This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: AP
January 26, 2012
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — Almost half of American Indians and Alaska Natives identify with multiple races, representing a group that grew by 39 percent over a decade, according to U.S. Census data released Wednesday.Of the 5.2 million people counted as Natives in 2010, nearly 2.3 million reported being Native in combination with one or more of six other race categories, showcasing a growing diversity among Natives. Those who added black, white or both as a personal identifier made up 84 percent of the multi-racial group.Tribal officials and organizations look to Census data for funding, to plan communities, to foster solidarity among tribes and for accountability from federal agencies that have a trust responsibility with tribal members....
Source: Ynet News
January 23, 2012
Historians have cheered news that Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" will be reprinted in Germany for the first time since the Nazi dictator's fall in 1945, just as Holocaust survivors hit out at the move.British publisher Peter McGee said he would put out excerpts from the anti-Semitic manifesto, which laid out the Fuehrer's vision long before he took power in 1933, alongside commentary putting the work in historical contextAcademics said the time had come for some of the taboos surrounding the book in Germany to fall."I think we have a very inhibited approach to this material in Germany. You can read this book around the world – there is even a Hebrew translation in Israel," Journalism Professor Horst Poettker, who is providing some of the annotation for the project, told AFP....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
January 25, 2012
A survey carried out two days before Holocaust Memorial Day shows more than a fifth of young Germans do not know the name of Auschwitz or what happened there.Twenty one per cent of people aged between 18 and 30 quizzed about the most notorious Nazi extermination camp had not heard of it, the survey revealed.And almost half of all those canvassed by the Forsa research institute said they had never visited a concentration camp despite the fact Germany has made all of those on its soil permanent memorials to the dead....
Source: NYT
January 24, 2012
A new ad on behalf of Mitt Romney pokes fun at Newt Gingrich, and says he is exaggerating his relationship with Ronald Reagan.Mr. Gingrich frequently links himself to the former president, who is revered by many as the embodiment of modern conservatism — even as some Republicans question Mr. Gingrich’s conservative credentials.The new ad asserts that Mr. Reagan, who died in 2004, did not return the love....
Source: AP
January 25, 2012
TOKYO (AP) — The Japanese government’s worst-case scenario at the height of the nuclear crisis last year warned that tens of millions of people, including residents of Tokyo, might be forced to leave their homes, according to a report. Fearing widespread panic, officials kept the report secret.The emergence of the 15-page internal document might add to complaints that the government withheld too much information about the meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, the world’s worst nuclear accident since the Chernobyl disaster in 1986.It also casts doubt about whether the government was sufficiently prepared to handle what could have been an evacuation on an extraordinary scale....
Source: NYT
January 25, 2012
CAIRO — A huge demonstration on the first anniversary of the Egyptian revolution turned into a contest on Wednesday between Islamists and other activists over whether to celebrate the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak or to rally against the continued rule of the generals who took power.Declared a national holiday, the occasion brought out teeming crowds in cities across the country, including an estimated 100,000 demonstrators packed into the revolution’s symbolic center in the capital’s Tahrir Square and the surrounding streets. The outpouring was as large as any during the original uprising. But the spirit of unity gave way to new divisions: Islamists against liberals, political winners against losers, dealmakers willing to compromise with the military against activists demanding its immediate exit from power....
Source: NYT
January 25, 2012
For 66 years, they lay unseen, first in a vault on the Upper West Side, more recently in a special cabinet. Now the New-York Historical Society plans to put them on public display alongside a silver cigar box, a silver ice cream dish and the silver controller handle that Mayor George B. McClellan Jr. used when he drove the first subway train, in 1904: A knife and fork with the initials A and H, for Adolf Hitler.The historical society is including the Hitler flatware, part of a dinner service made in celebration of his 50th birthday in 1939, in an exhibition of 150 of the “most aesthetically and historically compelling pieces” in its collection, according to a description on the society’s Web site.The exhibition, “Stories in Sterling: Four Centuries of Silver in New York,” promises to interpret “these compelling objects within a cultural context,” the Web site says. “Stories in Sterling” is scheduled to open on May 2 at the society’s recently renovated headquarters at 170 Central Park West, at West 77th Street....
