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This page features brief excerpts of news stories published by the mainstream media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Highlights
Breaking News
This page features brief excerpts of news stories published by the mainstream media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in each source note. Quotation marks are not used. Because most of our readers read the NYT we usually do not include the paper's stories in HIGHLIGHTS.
Name of source: NYT
SOURCE: NYT (7-29-11)
A federal judge in Washington has ordered the release of hundreds of pages of President Richard M. Nixon’s 1975 testimony about Watergate. The judge, Royce C. Lamberth III of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, wrote in a decision issued Friday that “nearly 40 years later, Watergate continues to capture both scholarly and public interest.”...
SOURCE: NYT (7-24-11)
PBS has announced plans to commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11 with a mixture of new programs and repeats. The schedule, starting in the week leading up to the anniversary, is to include “America Remembers — 9/11,” a “PBS NewsHour” presentation exploring the lasting effects that the terrorist attacks have had across the United States....
SOURCE: NYT (7-24-11)
WASHINGTON — A few days ago, former President Bill Clinton identified a constitutional escape hatch should President Obama and Congress fail to come to terms on a deficit reduction plan before the government hits its borrowing ceiling.
He pointed to an obscure provision in the 14th Amendment, saying he would unilaterally invoke it “without hesitation” to raise the debt ceiling, “and force the courts to stop me.”...
The provision in question, Section 4 of the amendment, was meant to ensure the payment of Union debts after the Civil War and to disavow Confederate ones. But it was written in broader terms.
“The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payments of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion,” the critical sentence says, “shall not be questioned.”
The Supreme Court has said in passing that those words have outlived the historical moment that gave rise to them.
“While this provision was undoubtedly inspired by the desire to put beyond question the obligations of the government issued during the Civil War,” Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes wrote for the court in 1935, “its language indicates a broader connotation.”...
SOURCE: NYT (7-24-11)
PORT GAMBLE S’KLALLAM RESERVATION, Wash. — The canoe journeys are a new tradition for a very old people, but they already have one rigid rule that everyone knows not to break.
That thing you are paddling is called a canoe. Do not call it something else.
“If you call it a boat,” said Mariah Francis, 16, of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe, “you’re either supposed to jump in the water or you’ll get thrown in.”
And as paddlers are reminded each year, the water here is cold.
For the 23rd summer in a row, a growing number of American Indians from tribes scattered across coastal regions of Washington State and British Columbia have climbed into traditionally designed cedar canoes and paddled as many as 40 miles a day, sometimes more, over two or three weeks, camping at a series of reservations until they converge at the home of a host tribe. There, several thousand people welcome them for a week of traditional dancing, singing and celebration....
Name of source: BBC
SOURCE: BBC (7-28-11)
Maritime archaeologists have investigated ways for World War II tanks at the bottom of the sea near the Isle of Wight to be protected.
The tanks and other equipment were being carried on a landing craft which capsized and lost its cargo as it was heading for the D-Day landings in 1944.
They sit on the seabed between the east of the island and Selsey, West Sussex.
Hampshire and Wight Trust for Maritime Archaeology is looking at how land legislation can be applied to the sea.
The project has been funded by English Heritage.... .....
SOURCE: BBC (7-29-11)
A collection of silver and pewter items, some 350 years old, has been stolen from a Derbyshire church.
St Peter's Church, on Pindale Road in Hope, was broken into between 2 July and 27 July, police said.
About 15 items, dating back to between 1662 and 1970 and including two silver chalices and a 17th Century pewter plate, were taken from a safe.
Police said the items, which are used for special services, were worth thousands of pounds....
SOURCE: BBC (7-29-11)
Human remains have been found in South Korea, which could be those of a Gloucestershire regiment soldier who fought in the Korean War in 1951.
Tests are now being carried out by the UK's Joint Casualty and Compassionate Centre (JCCC) to see if the soldier is British.
Bodies of several British soldiers who fought in Korea have never been found.
The discovery was made in October, but details of the find have only just been released.
Sue Raftree, of the JCCC based at RAF Innsworth in Gloucester, which is part of the MOD's Service Personnel and Veterans Agency (SPVA), said it was too early to say for certain if the soldier was British....
SOURCE: BBC (7-25-11)
An archaeologist believes a wall carving in a south Wales cave could be Britain's oldest example of rock art.
The faint scratchings of a speared reindeer are believed to have been carved by a hunter-gatherer in the Ice Age more than 14,000 years ago.
The archaeologist who found the carving on the Gower peninsula, Dr George Nash, called it "very, very exciting."
Experts are working to verify the discovery, although its exact location is being kept secret for now.
