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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 (2-21-11)
Her memory is creaky, Dwania Kyles insisted, and most of the photographs that help unlock it are stored in her computer. But recently, sitting in a warren of rooms in Harlem as the light outside faded, she had a rush of recollections about her family and the night that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did not come to dinner.
Ms. Kyles and Thomas Allen Harris, a documentary filmmaker, had donned white gloves to thumb through photographs of her parents in high school. “My parents left the promised land to jump into the lion’s den,” she said of their move from Chicago to Memphis to join the civil rights movement. On the evening in 1968 that King was expected at their home for soul food, her father, the Rev. Samuel B. Kyles, ended up with him on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, where King was felled by an assassin.
Mr. Harris and Ms. Kyles, a 55-year-old wellness consultant and songwriter who lives in Harlem, were in his office ferreting out information for the filmmaker’s Digital Diaspora Family Reunion project. Since 2009, Mr. Harris has traveled the country collecting photographs and stories from families, then putting those and filmed interviews onto his Web site....
Ms. Kyles and Thomas Allen Harris, a documentary filmmaker, had donned white gloves to thumb through photographs of her parents in high school. “My parents left the promised land to jump into the lion’s den,” she said of their move from Chicago to Memphis to join the civil rights movement. On the evening in 1968 that King was expected at their home for soul food, her father, the Rev. Samuel B. Kyles, ended up with him on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, where King was felled by an assassin.
Mr. Harris and Ms. Kyles, a 55-year-old wellness consultant and songwriter who lives in Harlem, were in his office ferreting out information for the filmmaker’s Digital Diaspora Family Reunion project. Since 2009, Mr. Harris has traveled the country collecting photographs and stories from families, then putting those and filmed interviews onto his Web site....
Tuesday, February 22, 2011 - 10:11
Comments
SOURCE: NYT (2-21-11)
One of Malcolm X’s daughters is being held in North Carolina on an arrest warrant from Queens, stemming from an accusation that she stole from the widow of one of her father’s bodyguards, the authorities said Monday.
The daughter, Malikah Shabazz, was arrested Friday night in Mars Hill, N.C., and faces an extradition hearing on Tuesday....
The daughter, Malikah Shabazz, was arrested Friday night in Mars Hill, N.C., and faces an extradition hearing on Tuesday....
Tuesday, February 22, 2011 - 10:10
SOURCE: NYT (2-20-11)
WASHINGTON — There comes a moment in the life of almost every repressive regime when leaders — and the military forces that have long kept them in power — must make a choice from which there is usually no turning back: Change or start shooting.
Egypt’s military, calculating that it was no longer worth defending an 82-year-old, out-of-touch pharaoh with no palatable successor and no convincing plan for Egypt’s future, ultimately sided with the protesters on the street, at least for Act 1....
The question is whether Egypt’s military can manage a transition to democracy, as the militaries of South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines and Chile have.
South Korea is perhaps the clearest example of a good outcome, for both its citizens and the United States. The country is now among the most prosperous in the world, and the government, after some very rocky years, is now Washington’s favorite ally in Asia. In the face of large street protests in the mid-1980s, the generals gradually allowed free elections. In those days, rumors of coups were rampant, and the first freely elected president was a general. But the last four have been civilians, including one Nobel-prize winning dissident....
Egypt’s military, calculating that it was no longer worth defending an 82-year-old, out-of-touch pharaoh with no palatable successor and no convincing plan for Egypt’s future, ultimately sided with the protesters on the street, at least for Act 1....
The question is whether Egypt’s military can manage a transition to democracy, as the militaries of South Korea, Indonesia, the Philippines and Chile have.
South Korea is perhaps the clearest example of a good outcome, for both its citizens and the United States. The country is now among the most prosperous in the world, and the government, after some very rocky years, is now Washington’s favorite ally in Asia. In the face of large street protests in the mid-1980s, the generals gradually allowed free elections. In those days, rumors of coups were rampant, and the first freely elected president was a general. But the last four have been civilians, including one Nobel-prize winning dissident....
Monday, February 21, 2011 - 22:55
SOURCE: NYT (2-19-11)
ATLANTA — Over the years, the public radio show “This American Life” has done some ambitious work. It was the first media outlet in the country to broadcast lengthy interviews with Guantánamo Bay prisoners. It sent reporters to Iraq for a month. And it exposed the misdeeds of a hedge fund.
So what other topic could be so weighty, so captivating that it would cause the radio show’s Web site to crash under a stampede of visitors?
A soft-drink recipe.
The host, Ira Glass, revealed on last weekend’s show what he claimed was the original formula for Coca-Cola. He found it buried in a little-noticed article in the archives of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution....
“It’s sobering,” Mr. Glass said. “We’ve done a lot of serious reporting on many serious things. But nothing that got the attention that we got from taking on a soft drink.”...
So what other topic could be so weighty, so captivating that it would cause the radio show’s Web site to crash under a stampede of visitors?
A soft-drink recipe.
The host, Ira Glass, revealed on last weekend’s show what he claimed was the original formula for Coca-Cola. He found it buried in a little-noticed article in the archives of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution....
“It’s sobering,” Mr. Glass said. “We’ve done a lot of serious reporting on many serious things. But nothing that got the attention that we got from taking on a soft drink.”...
Monday, February 21, 2011 - 22:54
SOURCE: NYT (2-20-11)
In the Cemetery of the Evergreens on the border of Brooklyn and Queens, there is a haunting stone monument to the garment workers who died in the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire of 1911 but were never identified. It contains the bas-relief figure of a kneeling woman, her head bowed, seemingly mourning not only the deaths, but also the fact that those buried below were so badly charred that relatives could not recognize them.
Almost a century after the fire, the five women and one man, all buried in coffins under the Evergreens monument, remained unknown to the public at large, though relatives and descendants knew that a loved one had never returned from the burning blouse factory.
Now those six have been identified, largely through the persistence of a researcher, Michael Hirsch, who became obsessed with learning all he could about the victims after he discovered that one of those killed, Lizzie Adler, a 24-year-old greenhorn from Romania, had lived on his block in the East Village.
And so, for the first time, at the centennial commemoration of the fire on March 25 outside the building in Greenwich Village where the Triangle Waist Company occupied the eighth, ninth and 10th floors, the names of all 146 dead will finally be read.
The fire was a wrenching event in New York’s history, one that had a profound influence on building codes, labor laws, politics and the beginning of the New Deal two decades later.
Among the most anguishing aspects was the memory of the more than 50 young immigrant women and men who were forced to leap from the high floors to escape the inferno. However, many of the 146 victims — 129 women and 17 men — burned to death in the loft building, at Washington Place and Greene Street, and had no telltale jewelry or clothing to help identify them....
Almost a century after the fire, the five women and one man, all buried in coffins under the Evergreens monument, remained unknown to the public at large, though relatives and descendants knew that a loved one had never returned from the burning blouse factory.
Now those six have been identified, largely through the persistence of a researcher, Michael Hirsch, who became obsessed with learning all he could about the victims after he discovered that one of those killed, Lizzie Adler, a 24-year-old greenhorn from Romania, had lived on his block in the East Village.
And so, for the first time, at the centennial commemoration of the fire on March 25 outside the building in Greenwich Village where the Triangle Waist Company occupied the eighth, ninth and 10th floors, the names of all 146 dead will finally be read.
The fire was a wrenching event in New York’s history, one that had a profound influence on building codes, labor laws, politics and the beginning of the New Deal two decades later.
Among the most anguishing aspects was the memory of the more than 50 young immigrant women and men who were forced to leap from the high floors to escape the inferno. However, many of the 146 victims — 129 women and 17 men — burned to death in the loft building, at Washington Place and Greene Street, and had no telltale jewelry or clothing to help identify them....
Monday, February 21, 2011 - 17:46
SOURCE: NYT (2-21-11)
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — One hundred and fifty years and one day later, the South did it again.
Before a cheering crowd of several hundred men and women, some in period costume and others in crisp suits, an amateur actor playing Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president of the Confederacy on the steps of the Alabama Capitol on Saturday, an event framed by the firing of artillery, the delivery of defiant speeches and the singing of “Dixie.”
The participants far outnumbered the spectators, but it was to be the largest event of the year organized by the Sons of Confederate Veterans and one in a series of commemorations of the 150th anniversary of the Confederacy and the War for Southern Independence. (Referring to the Civil War as anything other than an act of unwarranted Northern aggression upon a sovereign republic was rather frowned upon.)
The Sons’ principal message was that the Confederacy was a just exercise in self-determination that had been maligned by “the politically correct crowd” through years of historical distortions. It is the right of secession that they emphasize, not the cause, which they often describe as a complicated mix of tariff and tax disputes and Northern attempts to politically subjugate the South....
Before a cheering crowd of several hundred men and women, some in period costume and others in crisp suits, an amateur actor playing Jefferson Davis was sworn in as president of the Confederacy on the steps of the Alabama Capitol on Saturday, an event framed by the firing of artillery, the delivery of defiant speeches and the singing of “Dixie.”
The participants far outnumbered the spectators, but it was to be the largest event of the year organized by the Sons of Confederate Veterans and one in a series of commemorations of the 150th anniversary of the Confederacy and the War for Southern Independence. (Referring to the Civil War as anything other than an act of unwarranted Northern aggression upon a sovereign republic was rather frowned upon.)
