nutritional needs and to kill off local competition, according to the study, published in the August issue of Current Anthropology....
Canada, U.K. discuss preserving shipwreck
Source: CBC News (9-1-10)
Canadian officials say they have entered talks with the British government on how best to preserve the wreck of HMS Investigator, a 19th-century British naval ship that was found in Arctic waters this summer.
Archeologists with Parks Canada discovered the shipwreck on July 25 in Banks Island's Mercy Bay in the Northwest Territories. The ship had been abandoned in 1854, during an attempt to search for Sir John Franklin's missing expedition.
The process of preserving HMS Investigator is still in the very early stages, said lead researcher Ryan Harris of Parks Canada....
Scientists find evidence discrediting theory Amazon was virtually unlivable
Source: The Washington Post (9-3-10)
To the untrained eye, all evidence here in the heart of the Amazon signals virgin forest, untouched by man for time immemorial - from the ubiquitous fruit palms to the cry of howler monkeys, from the air thick with mosquitoes to the unruly tangle of jungle vines.
Archaeologists, many of them Americans, say the opposite is true: This patch of forest, and many others across the Amazon, was instead home to an advanced, even spectacular civilization that managed the forest and enriched infertile soils to feed thousands.
The findings are discrediting a once-bedrock theory of archaeology that long held that the Amazon, unlike much of the Americas, was a historical black hole, its environment too hostile and its earth too poor to have ever sustained big, sedentary societies. Only small and primitive hunter-gatherer tribes, the assumption went, could ever have eked out a living in an unforgiving environment.
But scientists now believe that instead of stone-age tribes, like the groups that occasionally emerge from the forest today, the Indians who inhabited the Amazon centuries ago numbered as many as 20 million, far more people than live here today....
Jerome M. McCabe, survivor of Korean War's Battle of Chosin Reservoir, dies at 84
Source: The Washington Post (9-3-10)
...The 23-year-old Maryland native and self-described "wet-nosed lieutenant" was the fire control officer for an Army artillery unit engaged in what historians considered some of the bloodiest fighting of the Korean War: the Battle of Chosin Reservoir.
By the night of Dec. 1, 1950, only 385 of the original 3,000 soldiers remained in the 31st Regimental Combat Team, known as Task Force Faith. About 1,000 had been killed, taken prisoner or left to freeze to death. Another 1,500 were incapacitated or removed from the battlefield.
Then-Lt. McCabe said he was lucky; he was part of a group that called themselves the "Chosin Few." He went on to a long career in the military, serving a second tour in Korea and one in Vietnam before retiring as a colonel in 1973. He died of pancreatic cancer Aug. 27 at his home in California, Md., at age 84....
First ever female cop in U.S. was an Irish woman
Source: Irish Central (9-3-10)
A retired federal agent's research has uncovered the records which show that the United States first female cop was an Irish woman.
While researching the history of Chicago law enforcement, Rick Barrett, a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent and amateur historian, discovered records of Sergeant Marie Owen, the first female cop in the United States and an Irish-born woman.
Barrett spent over three years researching Owens. He spend his time travelling all over the city befriending archivist pulling in favors with pension records, civil service documents and cemetery plot listings. Eventually it paid off.
She was both written off by the police department and therefore out of history. However Owen's story was well covered by the turn-of-the century press. Unfortunately her story got lost in about 1925 when historians confused her story with another woman's tale.
As a result Ms Owen's accomplishments were erased. Barrett believes his findings to be accurate. Dave MacFarlan, a police historian and member of the Chicago Police History Committee says that if he is correct it would be "huge"....
Rare Roman lantern found in field near Sudbury
Source: BBC (9-2-10)
A metal detecting enthusiast has found what is believed to be the only intact Roman lantern made out of bronze ever discovered in Britain.
Danny Mills, 21, made the find in a field near Sudbury in Suffolk.
The area was dotted with plush Roman villas and country estates in the second century.
The object, described as a rare example of Roman craftsmanship, has been donated to Ipswich Museum where it is now on display.
In the autumn of 2009, Mr Mills, a metal detector user, found a large bronze object whilst metal detecting in a field near Sudbury....
Sweat and breath damaging Sistine Chapel's frescoes
Source: Telegraph (UK) (9-3-10)
Sweat, dust and the breath of the 4.5 million tourists who tramp through the Sistine Chapel each year are damaging its priceless Renaissance frescoes, the head of the Vatican Museums has warned.
Art custodians expressed alarm over the state of the exquisite paintings which adorn the chapel, in the heart of the Vatican city state, following the first cleaning operation for four years.
The Sistine Chapel is subjected to an influx of between 15,000 and 20,000 visitors a day, with each tourist responsible for adding to the invisible cloud of dirt, dandruff and other microscopic debris that floats up into the uppermost reaches of the famed church.
Climate control systems which regulate the temperature and humidity inside the chapel are up to 20 years old and in urgent need of replacement.
The guardians of the world famous site say that it has become a victim of its own success — it is the climax to tours of the adjoining Vatican Museums and some tourists sprint ahead of the crowds to experience its grandeur in relative solitude....
Report: Ground Zero Mosque Investor Contributed to Designated Terror Group
Source: Fox News (9-3-10)
A key financial backer of the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero once contributed to a U.S.-designated terror group, MyFoxNY.com reports.
Egyptian-born businessman Hisham Elzanaty, who made what is described as a "significant investment" in the Ground Zero mosque project,contributed more than $6,000 in 1999 to the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, also known as HLF, tax records show.
The donations came two years before the federal government shut down HLF and designated it a terror group. Elzanaty's attorney told MyFoxNY.com that his client believed at the time that he was donating to an orphanage. Elzanaty did not respond to questions....
Fidel Castro dons military duds for 1st time since stepping down; possible sign of larger role
Source: AP (9-3-10)
Fidel Castro dusted off his full military uniform for the first time since stepping down as president four years ago, a symbolic act in a communist country where little signals often carry enormous significance.
The revolutionary leader wore the olive-green cap and uniform — minus the star and laurels he held as commander in chief — at a speech early Friday to students at the University of Havana. The clothing choice was sure to revive speculation the 84-year-old is seeking a larger role in Cuban politics after turning power over to his younger brother Raul.
Castro repeated his warning that the world stands on the brink of a nuclear conflagration due to tension pitting the United States and Israel against Iran. He has returned to the message almost daily since emerging from seclusion in July....
Natural History Museum's Origins of Western Culture hall will close for a 3-year renovation
Source: Washington Post (9-3-10)
The mummies at the National Museum of Natural History are going into storage. Their antiquated hall, the Origins of Western Culture, will close Sept. 26 for an extensive three-year renovation, although a few specimens will be viewable next spring.