Dr Nash, a part-time academic for Bristol University, made the discovery while at the caves in September 2010...
SOURCE: BBC (7-25-11)
Parts of a German bomber shot down in the Battle of Britain have been found in a bungalow's garden in Somerset.
Engine parts of the Heinkel were left 5ft (1.5m) underground in Puriton for over 70 years archaeologists have said.
The site is being excavated after original photographs were used to discover the plane's exact whereabouts.
At the time, the main body of the bomber was recovered by the RAF but the impact of the crash meant some of the parts broke off as it was pulled out of the ground.
It is these parts which are now being excavated by the enthusiasts who hope theY will eventually be displayed in a museum to give a fresh insight into the Battle of Britain...
SOURCE: BBC (7-21-11)
A 120-million-year-old fossil is the oldest pregnant lizard ever discovered, according to scientists.
The fossil, found in China, is a very complete 30cm (12in) lizard with more than a dozen embryos in its body.
Researchers from University College London, who studied the fossil, say it was just days from giving birth when it died and was buried during the Cretaceous period.
The team reports the findings in the journal Naturwissenschaften.
The fossil is especially interesting to scientists because it is a reptile that produced live young rather than laying eggs....
SOURCE: BBC (7-24-11)
The 600th anniversary of a famous Aberdeenshire battle has been remembered.
The Battle of Harlaw was a clash between Scottish clans which was fought on 24 July, 1411, just north of Inverurie.
Hundreds of men died in the fierce combat.
A service was held at the Kirk of St Nicholas in Aberdeen before wreaths were laid at the Battle of Harlaw monument at Chapel of Garioch.
The Lord Provost of Aberdeen, Peter Stephen, and the Provost of Aberdeenshire, Bill Howatson, were joined by representatives from clans involved in the battle...
SOURCE: BBC (7-21-11)
Thirty fugitives wanted for war crimes or crimes against humanity are believed to be hiding in Canada, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government has said.
The country's Border Services Agency website named the suspects, appealing for the public's help to find them.
The fugitives are listed as having come from regions including the Middle East, Africa and Latin America.
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said the suspects should be tracked down and removed from Canada.
The website said the wanted men came from Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, El Salvador, Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan and the former Yugoslavia....
SOURCE: BBC (7-22-11)
The top half of the Weary Herakles statue, which was bought by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1982, is to be returned to its native Turkey.
After an ongoing dispute, the MFA will reunite the bust with its lower half at the Antalya Museum later this year.
The announcement is seen as a victory for Turkey which is trying to retrieve artefacts it believes have been looted throughout the years.
It is thought the full statue will return to Boston on a short-term loan.
The top half of the sculpture of weary demigod Hercules was purchased in 1981 from a German dealer, by the MFA and late New York art collecter Leon Levy....
Name of source: MSNBC
SOURCE: MSNBC (7-29-11)
As ancient civilizations across the Middle East collapsed, possibly in response to a global drought about 4,200 years ago, archaeologists have discovered that one settlement in Syria not only survived, but expanded.
Their next question is — why did Tell Qarqur, a site in northwest Syria, grow at a time when cities across the Middle East were being abandoned?
Tell Qarqur was occupied for about 10,000 years, between 8,500 B.C. and A.D. 1350. While excavations have taken place off and on for nearly three decades now, only a small portion of the city has been excavated so far. The long history of the site makes digging down to the 4,200-year-old remains difficult. To compensate, the team has used Ground Penetrating Radar to help map structures beneath the surface .
Environmental data gathered from numerous sources, including ocean sediment cores and plant remains, suggests that there was a climate event that rocked the Middle East and much of the planet 4,200 years ago....
Name of source: Telegraph (UK)
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (7-29-11)
The secret grand jury testimony of President Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal was ordered to be released on Friday by a federal judge because of its significance in American history.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth granted a request by historian Stanley Kutler, who has written several books about Nixon and Watergate, and others to unseal the testimony given June 23 and 24 in 1975.
Nixon was questioned about the political scandal during the 1970s that resulted from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington.
The scandal caused Nixon to leave office Aug. 9, 1974, the only resignation of a U.S. president. The scandal also resulted in the indictment, trial, conviction and imprisonment of a number of his top officials.
Lamberth ruled in the 15-page opinion that the special circumstances, especially the undisputed historical interest in Nixon's testimony, far outweighed the need to keep the records secret. Grand jury proceedings typically remain secret....
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (7-29-11)
George W Bush says his blank reaction to the first news of the Sept 11 attacks while US president was a conscious decision to project an aura of calm in a crisis.
In a rare interview with the National Geographic Channel, Mr Bush reflected on what was going through his mind when he was informed that a second passenger jet had hit New York's World Trade Center.
