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: Reuters
January 11, 2012
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's parliament gave initial approval on Wednesday to laws to curb public use of Nazi symbols after ultra-Orthodox protesters caused outrage by calling police Nazis and wearing concentration camp garb.Four bills swiftly passed one of five rounds of voting needed to become law, even though a spectrum of critics denounced them as a violation of free speech.The laws call for up to a year in jail and stiff fines for anyone convicted of visually or verbally misusing symbols such as swastikas, the term Nazi or epithets related to the killing of six million Jews before and during World War Two.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's cabinet approved the bills before they went to parliament, seizing on public outrage at devout Jews who dressed last month as Holocaust victims to show they felt persecuted by objections to their efforts to achieve gender segregation in public....
Source: RFI English
January 11, 2012
A Paris court has rejected a bid by heirs of the founder of French carmaker Renault to be compensated for the nationalisation of the company at the end of World War II when their grandfather was dubbed a Nazi collaborator.The court rejected a challenge to the 1945 nationalisation under a new judicial procedure that allows plaintiffs to challenge the constitutionality of legislation.They claimed that the state takeover was a "violation of fundamental legal and property rights".The seven grandchildren of founder Louis Renault said they would appeal against the decision.Louis Renault founded Renault with his brothers in 1898. During the Nazi occupation the company was placed under German control and made equipment for German forces, leading to allied planes bombing its factories....
Source: CzechPosition.com
January 10, 2012
A new opinion poll indicates more Czechs are now in favor of abolishing decrees issued by post-war Czechoslovak president Edvard Beneš, which provided the legal basis after WWII for the expulsion and confiscation of property of Sudeten Germans who could not prove they did not support the Nazis. More respondents have no clear opinion on the issue.According to the poll conducted by Czech Academy of Science’s public research center (CVVM) at the end of 2011, 49% of Czechs are in favor of preserving the Beneš Decrees. The previous poll conducted in 2009 showed 65% were in favor of preserving the decrees, which are fiercely opposed by movements in Germany and Austria representing Sudeten Germans and their descendents.The latest CVVM poll thus suggests Czech public opinion is swaying back towards abolishing the decrees: in 2006 and 2007 polls, just over 50% of respondents were in favor. Now 17% of respondents said the decrees should be abolished, whereas in 2009, the figure was 8%....
Source: BBC News
January 10, 2012
In 1900, an American civil engineer called John Elfreth Watkins made a number of predictions about what the world would be like in 2000. How did he do?As is customary at the start of a new year, the media have been full of predictions about what may happen in the months ahead.But a much longer forecast made in 1900 by a relatively unknown engineer has been recirculating in the past few days.In December of that year, at the start of the 20th Century, John Elfreth Watkins wrote a piece published on page eight of an American women's magazine, Ladies' Home Journal, entitled What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years....
Source: BBC News
January 11, 2012
A manuscript possibly written by Victorian serial killer Jack the Ripper is to be published worldwide.The document was unearthed at the Montacute TV and Radio museum, Somerset, in October 2009 among the possessions of children's author SG Hulme Beaman.It is thought to have been written in the 1920s and is entitled The Autobiography of James Carnac.Ripper historian Paul Begg has read the whole manuscript and said it could not be dismissed as a piece of fiction as "you find all sorts of questions and lots of niggles" about its content and provenance....
Source: BBC News
January 11, 2012
A letter written by composer Ludwig van Beethoven has emerged in Germany after being left in a will.In the six-page document of Beethoven's scrawled corrections, he complains about his illness and a lack of money.Experts were already aware of the 1823 letter's existence, but say it is of historic value.Broadcaster John Suchet, who has written books on Beethoven, said finding the letter was "hugely significant"....
Source: NYT
January 5, 2012
A bronze disk recently discovered in the mud near the Putney Bridge in London seemed innocent enough, but on close inspection it has turned out to be one of the oldest pieces of British pornographic art, according to the Guardian....
Source: BBC News
January 10, 2012
What has been hailed as one of the most significant recent UK Iron Age finds is going on display after a nine-year conservation project.The decorated Roman cavalry helmet was discovered at a site in Leicestershire.Experts said its date, close to the Roman invasion of 43 AD, meant it could be evidence of Celtic tribes serving with the Roman army.The artefact, which was found in fragments, has been restored by a team at the British Museum.Dr Jeremy Hill, from the museum, said: "You can't underestimate the shock and surprise this had when it was first found - Hallaton really transforms our understanding of the Roman conquest of Britain."...