The Sons’ principal message was that the Confederacy was a just exercise in self-determination that had been maligned by “the politically correct crowd” through years of historical distortions. It is the right of secession that they emphasize, not the cause, which they often describe as a complicated mix of tariff and tax disputes and Northern attempts to politically subjugate the South....
Monday, February 21, 2011 - 13:45
SOURCE: NYT (2-21-11)
CHICAGO — Locked in a climate-controlled vault at the Newberry Library here, a volume titled “The Pen and the Book” can be studied only under the watch of security cameras.
The book, about making a profit in publishing, scarcely qualifies as a literary masterpiece. It is highly valuable, instead, because a reader has scribbled in the margins of its pages.
The scribbler was Mark Twain, who had penciled, among other observations, a one-way argument with the author, Walter Besant, that “nothing could be stupider” than using advertising to sell books as if they were “essential goods” like “salt” or “tobacco.” On another page, Twain made some snide remarks about the big sums being paid to another author of his era, Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science.
Like many readers, Twain was engaging in marginalia, writing comments alongside passages and sometimes giving an author a piece of his mind. It is a rich literary pastime, sometimes regarded as a tool of literary archaeology, but it has an uncertain fate in a digitalized world.
“People will always find a way to annotate electronically,” said G. Thomas Tanselle, a former vice president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and an adjunct professor of English at Columbia University. “But there is the question of how it is going to be preserved. And that is a problem now facing collections libraries.”...
The book, about making a profit in publishing, scarcely qualifies as a literary masterpiece. It is highly valuable, instead, because a reader has scribbled in the margins of its pages.
The scribbler was Mark Twain, who had penciled, among other observations, a one-way argument with the author, Walter Besant, that “nothing could be stupider” than using advertising to sell books as if they were “essential goods” like “salt” or “tobacco.” On another page, Twain made some snide remarks about the big sums being paid to another author of his era, Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science.
Like many readers, Twain was engaging in marginalia, writing comments alongside passages and sometimes giving an author a piece of his mind. It is a rich literary pastime, sometimes regarded as a tool of literary archaeology, but it has an uncertain fate in a digitalized world.
“People will always find a way to annotate electronically,” said G. Thomas Tanselle, a former vice president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and an adjunct professor of English at Columbia University. “But there is the question of how it is going to be preserved. And that is a problem now facing collections libraries.”...
Monday, February 21, 2011 - 13:23
SOURCE: NYT (2-12-11)
In the Cemetery of the Evergreens on the border of Brooklyn and Queens, there is a haunting stone monument to the garment workers who died in the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire of 1911 but were never identified. It contains the bas-relief figure of a kneeling woman, her head bowed, seemingly mourning not only the deaths, but also the fact that those buried below were so badly charred that relatives could not recognize them.
Almost a century after the fire, the five women and one man, all buried in coffins under the Evergreens monument, remained unknown to the public at large, though relatives and descendants knew that a loved one had never returned from the burning blouse factory.
Now those six have been identified, largely through the persistence of a researcher, Michael Hirsch, who became obsessed with learning all he could about the victims after he discovered that one of those killed, Lizzie Adler, a 24-year-old greenhorn from Romania, had lived on his block in the East Village.
And so, for the first time, at the centennial commemoration of the fire on March 25 outside the building in Greenwich Village where the Triangle Waist Company occupied the eighth, ninth and 10th floors, the names of all 146 dead will finally be read.
The fire was a wrenching event in New York’s history, one that had a profound influence on building codes, labor laws, politics and the beginning of the New Deal two decades later....
Almost a century after the fire, the five women and one man, all buried in coffins under the Evergreens monument, remained unknown to the public at large, though relatives and descendants knew that a loved one had never returned from the burning blouse factory.
Now those six have been identified, largely through the persistence of a researcher, Michael Hirsch, who became obsessed with learning all he could about the victims after he discovered that one of those killed, Lizzie Adler, a 24-year-old greenhorn from Romania, had lived on his block in the East Village.
And so, for the first time, at the centennial commemoration of the fire on March 25 outside the building in Greenwich Village where the Triangle Waist Company occupied the eighth, ninth and 10th floors, the names of all 146 dead will finally be read.
The fire was a wrenching event in New York’s history, one that had a profound influence on building codes, labor laws, politics and the beginning of the New Deal two decades later....
Monday, February 21, 2011 - 12:42
SOURCE: NYT (2-18-11)
As a child, Razib Khan spent several weeks studying in a Bangladeshi madrasa. Heather Mac Donald once studied literary deconstructionism and clerked for a left-wing judge. In neither case did the education take. They are atheist conservatives — Mr. Khan an apostate to his family’s Islamic faith, Ms. Mac Donald to her left-wing education.
They are part of a small faction on the right: conservatives with no use for religion. Since 2008, they have been contributors to the blog Secular Right, where they argue that conservative values like small government, self-reliance and liberty can be defended without recourse to invisible deities or the religions that exalt them....
Neither Mr. Khan nor Ms. Mac Donald gainsays the historical connection between conservatism and religiosity. Influential conservatives, like the 18th-century Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke, have been sympathetic toward religion in part because it endures....
After the French Revolution, opposition to clergy became identified with revolutionaries and, as in communist countries, the political left. Veneration of clergy, as by the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, was a marker of the right.
But only in the 1970s did the Republican Party became more identified with religiosity than the Democrats. In recent years, conservative magazines and talk radio have increased their cheerleading for religion, while two magazines with religious roots, First Things and Commentary, have become more conservative in their politics....
They are part of a small faction on the right: conservatives with no use for religion. Since 2008, they have been contributors to the blog Secular Right, where they argue that conservative values like small government, self-reliance and liberty can be defended without recourse to invisible deities or the religions that exalt them....
Neither Mr. Khan nor Ms. Mac Donald gainsays the historical connection between conservatism and religiosity. Influential conservatives, like the 18th-century Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke, have been sympathetic toward religion in part because it endures....
After the French Revolution, opposition to clergy became identified with revolutionaries and, as in communist countries, the political left. Veneration of clergy, as by the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, was a marker of the right.
But only in the 1970s did the Republican Party became more identified with religiosity than the Democrats. In recent years, conservative magazines and talk radio have increased their cheerleading for religion, while two magazines with religious roots, First Things and Commentary, have become more conservative in their politics....
Saturday, February 19, 2011 - 15:43
SOURCE: NYT (2-18-11)
SEDALIA, Colo. — The mechanics were simple. A trailer latch popped, a gate swung open and three wild bighorn sheep — two females, presumably pregnant, and a year-old lamb, definitely frisky — trotted up the rocky slope of Thunder Butte under a pale afternoon sun.
It is the back story of the animals’ release this week by wildlife biologists here in the mountains southwest of Denver that can stagger the mind with its complications of coincidence, historical accident, devastation and hope.
A truck breakdown on a highway in February 1946 played a role, believe it or not, as did the biggest Colorado wildfire in memory, the Hayman, in June 2002. The fire roared through the cliffs in the Pike National Forest with flames hundreds of feet high, scouring the land of trees across 138,000 acres.
Human intervention, from the mining boom in the late 1800s, when timber was cut by the trainload for fuel and construction, through the bighorn reintroduction program in the Hayman burn area by the Colorado Division of Wildlife, begun last year, completed the circle of natural and wild that brought the bighorns home. They were last seen in this area in the mid-1960s....
It is the back story of the animals’ release this week by wildlife biologists here in the mountains southwest of Denver that can stagger the mind with its complications of coincidence, historical accident, devastation and hope.
A truck breakdown on a highway in February 1946 played a role, believe it or not, as did the biggest Colorado wildfire in memory, the Hayman, in June 2002. The fire roared through the cliffs in the Pike National Forest with flames hundreds of feet high, scouring the land of trees across 138,000 acres.
Human intervention, from the mining boom in the late 1800s, when timber was cut by the trainload for fuel and construction, through the bighorn reintroduction program in the Hayman burn area by the Colorado Division of Wildlife, begun last year, completed the circle of natural and wild that brought the bighorns home. They were last seen in this area in the mid-1960s....
Saturday, February 19, 2011 - 15:41
SOURCE: NYT (2-18-11)
In the half century since Wisconsin became the first state to give its public workers the right to bargain collectively, government employee unions have mushroomed in size and power — so much so that they now account for more than half of the nation’s union members.
But the legislative push by Wisconsin’s new governor, Scott Walker, a Republican, to slash the collective bargaining rights of his state’s public employees could prove a watershed for public-sector unions, perhaps signaling the beginning of a decline in their power — both at the bargaining table and in politics....
Some Republicans quote President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, who bridled at public-sector unionism and once said, “The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted in the public service.”
Republicans say the Democrats have embraced the government employees’ cause because weaker unions would reduce crucial political support for Democratic candidates. Republicans have often denounced what they say is a squalid deal in which public-sector unions spend generously to elect allies to office and then those allies lavish generous wages and benefits on union members.
Ever since Wisconsin gave its government employees the right to bargain in 1959, it has generally been Democrats who have extended that right in other states. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy gave most federal employees the right to unionize and bargain collectively....
But the legislative push by Wisconsin’s new governor, Scott Walker, a Republican, to slash the collective bargaining rights of his state’s public employees could prove a watershed for public-sector unions, perhaps signaling the beginning of a decline in their power — both at the bargaining table and in politics....
Some Republicans quote President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, who bridled at public-sector unionism and once said, “The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted in the public service.”
Republicans say the Democrats have embraced the government employees’ cause because weaker unions would reduce crucial political support for Democratic candidates. Republicans have often denounced what they say is a squalid deal in which public-sector unions spend generously to elect allies to office and then those allies lavish generous wages and benefits on union members.