The one human mummy and handful of animal mummies are among the museum's most popular attractions, right behind the Hope Diamond and the giant whale and squid. Featured are an Egyptian male, 2,200 years old, and an Apis bull, from 332-30 B.C. Both are displayed with the elaborate inner and outer coffins of Tenet-Khonsu, a high priestess from around 1000 B.C.
The Western Culture hall is one of the oldest displays at the 100-year-old museum, having opened as a full exhibition in 1978. The story line follows the development of mankind, tools and lifestyles from the Ice Age to about A.D. 500. In recent years, the museum has been tearing apart its old halls, updating scholarship in several areas and introducing new features, such as the Sant Ocean Hall. All these revisions have only accentuated the datedness of the mummies' enclosures.
A Detroit District Thrives by Building on the Past
Source: New York Times (8-31-10)
In sharp contrast to the rest of the Detroit metropolitan area, an area known as Midtown just north of the central business district has been holding its own in the recession.
Much of the success of Midtown — as it was branded a decade ago — is a result of the strength of institutions like Wayne State University, the Detroit Medical Center, the Henry Ford Hospital and the Detroit Institute of Arts, all of which contribute students and employees as well as residents.
Marcel Albert, Air Ace of France in World War II, Dies at 92
Source: New York Times (8-25-10)
Marcel Albert, who became one of the leading French fighter pilots of World War II, flying Soviet-built planes in duels with German aircraft on the Eastern front, died Monday in Harlingen, Tex. He was 92.
His death, at a nursing home, was announced by France’s Order of the Liberation, founded by Gen. Charles de Gaulle during the war. The cause was complications of cancer, his nephew Jean Mavinger told The Associated Press in Paris.
Mr. Albert was among four pilots of the Free French’s Normandie-Niémen fighter unit to be decorated as a Hero of the Soviet Union, receiving the citation in 1944. Flying Yakovlev fighter planes — known as Yaks — in combat alongside Soviet pilots, he took part in shooting down 24 German planes, according to the Order of the Liberation.
Exhibit presents World War I from the Germans’ perspective.
Source: Kansas City Star (9-2-10)
The soldier’s eyes are almost spooky as they gaze determinedly into the future.
They stare out from a patriotic poster exhorting the public to buy war bonds and help the nation prevail in the struggle against the enemy.
But this infantryman is German and the enemy is us.
The huge image dominates a new and limited exhibit at the Liberty Memorial that presents the First World War from the perspective of the other guys.
Exhibit organizers say they believe this is a first for an American museum.
Last mission for World War II bomber squadron
Source: Chicago Tribune (9-1-10)
There are famous last words and last rites. There's even a new book out on last meals.
But for a rapidly dwindling group of World War II veterans, what matters most right now is the last reunion.
The final curtain call for roughly 40 surviving members of the 320th Bomb Group will start Thursday at the Westin O'Hare Hotel in Rosemont. The storied unit caught flak repeatedly during some of the toughest missions of the war.
But there are fewer veterans left to talk about it, prompting the group to include other World War II and Korean War bomber groups at the three-day reunion.
As Past Recedes, Germans Reconsider the Draft
Source: New York Times (8-30-10)
For the first time in more than half a century, Germany’s political leadership appears ready to end the draft, a post World War II mandate embedded in the Constitution to prevent this nation’s military from ever again developing into a state-within-a-state that could impede democracy and start war.
The idea of the draft has become an anachronism in the post-cold-war world, where security concerns have shifted, demanding smaller, professional militaries to deal with hot spots around the world and to combat terrorist threats. Most of the West long ago abandoned conscription.
But Germany’s history and a deep attachment to the draft by the conservative parties have until now meant clinging to conscription, even as it became largely symbolic. Few young men served, and those who did usually served just six months. The draft was instituted in 1956 to develop an army of so-called “citizens in uniform,” creating an armed force integrated with society, loyal to the civilian leadership and immune to the kind of elitist force that dominated state affairs during the years of the Weimar Republic and before.
Mountain Meadows affidavit Hofmann forgery?
Source: Salt Lake Tribune (9-2-10)
Mormon bomber Mark Hofmann’s calling card has popped up again, signaling that the forger’s handiwork may be more widespread than previously believed.
But this time, instead of bogus documents surrounding the origins of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, an embarrassing affidavit on the Mountain Meadows Massacre has surfaced.
Just shy of the 25th anniversary of Hofmann’s deadly Salt Lake City-area bombing spree, a written record quoted by historians has become the focus of an investigation.
“The 1924 William Edwards affidavit” seems to give insights into the 1857 attack by Mormon settlers and American Indians in southern Utah that resulted in the deaths of 120 men, women and children in an Arkansas wagon train. The paper was tied to Hofmann two years before the admitted forger killed Steven Christensen and Kathleen Sheets in separate 1985 bombings.
History Buffs in Kansas Bring Back 'Town Ball'
Source: Kansas City Star (8-16-10)
irst, ballplayers plant a large square of broomstick stakes, instead of a diamond of bases, around a field.
Then, they divide randomly into halves. One team with an antique bat heads out for its first bout at bat.
“Huzzah, good strike,” screams Synthia Somerhalder, as striker Logan Nickels knocks a cotton-filled leather ball left and runs from broomstick to broomstick.
Two at-bats later, a ball skims the infield near another “stake-runner” who can’t avoid a flying “plug” from a nearby fielder, even with a “wild weasel” way off the stake-path. Just minutes after starting, the half-inning ends with only one out.
These games at the Lawrence Water Tower Park on Tuesday nights could easily seem a new, edgier version of baseball, but actually, they’re the opposite. The players come weekly with a bat and ball to play baseball’s predecessor, called town ball.
Historian Sean Wilentz claims Bob Dylan as one of his own.
Source: New York Magazine (8-22-10)
ean Wilentz, a Princeton history professor and author of Bob Dylan in America, has agreed to lead a tour of Dylan’s Greenwich Village, a place he knows better than any other. We visit the singer’s former apartment on West 4th Street, above what’s now a sex shop; the clubs he played along Macdougal Street; the building where he first encountered Allen Ginsberg. “This whole neighborhood has such a long history that there is a sense—for some of us, anyway—of revenants, of ghosts,” says Wilentz, better-heeled than your average tour guide, in Brooks Brothers and custom-made shoes. “Dylan talks about walking around here and thinking that it really is 1880. I don’t mean to be mystical or spooky, but if you know what’s going on, you can’t help but feel it.” Although Wilentz has done plenty of journalism, the Dylan book is a departure from his hardbound oeuvre, which includes a 1,100-page tome on American democracy and biographies of Andrew Jackson and Ronald Reagan. Bob Dylan in America may be an unusually rigorous Dylan book, but “it was easier to do than the others,” he says, “because in effect I’ve been doing the research all my life.”