Source: Hispanically Speaking News
January 8, 2012
Mexican archaeologists found some 3,000 cave paintings, some almost 2,000 years old, in the central Mexican state of Guanajuato, the National Anthropology and History Institute, or INAH, said.Sources at the institute told Efe that the discoveries were made between August and October 2011, but were not announced until specialists confirmed their antiquity and completed their analyses.The relics came to light through the Rupestral Art Project of the Victoria River Basin - which includes semi-desert regions in the states of Queretaro and Guanajuato - developed by INAH experts and directed by archaeologist Carlos Viramontes.INAH said in a communique Friday that the pictographs were found at 40 rock sites in an arid northeastern area of Guanajuato....
Source: NYT
January 9, 2012
California’s catalog of historic artifacts includes two pairs of boots, an American flag, empty food bags, a pair of tongs and more than a hundred other items left behind at a place called Tranquillity Base.The history registry for New Mexico lists the same items.That might be surprising, since Tranquillity Base is not in New Mexico or California but a quarter of a million miles away, in the spot where Neil A. Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the moon in 1969.But for archaeologists and historians worried that the next generation of people visiting the moon might carelessly obliterate the site of one of humanity’s greatest accomplishments, these designations were important first steps toward raising awareness of the need to protect off-world artifacts.“I think it’s humanity’s heritage,” said Beth L. O’Leary, a professor of anthropology at New Mexico State University. “It’s just an incredible realm that archaeologists haven’t begun to look at until now.”Dr. O’Leary herself had not given much thought to historic preservation on the Moon until a student asked her in 1999 whether federal preservation laws applied to the Apollo landing sites.
Source: LiveScience
January 10, 2012
A tiny stamp bearing an image of the Temple Menorah and likely placed on baked goods some 1,500 years ago has turned up during excavations near the Israeli city of Akko, researchers announced.The Israel Antiquities Authority discovered the ceramic stamp while excavating at Horbat Uza, a small rural settlement east of the city Akko, before construction of a railroad track connecting Akko and Karmiel in northern Israel.From the Byzantine period, the stamp is called a "bread stamp," as it was used to identify baked goods; this one, in particular, probably belonged to a bakery supplying kosher bread to the Jews of Akko, the researchers say....
Source: LiveScience
January 10, 2012
Traces of nicotine discovered in a Mayan flask dating back more than 1,000 years represent the first physical evidence of tobacco use by the Mayans, researchers say.The flask was decorated with text that seemed to read "Yo-'OTOT-ti 'u-MAY," which translates to "the home of his tobacco" (or "her tobacco" or "its tobacco"), the archaeologists said, but that by itself wasn't enough to convince them. "Textual evidence written on pottery is often an indicator of contents or of an intended purpose – however, actual usage of a container could be altered or falsely represented," said study researcher Jennifer Loughmiller-Newman of the University at Albany....
Source: Discovery News
January 10, 2012
Humanity will soon be getting an update on how close we are to catastrophic destruction, as scientists and security experts decide whether to nudge the hands of the famous "Doomsday Clock" forward toward midnight -- and doom -- or back toward security and safety.The clock, in use as a symbol of imminent apocalypse since 1947, now stands at six minutes to midnight.On Tuesday (Jan. 10), the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) will announce whether they will nudge the minute hand forward or backward to reflect current trends in world security. The last time the clock hand moved was in 2010, when the group moved the hand from five minutes to midnight back to six....
Source: Discovery News
January 9, 2012
Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519) was an artist, inventor, scientist, architect, engineer, writer and even a musician. Now we know that he was also a fashion designer.After several months of meticulous research, scholars have reconstructed some fragmented drawings of a unique bag designed by the Renaissance genius around 1497.The sketch was first published in 1978 by Carlo Pedretti, a leading Da Vinci scholar, who identified it among the Atlantic Code's tens of thousands of drawings.Overlooked for more than three decades, it has been reconstructed and reassembled by Agnese Sabato and Alessandro Vezzosi, director of the Museo Ideale in the Tuscan town of Vinci, where da Vinci was born in 1452....
Source: Discovery News
January 6, 2012
Fame did not come easily for Jim Lovell and his two crewmates on NASA's aborted Apollo 13 moon mission. The astronauts nearly died after an explosion tore apart part of their spaceship on April 13, 1970, but ingenuity, endurance and sheer luck prevailed and the trio made it home safely.Now apparently fortune is taking a likewise star-crossed path. Lovell sold a notebook that was used during the mission at auction in November for $388,375. The check, however, is not in the mail.Heritage Auctions on Thursday said the sale of the 70-page binder, which includes handwritten calculations by Lovell, is being suspended after NASA launched an investigation into whether it was the astronaut’s property to sell."In an email to Heritage, NASA Deputy Chief Counsel Donna M. Shafer said there appeared to be 'nothing to indicate' that the agency had ever transferred ownership of the checklist to Lovell," The Associated Press reports....