Ever since Wisconsin gave its government employees the right to bargain in 1959, it has generally been Democrats who have extended that right in other states. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy gave most federal employees the right to unionize and bargain collectively....
Saturday, February 19, 2011 - 15:39
SOURCE: NYT (2-18-11)
OSWIECIM, Poland — For nearly 60 years, Auschwitz has told its own story, shaped in the aftermath of the Second World War. It now unfolds, unadorned and mostly unexplained, in displays of hair, shoes and other remains of the dead. Past the notorious, mocking gateway, into the brick ranks of the former barracks of the Polish army camp that the Nazis seized and converted into prisons and death chambers, visitors bear witness via this exhibition.
Now those in charge of passing along the legacy of this camp insist that Auschwitz needs an update. Its story needs to be retold, in a different way for a different age.
Partly the change has to do with the simple passage of time, refurbishing an aging display. Partly it’s about the pressures of tourism, and partly about the changing of generations. What is the most visited site and the biggest cemetery in Poland for Jews and non-Jews alike, needs to explain itself better, officials here contend.
A proposed new exhibition at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum here, occupying some of the same barracks or blocks, will retain the piled hair and other remains, which by now have become icons, as inextricable from Auschwitz as the crematoria and railway tracks. But the display will start with an explanatory section on how the camp worked, as a German Nazi bureaucratic institution, a topic now largely absent from the present exhibition, which was devised by survivors during the 1950s....
Now those in charge of passing along the legacy of this camp insist that Auschwitz needs an update. Its story needs to be retold, in a different way for a different age.
Partly the change has to do with the simple passage of time, refurbishing an aging display. Partly it’s about the pressures of tourism, and partly about the changing of generations. What is the most visited site and the biggest cemetery in Poland for Jews and non-Jews alike, needs to explain itself better, officials here contend.
A proposed new exhibition at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum here, occupying some of the same barracks or blocks, will retain the piled hair and other remains, which by now have become icons, as inextricable from Auschwitz as the crematoria and railway tracks. But the display will start with an explanatory section on how the camp worked, as a German Nazi bureaucratic institution, a topic now largely absent from the present exhibition, which was devised by survivors during the 1950s....
Saturday, February 19, 2011 - 15:37
SOURCE: NYT (2-12-11)
TEL AVIV — When Google, the world’s largest search engine, joined forces with Yad Vashem, keeper of the world’s largest Holocaust archive, the first thing one Google employee here did was search for his grandfather’s name.
A link took the employee, Doron Avni, to a Google-operated page on the Yad Vashem Web site showing a photograph of his grandfather, Yecheskel Fleischer, taken in 1941 just after he was released from a Nazi-run prison in Lithuania.
Under the photograph of his grandfather, then 27, dark-eyed and gaunt, Mr. Avni was able to type in details of his grandfather’s story. Icons on the page from Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets allow for immediate sharing of the images and attached information.
“It’s a milestone that marks a new era in our ability to disseminate and bring useful accessibility to Yad Vashem’s databases,” said Avner Shalev, chairman of Yad Vashem, at a news conference last month at Google’s offices in central Tel Aviv....
A link took the employee, Doron Avni, to a Google-operated page on the Yad Vashem Web site showing a photograph of his grandfather, Yecheskel Fleischer, taken in 1941 just after he was released from a Nazi-run prison in Lithuania.
Under the photograph of his grandfather, then 27, dark-eyed and gaunt, Mr. Avni was able to type in details of his grandfather’s story. Icons on the page from Facebook, Twitter and other social media outlets allow for immediate sharing of the images and attached information.
“It’s a milestone that marks a new era in our ability to disseminate and bring useful accessibility to Yad Vashem’s databases,” said Avner Shalev, chairman of Yad Vashem, at a news conference last month at Google’s offices in central Tel Aviv....
Friday, February 18, 2011 - 13:52
Name of source: Ynet News
SOURCE: Ynet News (2-21-11)
The family of Jewish physicist Albert Einstein is offering a €5,000 ($6,850) reward for information about the murder of three members of Einstein’s family by Nazi soldiers in 1944. The wife and two daughters of Eisntein's cousin Robert were murdered in August 3, 1944 near Florence, Italy.
Authorities have been investigating the murder since 2007 when new evidence surfaced, and have largely managed to reconstruct the events of the day of the murder....
Authorities have been investigating the murder since 2007 when new evidence surfaced, and have largely managed to reconstruct the events of the day of the murder....
Monday, February 21, 2011 - 19:32
Name of source: Baltimore Sun
SOURCE: Baltimore Sun (2-21-11)
Del. Sandy Rosenberg reports that the House hearing on the bill he has proposed to require extensive disclosures about the French national railway's World War II activities while under Nazi control if one of its subsidiaries wants to bid for a MARC contract has been postponed from Wednesday until March 3....
Monday, February 21, 2011 - 19:32
Name of source: BBC
SOURCE: BBC (2-21-11)
The Nottinghamshire public are being offered a rare opportunity to handle a 75,000-year-old axe and other ancient artefacts at a local museum.
The University of Nottingham Museum of Archaeology is putting on a Prehistory Day on 23 February 2011, in conjunction with the BBC's Hands On History.
The attraction is the only specialised archaeological museum in the region.
The museum opened in 1933 with artefacts donated by Felix Oswald, including his collection from excavations at Margidunum, a Roman site found under a roundabout at Bingham in the early 1930s....
The University of Nottingham Museum of Archaeology is putting on a Prehistory Day on 23 February 2011, in conjunction with the BBC's Hands On History.
The attraction is the only specialised archaeological museum in the region.
The museum opened in 1933 with artefacts donated by Felix Oswald, including his collection from excavations at Margidunum, a Roman site found under a roundabout at Bingham in the early 1930s....
Monday, February 21, 2011 - 17:51
SOURCE: BBC (2-21-11)
Egypt has re-opened many of its museums and historical sites which had been closed since the civil uprising started in January.
Tourists visiting Cairo's Egyptian Museum, which houses Tutankhamun's golden death mask, were welcomed by staff with roses.
The museum stands on Tahrir Square, the focus of the unrest, and some artefacts were stolen or damaged.
The upheaval is said to have cost the tourism industry $800m (£500m).
The usually busy galleries of the Egyptian Museum were virtually deserted when doors opened on Sunday, Reuters news agency reports....
Tourists visiting Cairo's Egyptian Museum, which houses Tutankhamun's golden death mask, were welcomed by staff with roses.
The museum stands on Tahrir Square, the focus of the unrest, and some artefacts were stolen or damaged.
The upheaval is said to have cost the tourism industry $800m (£500m).
The usually busy galleries of the Egyptian Museum were virtually deserted when doors opened on Sunday, Reuters news agency reports....
Monday, February 21, 2011 - 17:26
SOURCE: BBC (2-21-11)
Excavation work on the site of a Roman fort near a school has revealed what archaeologists believe are structures never previously seen in the UK.
The dig in the playing fields of Dwr-y-Felin Comprehensive Upper School in Neath has uncovered sections of the defences of the 1st Century building.
These include a defence tower partially set outside its ramparts allowing soldiers to shoot at gate attackers.
A fort was in occupation on the site until at least the 3rd Century.
The trust was asked by Neath Port Talbot council to carry out the work before a new teaching block was built on the playing field.
The fort of Nidum was discovered in the 1950s, and according to the trust, it would have been occupied by a unit of auxiliaries, who were regarded as high quality troops but "less prestigious than the legions".
They protected the fort against the fierce local tribe, known as the Silures, who were native to much of south, mid and west Wales....
The dig in the playing fields of Dwr-y-Felin Comprehensive Upper School in Neath has uncovered sections of the defences of the 1st Century building.
These include a defence tower partially set outside its ramparts allowing soldiers to shoot at gate attackers.
A fort was in occupation on the site until at least the 3rd Century.
The trust was asked by Neath Port Talbot council to carry out the work before a new teaching block was built on the playing field.
The fort of Nidum was discovered in the 1950s, and according to the trust, it would have been occupied by a unit of auxiliaries, who were regarded as high quality troops but "less prestigious than the legions".
They protected the fort against the fierce local tribe, known as the Silures, who were native to much of south, mid and west Wales....
Monday, February 21, 2011 - 17:23
SOURCE: BBC (2-18-11)
On Saturday, a group will gather in Alabama to mark the 150th anniversary of the inauguration of the first president of the Confederacy, 11 Southern slave states that left the US in 1860 and 1861. They say they are honouring their ancestors and their heritage but, as the BBC's Daniel Nasaw reports, critics view the group as celebrating slavery.
Under a bright Southern sky on Saturday, the Sons of Confederate Veterans will dress in period costume, including replica grey uniforms of the Confederate army, to commemorate the first raising of a national flag and the inauguration of a president.
They won't be saluting the familiar Stars and Stripes or honouring an occupant of the White House. Instead, they will pay tribute to the Confederate States of America, a political entity created after 11 states seceded from the US. That painful division led to the Civil War.
The event's organisers say that in addition to marking an important moment in US history, the commemoration is intended to instil a sense of pride in Southerners who they say have been taught to be ashamed of their heritage....
Under a bright Southern sky on Saturday, the Sons of Confederate Veterans will dress in period costume, including replica grey uniforms of the Confederate army, to commemorate the first raising of a national flag and the inauguration of a president.