New Owners Acquire Ice Age Discovery in Wisconsin
Source: ABC News (9-1-10)
The Cardy family of Door County has a lot to be proud of -- not only because their property dates back generations but because on that property are artifacts older than the Egyptian pyramids.
On Wednesday, one of Wisconsin's most significant archeological finds came under new ownership.
Archaeologists call the Cardy Camp on the southeastern edge of Sturgeon Bay the most important archaeological site of its era in Wisconsin.
Scientists say it was a hunting camp on the edge of a glacier at the end of the last Ice Age. Spear points, other stone tools, and the remains of a fire pit of a paleo-Indian culture have been discovered.
The artifacts date back 11,000 years.
"This was seven thousand years before (the pyramids), so we're quite excited about this discovery," Darrel Cardy said.
The Cardy family, who owns the property, will transfer ownership to the non-profit Archaeological Conservancy, which will continue to preserve and restore the find.
They're priceless items Cardy didn't think of when he collected them as a kid.
"As we were picking up the stones, occasionally we'd find an arrowhead at home, and we never thought a great deal about it," he said.
But years later he would come to find those arrowheads were actually a pretty rare find.
"This was a site, frankly, it was not supposed to be here. It was considered way too old for the landscape it was on. Many people didn't believe it existed," archaeologist David Overstreet said....
Rare German wartime bomber found in UK seabed to be raised for museum display
Source: Daily Mail (UK) (9-3-10)
rare German wartime bomber which was discovered on a sandbank 70 years after it was shot down during the Battle of Britain is to be raised, it was announced today.
The twin-engined Dornier 17 first emerged from Goodwin Sands, a ten-mile long sandbank off the coast of Deal, Kent, two years ago, a spokesman for the RAF Museum said.
Since then, the museum has worked with Wessex Archaeology to complete a full survey of the wreck site, usually associated with shipwrecks, before the plane is recovered and eventually exhibited as part of the Battle of Britain Beacon project.
The spokeswoman said the aircraft - known as a Flying Pencil due to its sleek design and stick-like lines - was part of a large enemy formation which attempted to attack airfields in Essex on August 26, 1940 but was intercepted by RAF fighter aircraft above Kent before the convoy reached its target.
he plane's pilot, Willi Effmert, attempted to carry out a wheels-up landing on Goodwin Sands but, although he landed safely, the aircraft sank.
He and one other crew member were captured but another two men died....
French Teacher Suspended for Spending Too Much Time Teaching Holocaust
Source: Fox News (9-3-10)
A history teacher has been suspended in France for spending too much time teaching students about the Holocaust.
Catherine Pederzoli, 58, a secondary school teacher who is Jewish, was accused of teaching the subject with insufficient neutrality for both her time dedicated to teaching about the Holocaust and trips she organized to former Nazi death camps, Pederzoli’s attorney Christine Tadic told Agence France-Presse.
"If this teacher had been a Christian, no one would have accused her of brain-washing," Tadic said. "Isn't it the case that this teacher's fault is to have been Jewish?"
A report compiled by school officials last month alleged that Pederzoli took up too much time preparing students for the annual school trips to Poland and the Czech Republic and accuses her of "lacking distance, neutrality and secularism" and "brain-washing" in teaching the Holocaust, AFP reported.
Tadic told the AFP that her client organized the trips for 15 years with no complaints and was unfairly targeted by a new school management team that arrived in 2007....
World's 'oldest beer' found in shipwreck
Source: CNN (9-3-10)
First there was the discovery of dozens of bottles of 200-year-old champagne, but now salvage divers have recovered what they believe to be the world's oldest beer, taking advertisers' notion of 'drinkability' to another level.
Though the effort to lift the reserve of champagne had just ended, researchers uncovered a small collection of bottled beer on Wednesday from the same shipwreck south of the autonomous Aland Islands in the Baltic Sea.
"At the moment, we believe that these are by far the world's oldest bottles of beer," Rainer Juslin, permanent secretary of the island's ministry of education, science and culture, told CNN on Friday via telephone from Mariehamn, the capital of the Aland Islands.
"It seems that we have not only salvaged the oldest champagne in the world, but also the oldest still drinkable beer. The culture in the beer is still living."
Juslin said officials had talked to a local brewer about whether the new-found beer might be able to yield its recipe after experts decipher the brew's ingredients.
The newest find came as divers unearthed bottles separate from the earlier champagne find. While lifting a few to the surface, one exploded from pressure. A dark fluid seeped from the broken bottle, which they realized was beer.
All the cargo on the ship -- including the beer and champagne -- is believed to have been transported sometime between 1800 and 1830, according to Juslin. He said the wreck was about 50 meters deep (roughly 164 feet) in between the Aland island chain and Finland....
Winston Churchill 'ordered assassination of Mussolini to protect compromising letters’
Source: Telegraph (UK) (9-2-10)
Winston Churchill ordered the assassination of Benito Mussolini as part of a plot to destroy potentially compromising secret letters he had sent the Italian dictator, a leading French historian has suggested.
Pierre Milza, an expert on fascist Italy, theorizes that the wartime prime minister may have wanted Mussolini dead to prevent the letters, in which Churchill expressed his admiration for his Italian counterpart before the outbreak of the Second World War, coming to light.
“There is no doubt, judging by his public declarations back in the 1920s and early 1930s, that Churchill was a fan of Mussolini. Roosevelt too,” Mr Milza said.
“Churchill even once said: 'Fascism has rendered a service to the entire world... If I were Italian, I am sure I would have been with you entirely’.
“But that was understandable in 1927, as then a fascist did not mean a friend of Hitler and accomplice to genocide. But when you are head of state and legitimate war hero of the British people, you don’t really want all that put up in lights.”
Officially, Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci, were seized by Italian Communist partisans near Dongo on Lake Como as they tried to flee to Switzerland in April 1945.
Despite disguising himself as a drunk German officer in a mixed Italian and SS convoy, he was spotted. Both he and Petacci were shot and their bodies subsequently trussed up in a square in Milan the following day....
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Wiesenthal Worked for Israeli Spy Agency, Book Alleges
Source: New York Times (9-2-10)
Simon Wiesenthal, a Holocaust survivor who gained worldwide fame for decades as a one-man Nazi-hunting operation, was in fact frequently on the payroll of the Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, a new biography asserts.
The assertion, based on numerous documents and interviews with three people said to be Mr. Wiesenthal’s Mossad handlers, punctures not only a widely held belief about how he operated; it also suggests a need to re-evaluate the standard view that the Israeli government took no interest in tracking down Nazis until the 1960 capture in Argentina of Adolf Eichmann, and little thereafter.
Mr. Wiesenthal died in 2005 at the age of 96 in his Vienna home.