Mr Bush was visiting a Florida classroom at the time, and the incident - which was caught by television cameras - has often been used by critics to ridicule his apparently dazed response to the attack
Mr Bush said he could see journalists at the back of the classroom getting the news on their own cellphones "and it was like watching a silent movie." ...........
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (7-30-11)
Immortalised by Edward Woodward on the silver screen, the fate of 'Breaker' Morant and his two cohorts is widely known - sentenced to death by firing squad by the British military.
Now descendants of the executed Boer War soldier and his co-accused have added their voices to growing calls for a judicial inquiry in Australia into the trial of the men 109 years ago.
For several years campaigners have been calling for an independent review into the convictions of Harry Morant and fellow soldiers Peter Handcock and George Witton.
The men were convicted in 1902 of shooting 12 Boer prisoners of war. They claimed that they were following orders from British officials, a claim that Britain denies.
Morant and Handcock were sentenced to death by firing squad, becoming the only Australians in history to be executed for war crimes....
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (7-25-11)
The orchestra will make musical history playing a piece by Adolf Hitler’s favourite composer at Wagner's Bavarian home town of Bayreuth tomorrow.
Hitler's theories of racial purity and exterminating Jews were said to be partly drawn from Richard Wagner's anti-Semitic and fervently nationalistic writings. Since its founding in 1948, Israel has observed an informal ban on the composer's music.
The news that Israel Chamber Orchestra and members of the Israel Symphony Orchestra will play a piece by Wagner at Bayreuth Festival, has aroused the hostility of Israeli politicians. The ensemble have also been threatened with funding cuts.
The heads of the orchestra decided not to rehearse the piece in Israel, out of consideration for the public dispute.
The orchestra, conducted by Roberto Paternostro, will play Siegfried Idyll, a twenty minute long symphonic poem which Wagner composed as a birthday present to his second wife....
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (7-25-11)
Glenn Beck, the leading Right-wing American broadcaster, has prompted outrage after comparing the teenage victims of the Utoya Island massacre to the Hitler Youth.
Beck said that the Labour party youth camp on the island, where 68 people were murdered, bore "disturbing" similarities to the Nazi party's notorious juvenile wing.
Beck, a multimillionaire darling of the Tea Party movement, said on his nationally-syndicated radio show: "There was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like, you know, the Hitler youth. I mean, who does a camp for kids that's all about politics? Disturbing."
Torbjørn Eriksen, a former press secretary to Jens Stoltenberg, Norway's prime minister, described the comment as "a new low" for the broadcaster, who has frequently been forced to apologise for offensive remarks.....
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (7-25-11)
Hitler's theories of racial purity and exterminating Jews were said to be partly drawn from Richard Wagner's anti-Semitic and fervently nationalistic writings. Since its founding in 1948, Israel has observed an informal ban on the composer's music.
The news that Israel Chamber Orchestra and members of the Israel Symphony Orchestra will play a piece by Wagner at Bayreuth Festival, has aroused the hostility of Israeli politicians. The ensemble have also been threatened with funding cuts.
The heads of the orchestra decided not to rehearse the piece in Israel, out of consideration for the public dispute.
The orchestra, conducted by Roberto Paternostro, will play Siegfried Idyll, a twenty minute long symphonic poem which Wagner composed as a birthday present to his second wife....
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (7-25-11)
• Hitler wrote in his first volume of his book Mein Kampf: "At the age of twelve, I saw ... the first opera of my life, Lohengrin. In one instant I was addicted. My youthful enthusiasm for the Bayreuth Master knew no bounds."
• Aged 16, Hitler quit school and spent the next three years being idle. He is said to have spent a tidy proportion of his pocket money on going to the opera. He became passionate about Wagner.
• Wagner's anti-Semitic and fervently nationalistic writings are thought to have had a quasi-religious effect on Hitler. His theories of racial purity were partly drawn from Wagner. According to Wagner: "The Volk has always been the essence of all the individuals who constituted a commonality. In the beginning, it was the family and the races; then the races united through linguistic equality as a nation."...
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (7-25-11)
Two gold medals earned by Captain William Bligh during his exploits at sea during the late 1700s are to be auctioned in Australia and are expected to fetch more than AU$250,000 (£165,000).
Captain Bligh, who is best known for being ousted from his post aboard the HMS Bounty by a mutinous crew, won the medals during his long and distinguished career in the Royal Navy....