Source: Discovery News
January 6, 2012
Celebrations abounded in France today to mark the 600th birthday of Joan of Arc, the fifteenth-century peasant girl who led the French army to victory against the English, was burned at the stake for heresy and witchcraft, and five centuries later was declared a saint.Looking for a patriotic boost in the presidential election campaign, French President Nicolas Sarkozy delivered a 19 minute praise of the medieval heroine as he visited her native village of Domremy-La-Pucelle.Although it might prove effective from a political perspective, Sarkozy's commemoration was likely made on the wrong day."January 6 was almost certainly not the day of Joan's birth," Nancy Goldstone, the author of the forthcoming book The Maid and the Queen: The Secret History of Joan of Arc, told Discovery News.Indeed, there is no record of Joan's date of birth nor her baptism -- after all, individual birthdays were not celebrated in the 15th century....
Source: The Post Game
January 5, 2012
A gym advertisement with a explicit Holocaust connection? What could possibly go wrong?We thought Newt Gingrich's comparison of failing to be on the Virginia Republican primary ballot to Pearl Harbor was bad. Now a gym owner in Dubai thought a picture of the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp would be a great advertisement poster for his gym.He thought wrong.Phil Parkinson, 32, posted a picture to the Circuit Factory's Facebook page of the railroad tracks leading to Auschwitz with the caption "Where your calories go to die." Great slogan by itself? Sure. But not when attached to an image like that. The Nazis slaughtered 1.3 million people at Auschwitz....
Source: The Economist
January 7, 2012
CANADA and the United States started the new year by firing cannons at each other across the Niagara river, which separates the province of Ontario from the state of New York, leaving a whiff of gunpowder and politicking in the air. The guns at Fort George on the Canadian side and Old Fort Niagara on the American shore were replicas of those from the 1812 war between the two countries, and were loaded with blanks.They fired the first salvo in what Canada’s government plans as a noisy 200th anniversary celebration of a largely forgotten war in which British redcoats, colonial militia and Indian allies stopped an American invasion (which Thomas Jefferson mistakenly predicted was “a mere matter of marching”) of what was then a sparsely populated string of colonies. “The heroic efforts of those who fought for our country in the War of 1812 tell the story of the Canada we know today: an independent and free country with a constitutional monarchy and its own distinct parliamentary system,” says James Moore, the minister of Canadian Heritage....
Source: Hartford Courant
January 2, 2012
The Republic of Suriname, a former Dutch sugar colony on the northern coast of South America, is not often a topic of conversation around here. But a team of researchers may make the tiny state of interest to Connecticut residents, thanks to their discovery of the graves of two 18th-century sea captains.One headstone, bearing the date of 1758, is that of Capt. Michael Burnham of Middletown, a swashbuckling adventurer who made a fortune as a privateer and most likely trafficked in slaves. Another, made of Portland brownstone, marks the grave of New London Capt. William Barbut. Nearby are the graves of Rhode Island merchants Capt. Nathaniel Angel and Capt. William Gardner Wanton.The graves of the New England seafarers were uncovered on Oct. 29 in the Dutch colonial cemetery of Nieuw Oranjetuin in Paramaribo, Suriname's capital city, by researchers who used machetes to hack away the vines covering the old headstones. One of those researchers, a former Connecticut resident, Tom Hart, immediately communicated the find to the Middlesex County Historical Society. The expedition was led by Paramaribo historian Bas Spek....
Source: CNN.com
January 6, 2012
London (CNN) -- It sits in the ancient heart of Rome and is an emblem of the city's imperial history as well as an icon of Italy.But plans to restore Rome's nearly 2,000-year-old Colosseum are causing rumblings among heritage workers and restorers, compounded by reports in December that small amounts of powdery rock had fallen off the monument.The current $33 million (25 million euro) restoration plans to restore the Flavian amphitheater, which once hosted spectacular shows and gruesome gladiatorial battles, are being sponsored by Diego della Valle, of luxury Italian brand Tod's, in exchange for advertising rights.Restoration of the monument, which attracts up to two million visitors a year, is due to go ahead in March and will involve cleaning of the travertine exterior, the restoration of underground chambers, new gating, the moving of visitor service stations to an area outside of the building itself and increased video security.But members of the Restorers Association of Italy are unhappy about the plans, which they believe has sidelined them in favor of non-specialist restorers and which "run the risk of causing irreparable damage to the monument," according to the group's President, Carla Tomasi.....