Source: BBC News
January 25, 2012
A British publisher who planned to sell extracts of Adolf Hitler's political manifesto Mein Kampf on the streets of Germany has backed down.The state of Bavaria, which owns the copyright to the book, had threatened legal action if publisher Peter McGee sold pamphlets containing the extracts.Mr McGee sells reproductions of Nazi-era newspapers along with historians' analysis of their content.He will now render Hitler's text illegible when his pamphlets are sold.Mr McGee publishes newspapers from 1933-45 in the form of a magazine called "Zeitungszeugen" (which roughly translates as "newspaper witnesses").He had planned to include a supplement entitled The Unreadable Book, containing extracts from Mein Kampf along with a commentary from journalism professor Horst Poettker....
Source: NYT
January 24, 2012
POTSDAM, Germany — The official delegation honoring Frederick the Great’s 300th birthday had just finished laying a laurel wreath and a grand cross of white flowers at his grave here on Tuesday when a 70-year-old retiree quietly slipped in behind them and placed a small potato on the gray slab of stone that marks the monarch’s resting place.“I’m a born Potsdamer and my father was, too, and I guess a little of the old Prussiandom is still in my veins,” said the man, Harry Günther, a retired engineer, standing before the yellow walls of Frederick’s magnificent summer palace, Sanssouci, on a chilly, foggy morning, a light coating of snow on the grass. He praised Frederick’s Prussian virtues, like hard work, honesty and thrift.The potato, one of more than a dozen left by admirers, is a traditional token to honor Frederick’s role in spreading the cultivation of the food staple in his lands. “Old Fritz made sure they grew them,” Mr. Günther said, using the monarch’s popular nickname. “Plus, they last longer than flowers.”...
Source: LiveScience
January 20, 2012
When Adam Rabinowitz was 15 years old, his aunt, an archaeologist, invited him to join her on a dig in Sicily.More than two decades later, Rabinowitz, now the assistant director at the Institute of Classical Archaeology at the University of Texas at Austin, is still travelling around the world getting dirt under his nails. And though much remains the same about archaeology since he first picked up a trowel, a lot has changed.
Source: Columbus Dispatch
January 22, 2012
When friends ask me what’s new at work, I occasionally (often enough to become tiresome) respond with, 'Nothing. Everything I work with is old.'But that’s not entirely true. In archaeology, as in any field of science, there is always something new — whether it’s a new discovery or the development of new technologies that enable us to learn new things about old discoveries.Ohio’s ancient earthworks certainly aren’t news. The Smithsonian Institution’s first publication, in 1848, included surveys of most of the largest sites.Sadly, since then, many of these wonderful sites have been plowed over or leveled to make way for houses, stores and factories. For example, the authors of the Smithsonian report concluded, with regard to Newark’s once-sprawling earthworks, “The ancient lines can now be traced only at intervals, among gardens and outhouses.”...
Source: BBC News
January 24, 2012
A row has erupted in Russia over the replacement of a Holocaust memorial plaque in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don which named Jews as victims.In August 1942 Nazi German troops murdered at least 27,000 people at Zmiyevskaya Balka, regarded as the worst Holocaust atrocity in Russia.More than half the victims were Jews, the Russian Jewish Congress (RJC) says.A new plaque does not mention Jews, but "peaceful citizens of Rostov-on-Don and Soviet prisoners-of-war".The RJC, a secular foundation representing Russian Jews, says it will take legal action over the unauthorised decision to replace the former plaque, which spoke of "more than 27,000 Jews" murdered by the Nazis. That plaque had been put up in 2004....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 25, 2012
John Roos, the US Ambassador to Japan, has written to Kazumi Matsui, mayor of Hiroshima, to reassure him that the Manhattan Project National Historical Park will serve as "an educational and commemorative facility."Mr Roos said that a speech by President Barack Obama in Prague in 2009 in which he promised to work towards a world without atomic weapons "marked the beginning of the end of the nuclear weapons era.""As we look to the future and a world without nuclear weapons, it is fitting to remember that era through the lens of history, which the promised park aims to achieve."The plans for the three-site park were first detailed in August 2011, with Cindy Kelly, president of the Atomic Heritage Foundation, stating "A national park site would deepen public understanding of the development of the atom bomb in the context of the time, including how its creators felt about it from a moral and personal perspective....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
January 25, 2012
Dogs have been a loyal companion to mankind for more than 30,000 years, findings reveal.Scientists believe that two 33,000-year-old skulls unearthed in digs in Siberia and Belgium show dogs were domesticated long before any other animal, such as sheep, cows or goats.Researchers from the University of Arizona said the skulls had shorter snouts and wider jaws than undomesticated animals such as wolves, which use their longer snouts and narrower jaws to help them hunt....