Capt Bligh was on a mission to bring back breadfruit, which the British empire hoped it could cultivate to feed to slaves in the West Indies, in 1789 when the famous mutiny took place and he and a group of his men were set adrift in a 22ft launch without navigation equipment in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
In a remarkable feat of endurance, the celebrated British seaman and his crew spent 47 days at sea, catching fish and seabirds and drinking rainwater to survive while navigating thousands of nautical miles by memory....
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (7-25-11)
Since its founding in 1948, Israel has observed an informal ban on Wagner’s music because of its use in Nazi propaganda before and during World War II.
• In 1953 on a tour to Israel, revered violinist Jascha Heifetz was attacked by a man with an iron bar after playing a violin sonata by Richard Strauss, who had been head of the State Music Bureau for several years under the Third Reich but who, it was later revealed, detested the Nazis and conformed to help protect his Jewish daughter-in-law and Jewish grandchildren. Strauss's music is no longer unofficially banned in Israel and is performed and broadcast regularly.
• In 1998, Israel's Tel Aviv opera company shelved plans to perform a Wagner aria after dozens protested.
• The Berlin Philharmonic was also barred from Israel because its conductor for more than three decades, Herbert von Karajan, was a Nazi party member. However they came to Israel under conductor Daniel Barenboim in 1990. Karajan died in 1989....
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (7-25-11)
• Hitler wrote in his first volume of his book Mein Kampf: "At the age of twelve, I saw ... the first opera of my life, Lohengrin. In one instant I was addicted. My youthful enthusiasm for the Bayreuth Master knew no bounds."
• Aged 16, Hitler quit school and spent the next three years being idle. He is said to have spent a tidy proportion of his pocket money on going to the opera. He became passionate about Wagner.
• Wagner's anti-Semitic and fervently nationalistic writings are thought to have had a quasi-religious effect on Hitler. His theories of racial purity were partly drawn from Wagner. According to Wagner: "The Volk has always been the essence of all the individuals who constituted a commonality. In the beginning, it was the family and the races; then the races united through linguistic equality as a nation."
• On January 13, 1933 the newly-elected National Socialist Party celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of Richard Wagner's death by staging a grandiose memorial ceremony in Leipzig, the composer's birthplace. Adolf Hitler invited Siegfried Wagner's widow, the English-born Winifred, and her son Wieland to be guests of honor at this event....
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (7-23-11)
Ettinger preferred to style himself an "immortalist", since he argued that whole body or head-only freezing ("neurological suspension") was only one means of achieving indefinite life. His rationale for pursuing this goal was contained in his book The Prospect Of Immortality (1964), which revealed him as an unquenchable optimist about mankind's technological future.
He drew on his experience as a physics teacher and his interest in science fiction to predict the evolution of machines which would manufacture from raw atoms all that man needed. He foresaw intergalactic settlement, and argued that science would produce medical machines which would cure all diseases.
What now seemed to be a fatal illness would be no more than a twinge by 2050. From this it followed that the dead might be "cured" by the doctors of the future.
Ettinger proposed that governments immediately initiate a mass-freezing programme. He suggested that this might have huge social benefits. To pay the premiums on their frozen families, people would need steady work and would be compelled to live responsible lives. He predicted that when immortality was achieved, crime would become extinct, since criminals would be afraid of justice pursuing them beyond the grave. Immortality would secure for man a higher, nobler nature....
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (7-25-11)
The men have sold the film rights to the Hollywood producer responsible for the Oscar winning movie Black Swan and have promised to give a no-holds-barred account of their ordeal.
"This is the only official and authorized film about what we lived in the San Jose mine," said Juan Andres Illanes, one of "Los 33", as they have become known. "Much of our story has never been told."
Rumours of potential film versions of their time spent trapped 2,000ft below the Atacama desert in northern Chile have circulated since even before the men were brought to the surface in a televised rescue that was watched by an estimated worldwide audience of a billion people.
Brad Pitt was among those rumoured to be negotiating for the rights but industry newspaper Hollywood Reporter revealed that Mike Medavoy, the producer behind blockbusters Black Swan and Shutter Island, has secured the deal almost a year after the shaft collapsed trapping the team of workers....
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (7-24-11)
Nelson Mandela, the former South African president, is to remain at his birthplace, his rural home in the Eastern Cape indefinitely, his family have confirmed.
The 93-year-old flew to Qunu ahead of his birthday last week along with his wife Graca and a phalanx of doctors and staff.
His family have confirmed that he asked to remain there and will not now return to his home in Houghton, Johannesburg as was expected....
Name of source: AP
SOURCE: AP (7-29-11)
Long before Rosa Parks was hailed as the "mother of the civil rights movement," she wrote a detailed and harrowing account of nearly being raped by a white neighbor who employed her as a housekeeper in 1931.