They won't be saluting the familiar Stars and Stripes or honouring an occupant of the White House. Instead, they will pay tribute to the Confederate States of America, a political entity created after 11 states seceded from the US. That painful division led to the Civil War.
The event's organisers say that in addition to marking an important moment in US history, the commemoration is intended to instil a sense of pride in Southerners who they say have been taught to be ashamed of their heritage....
Monday, February 21, 2011 - 13:24
SOURCE: BBC (2-18-11)
Four hundred years after his death, Caravaggio is a 21st Century superstar among old master painters. His stark, dramatically lit, super-realistic paintings strike a modern chord - but his police record is more shocking than any modern bad boy rock star's.
An exhibition of documents at Rome's State Archives throws vivid light on his tumultuous life here at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries.
Caravaggio's friendships, daily life and frequent brawls - including the one which brought him a death sentence from Pope Paul V - are described in handwritten police logs, legal and court parchments all bound together in heavy tomes - and carefully preserved in this unique repository of Rome's history during the Renaissance and after.
The picture the documents paint is that of an irascible man who went about town carrying personal weapons - a sword and dagger, and even a pistol - without a written permit, boasting that he enjoyed the protection of the ecclesiastical authorities who commissioned some of his most famous works.
He had frequent brushes with the police, got into trouble for throwing a plate of cooked artichokes in the face of a waiter in a tavern, and made a hole in the ceiling of his rented studio, so that his huge paintings would fit inside. His landlady sued, so he and a friend pelted her window with stones....
An exhibition of documents at Rome's State Archives throws vivid light on his tumultuous life here at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries.
Caravaggio's friendships, daily life and frequent brawls - including the one which brought him a death sentence from Pope Paul V - are described in handwritten police logs, legal and court parchments all bound together in heavy tomes - and carefully preserved in this unique repository of Rome's history during the Renaissance and after.
The picture the documents paint is that of an irascible man who went about town carrying personal weapons - a sword and dagger, and even a pistol - without a written permit, boasting that he enjoyed the protection of the ecclesiastical authorities who commissioned some of his most famous works.
He had frequent brushes with the police, got into trouble for throwing a plate of cooked artichokes in the face of a waiter in a tavern, and made a hole in the ceiling of his rented studio, so that his huge paintings would fit inside. His landlady sued, so he and a friend pelted her window with stones....
Saturday, February 19, 2011 - 18:47
SOURCE: BBC (2-16-11)
Ancient Britons were not averse to using human skulls as drinking cups, skeletal remains unearthed in southwest England suggest.
The braincases from three individuals were fashioned in such a meticulous way that their use as bowls to hold liquid seems the only reasonable explanation.
The 14,700-year-old objects were discovered in Gough's Cave, Somerset.
Scientists from London's Natural History Museum say the skull-cups were probably used in some kind of ritual....
The braincases from three individuals were fashioned in such a meticulous way that their use as bowls to hold liquid seems the only reasonable explanation.
The 14,700-year-old objects were discovered in Gough's Cave, Somerset.
Scientists from London's Natural History Museum say the skull-cups were probably used in some kind of ritual....
Thursday, February 17, 2011 - 23:58
Name of source: AP
SOURCE: AP (2-21-11)
A New York man whose wallet disappeared from his jacket pocket has gotten it back -- 40 years later.
Rudolph Resta was working for The New York Times as an art director in 1970 when he left his jacket in a closet at the old Times building in Manhattan just off Times Square. When he went to fetch the jacket, the wallet was gone.
Fast-forward to last fall, when a security guard checking a gap by an unused window came across the wallet -- apparently stashed there by a thief who'd pulled out the cash....
Rudolph Resta was working for The New York Times as an art director in 1970 when he left his jacket in a closet at the old Times building in Manhattan just off Times Square. When he went to fetch the jacket, the wallet was gone.
Fast-forward to last fall, when a security guard checking a gap by an unused window came across the wallet -- apparently stashed there by a thief who'd pulled out the cash....
Monday, February 21, 2011 - 16:55
SOURCE: AP (2-20-11)
Japan is starting to excavate the site of a former medical school that may reveal grisly secrets from World War II.
The investigation begins Monday at the former school linked to Unit 731, a germ and biological warfare outfit during the war. Shadowy experiments conducted by the unit on war prisoners have never been officially acknowledged by the government but have been documented by historians and participants.
It is the first government probe of the Tokyo site, and follows a former nurse's revelation that she helped bury body parts there as American forces began occupying the capital at the end of the war....
The investigation begins Monday at the former school linked to Unit 731, a germ and biological warfare outfit during the war. Shadowy experiments conducted by the unit on war prisoners have never been officially acknowledged by the government but have been documented by historians and participants.
It is the first government probe of the Tokyo site, and follows a former nurse's revelation that she helped bury body parts there as American forces began occupying the capital at the end of the war....
Sunday, February 20, 2011 - 20:28
SOURCE: AP (2-19-11)
A prosecutor says a court has told Pakistani authorities to trace the address of former military ruler Pervez Musharraf to arrest him in connection with the Benazir Bhutto assassination.
Musharraf left Pakistan for London after quitting the presidency in 2008.
Bhutto, a former prime minister, died in a gun and suicide bomb attack in late 2007. Prosecutors allege Musharraf was part of the conspiracy to kill her because he did not do enough to protect her....
Musharraf left Pakistan for London after quitting the presidency in 2008.
Bhutto, a former prime minister, died in a gun and suicide bomb attack in late 2007. Prosecutors allege Musharraf was part of the conspiracy to kill her because he did not do enough to protect her....
Saturday, February 19, 2011 - 18:33
SOURCE: AP (2-19-11)
A steady stream of people gathered to mourn the apparent imminent demise of the poisoned oak trees at Toomer's Corner, where Auburn fans traditionally celebrate wins.
The crowd of old and young alike, many clad in orange and blue, began arriving early Saturday morning for the rally dubbed "Toomer's Tree Hug" and carried on well into the afternoon.
A fan of rival Alabama -- Harvey Updyke Jr., 62 -- has been charged with first-degree criminal mischief for allegedly using a tree-destroying herbicide to poison the two 130-year-old oaks after Auburn beat the Crimson Tide in November. He was released from the Lee County Detention Facility on bond Friday night....
The crowd of old and young alike, many clad in orange and blue, began arriving early Saturday morning for the rally dubbed "Toomer's Tree Hug" and carried on well into the afternoon.
A fan of rival Alabama -- Harvey Updyke Jr., 62 -- has been charged with first-degree criminal mischief for allegedly using a tree-destroying herbicide to poison the two 130-year-old oaks after Auburn beat the Crimson Tide in November. He was released from the Lee County Detention Facility on bond Friday night....
Saturday, February 19, 2011 - 18:31
SOURCE: AP (2-17-11)
Egypt said it will reopen historical sites to tourism on Sunday as it sought to revive a key industry shattered in the turmoil that ousted President Hosni Mubarak. Archaeologists were cheered by the recovery of the most important artifact stolen from Cairo's Egyptian Museum, a rare statue of King Tut's father.
A 16-year-old anti-government protester found the statue of the Pharaoh Akhenaten next to a garbage can and his family returned it, the antiquities ministry said.
But damage to Egypt's heritage may have been greater than previously thought, as officials reported new cases of break-ins at archaeological sites....
A 16-year-old anti-government protester found the statue of the Pharaoh Akhenaten next to a garbage can and his family returned it, the antiquities ministry said.
But damage to Egypt's heritage may have been greater than previously thought, as officials reported new cases of break-ins at archaeological sites....
Friday, February 18, 2011 - 00:10
Name of source: CNN
SOURCE: CNN (2-20-11)
So there is Abraham Lincoln -- Henry Fonda, actually, in a stovepipe hat -- walking toward the horizon as the gorgeous strains of an orchestra swell up behind him. Soon the orchestra is joined by a choir, the strings and the voices blending into a beautiful, almost ethereal, rendition of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." Thunder crackles in the cinematic sky.
Monday is Presidents Day, and in anticipation I treated myself to a viewing of "Young Mr. Lincoln," the 1939 movie about the 16th president's early life as a lawyer in Illinois. The film was purposefully inspiring, of course, sentimental and warmhearted. As it concluded -- the viewer was left to surmise that where Lincoln was heading, bathed in all that music and all that thunder, was toward his, and the nation's, future -- the thought occurred that such movies may be a thing of the past.
Not movies about Lincoln; there will always be a market for those, and in fact a spate of them are said to be either in production or in the planning stages. But uplifting feature-film biographies about more contemporary presidents -- life stories told admiringly, earnestly, with the intent to attract paying customers to brick-and-mortar movie theaters -- seem now to be an anachronism. And it may be worth taking a moment to ask ourselves whether this is the fault of our presidents, or of the times we live in, or of us.
Such movies -- the life stories of the presidents, delivered straight and with an implied crisp salute of respect -- were once a staple of the American entertainment menu: "Sunrise at Campobello," about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, "PT 109," about John F. Kennedy, the various Lincoln movies ("Abe Lincoln in Illinois" followed "Young Mr. Lincoln" into theaters just one year later) ... there was even, in the 1940s, a big-budget film about the life of Woodrow Wilson. The assumption seemed to be that American audiences out for the evening longed to be edified by rousing tales of the men who had made it all the way to the White House. The movies played it literal and clear-eyed; presidents, on the screen, were people to be highly regarded and emulated.