“This requires us to adjust in some small way our view of history,” said Tom Segev, the author of the new book “Simon Wiesenthal: The Life and Legends,” which is being published by Doubleday this week in the United States and simultaneously in six other countries.
Mr. Segev, who is Israeli and a columnist for the newspaper Haaretz here, is the author of half a dozen other books, mostly about Israeli history. In a telephone interview, he said he had been given unfettered access to Mr. Wiesenthal’s papers — some 300,000 of them, previously closed to the public — by Mr. Wiesenthal’s daughter, Paulinka Kreisberg.
While reading through Mr. Wiesenthal’s correspondence, Mr. Segev came across names of people he did not recognize and discovered that they were Mossad agents and handlers. He interviewed three of them and named two in the book.
Mr. Segev said that Mr. Wiesenthal was first employed by the political department of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, a forerunner to the Mossad, and then by the agency itself. It financed his first office in Vienna in 1960, paid him a monthly salary and provided him with an Israeli passport, the biography says. Mr. Wiesenthal’s code name was Theocrat.
His main task was to help locate Nazi criminals, including Eichmann, one of the architects of the Final Solution, and especially to watch out for neo-Nazis and provide information on the activities of former Nazis in Arab countries, the book says.
It also says that Mr. Wiesenthal was part of a largely unknown earlier attempt to trap Eichmann in Austria in the last days of 1948. According to the book, an Israeli agent who was helping Mr. Wiesenthal probably caused the operation to fail when he regaled fellow New Year’s drinkers in local bars with stories of Israel’s war of independence. Word spread that an Israeli was present and Eichmann’s planned visit to his wife and child was abruptly called off, the book says.
The operation was started by Asher Ben Natan, later Israel’s first ambassador to Germany, who spoke about it with Mr. Segev. The operational report, newly declassified, is also cited. Mr. Segev said he passed his manuscript through the Israeli military censor, which is required of any work published here on security-related issues.
Mr. Wiesenthal’s role in the 1960 capture of Eichmann has been a matter of dispute. Isser Harel, the former Mossad head, now dead, claimed that the Nazi hunter deserved no credit.
But the book says that Mr. Wiesenthal, financed by the Israeli Embassy in Vienna, told the Mossad in 1953 that Eichmann was hiding in Argentina, leading ultimately to his capture by agency operatives. Eichmann’s televised trial in Israel was a milestone in modern Holocaust awareness. He was found guilty and hanged by Israel in 1962.
Mr. Wiesenthal, a complex and often controversial figure, opposed the execution, Mr. Segev shows by examining previously unknown correspondence. It was not moral objection to the death penalty but the belief that Eichmann had not yet told everything he knew and that his future testimony could be useful.
The biography provides new details on Mr. Wiesenthal’s often strained relations — ultimately mended — with Rabbi Marvin Hier, the founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which is based in Los Angeles. The disputes, recorded in numerous letters from Mr. Wiesenthal, were mostly petty, regarding accusations that the center failed to inform or consult properly with him.
The book also shows that Mr. Wiesenthal came to the quiet and consistent aid of Kurt Waldheim, the former secretary general of the United Nations and president of Austria, when he was being accused by Jewish groups of having lied about his service in the German Army. The harshest suspicions of war crimes against Mr. Waldheim were never proved and Mr. Wiesenthal’s role was largely as a behind-the-scenes consultant to his fellow Austrian.
Have LDS, Jews resolved proxy baptism dispute?
Source: Salt Lake City Tribune (9-2-10)
The LDS Church and Jewish leaders in New York are looking forward to working together on relief efforts and other endeavors after announcing Wednesday the resolution of a sticky dispute: posthumous proxy baptisms by Mormons of Jewish Holocaust victims.
But not everyone is convinced the problem is settled.
The Utah-based church reiterated its willingness to eliminate names of Holocaust victims from its massive genealogical database. The Jewish delegation, headed by Robert Abrams, New York’s former attorney general, acknowledged the church’s good intentions.
Army Chaplain is 1st killed in action since 1970
Source: Associated Press (9-2-10)
A chaplain killed in Afghanistan this week was the first Army clergyman killed in action since the Vietnam War, the military said Thursday.
Capt. Dale Goetz of the 4th Infantry Division at Fort Carson, Colo., was among five soldiers killed by an improvised bomb on Monday.
Before Goetz, the last Army chaplain to die in action was Phillip Nichols, who was killed by a concealed enemy explosive in Vietnam in October of 1970, said Chaplain Carleton Birch, a spokesman for the Army chief of chaplains.
Highest Paid Athlete Hailed From Ancient Rome
Source: Discovery News (9-1-10)
Ultra millionaire sponsorship deals such as those signed by sprinter Usain Bolt, motorcycle racer Valentino Rossi and tennis player Maria Sharapova, are just peanuts compared to the personal fortune amassed by a second century A.D. Roman racer, according to an estimate published in the historical magazine Lapham's Quarterly.
According to Peter Struck, associate professor of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania, an illiterate charioteer named Gaius Appuleius Diocles earned “the staggering sum" of 35,863,120 sesterces (ancient Roman coins) in prize money.
Recorded in a monumental inscription erected in 146 A.D., the figure eclipses the fortunes of all modern sport stars, including golfer Tiger Woods, hailed by Forbes magazine last fall “sports' first billion-dollar man.”
Rare Roman lantern found in UK field
Source: BBC News (9-2-10)
A metal detecting enthusiast has found what is believed to be the only intact Roman lantern made out of bronze ever discovered in Britain.
Danny Mills, 21, made the find in a field near Sudbury in Suffolk.
The area was dotted with plush Roman villas and country estates in the second century.
The object, described as a rare example of Roman craftsmanship, has been donated to Ipswich Museum where it is now on display.
In the autumn of 2009, Mr Mills, a metal detector user, found a large bronze object whilst metal detecting in a field near Sudbury.
He immediately reported the discovery to Suffolk Archaeological Unit.
'Magnificent object'
A Colchester and Ipswich Museums (CIM) spokeswoman said: "It turned out to be the only complete example of a Roman lantern found in Britain.
"Only fragments of similar lanterns are held in the British Museum and the closest complete example is from the famous Roman site of Pompeii."...
Charles Darwin's ecological experiment on Ascension isle
Source: BBC News (9-1-10)
A lonely island in the middle of the South Atlantic conceals Charles Darwin's best-kept secret.
Two hundred years ago, Ascension Island was a barren volcanic edifice.
Today, its peaks are covered by lush tropical "cloud forest".
What happened in the interim is the amazing story of how the architect of evolution, Kew Gardens and the Royal Navy conspired to build a fully functioning, but totally artificial ecosystem.
By a bizarre twist, this great imperial experiment may hold the key to the future colonisation of Mars.
The tiny tropical island of Ascension is not easy to find. It is incredibly remote, located 1,600km (1,000 miles) from the coast of Africa and 2,250km (1,400 miles) from South America.