The six-page essay, written in her own hand many years after the incident, is among thousands of her personal items currently residing in the Manhattan warehouse and cramped offices of Guernsey's Auctioneers, which has been selected by a Michigan court to find an institution to buy and preserve the complete archive.
It helps explain what triggered Parks' lifelong campaign against the ritualistic rape of black women by white men, said McGuire, whose recent book "At the Dark End of the Street" examines how economic intimidation and sexual violence were used to derail the freedom movement and how it went unpunished during the Jim Crow era...
SOURCE: AP (7-24-11)
GRAND FORKS, N.D. -- North Dakota political leaders are asking the NCAA to back off and let the state's flagship university keep its Fighting Sioux name and logo, even at the risk of potential blacklisting and scorn by other universities and its own conference.
Lawmaker involvement is a strategy even some University of North Dakota boosters question, and is unique among schools forced to decide whether to drop American Indian nicknames deemed hostile and abusive or accept penalties for keeping them.
North Dakota's debate appeared to be resolved when the state Board of Higher Education agreed in 2009 to drop the Fighting Sioux logo and nickname and UND agreed to phase them out by this Aug. 15....
SOURCE: AP (7-23-11)
Walter Reed Army Medical Center, the Army's flagship hospital where privates to presidents have gone for care, is closing its doors after more than a century.
Hundreds of thousands of the nation's war wounded from World War I to today have received treatment at Walter Reed, including 18,000 troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Name of source: Boston Globe
SOURCE: Boston Globe (7-27-11)
WASHINGTON - The Army long ago presented the nation’s most hallowed award, the Medal of Honor, to a Civil War soldier from New York for capturing Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s eldest son. But sometimes history calls for a bit of revision.
Now, 146 years after the capture, the Army has agreed to take another look at whether it made a mistake and whether a young private from the Berkshires deserved the honor instead. Regiment accounts provide reason to think Private David D. White, of Cheshire, nabbed Lee during a barbaric battle in the wilds of Virginia in the war’s waning days.
The Army’s unusual reconsideration is a victory for White’s descendants, particularly his great-great-grandson, Frank E. White Jr., who has worked for decades to set the record straight. He recently enlisted the aid of Massachusetts lawmakers in the effort.
In reviewing the case, the Army also casts a light on a key battle that is largely unknown, except among historians and Civil War buffs who note its frenzied viciousness, even in the context of a war known for its brutality....
Name of source: Steven Aftergood
SOURCE: Steven Aftergood (7-27-11)
Last month the National Security Agency announced the declassification of various historic records as evidence of its “commitment to meeting the requirements” of President Obama’s policy on openness and transparency. Among the newly declassified records was a 200 year old publication on cryptology. (“NSA Declassifies 200 Year Old Report,” Secrecy News, June 9, 2011.)
NSA listed the 1809 study as a “highlight” of the new releases in a press statement, and the National Archives featured it in a promotional blog posting. But upon inspection, it turns out that the newly released document was already in the public domain and freely available online.
Instead of providing cause for celebration or congratulation, the NSA “release” is a disturbing sign of futility and irrelevance in the nation’s declassification program.
The June 8 NSA press statement hailed the disclosure of “early publications on cryptography, including ‘Cryptology: Instruction Book on the Art of Secret Writing’ from 1809. In fact, the document is a German work and its real title is “Kryptographik: Lehrbuch der Geheimschreibekunst…” by Johann Ludwig Klüber (1762-1837), who was the first Professor of Law at the University of Heidelberg.
According to a June 14 blog post by James Rush of the National Archives, this work was among the German government records that were seized by U.S. forces after the defeat of Germany in World War II, and it found its way into U.S. intelligence files.
Though the NSA press statement seemed to indicate that the full publication was being disclosed, the material that was released by NSA was actually just a 40 page abstract and excerpt of the author’s much longer work. A copy of what was transferred to the National Archives is now posted here (pdf)....
Name of source: WaPo
SOURCE: WaPo (7-26-11)
Investigators are probing whether a prominent historian and an associate accused of stealing valuable documents from the Maryland Historical Society also took papers from the National Archives and a handful of other libraries, a prosecutor said in court Tuesday.
The revelation came as a Baltimore City Circuit Judge set bail for Barry H. Landau, 63, at $500,000 and Jason Savedoff, 24, at $750,000. The pair were charged earlier this month with taking 60 historic documents. The papers included some signed by Abraham Lincoln, inaugural ball invitations and a commemoration of the Washington Monument, according to court documents.
On July 9, Landau and Savedoff were arrested after an employee at the Baltimore archive saw Savedoff slip a document in a portfolio and walk out of the library, according to court documents. Police later found 60 documents stashed in Savedoff’s laptop bag in a locker, according to court documents. Landau had signed the documents out, authorities said....