But starting with "All the President's Men" and the era it depicted, that changed. Suddenly moviegoers seemed to feel that before they even bought their tickets they already knew enough -- too much -- of the officially sanctioned versions of the presidents' lives. Oliver Stone made his three presidential movies -- "JFK," "Nixon" and "W."-- and there was no danger that they would ever be confused with "Young Mr. Lincoln."....
Monday is Presidents Day, and in anticipation I treated myself to a viewing of "Young Mr. Lincoln," the 1939 movie about the 16th president's early life as a lawyer in Illinois. The film was purposefully inspiring, of course, sentimental and warmhearted. As it concluded -- the viewer was left to surmise that where Lincoln was heading, bathed in all that music and all that thunder, was toward his, and the nation's, future -- the thought occurred that such movies may be a thing of the past.
Not movies about Lincoln; there will always be a market for those, and in fact a spate of them are said to be either in production or in the planning stages. But uplifting feature-film biographies about more contemporary presidents -- life stories told admiringly, earnestly, with the intent to attract paying customers to brick-and-mortar movie theaters -- seem now to be an anachronism. And it may be worth taking a moment to ask ourselves whether this is the fault of our presidents, or of the times we live in, or of us.
Such movies -- the life stories of the presidents, delivered straight and with an implied crisp salute of respect -- were once a staple of the American entertainment menu: "Sunrise at Campobello," about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, "PT 109," about John F. Kennedy, the various Lincoln movies ("Abe Lincoln in Illinois" followed "Young Mr. Lincoln" into theaters just one year later) ... there was even, in the 1940s, a big-budget film about the life of Woodrow Wilson. The assumption seemed to be that American audiences out for the evening longed to be edified by rousing tales of the men who had made it all the way to the White House. The movies played it literal and clear-eyed; presidents, on the screen, were people to be highly regarded and emulated.
But starting with "All the President's Men" and the era it depicted, that changed. Suddenly moviegoers seemed to feel that before they even bought their tickets they already knew enough -- too much -- of the officially sanctioned versions of the presidents' lives. Oliver Stone made his three presidential movies -- "JFK," "Nixon" and "W."-- and there was no danger that they would ever be confused with "Young Mr. Lincoln."....
Monday, February 21, 2011 - 16:52
SOURCE: CNN (2-21-11)
An upcoming tell-all on Sarah Palin authored by a former top aide alleges the Republican firebrand despised her job as governor and broke campaign election laws in 2006.
According to the Anchorage Daily News, a 500-page manuscript authored by Frank Bailey was leaked to several Alaska media organizations over the weekend.
The book reportedly describes a Palin deeply exasperated with her political opponents and the heightened attacks she faced after being tapped to be the GOP vice presidential nominee in 2008.
The yet-to-be-published book was leaked to the media and widely circulated over the weekend. It also alleges Palin flagrantly violated campaign law when she closely collaborated with the Republican Governor's Association on a campaign ad in 2006. Because of the RGA's status as a 527 organization, the group can only support candidates independently and are barred from coordinating on strategy.
According to the Daily News, Bailey joined Palin's political team in 2006 and had been in her in her circle until her resignation as governor. He had previously declined all media requests regarding his perceptions of his former boss.
The book was also written by Jeanne Devon, a longtime critic of the former governor who publishes the anti-Palin blog Mudflats, and California author Ken Morris, who has written anti-Palin articles on his own website....
According to the Anchorage Daily News, a 500-page manuscript authored by Frank Bailey was leaked to several Alaska media organizations over the weekend.
The book reportedly describes a Palin deeply exasperated with her political opponents and the heightened attacks she faced after being tapped to be the GOP vice presidential nominee in 2008.
The yet-to-be-published book was leaked to the media and widely circulated over the weekend. It also alleges Palin flagrantly violated campaign law when she closely collaborated with the Republican Governor's Association on a campaign ad in 2006. Because of the RGA's status as a 527 organization, the group can only support candidates independently and are barred from coordinating on strategy.
According to the Daily News, Bailey joined Palin's political team in 2006 and had been in her in her circle until her resignation as governor. He had previously declined all media requests regarding his perceptions of his former boss.
The book was also written by Jeanne Devon, a longtime critic of the former governor who publishes the anti-Palin blog Mudflats, and California author Ken Morris, who has written anti-Palin articles on his own website....
Monday, February 21, 2011 - 16:50
SOURCE: CNN (2-19-11)
Helena Hicks remembers it vividly. It was a cold January day back in 1955. The 20-year-old Morgan State College student was at a bus stop with her friends at Lexington and Howard streets on the west side of Baltimore. Hicks said she and her friends were cold, hungry, tired -- fed up.
With that mindset, Hicks and her friends went into Read's drug store and took a seat at the lunch counter. The problem: the retail chain had a policy of not serving African-Americans.
So there they were, sitting at the counter asking to be served, only to be told "no." The students sat there for close to 30 minutes before deciding to leave, Hicks said. Police were never called, and there were no violent confrontations -- only plenty of stares and a few choice words thrown at them.
More than 55 years after that impromptu sit-in, Hicks and many members of the Baltimore community are trying to save the vacant Read's building where it all started. City officials and a developer have a $150 million model for a mixed-use development they would like to turn into reality.
Several people in the community welcome the development but say there should be a way to save what they consider a big part of Baltimore's history. Community meetings are being held, and the city as well as the developer say they are working on a compromise....
With that mindset, Hicks and her friends went into Read's drug store and took a seat at the lunch counter. The problem: the retail chain had a policy of not serving African-Americans.
So there they were, sitting at the counter asking to be served, only to be told "no." The students sat there for close to 30 minutes before deciding to leave, Hicks said. Police were never called, and there were no violent confrontations -- only plenty of stares and a few choice words thrown at them.
More than 55 years after that impromptu sit-in, Hicks and many members of the Baltimore community are trying to save the vacant Read's building where it all started. City officials and a developer have a $150 million model for a mixed-use development they would like to turn into reality.
Several people in the community welcome the development but say there should be a way to save what they consider a big part of Baltimore's history. Community meetings are being held, and the city as well as the developer say they are working on a compromise....
Sunday, February 20, 2011 - 20:25
SOURCE: CNN (2-18-11)
The hard-won fight for civil rights could go down as one of the most thoroughly archived periods in American history, largely because participants kept photos and objects that would later tell their stories.
The revolution demanded it, even if the keepers of history at the time didn't.
At the height of the movement, there was no market for historic African-American artifacts. Mainstream museums weren't interested in documenting it, and "if you look at how museums and scholars had interpreted African-American history up until the '60s, it had been very biased and one-sided," said John Fleming, director of the International African-American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina.
Important items were tucked away and began to surface in the 1970s and 1980s. A handful of African-American museums blossomed to more than 100 by the early 1990s. Today, the Association of African American Museums boasts 250 members.
Not only can the cost and elusiveness of artifacts be prohibitive, but problems can also arise when the history being documented isn't fully written yet....
The revolution demanded it, even if the keepers of history at the time didn't.
At the height of the movement, there was no market for historic African-American artifacts. Mainstream museums weren't interested in documenting it, and "if you look at how museums and scholars had interpreted African-American history up until the '60s, it had been very biased and one-sided," said John Fleming, director of the International African-American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina.
Important items were tucked away and began to surface in the 1970s and 1980s. A handful of African-American museums blossomed to more than 100 by the early 1990s. Today, the Association of African American Museums boasts 250 members.
Not only can the cost and elusiveness of artifacts be prohibitive, but problems can also arise when the history being documented isn't fully written yet....
Sunday, February 20, 2011 - 20:21
Name of source: Newsweek
SOURCE: Newsweek (2-20-11)
Amid horrific Nazi madness, Wiera Gran sang love songs in the Warsaw Ghetto. Within the walls of that grim urban cage, the 25-year-old petite Jewish beauty drew crowds to the ghetto’s Café Sztuka, crooning standards from happier times in a deep, velvety lilt. She died, many decades later, in 2007, in a Paris at peace, caged in her own filthy, darkened hovel, consumed with hatred, sick with fear. She had scrawled words on every surface in her oppressive 16th-arrondissement flat, crippled by paranoia yet determined to defend her name. A hallway wall screamed in thick red marker, “Help! Szpilman and Polanski’s clique want to kill me! HELP!”
The subject of a controversial new book published in Polish and French, Accused: Wiera Gran, Gran’s fame has long faded. But many people know of her accompanist at the Café Sztuka, Wladyslaw Szpilman, the eponymous hero of Roman Polanski’s 2002 Oscar-winning biopic, The Pianist. Gran and Szpilman played the Sztuka together under the most intense conditions for more than a year.
Both the singer and the pianist went on to escape the ghetto, the only surviving members of their respective families. But as early as 1946, Szpilman’s memoirs curiously omitted Gran. Szpilman would become legend; Gran would be hounded wherever she went to sing or to live—from Poland to Israel to France, even Venezuela—by hazy rumors that she had collaborated with the Gestapo. Disparate joys—she dueted with Charles Aznavour and sang at Carnegie Hall—were always eclipsed by allegations she had been some sort of Marlene Dietrich turned Mata Hari. In 1971, her Israeli concert tour was canceled when protesters threatened to attend dressed in concentration-camp stripes. In matters of the Holocaust, vigilante persecution of the unpunished might be understandable, especially where guilt is beyond question. But in this case it wasn’t. In fact, Gran was never proved guilty by the official tribunals that studied her case in Poland and Israel. Still the rumors would resurface. She kept hundreds of copies of court verdicts, piled high, until her death. The whispers drove her mad....