Its existence depends entirely on what geologists call the mid-Atlantic ridge. This is a chain of underwater volcanoes formed as the ocean is wrenched apart....
Stephen Hawking Picks Physics Over God for Big Bang
Source: Fox News (9-2-10)
Physics was the reason for the Big Bang, not God, according to scientist Stephen Hawking.
"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing," the professor said in his new book, in a challenge to traditional religious beliefs.
"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going," he wrote in his book "The Grand Design," extracts of which are printed in London newspaper The Times.
The book, co-written by American physicist Leonard Mlodinow and published next week, sets out to contest Sir Isaac Newton's belief that the universe must have been designed by God as it could not have created out of chaos.
He cites the 1992 discovery of a planet orbiting a star other than the Sun.
"That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions -- the single Sun, the lucky combination of Earth-Sun distance and solar mass -- far less remarkable, and far less compelling as evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings."
Professor Hawking had previously appeared to accept the role of God in the creation of the universe, writing in A Brief History Of Time in 1988.
"If we discover a complete theory, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason -- for then we should know the mind of God," he wrote.
Until last year, the professor held the same post as Sir Isaac Newton, that of Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge.
While other eminent scientists, such as leading atheist Richard Dawkins, will welcome Professor Hawking's views, others are still not convinced...
White House Forbids Sale of 850,000 Korean War Rifles
Source: Fox News (9-1-10)
The South Korean government, in an effort to raise money for its military, wants to sell nearly a million antique M1 rifles that were used by U.S. soldiers in the Korean War to gun collectors in America.
The Obama administration approved the sale of the American-made rifles last year. But it reversed course and banned the sale in March – a decision that went largely unnoticed at the time but that is now sparking opposition from gun rights advocates.
A State Department spokesman said the administration's decision was based on concerns that the guns could fall into the wrong hands.
"The transfer of such a large number of weapons -- 87,310 M1 Garands and 770,160 M1 Carbines -- could potentially be exploited by individuals seeking firearms for illicit purposes," the spokesman told FoxNews.com.
"We are working closely with our Korean allies and the U.S. Army in exploring alternative options to dispose of these firearms."...
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Divers steal from Holland 5 submarine off Sussex coast
Source: BBC (9-1-10)
Thieves have targeted a historically important submarine wreck lying in the English Channel, it has emerged.
English Heritage said divers stole the torpedo tube hatch of the Holland 5, which sank six miles off Eastbourne in East Sussex in 1912.
The theft was discovered during a licensed dive by the Nautical Archaeology Society (NAS) in June and confirmed during a dive last month.
Sussex Police and English Heritage have appealed for help to catch the perpetrators, who may have struck up to two years ago.....
Archaeologists in Jordan say they have unearthed a 3,000-year-old temple
Source: The Canadian Press (9-1-10)
Archaeologists in Jordan have unearthed a 3,000-year-old Iron Age temple with a trove of figurines of ancient deities and circular clay vessels used for religious rituals, officials said Wednesday.
The head of the Jordanian Antiquities Department, Ziad al-Saad, said the sanctuary dates to the eighth century B.C. and was discovered at Khirbat 'Ataroz near the town of Mabada, some 20 miles (32 kilometres) southwest of the capital Amman.
The sanctuary and its artifacts — hewn from limestone and basalt or moulded from clay and bronze — show the complex religious rituals of Jordan's ancient biblical Moabite kingdom, according to al-Saad....
Palaeolithic funeral feast unearthed in Northern Israel
Source: BBC (9-1-10)
The remains of a huge 12,000 year old feast have been found in a cave in Northern Israel.
Archaeologists working in Hilazon Tachtit found what they thought was a late Palaeolithic campsite, when they discovered tools and animal bones.
However they soon realised they were looking at a large burial site, with huge numbers of animal bones.
They found the remains of at least three aurochs - giant extinct cattle - and over 70 tortoise skeletons....
Rare paintings found in Surrey attic saved from dustbin
Source: BBC (9-1-10)
A 75-year-old Surrey woman cleared out her attic and found two paintings that could fetch up to Ł30,000 at auction.
The woman decided she wanted to throw the oil paintings away, but first went to her neighbour Spencer Wright to ask how to dispose of them.
Mr Wright said he realised they should not be consigned to the bin, and used an iPhone app to contact Christie's.
The artworks were painted in 1904 to celebrate the founding of the Australian army by Major General Edward Hutton, who once owned the paintings.
William Blamire Young is known for his watercolours, which is why the oil paintings are considered to be rare....
New York art courier loses $1.3 million painting on night out
Source: Telegraph (UK) (9-1-10)
A New York art courier entrusted with helping to sell a $1.3 million (Ł850,000) painting is being sued after it vanished while he was on a night out.
James Carl Haggerty is now being sued by one of the owners of “Portrait of a Girl” by the French artist Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot.
Owner Kristyn Trudgeon is suing for the value of the painting, which was completed in about 1857 and spent years at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles....
Fidel Castro regrets discrimination against gays in Cuba
Source: Telegraph (UK) (9-1-10)
Fidel Castro has acknowledge discrimination against homosexuals during his rule in the 1960s and 70s, regretting that he did not pay enough attention to the “great injustice” suffered.
The former Cuban revolutionary leader said if someone was responsible, it was him, but he was primarily concerned with other matters.
Castro did not blame the ruling Communist Party for the discrimination, instead regretting that he himself did not pay enough attention to the plight of gays during an era of sabotage, armed attacks and assassination plots against him.
Like other Cubans, including some priests, considered “ideological deviants,” homosexuals in the 1960s were sent to labour camps for re-education and rehabilitation. Discrimination continued in the 1970s, with gays, in particular gay artists and writers, disgraced, marginalised, or in some cases driven into exile.....
Blair: Bush world view had 'immense simplicity'
Source: CNN (9-1-10)
Former U.S. President George W. Bush was a "true idealist" who displayed "genuine integrity and political courage," former British prime minister Tony Blair reveals in his memoirs.
Detailing the close professional and personal relationship which developed between the two leaders in the wake of the 2001 terror attacks in the U.S. and during the build-up to the Iraq war in 2003, Blair writes that Bush was "very smart" while having "immense simplicity in how he saw the world."
But Blair, whose premiership overlapped the presidencies of Bush and Bill Clinton, reserves his warmest words for Bush's Democratic predecessor, describing him as a "political soulmate" and "the most formidable politician I had ever encountered." He also defends Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair.
By contrast, Blair describes an initially awkward relationship with Bush when the pair first met at Camp David in February 2001, disagreeing on most social issues as well as being "poles apart" on climate change....