Name of source: ArmeniaDiaspora.com
SOURCE: ArmeniaDiaspora.com (7-25-11)
A Turkish ultranationalist was sentenced to 23 years in prison on Monday after being convicted of assassinating prominent ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in Istanbul in 2007. A juvenile court in Turkey initially handed a life sentence to Ogun Samast, 21, but then reduced it because he was a minor at the time of the crime committed in broad daylight.Ever since his arrest in January 2007, Samast has admitted shooting and killing Dink outside the Istanbul offices of the latter’s bilingual newspaper “Agos.
”Dink was hated by hardline Turkish nationalists for openly describing the 1915 mass killings and deportations of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide. Six months before his death, he was given a suspended six-month sentence for “insulting Turkishness” in an article on what remains a highly sensitive subject in Turkey. Turkey -- Gendarme officers escort the suspect Ogun Samast (C), in the killing of Turkish-Armenian editor Hrant Dink, from a court after his trial hearing in Istanbul, 07Jul2008 Dink’s murder sent shockwaves through Turkey and Armenia and caused strong international condemnation. In an unprecedented outpouring of sympathy, tens of thousands of Turks took part in his funeral.News reports said Samast blamed Turkish newspapers for his decision to kill the 52-year-old “Agos” editor. “How did I hear about ‘Agos,’ about Hrant Dink, about him being a traitor? It was all in the columns of ‘Hurriyet’ and ‘Vatan,” the AFP news agency quoted him as saying in his final court statement on Monday.
Name of source: Discovery News
SOURCE: Discovery News (7-25-11)
A mysterious stone statue, possibly the portrait of the great Inca emperor Pachacuti, once stood in Machu Picchu, according to archival research.
Likely placed against a round stone wall on one of Machu Picchu's terraces, the statue had already disappeared by the time American explorer Hiram Bingham climbed the steep jungle slope to be faced with an archaeological wonder exactly a century ago on July 24, 1911.
Bingham, who has been credited as one possible inspiration for the "Indiana Jones" character, saw "a remarkably large and well-preserved abandoned city " perched some 8,000 feet in the clouds "in a wonderfully picturesque position," he wrote in the March 26, 1914, issue of Nature.
Surrounded on three sides by the gorges of the Urubamba River (also called the Vilcanota River), and tucked between two massive mountain peaks -- the Huayna Picchu and the Machu Picchu -- the vine-covered ruins of "the lost city of the Incas" were never really lost at all....
Name of source: Live Science
SOURCE: Live Science (7-25-11)
A war and inferno that apparently destroyed one ancient society while dramatically elevating another in Peru is now shedding light on how states emerge in the world.
Scientists investigated ruins in the Titicaca basin in southern Peru, home to a number of thriving ancient societies more than 2 millennia ago. They focused on two prominent states in the region — Taraco, based along the Ramis River, and Pukara, in the grassland pampas. At its height, Taraco was about 250 acres in size with about 5,000 people, give or take 2,000, while Pukara peaked at about 500 acres and had about 10,000 people, give or take 2,000.
Their results suggest Pukara waged a violent war against Taraco, possibly killing hundreds with their weapons before burning the state to the ground....
Name of source: National Parks Traveler
SOURCE: National Parks Traveler (7-25-11)
It is an honor to stand with you on one of our most sacred American landscapes. Here, 150 years ago today, the nation got its first real look at civil war. This is where American democracy began its baptism by fire. Where the grueling four-year journey that shaped a nation, began in earnest.
The battle of Manassas dispelled the myth that the war would be a quick affair. The Confederate secretary of war, LeRoy Pope Walker, suggested prior to the battle that when all was said and done, he would be able to wipe up the blood that would be spilled with his pocket handkerchief.
Historian Shelby Foote liked to point out that it would have made a good doctoral dissertation, calculating how many handkerchiefs it would have taken to clean up the blood that was actually shed.
Over 620,000 lives. That was the price exacted by the Civil War. But those were only the military deaths. The war’s impact extended much farther than the battlefield....
Name of source: Watertown Daily Times (WI)
SOURCE: Watertown Daily Times (WI) (7-24-11)
In this Friday, July 22, 2011 photo, Ed Jorgensen, of Woodward Design, inspects one of three sections of Nazi Germany's Atlantic Wall, as they are offloaded at the Port of New Orleans, where they will be on display at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. The slabs are part of Nazi Germany's Atlantic Wall, a variety of defenses that stretched 3,200 miles from France to Norway and were designed to stop, or at least slow, the Allies from advancing inland during an invasion.