The subject of a controversial new book published in Polish and French, Accused: Wiera Gran, Gran’s fame has long faded. But many people know of her accompanist at the Café Sztuka, Wladyslaw Szpilman, the eponymous hero of Roman Polanski’s 2002 Oscar-winning biopic, The Pianist. Gran and Szpilman played the Sztuka together under the most intense conditions for more than a year.
Both the singer and the pianist went on to escape the ghetto, the only surviving members of their respective families. But as early as 1946, Szpilman’s memoirs curiously omitted Gran. Szpilman would become legend; Gran would be hounded wherever she went to sing or to live—from Poland to Israel to France, even Venezuela—by hazy rumors that she had collaborated with the Gestapo. Disparate joys—she dueted with Charles Aznavour and sang at Carnegie Hall—were always eclipsed by allegations she had been some sort of Marlene Dietrich turned Mata Hari. In 1971, her Israeli concert tour was canceled when protesters threatened to attend dressed in concentration-camp stripes. In matters of the Holocaust, vigilante persecution of the unpunished might be understandable, especially where guilt is beyond question. But in this case it wasn’t. In fact, Gran was never proved guilty by the official tribunals that studied her case in Poland and Israel. Still the rumors would resurface. She kept hundreds of copies of court verdicts, piled high, until her death. The whispers drove her mad....
Monday, February 21, 2011 - 16:09
Name of source: WaPo
SOURCE: WaPo (2-20-11)
The daunting tower of national, state and local debt in the United States will reach a level this year unmatched just after World War II and already exceeds the size of the entire economy, according to government estimates.
But any similarity between 1946 and now ends there. The U.S. debt levels tumbled in the years after World War II, but today they are still climbing and even deep cuts in spending won't completely change that for several years.
As President Obama and Republicans squabble over whose programs to cut and which taxes to raise, slow growth and a rising tide of interest payments - largely beyond their control - are making the job of fixing the budget much harder than in the past. Statehouses and governors face similar challenges.
After World War II, the federal debt - including debt purchased by the Social Security Trust Fund - hit nearly 122 percent of gross domestic product. State and municipal debt back then was minimal. By the time Dwight Eisenhower was elected president six years later, the federal government's debt had dipped to about three-fourths of GDP....
But any similarity between 1946 and now ends there. The U.S. debt levels tumbled in the years after World War II, but today they are still climbing and even deep cuts in spending won't completely change that for several years.
As President Obama and Republicans squabble over whose programs to cut and which taxes to raise, slow growth and a rising tide of interest payments - largely beyond their control - are making the job of fixing the budget much harder than in the past. Statehouses and governors face similar challenges.
After World War II, the federal debt - including debt purchased by the Social Security Trust Fund - hit nearly 122 percent of gross domestic product. State and municipal debt back then was minimal. By the time Dwight Eisenhower was elected president six years later, the federal government's debt had dipped to about three-fourths of GDP....
Monday, February 21, 2011 - 14:07
SOURCE: WaPo (2-18-11)
LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- A longtime Murray State University professor has decided to retire after referring to slavery while making a point about tardiness to two black students last semester, the school said Friday.
Political science professor Mark Wattier has filed his retirement application with the state, with an effective date of March 1, university spokeswoman Catherine Sivills said.
One of the students filed a complaint with the university, and Wattier was suspended without pay.
His career spanned 30 years at the school in Kentucky's southwest corner, including time as Faculty Senate president....
Political science professor Mark Wattier has filed his retirement application with the state, with an effective date of March 1, university spokeswoman Catherine Sivills said.
One of the students filed a complaint with the university, and Wattier was suspended without pay.
His career spanned 30 years at the school in Kentucky's southwest corner, including time as Faculty Senate president....
Saturday, February 19, 2011 - 15:51
SOURCE: WaPo (2-18-11)
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- Months after the University of Alabama dedicated a plaza and clock tower to its earliest black students, the school has been swamped with unwelcome attention over the past two weeks because of racial slurs used on campus.
First, a white student was disciplined for yelling epithets at a black student early this month. Days after that incident, insulting messages about several racial and ethnic groups were written on campus sidewalks in chalk.
The flaps fit a pattern that's dogged the state's flagship school since it was integrated: Missteps along the path to greater diversity and inclusion often make more of an impression than positive strides do.
School president Robert Witt has drawn praise for instituting programs to increase diversity. But it's student foibles that garner the national headlines, such as when a parade of white students in Confederate uniforms stopped in front of a black sorority house in 2009 and angered alumnae gathered for a party.
"Given the long history, stretching back to the days of slavery and running through the dark and difficult years of Jim Crow up through the integration of the university, racial insults are particularly poignant and powerful at the university," said Al Brophy, a University of North Carolina law professor who previously taught at Alabama....
First, a white student was disciplined for yelling epithets at a black student early this month. Days after that incident, insulting messages about several racial and ethnic groups were written on campus sidewalks in chalk.
The flaps fit a pattern that's dogged the state's flagship school since it was integrated: Missteps along the path to greater diversity and inclusion often make more of an impression than positive strides do.
School president Robert Witt has drawn praise for instituting programs to increase diversity. But it's student foibles that garner the national headlines, such as when a parade of white students in Confederate uniforms stopped in front of a black sorority house in 2009 and angered alumnae gathered for a party.
"Given the long history, stretching back to the days of slavery and running through the dark and difficult years of Jim Crow up through the integration of the university, racial insults are particularly poignant and powerful at the university," said Al Brophy, a University of North Carolina law professor who previously taught at Alabama....
Saturday, February 19, 2011 - 15:51
Name of source: Telegraph (UK)
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (2-20-11)
An alleged war criminal is working in a care home in a seaside resort.
Celestin Ugirashebuja is wanted for war crimes in Rwanda, where he accused of organising attacks during the genocide in 1994.
Mr Ugirashebuja, who passed a Criminal Records Bureau check, works at the Anna Victoria Nursing Home in Frinton-on-Sea, Essex.
Nearly half a million Rwandans died in the genocide, and Mr Ugirashebuja, 60, is accused of organising roadblocks and urging Hutus to kill escaping Tutsis.
CRB checks only show British convictions, so the background check did not the summary indictment issued against Mr Ugirashebuja by the Rwandan authorities.
After the massacre, Mr Ugirashebuja, a former mayor, fled to the UK, where he was arrested in 2006 along with three men also accused of being involved in the genocide....
Celestin Ugirashebuja is wanted for war crimes in Rwanda, where he accused of organising attacks during the genocide in 1994.
Mr Ugirashebuja, who passed a Criminal Records Bureau check, works at the Anna Victoria Nursing Home in Frinton-on-Sea, Essex.
Nearly half a million Rwandans died in the genocide, and Mr Ugirashebuja, 60, is accused of organising roadblocks and urging Hutus to kill escaping Tutsis.
CRB checks only show British convictions, so the background check did not the summary indictment issued against Mr Ugirashebuja by the Rwandan authorities.
After the massacre, Mr Ugirashebuja, a former mayor, fled to the UK, where he was arrested in 2006 along with three men also accused of being involved in the genocide....
Sunday, February 20, 2011 - 20:35
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (2-20-11)
A “macabre” short story written by Daphne du Maurier and lost for more than 70 years has been unearthed by an enthusiast.
The Doll, billed as “a dark story of obsession and jealousy”, is the peculiar tale of a man who becomes infatuated with a woman he meets at a party. He visits her home only to discover the real object of her affection: a life-size, mechanical male doll.
The story was written around 1928 and the female character was called Rebecca, a name du Maurier would use a decade later in her most famous novel.
It is one of 13 du Maurier short stories to be published in a new anthology.
The author made reference to The Doll in her autobiography but biographers and academics failed to find it. Ann Willmore, a du Maurier enthusiast, spent years on the case and finally unearthed it in a 1937 compendium, The Editor Regrets, featuring short stories that had been rejected for publication....
The Doll, billed as “a dark story of obsession and jealousy”, is the peculiar tale of a man who becomes infatuated with a woman he meets at a party. He visits her home only to discover the real object of her affection: a life-size, mechanical male doll.
The story was written around 1928 and the female character was called Rebecca, a name du Maurier would use a decade later in her most famous novel.
It is one of 13 du Maurier short stories to be published in a new anthology.
The author made reference to The Doll in her autobiography but biographers and academics failed to find it. Ann Willmore, a du Maurier enthusiast, spent years on the case and finally unearthed it in a 1937 compendium, The Editor Regrets, featuring short stories that had been rejected for publication....
Sunday, February 20, 2011 - 20:33
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (2-20-11)
History will become the preserve of the rich if the coalition continues to cut arts and humanities in favour of sciences, Simon Schama the historian has warned.
The Government's new history tsar who was called in by Education Secretary Michael Gove to advise the Government on the history curriculum in schools, also berated academic snobbery among some fellow historians who have worked solely in higher education.
Broadcaster Schama, 66, who is Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University, also made no secret of his fears for what lies ahead for the study of the arts and humanities in British universities.
He said he had deep misgivings about the proposed new financial regimen for higher education.
Schama said he was uneasy that "sciences and subjects, which seem to be on a utilitarian measure useful, have retained their state funding, while the arts and humanities are being stripped of theirs."
He fears that such a move will have the "unfortunate" effect of channelling students into subjects such as accountancy rather than philosophy or the history of art....
The Government's new history tsar who was called in by Education Secretary Michael Gove to advise the Government on the history curriculum in schools, also berated academic snobbery among some fellow historians who have worked solely in higher education.