Source: History of the Ancient World
January 24, 2012
A project directed by academics at the University of Sheffield has made the archaeology of the world-famous Stonehenge site more accessible than ever before.Google Under-the-Earth: Seeing Beneath Stonehenge is the first application of its kind to transport users around a virtual prehistoric landscape, exploring the magnificent and internationally important monument, Stonehenge.The application used data gathered from the University of Sheffield´s Stonehenge Riverside Project in conjunction with colleagues from the universities of Manchester, Bristol, Southampton and London. The application was developed by Bournemouth University archaeologists, adding layers of archaeological information to Google Earth to create Google Under-the-Earth.The unique visual experience lets users interact with the past like never before. Highlights include taking a visit to the Neolithic village of Durrington Walls and a trip inside a prehistoric house. Users also have the opportunity to see reconstructions of Bluestonehenge at the end of the Stonehenge Avenue and the great timber monument called the Southern Circle, as they would have looked more than 4,000 years ago....
Source: Reuters
January 21, 2012
(Reuters) - When Patty Tegeler looks out the window of her home overlooking the Appalachian Mountains in southwestern Virginia, she sees trouble on the horizon."In an instant, anything can happen," she told Reuters. "And I firmly believe that you have to be prepared."Tegeler is among a growing subculture of Americans who refer to themselves informally as "preppers." Some are driven by a fear of imminent societal collapse, others are worried about terrorism, and many have a vague concern that an escalating series of natural disasters is leading to some type of environmental cataclysm....A sense of "suffering and being afraid" is usually at the root of this kind of thinking, according to Cathy Gutierrez, an expert on end-times beliefs at Sweet Briar College in Virginia. Such feelings are not unnatural in a time of economic recession and concerns about a growing national debt, she said....
Source: Toronto Star
January 24, 2012
Joseph Stalin didn’t care about taxpayers.That’s the most benefit-of-the-doubt way to take a radio comment made by Mayor Rob Ford on Tuesday morning, which likened five political rivals to the murderous Russian dictator.Speaking on the John Oakley show, Ford told the AM640 host that certain councillors are “two steps left of Joe Stalin.”Ford was being questioned as to whether he had lost support of council’s middle. Oakley pointed to the fact that self-proclaimed centrist Josh Matlow recently stated he would not back Ford’s plan to do away with the land transfer tax.
Source: NYT
January 24, 2012
The Turkish government and press castigated France on Tuesday, accusing the parliament of racism and a breach of France’s own free speech principles after the French Senate passed a bill late Monday effectively criminalizing the denial that the slaughter of some 1.5 million Armenians in the early 20th century under the Ottoman Turks was a genocide.
Source: NYT
January 23, 2012
LOS ANGELES — No one expects to stumble across a cache of Picasso’s works in the middle of a desert. So who would think that just off bustling Wilshire Boulevard, tucked between the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the national headquarters of the Screen Actors Guild, lie buried some of the most exquisitely preserved fossils in the world?The fossils of the La Brea Tar Pits are just that. They were first discovered in Maj. Henry Hancock’s asphalt mine in the 1870s, when Los Angeles was but a village. Since the early 20th century, more than one million bones have been excavated from the pits; when reassembled, they provide an extraordinary time capsule of the creatures that roamed Southern California 10,000 to 40,000 years ago.
Source: NYT
January 23, 2012
ISTANBUL — For 1,600 years, this city — Turkey’s largest — has been built and destroyed, erected and erased, as layer upon layer of life has thrived on its seven hills.Today, Istanbul is a city of 13 million, spread far beyond those hills. And on a long-farmed peninsula jutting into Lake Kucukcekmece, 13 miles west of the city center, archaeologists have made an extraordinary find.The find is Bathonea, a substantial harbor town dating from the second century B.C. Discovered in 2007 after a drought lowered the lake’s water table, it has been yielding a trove of relics from the fourth to the sixth centuries A.D., a period that parallels Istanbul’s founding and its rise as Constantinople, a seat of power for three successive empires — the Eastern Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman....