Name of source: ynet News (Israel)
SOURCE: ynet News (Israel) (7-25-11)
The German intelligence agency BND admitted Monday to destroying the file of wanted Nazi criminal Alois Brunner in the 1990s and attempting to recruit him, Der Spiegel reported.
Brunner was responsible for the deportation of at least 130,000 Jews to concentration camps during the Holocaust. Some reports claimed he had fled to Damascus after World War II and has been hiding there ever since.
An email sent to a French news agency stated that the BND recently discovered secret files on Brunner which had mysteriously disappeared in the 1990s.
Brunner, who if still alive would be 99, worked alongside Adolf Eichmann and was commander at the Drancy internment camp north of Paris, where Jews were held prior to being sent to their deaths at Auschwitz. Before arriving in France, Brunner assisted in annihilating Jewish communities in Vienna and Salonica.
The Nazi criminal has been wanted for over 65 years. He was arrested in Vienna by the US army after the war, but managed to escape using a fake identity. Later he was able to reach Syria via Egypt, where he settled down in the 1960s.
In Syria he became "special advisor" to the government and befriended then Syrian President Hafez al-Assad. Brunner was wounded twice during his stay in Syria by parcel bombs sent to him. He lost his left eye and some of his fingers were cut off....
Name of source: CNN
SOURCE: CNN (7-25-11)
As most people know by now, incredibly talented singer Amy Winehouse was found dead in her London apartment over the weekend. She joins an unfortunate club of singers who led troubled lives, some who struggled with drugs, and died at age 27.
The so-called "27s" is part of the title of a book published a few years ago that examines the deaths of many of these young musicians and the tragic number they have in common.
Considered the greatest electric guitarist of all time and an icon of his generation, Jimi Hendrix died in London in 1970 at age 27. He was well known for boozing and drugs, though according to the London Telegraph, the autopsy on him found that he died due to choking on his own vomit but there was little alcohol in his system....
SOURCE: CNN (7-24-11)
America's political leaders are paralyzed. The government is reeling from debt. Corrupt bankers foreclose on people's homes as a brutal recession sweeps the land.
We're talking, of course, about the great debt standoff of 1786: Shays' Rebellion.
Nervous Americans glancing at the upcoming August 2 deadline for raising the debt ceiling are being told that the nation is entering uncharted territory. But historians say they've seen this movie before.
Many of the same issues driving this modern-day standoff -- disagreement on how to handle the national debt, ineffective government and a populist citizen's revolt -- drove the 18th-century uprising that's been called America's first civil war.
Historians say the lesson that can be drawn from Shays' Rebellion and other transformative events in U.S. history is this: Protracted political gridlock is seldom resolved through compromise. It comes when one political party finally beats the other down.
Many Americans, however, have told pollsters that they want the political parties to work together to solve the debt ceiling crisis. Yet political stability doesn't always come through give-and-take, some historians say....
SOURCE: CNN (7-23-11)
The iconic World Trade Center cross -- two intersecting steel beams that held up when the Twin Towers collapsed on September 11, 2001 -- was moved Saturday to its new home at the nearby 9/11 Memorial and Museum.
Recovery workers and their families were among those invited to attend a ceremonial blessing before the cross, which was uncovered in the rubble of the collapsed buildings. The service was led by Father Brian Jordan, a Franciscan monk who ministered to workers clearing the area after the 9/11 attacks.
This September 11 will mark the 10th anniversary of the attacks, and the memorial will be dedicated that day. It will open to the public the following day. A museum at the same site will open in 2012...
Name of source: BBC News
SOURCE: BBC News (7-21-11)
On Wednesday 20 July 2011 - the anniversary of the attempt on Hitler's life in 1944 - the public was informed that the grave of Rudolf Hess, the "Fuehrer's deputy", had been razed before daybreak.
Beyond the fascinating coincidence in the date - there will surely be further speculation on this - the decision by Hess's heirs was surprising.
They wanted to commit his mortal remains to the waves and organise a funeral at sea for a man whose mystique and influence on the far-right was strongly linked to the existence of his grave in the Bavarian village of Wunsiedel.
He was already one the most interesting figures in post-war Germany, being the only high-ranking Nazi serving a life sentence imposed by the Nuremberg war-crimes court - Albert Speer, for instance, was released in 1966....
SOURCE: BBC News (7-25-11)
The Israeli Chamber Orchestra will break with tradition to play a work by Hitler's favourite composer, Richard Wagner, in Germany.
Roberto Paternostro will conduct classical piece Siegfried Idyll on Tuesday at Bayreuth's Wagner festival.