Divers lift 200-year-old champagne from Baltic shipwreck
Source: CNN (9-1-10)
Divers are recovering bottles of champagne that have been lying at the bottom of the Baltic Sea for about two centuries, an autonomous Finnish island official said Wednesday.
About 70 bottles lie mostly undamaged at 50 meters deep [roughly 164 feet] south of the Aland Islands.
Juslin said that the cargo was aboard a ship believed to be heading from Copenhagen, Denmark, to St Petersburg, Russia, between 1800 and 1830. It could have possibly been sent by France's King Louis XVI to the Russian Imperial Court....
History will be judge of war in Iraq, Gates says
Source: Washington Times (9-1-10)
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Wednesday that history will judge whether the war in Iraq was worth it.
In Iraq to mark the formal close of the U.S. combat mission and the departure of the top U.S. war commander, Mr. Gates visited troops at Camp Ramadi in western Iraq.
Asked whether the U.S. was still at war in Iraq, Mr. Gates answered succinctly, "I would say we are not."
Fewer than 50,000 U.S. troops are still in Iraq, down from more than 165,000 at the height of the fighting.
Mr. Gates was less definitive about whether the 7 and a half year war was worthwhile. That judgment "really requires a historian's perspective," and will depend in part on whether Iraq emerges as a democratic anchor in the Middle East, Mr. Gates told reporters after his Ramadi visit.
Giant Freeze Dryer To Preserve Ship Pieces At Texas A&M Lab
Source: Texas A&M News (8-31-10)
Texas A&M University researchers working to restore the hull of La Belle, a light frigate recovered from its underwater grave, are using an unconventional method to preserve the pieces: a state-of-the-art freeze dryer big enough to hold a few head of cattle.
La Belle was carrying 43 people when it sank in Matagorda Bay in January 1686. The ship’s remains now lie in a vat of oily preservative on Texas A&M’s Riverside Campus, the former Bryan Air Force Base that serves as headquarters for research and related activities, including a division of the Center for Maritime Archaeology and Conservation.
Dig uncovers fort built by the British during the Revolution
Source: Savannah Morning News (8-27-10)
Covered over for a couple of hundred years, a British-built Revolutionary War fort at Ebenezer shows up perfectly on Dan Elliott's ground-penetrating radar as a set of squiggly lines.
Just a few feet away, radar shows more squiggly lines, this time indicating several graves outside the cemetery fence.
"The story of the dead here is really interesting, and complicated," said Elliott, who, since 1987, has been worked on several projects at Ebenezer.
Homeowner’s Fight Involves Flag Tied to Tea Party
Source: New York Times (8-30-10)
Don’t tread on Andy C. McDonel.
This year, Mr. McDonel began flying a yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” flag on his roof in this unincorporated area just outside Phoenix. The historic banner — which dates to 1775, when it was hoisted aboard ships during the initial days of the Revolutionary War — has been adopted by the Tea Party movement. But Mr. McDonel said that he had unfurled the flag for its historical significance and nothing else.
He notes that the banner, the Gadsden flag, has been widely used over the years and was even featured on the cover of a rock album. “Am I a Metallica fan because I’m using the flag?” he asked.
Live Civil War cannonballs removed from KSU building
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution (8-31-10)
Call it the second evacuation of Kennesaw, thanks to the Civil War.
Students waited outside the building for the all clear Monday. A Kennesaw State University classroom building was evacuated Monday because of Civil War relics that authorities feared were dangerous.
When General William T. Sherman rode through in 1864, folks got out of the way; and hundreds of Kennesaw State University students were evacuated from a classroom Monday because of two live cannonballs on campus.
They were not uncovered during construction or an archeological dig, but had been gathering dust in a display case for three years on the third floor of the Social Sciences building. The room had limited access.
Tony Blair says did not foresee Iraq "nightmare"
Source: Reuters (9-1-10)
Former British prime minister Tony Blair said on Wednesday he could have not have imagined what he called the "nightmare" that unfolded in Iraq but still did not regret joining the U.S.-led invasion.
In a political memoir Blair echoed previous statements that the 2003 invasion was justified because Saddam Hussein posed a threat and could have developed weapons of mass destruction.
The self-penned volume "A Journey" was published on the day the United States formally ended combat operations in Iraq after a conflict that claimed more than 100,000 deaths, most of them civilians
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Magna Carta Getting a New Gas to Lie In
Source: Live Science (8-31-10)
The Magna Carta helped form the foundation for modern English and U.S. law. Now one of two copies known to exist outside England is headed for a special new case to preserve it.
The very first Magna Carta dates to 1215, when English barons forced King John to write down the traditional rights and liberties of the country's free persons. A copy of the Magna Carta signed by King Edward I in 1297 currently resides within a helium-filled casement at the National Archives Building in Washington. But the medieval document is scheduled for a temporary removal in 2011 so it can be re-measured for a new case filled with argon.
Researchers worried that helium atoms, which are relatively small, could escape from the case holding the Magna Carta, leaving the 713-year-old animal skin parchment susceptible to degradation. Those fears proved unfounded, but the National Archives has chosen to preserve the parchment in another inert gas, argon, whose larger atoms have proven easier to contain....
Cavemen Accused of Wiping Out Cave Bears
Source: Live Science (8-29-10)
Giant cave bears thought to have once dined on each other might have been driven to extinction by the advance of humanity, scientists now suggest.
Cave bears (Ursus spelaeus) are named after the places where their bones are often found - caves across Europe. These giants were roughly a third larger than modern grizzly bears, and while scientists previously thought cave bears were vegetarians, recent findings hinted they might also have consumed meat, and possibly even cannibalized each other.
Cave bear populations started to plummet in Europe 24,000 years ago, dying out roughly 20,000 years ago, back when ice dominated the Earth. The cause was unknown.
The scientists compared 59 DNA sequences from cave bear mitochondria - the powerhouses within their cells - with 40 modern and fossil DNA samples from brown bears (Ursus arctos) to find out why the former went extinct while the latter did not.
Their findings suggest that cave bear genetic diversity - a clue to how many there were - began declining 50,000 years ago. Other fossil evidence reveals they ceased to be abundant in Central Europe roughly 35,000 years ago. (Diversity of genes can provide indirect evidence for the number of breeding individuals, because with more bears mating more genes are thrown into the mix, and vice versa.)....
Prehistoric villages ruins discovered in North China
Source: Sify News (8-31-10)
Chinese archaeologists have found the ruins of two prehistoric villages in Tongliao City of eastern Inner Mongolia.
The archaeologistsin north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region found the ruins in Hamin'aile Village, of Horqin Left-wing Middle Banner (County).
The remains were identified in the spring as possibly originating from Hongshan Culture, dating back 5,000 years, said Ji Ping, a researcher at the Institute of Cultural and Historical Relics and Archaeology of Inner Mongolia.