Broadcaster Schama, 66, who is Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University, also made no secret of his fears for what lies ahead for the study of the arts and humanities in British universities.
He said he had deep misgivings about the proposed new financial regimen for higher education.
Schama said he was uneasy that "sciences and subjects, which seem to be on a utilitarian measure useful, have retained their state funding, while the arts and humanities are being stripped of theirs."
He fears that such a move will have the "unfortunate" effect of channelling students into subjects such as accountancy rather than philosophy or the history of art....
Sunday, February 20, 2011 - 20:32
Name of source: Art Info
SOURCE: Art Info (2-17-11)
Much international concern has focused on acts of looting of cultural artifacts during the current revolutionary unrest in Egypt. However, in Tunisia, a far more spectacular cultural crime is making news, this one carried out by the agents of the state themselves. Recently ousted dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and his family stand accused of illegal appropriation and plundering of the site of the ancient city of Carthage. A pair of activists are publicizing the crimes in a petition they have launched demanding that they be rectified by the new government.
The ruins of Carthage and the village of Sidi Bou Saïd are located next to the modern city of Tunis, and were designated UNESCO heritage sites in 1979. At the time, the Tunisian government classified them as "non-construction" zones because of their archeological and historic interest. Now, Abdelmajid Ennabli, an archeologist who was head of the Carthage site during excavations from 1972 to 1992, and Jellal Abdelkafi, an urban planner who has studied urbanization and land use, are accusing Ben Ali and his family of removing large swaths of these zones from this protective category so that they could build a luxury apartment complex.
The pair also say that Ben Ali's family is guilty of "the appropriation of historical palaces and residences as well as of pieces from our heritage." They have called on the minister of culture to stop all illegal construction on the ancient site and to seize misappropriated property. Their petition, launched on February 4, has as of this writing collected over 3,500 signatures....
The ruins of Carthage and the village of Sidi Bou Saïd are located next to the modern city of Tunis, and were designated UNESCO heritage sites in 1979. At the time, the Tunisian government classified them as "non-construction" zones because of their archeological and historic interest. Now, Abdelmajid Ennabli, an archeologist who was head of the Carthage site during excavations from 1972 to 1992, and Jellal Abdelkafi, an urban planner who has studied urbanization and land use, are accusing Ben Ali and his family of removing large swaths of these zones from this protective category so that they could build a luxury apartment complex.
The pair also say that Ben Ali's family is guilty of "the appropriation of historical palaces and residences as well as of pieces from our heritage." They have called on the minister of culture to stop all illegal construction on the ancient site and to seize misappropriated property. Their petition, launched on February 4, has as of this writing collected over 3,500 signatures....
Saturday, February 19, 2011 - 18:58
Name of source: National Geographic
SOURCE: National Geographic (2-18-11)
Explorers have discovered what might be the oldest evidence of humans in the Americas.
Alex Alvarez, Franco Attolini, and Alberto (Beto) Nava are members of PET (Projecto Espeleológico de Tulum), an organization that specializes in the exploration and survey of underwater caves on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.
Alex, Franco and Beto have surveyed tens of thousands of feet of mazelike cave passages in the state of Quintana Roo. The team's relatively recent explorations of a large pit named Hoyo Negro (Black Hole, in Spanish), deep within a flooded cave, resulted in their breathtaking and once-in-a-lifetime discovery of the remains of an Ice Age mastodon and a human skull at the very bottom of the black abyss.
While the team of explorers conducted various dives for the purpose of mapping and surveying of this newly discovered pit, they noticed some peculiar bones sitting on the bottom. They first came across several megafauna remains and what was clearly a mastodon bone, while subsequent dives proved even more exciting when they spotted a human skull resting upside down with other nearby remains at about 140 feet [43 meters] depth....
Alex Alvarez, Franco Attolini, and Alberto (Beto) Nava are members of PET (Projecto Espeleológico de Tulum), an organization that specializes in the exploration and survey of underwater caves on the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.
Alex, Franco and Beto have surveyed tens of thousands of feet of mazelike cave passages in the state of Quintana Roo. The team's relatively recent explorations of a large pit named Hoyo Negro (Black Hole, in Spanish), deep within a flooded cave, resulted in their breathtaking and once-in-a-lifetime discovery of the remains of an Ice Age mastodon and a human skull at the very bottom of the black abyss.
While the team of explorers conducted various dives for the purpose of mapping and surveying of this newly discovered pit, they noticed some peculiar bones sitting on the bottom. They first came across several megafauna remains and what was clearly a mastodon bone, while subsequent dives proved even more exciting when they spotted a human skull resting upside down with other nearby remains at about 140 feet [43 meters] depth....
Saturday, February 19, 2011 - 18:56
Name of source: Physorg
SOURCE: Physorg (2-18-11)
One of Europe’s best preserved medieval fishing structures located on the Fergus Estuary in County Clare, Ireland, will be washed away by tidal flows before archaeologists can reveal its secrets.
A team of University College Dublin archaeologists who have been visiting the remote 700 year old fishing site will no longer be able to conduct their scientific recording and analysis, due to recent budget cuts experienced by the Irish Heritage Council.
Located about 1.5km from the nearest dryland in the Fergus Estuary in County Clare, Ireland, the medieval fishweirs [wooden structures] are in the very middle of a vast landscape of mudbanks and water channels.
The archaeological site can only be accessed by boat for a few short weeks in the summer when the tide is extremely low....
A team of University College Dublin archaeologists who have been visiting the remote 700 year old fishing site will no longer be able to conduct their scientific recording and analysis, due to recent budget cuts experienced by the Irish Heritage Council.
Located about 1.5km from the nearest dryland in the Fergus Estuary in County Clare, Ireland, the medieval fishweirs [wooden structures] are in the very middle of a vast landscape of mudbanks and water channels.
The archaeological site can only be accessed by boat for a few short weeks in the summer when the tide is extremely low....
Saturday, February 19, 2011 - 18:52
Name of source: Monsters and Critics
SOURCE: Monsters and Critics (2-17-11)
Croatian police have completed the exhumation of remains from mass grave in a Zagreb suburb, on one of more than 200 known sites where thousands of Germans, both soldiers and civilians, were buried in the closing days of the Second World War.
Yugoslav communist partisans carried out executions across the c country as the Nazi regime crumbled and fell in 1945. So far the Croatian interior ministry has compiled a list of the sites more than 200 German mass graves.
Yet just a handful of the sites have so far been investigated.
One was discovered two years ago at Harmica, where an estimated 5,000 soldiers of the German Wehrmacht were shot and buried, including 500 officers....
Yugoslav communist partisans carried out executions across the c country as the Nazi regime crumbled and fell in 1945. So far the Croatian interior ministry has compiled a list of the sites more than 200 German mass graves.
Yet just a handful of the sites have so far been investigated.
One was discovered two years ago at Harmica, where an estimated 5,000 soldiers of the German Wehrmacht were shot and buried, including 500 officers....
Friday, February 18, 2011 - 14:05
Name of source: BBC News
SOURCE: BBC News (2-18-11)
t crops up in our speech dozens of times every day, although it apparently means little. So how did the word "OK" conquer the world, asks Allan Metcalf.
"OK" is one of the most frequently used and recognised words in the world.
It is also one of the oddest expressions ever invented. But this oddity may in large measure account for its popularity.
It's odd-looking. It's a word that looks and sounds like an abbreviation, an acronym.
We generally spell it OK - the spelling okay is relatively recent, and still relatively rare - and we pronounce it not "ock" but by sounding the names of the letters O and K.
Visually, OK pairs the completely round O with the completely straight lines of K....
"OK" is one of the most frequently used and recognised words in the world.
It is also one of the oddest expressions ever invented. But this oddity may in large measure account for its popularity.
It's odd-looking. It's a word that looks and sounds like an abbreviation, an acronym.
We generally spell it OK - the spelling okay is relatively recent, and still relatively rare - and we pronounce it not "ock" but by sounding the names of the letters O and K.
Visually, OK pairs the completely round O with the completely straight lines of K....
Friday, February 18, 2011 - 13:54
SOURCE: BBC News (2-18-11)
Four hundred years after his death, Caravaggio is a 21st Century superstar among old master painters. His stark, dramatically lit, super-realistic paintings strike a modern chord - but his police record is more shocking than any modern bad boy rock star's.
An exhibition of documents at Rome's State Archives throws vivid light on his tumultuous life here at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries.
Caravaggio's friendships, daily life and frequent brawls - including the one which brought him a death sentence from Pope Paul V - are described in handwritten police logs, legal and court parchments all bound together in heavy tomes - and carefully preserved in this unique repository of Rome's history during the Renaissance and after.
The picture the documents paint is that of an irascible man who went about town carrying personal weapons - a sword and dagger, and even a pistol - without a written permit, boasting that he enjoyed the protection of the ecclesiastical authorities who commissioned some of his most famous works....
An exhibition of documents at Rome's State Archives throws vivid light on his tumultuous life here at the end of the 16th and the beginning of the 17th centuries.
Caravaggio's friendships, daily life and frequent brawls - including the one which brought him a death sentence from Pope Paul V - are described in handwritten police logs, legal and court parchments all bound together in heavy tomes - and carefully preserved in this unique repository of Rome's history during the Renaissance and after.
The picture the documents paint is that of an irascible man who went about town carrying personal weapons - a sword and dagger, and even a pistol - without a written permit, boasting that he enjoyed the protection of the ecclesiastical authorities who commissioned some of his most famous works....