It is rare for Israeli musicians to play the anti-Semitic composer's work, which was appropriated by the Nazis.
Paternostro said that while Wagner's ideology was "terrible", the aim was "to divide the man from his art".
An unofficial ban on Wagner was introduced in 1938 by the Palestine Orchestra - now the Israel Philharmonic - after Jews were attacked by the Nazis in Germany....
SOURCE: BBC News (7-25-11)
Actress Linda Christian, a 1940s Hollywood starlet who went on to become the first Bond girl, has died aged 87.
She died last Friday in Palm Desert, California, after suffering from colon cancer, her daughter said.
Christian starred as Vesper Lynd, the love interest of James Bond in the first TV adaptation of Ian Fleming's debut novel, Casino Royale, in 1954.
The actress's curvaceousness led Life magazine to nickname her the "anatomic bomb."
Born Blanca Rosa Welter in Mexico, Christian was discovered by Errol Flynn in Acapulco before pursuing an acting career in Los Angeles and eventually signing a contract with MGM.
She made her film debut alongside Danny Kaye in the 1944 musical comedy Up In Arms....
Name of source: Minnesota Public Radio
SOURCE: Minnesota Public Radio (7-25-11)
St. Paul, Minn. — Workers are already laying track for the Central Corridor Light Rail line between downtown Minneapolis and downtown St. Paul. The west end of the line will stop at Target Field.
The east end of the line line will be the Union Depot in St. Paul, and the renovation of that historic building has begun in earnest....
Passenger trains haven't been on the depot's platform since the last Burlington Northern Zephyr pulled out of the station on April 30, 1971.
Passenger rail had already been declining when the depot was built in the 1920s, according to John Diers, a railroad buff who's writing a history of the station.
"Some of the railroad presidents didn't want to build a fancy depot like this. They thought it was a waste of money," Diers said. "And it turned out they were right. Because by the time it was completed in 1924, the passenger train was already in decline."...
Name of source: University of Bristol
SOURCE: University of Bristol (7-23-11)
In a special issue of one of the world's leading medical journals, The Lancet, Gareth Williams, Professor of Medicine at the University, tells the story behind the greatest ever coup in the history of preventative medicine — the eradication of smallpox.
The article, which forms part of an issue devoted to vaccination and is published today [23 July] explores the story of doctor and polymath, Edward Jenner, who successfully defeated smallpox, a disease once so feared it was known as the ‘angel of death’. The disease killed millions of people throughout history until, thirty years ago, it became the first – and, so far, only – disease to be eradicated from the planet.
Professor Williams offers glimpses into Jenner’s life through his residence, The Chantry in Gloucestershire, now a museum dedicated to his pioneering work, where on 14 May 1796 he performed the first properly recorded vaccination, on his gardener’s eight-year-old son....
Name of source: Silicon Valley Mercurcy News
SOURCE: Silicon Valley Mercurcy News (7-23-11)
NEW ORLEANS—The gray, concrete, heavily scarred slabs that arrived at the National World War II Museum this week are more than just chunks of an old wall to historians.
The slabs are part of Nazi Germany's Atlantic Wall, a string of defenses ordered by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler in 1940. The defenses, also known as "Hitler's wall," stretched 3,200 miles from France to Norway and were designed to stop, or at least slow, the Allies from advancing inland during an invasion.
Allan Millette, a history professor and director of the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans, said the relic is a portal to studying what happened in 1944 and 1945, when Allied forces penetrated the wall and the tide began to turn against Germany....
Name of source: Fox News
SOURCE: Fox News (7-22-11)
NABLUS, West Bank – What happens when biblical history and modern turmoil collide?
Archaeologists in tumultuous Palestine are digging up the ruins of Shekem, where Abraham once stopped, Jacob once camped -- and today litter is strewn.
The biblical ruin lies inside a Palestinian city in the West Bank, where modern researchers are writing the latest chapter in a 100-year-old excavation that has been interrupted by two world wars and numerous rounds of Mideast upheaval.
Name of source: WSJ
SOURCE: WSJ (7-23-11)
The Oslo attacks come as European counterterrorism officials say terror groups are shifting their targets to countries where attacks have been less common, and perhaps more unexpected.
A confidential June report by the European police agency Europol described the shift. Favored targets include Scandinavian countries, one senior intelligence official said, noting a string of recent incidents.
In December, a suspected suicide bomber blew himself up among Christmas shoppers near a busy street in the center of Stockholm.
In September, an Iraqi Kurd, one of three men arrested in July in the Oslo area and in the German city of Duisburg, confessed to planning a terrorist strike that may have targeted Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper known for publishing controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad....