Another group of prehistoric village ruins were located in Nanbaoligaotu Village, of Jarud Banner, with a total area of 10,000 square meters, and more than 200 articles of earthenware, stoneware and jadeware had been discovered.nlike the Hamin'aile Village finds, the jade articles in Nanbaoligaotu Village were made with white jade, which was mainly found around Lake Baikal in Russia....
Failed Search Deepens Mystery of Vanished Explorers
Source: The Wall Street Journal (8-31-10)
Canadian scientists' announcement Monday that they failed to find the final resting place of British naval hero Sir John Franklin deepened one of the most enduring mysteries of the Arctic.
In May 1845, Franklin set sail from England with 134 men aboard two ships, the Terror and Erebus, to search for the fabled Northwest Passage through the Canadian Arctic to the Pacific Ocean. Five sailors left the ship in Greenland. The rest were never heard from again.
Last week, a six-man government survey team, supported by the Canadian Coast Guard vessel the Sir Wilfrid Laurier and its near 50-man crew, surveyed hundreds of square miles of frigid sea floor hoping to succeed where some 100 other expeditions failed—discovering the fate of the ships and a crew whose demise has been attributed to factors from lead poisoning to cannibalism....
South Sudan to end use of child soldiers
Source: BBC (3-31-10)
The army in Southern Sudan has pledged to demobilise all child soldiers by the end of the year.
The Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) has established a child protection unit to fulfil the pledge.
The UN children's agency estimates that the SPLA, thought to have already discharged more than 20,000 children, still includes about 900 in its ranks.
Sudan's civil war ended with a peace agreement in 2005, which committed both sides to an extensive process of demobilisation. But tensions have remained high in the run up to the referendum....
Meat-eating 'dragon' terrorised Romania 80 million years ago
Source: Telegraph (UK) (8-30-10)
A dragon-like dinosaur with vast claws terrorised Europe 80 million years ago, a study has found.
The creature was a powerfully-built meat-eating dinosaur with scythe-like claws for ripping its prey apart. It used its lower limbs to disembowel its victims.
Experts have named the seven-foot long dinosaur, which was discovered in Romania, Balaur bondoc, which means ''stocky dragon''.
Other fossils found in the same region include cow-sized relatives of giant sauropod dinosaurs, and tiny duck-billed dinosaurs....
Titanic wreckage to be raised digitally by new 3D map
Source: Telegraph (UK) (8-31-10)
...But now researchers believe they will be able to raise the Titanic - digitally - after amazing High Definition images were beamed back from its final resting place.
Images originally designed to give scientists an insight into how long it takes for wrecks to disintegrate are to be turned into a 3D map of the wreckage.
It will mean people could one day be able to take a 3D tour of the shipwreck.
Using state-of-the art HD robotic cameras and sonar, scientists have been able to take the clearest pictures yet of the ship.
And they were amazed to find it is far better preserved than was previously thought, despite nearly a century underwater....
Israeli archaeologists say ancient shards of flint might be world's oldest disposable cutlery
Source: AP (8-30-10)
Israeli archaeologists believe thousands of ancient shards of flint found scattered around a fire pit in a cave near Tel Aviv might be the world's oldest known disposable knives.
Dating to the Stone Age, the tiny knives are believed to be at least 200,000 years old. A Tel Aviv University excavation team found the tools around a fireplace littered with charred animal bones.
Archaeologist Ran Barkai said he believes Stone Age hunter-gatherers used the rough, round-shaped cutlery — ranging from the size of human teeth to guitar picks — for slicing through cooked meat because they were found next to the animal bones. The bones were used to determine the age of the knives....
Nearly 15,000 people still missing from 1990s Balkan wars, Red Cross says
Source: AP (8-30-10)
The Red Cross says nearly 15,000 people are still missing from the wars fought in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
The figures were released Monday to commemorate the International Day of the Disappeared.
About 10,500 of those missing are from the 1992-95 war in Bosnia, while 2,392 are from the 1991-95 conflict in Croatia. Another 1,839 are from the 1998-99 conflict in Kosovo.
Vietnam War-era artillery shell explodes in southern Vietnam, killing man and injuring wife
Source: AP (8-30-10)
A Vietnam War-era artillery shell exploded and killed a villager in southern Vietnam as he was cutting it up for scrap metal.
Long Duc village chief Truong Hoang Hai in the southern province of Soc Trang said the man was killed in the explosion Monday that also seriously wounded his wife. The man was in his early 40s.
Vietnamese government figures show unexploded ordnance has killed more than 42,000 people and wounded some 62,000 since the conflict ended in 1975....
Seeking clues to Bolivar's death, Venezuela exhumes bones of independence hero's sisters
Source: AP (8-30-10)
Venezuelan authorities exhumed the remains of Simon Bolivar's sisters Monday, seeking genetic clues to help them investigate President Hugo Chavez's theory that the South American independence hero may have been murdered.
Scientists and forensic experts extracted DNA samples from the bones of Juana and Maria Antonia Bolivar — the only siblings of the man known in Venezuela as "El Libertador" — after authorities opened their tombs inside a cathedral in downtown Caracas, Vice President Elias Jaua said.
Chavez ordered the exhumation of Bolivar's bones last month in hopes of using modern forensics to confirm his identity and investigate a theory that his idol was felled by a murder conspiracy. The president has gone so far as to raise concerns that the skeleton inside the National Pantheon may not be the remains of the 19th century independence icon.....
Former Argentine military officer fights extradition from US over 1972 massacre
Source: AP (8-31-10)
A former Argentine military officer is going to have to wait a little longer to find out if he will be sent to Argentina to stand trial on charges that he was involved in a 1972 massacre of leftist guerrillas.
A federal judge in Miami said at a hearing Tuesday he would issue a written decision in a few weeks in the case of 68-year-old Roberto Guillermo Bravo.
Argentina wants Bravo to face 16 counts of murder and other charges in the 1972 killings. Bravo's attorney says he is innocent and has been cleared by an Argentine military investigation....
White House keeps lid on Obama, Bush talk
Source: CNN (8-31-10)
President Obama telephoned former President George W. Bush from Air Force One in advance of Tuesday night's prime time speech regarding the end of the combat mission in Iraq - but the White House isn't saying what the two men discussed.
Obama called his predecessor while flying to Fort Bliss to meet with military personnel Tuesday morning ahead of his Oval Office address. The two spoke for several minutes according to Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton. There were no details about the subject of their conversation and Burton said no read out of the phone call would be provided....
U.S. combat mission in Iraq nears end
Source: CNN (8-31-10)
Almost 7˝ years ago, President George W. Bush launched a blistering "shock and awe" invasion of Iraq.
The goal: eliminate a perceived threat of weapons of mass destruction while replacing a hostile, tyrannical regime with a friendly democracy in the heart of the Middle East.