Friday, February 18, 2011 - 13:50
SOURCE: BBC News (2-17-11)
A rare Andy Warhol self-portrait has sold for £10.79m ($17.44m) at auction, having been in private hands since 1974.
The red and white portrait, which measures 6ft (1.8m) by 6ft, had been expected to fetch no more than £5m.
It was bought by an anonymous bidder at the auction held by Christie's in London.
The 1967 work was part of a historic series of 11 large-scale self-portraits created that year.
Warhol was at the height of his fame when he first exhibited his self-portrait at the Expo 67 world fair in Montreal, Canada.
The piece, which was put up for sale after his death, was exhibited in public for the first time at Christie's in New York in January this year....
The red and white portrait, which measures 6ft (1.8m) by 6ft, had been expected to fetch no more than £5m.
It was bought by an anonymous bidder at the auction held by Christie's in London.
The 1967 work was part of a historic series of 11 large-scale self-portraits created that year.
Warhol was at the height of his fame when he first exhibited his self-portrait at the Expo 67 world fair in Montreal, Canada.
The piece, which was put up for sale after his death, was exhibited in public for the first time at Christie's in New York in January this year....
Thursday, February 17, 2011 - 19:41
Name of source: AFP
SOURCE: AFP (2-16-11)
Iceman Oetzi, whose mummified body was famously found frozen in the Italian Alps in 1991, will get a new face for the 20th anniversary of his discovery.
As part of a new exhibit at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano (www.iceman.it), two Dutch experts -- Alfons and Adrie Kennis -- have made a new model of the living Oetzi, this time with brown eyes.
Indeed, recent research has shown the Iceman, now approaching the tender age of 5,300 years, did not have blue eyes as previously believed....
As part of a new exhibit at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano (www.iceman.it), two Dutch experts -- Alfons and Adrie Kennis -- have made a new model of the living Oetzi, this time with brown eyes.
Indeed, recent research has shown the Iceman, now approaching the tender age of 5,300 years, did not have blue eyes as previously believed....
Friday, February 18, 2011 - 00:08
Name of source: Live Science
SOURCE: Live Science (2-15-11)
The political upheaval in Egypt has thrown Egyptian archaeology into a state of uncertainty — expeditions have been disrupted and Zahi Hawass, the head of the country's antiquity council, is now coming under fire from protesters.
Known for his flamboyant style – including an Indiana Jones-style fedora – and his boosterism of Egypt's treasures, Hawass is the face of Egyptian archaeology. As secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), Hawass is in charge of approving any archaeological research that goes on in Egypt.
Hawass was given a cabinet minister position shortly before Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigned, and the association has not served him well in the aftermath of the regime change. On Feb. 14, about 150 archaeology students and workers protested outside Hawass' office, demanding he resign, according to news reports.
Some of the protests have centered around Hawass' handling of a Jan. 28 break-in at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Hawass originally said that no artifacts had been stolen during the break-in; later, he announced that 18 items, including some belonging to King Tutankhamen, were missing.
But on a Facebook page calling for a protest at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo at 2 p.m. local time on Feb. 18, demonstrators also called for an end to "corruption" and "nepotism" in the SCA....
Known for his flamboyant style – including an Indiana Jones-style fedora – and his boosterism of Egypt's treasures, Hawass is the face of Egyptian archaeology. As secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), Hawass is in charge of approving any archaeological research that goes on in Egypt.
Hawass was given a cabinet minister position shortly before Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigned, and the association has not served him well in the aftermath of the regime change. On Feb. 14, about 150 archaeology students and workers protested outside Hawass' office, demanding he resign, according to news reports.
Some of the protests have centered around Hawass' handling of a Jan. 28 break-in at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Hawass originally said that no artifacts had been stolen during the break-in; later, he announced that 18 items, including some belonging to King Tutankhamen, were missing.
But on a Facebook page calling for a protest at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo at 2 p.m. local time on Feb. 18, demonstrators also called for an end to "corruption" and "nepotism" in the SCA....
Friday, February 18, 2011 - 00:07
Name of source: PBS
SOURCE: PBS (2-16-11)
As the dust settles on Egypt's recent protests, one less-discussed outcome of the uprising is the damage done to some of the country's ancient artifacts. After would-be looters broke into the famous Egyptian museum in Cairo in search of gold on Jan. 29, approximately 70 artifacts were damaged.
Among the items were several small statues, a 3,000-year-old tomb, and a statue of King Tutankhamun. The king, who formerly stood atop a panther, was severed from the animal after the break-in.
With some twenty-five artifacts now in line for restoration, we looked further into the science of conservation.
Western conservators, Jett explained, are always careful to make sure their work is reversible. In other words, they are careful not to make any permanent changes to the art. "Here in the west we follow a certain rule of ethics," he said.
To do so, scientists and conservators use special adhesives to glue the broken pieces together, such as a formula called Aquazol, which is water soluble. Acrylic adhesive and water-soluble resin are also used....
Among the items were several small statues, a 3,000-year-old tomb, and a statue of King Tutankhamun. The king, who formerly stood atop a panther, was severed from the animal after the break-in.
With some twenty-five artifacts now in line for restoration, we looked further into the science of conservation.
Western conservators, Jett explained, are always careful to make sure their work is reversible. In other words, they are careful not to make any permanent changes to the art. "Here in the west we follow a certain rule of ethics," he said.
To do so, scientists and conservators use special adhesives to glue the broken pieces together, such as a formula called Aquazol, which is water soluble. Acrylic adhesive and water-soluble resin are also used....
Friday, February 18, 2011 - 00:05
Name of source: Guardian (UK)
SOURCE: Guardian (UK) (2-16-11)
Good taste is not a feature of a new Roman house that has risen, with much sweat and cursing, from a flat Shropshire field at the genuinely ancient Roman town site of Wroxeter: painted bright yellow and oxblood red, the building can be seen a mile off,
The wall, which is 7 metres (23ft) high and stands on top of a metre-high mound, protects the remains of an real ancient Roman forum.
They had to take some shortcuts, including using some machine-cut roof trusses, in order to get the building finished before what proved to be the coldest winter in a century. He has already taken a kicking from some of his peers over that, and even more so over the oak shingled roof (rather than tile or thatch) and the bull's intestine windows in the bath house.
It took a team of seven builders six months, 150 tonnes of sandstone bricks, 15 tonnes of lime mortar and 26 tonnes of plaster – all mixed by hand – 1,500 hand-cut timber joints and 2,600 hand-cut roof tiles to create the house, based on a real building excavated at Wroxeter, which was once the fourth largest city in Roman Britain and is now an archaeology visitor attraction in the care of English Heritage....
The wall, which is 7 metres (23ft) high and stands on top of a metre-high mound, protects the remains of an real ancient Roman forum.
They had to take some shortcuts, including using some machine-cut roof trusses, in order to get the building finished before what proved to be the coldest winter in a century. He has already taken a kicking from some of his peers over that, and even more so over the oak shingled roof (rather than tile or thatch) and the bull's intestine windows in the bath house.
It took a team of seven builders six months, 150 tonnes of sandstone bricks, 15 tonnes of lime mortar and 26 tonnes of plaster – all mixed by hand – 1,500 hand-cut timber joints and 2,600 hand-cut roof tiles to create the house, based on a real building excavated at Wroxeter, which was once the fourth largest city in Roman Britain and is now an archaeology visitor attraction in the care of English Heritage....
Friday, February 18, 2011 - 00:03
Name of source: Daily Mail (UK)
SOURCE: Daily Mail (UK) (2-17-11)
Not even in his wildest dreams could Martin Luther King Jr have imagined that he would one day find himself honoured alongside two of America's best-known and best-loved presidents.
But Dr King is soon to stand shoulder to shoulder with Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson when a statue of the slain civil rights leader is unveiled in the National Mall in Washington, DC.
The memorial will be positioned in a direct line between those dedicated to legendary former leaders Jefferson and Lincoln in the open-air national park, where King delivered his famous 'I Have a Dream' speech in 1963....
But Dr King is soon to stand shoulder to shoulder with Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson when a statue of the slain civil rights leader is unveiled in the National Mall in Washington, DC.
The memorial will be positioned in a direct line between those dedicated to legendary former leaders Jefferson and Lincoln in the open-air national park, where King delivered his famous 'I Have a Dream' speech in 1963....
Thursday, February 17, 2011 - 19:42
Name of source: Voice of America
SOURCE: Voice of America (2-16-11)
Thurgood Marshall is perhaps best known as the first African-American justice on the Supreme Court, where he served from 1967 to 1991. But he had a long history of working for justice. As an attorney for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), he waged legal battles against racial discrimination which helped reshape American society.
Now, a new collection of letters from that period offers a new portrait of Marshall as an important force in the civil rights movement.
Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955, and Martin Luther King Jr.'s leadership of the black boycott of the city’s public transportation system are widely acknowledged as pivotal events in the civil rights struggle. But almost 20 years before that, a young attorney with the NAACP laid the groundwork for the movement’s success....
Now, a new collection of letters from that period offers a new portrait of Marshall as an important force in the civil rights movement.
Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955, and Martin Luther King Jr.'s leadership of the black boycott of the city’s public transportation system are widely acknowledged as pivotal events in the civil rights struggle. But almost 20 years before that, a young attorney with the NAACP laid the groundwork for the movement’s success....
Thursday, February 17, 2011 - 19:40