At 5 p.m. ET Tuesday -- at a cost of more than 4,400 U.S. military personnel killed and 30,000 wounded -- America's combat mission in Iraq will officially draw to a close.
The quick removal of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein ushered in years of grinding sectarian violence, war, terrorist attacks and, according to some observers, increased Iranian influence in the region. But it also paved the way for nationwide elections and increasing economic development.
Whether the war was worth the price remains a subject of fierce debate both at home and abroad....
The man who first saw Belsen
Source: The Telegraph (8-31-10)
As Captain John Webster’s Jeep approached a small German town in 1945, he ordered his driver to turn down an unmade track. The officer had glimpsed some white buildings which, he recalls, “just didn’t look right”.
Capt Webster, senior liaison officer with Lowland Brigade HQ of the 15th Scottish Division, had been sent to find an armoured column that had failed to make contact with his unit in the British advance into north Germany in April 1945.
He told his driver to proceed cautiously – he didn’t want to blunder into an enemy position. However, what they found was not German soldiers but a sight so extraordinary and so disturbing it has stayed with Capt Webster ever since: hundreds of people, dressed in blue striped uniforms, emaciated and looking “as if they were no longer of this world”.
Recalling that scene, Capt Webster says: “They took no notice of us at all. I thought, 'What is this place?’ ”
Daniel Libeskind memorial to mark Canada's refusal of Jews in 1939
Source: The Globe and Mail (Toronto) (8-30-10)
Crafted from steel and carved in a never-ending circle, a monument to be built by world-renowned architect Daniel Libeskind will be the first Canadian tribute to the MS St. Louis, a ship carrying Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany that the Canadian government turned away in 1939.
The ship’s journey is a black mark for Canada, because a third of its 900 occupants later died in Nazi concentration camps. A lack of public awareness about the incident led the Canadian Jewish Congress to hold a contest to design a monument that would convey the pain of the experience and the lessons to be learned, said the CJC’s chief executive officer, Bernie Farber.
Most Russians unaware of Molotov-Ribbentrop pact
Source: Kiev Post (8-31-10)
The percentage of Russians approving of the signing in August 1939 of the treaty of non-aggression between the USSR and the Nazi Germany (the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact) has noticeably dropped from 40% to 33% in the past five years, sociologists from the Levada-Center told Interfax on Monday.
Forty-six percent respondents are unaware about the pact's existence at all (37% in 2005), according to the findings of a nationwide poll conducted on August 20-23. The document is condemned by 5% Russians.
German war-dead find final resting place in Czech soil
Source: Earth Times (8-25-10)
The remains of 5,600 Wehrmacht soldiers and ethnic Germans who died on Czech territory during and shortly after World War II now have a final resting place there.
The place is the town of Cheb, known in German as Eger, in the Sudetenland region near the Bavarian border. The new war cemetery, the largest and last burial site for German war dead on Czech territory, will be officially opened on September 11, some 65 years after the war.
Oil aboard sunken WWII tanker may pose threat
Source: S.F. Chronicle (8-27-10)
Scientists are studying sonar images of a shipwreck loaded with 3.5 million gallons of crude oil in the holds of a tanker that lies 4 miles off the scenic Central California coast like a rusting time bomb.
The American tanker Montebello was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine Dec. 23, 1941, only 16 days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and sank in 900 feet of water. The Montebello has lain on the bottom ever since.
Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera to be reunited on 500-peso bill
Source: L.A. Times (8-30-10)
The Bank of Mexico said Monday it would place in circulation a new 500-peso bill featuring the well-known faces of two of the country's best-known artists, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. In the bank's official video to promote the bill's anti-counterfeiting features, two figures resembling the celebrity couple stroll in costume around traditional and modern sites in Mexico.
The previous face on the 500-peso bill was Ignacio Zaragoza, hero of the Battle of Puebla. Milenio reports that in 2006, efforts to replace his face on the note were resisted in Congress. This time, the Bank of Mexico said it had the autonomy to change the look of Mexico's currency as it bolsters efforts to combat money laundering and counterfeiting.
Rewriting History on Chappaquiddick
Source: U.S. News (8-30-10)
For many, the name Chappaquiddick conjures images of a drunken Sen. Edward Kennedy hitting on Mary Jo Kopechne in his Oldsmobile, losing control, and plunging into the water of Poucha Pond on Chappaquiddick Island, adjacent to Martha's Vineyard where President Obama was vacationing. Kopechne, a family friend, drowned; and Teddy fumbled for excuses about what happened.
Now, a year after Kennedy died, his lifelong biographer Burton Hersh, armed with fresh interviews with Kennedy's mistress at the time, tells Whispers that the whole July 1969 episode should have been handled as a simple crash, leaving the senator's legacy untainted. "It was a car accident," he says. "Ted was a terrible driver. He never paid much attention to where he was going."
Britain to Scrap Outmoded Bylaws
Source: AFP (8-31-10)
Fish frying will become legal in Gloucester and people will be allowed to beat carpets in Blackpool under government plans announced Tuesday to let local councils scrap outdated byelaws.
Local Government Minister Grant Shapps outlined the proposals as part of a strategy to hand power back to councils and communities.
The reforms will mean that councils can create new byelaws or get rid of old ones without seeking permission from Whitehall.
French railways to open Nazi deportation files to US
Source: AsiaOne News (8-29-10)
France's state rail company will give US authorities details of its role in deporting Jews to Nazi death camps in support of its bid to build a high-speed railway in California, its chairman said Sunday.
"Twenty years ago we opened all our archives... we are going to open all that to the Americans," said the chairman of the SNCF national railway company, Guillaume Pepy, on Europe 1 radio.
German Plans to Invade Ireland Revealed
Source: Irish Central (8-28-10)
If the Nazi invasion of Britain had been successful, Ireland would have been invaded, it has been revealed.
Details of the Irish invasion were recently released by the National Archives in Britain.
The just-published MI5 file shows that Ireland was definitely targeted for a Nazi landing if the German Air Force, the Luftwaffe, had won the Battle of Britain.
RAF relied on German sea rescue service during Battle of Britain
Source: The Telegraph (8-31-10)
The problem became so severe that British aircraft were ordered to try to avoid travelling over the sea because too many being drowned, it has emerged.
Amid the 70th anniversary commemorations this summer it can be disclosed that at least 200 pilots died “needlessly” in 1940 after bailing out over water.
Once they hit the water there was very little chance of survival with only the occasional flier being picked up by a passing destroyer or fishing boat.
The German service, that had been set up in 1935, became so effective that RAF chiefs ordered fighters to shoot down the Luftwaffe Dornier 24 seaplane that were unarmed and painted in white with a large red cross. However, it is thought that the Germans might have been using the aircraft for illicit reconnaissance missions.
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