This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 23, 2010
Tatyana Yumasheva, daughter of Boris Yeltsin, is ruffling feathers in Russia with her blog.
Tatyana Yumasheva was the "Lady Rasputin" who wielded huge and unaccountable power from behind her father's tottering throne for years.
But after disappearing from public view for more than a decade, the daughter of the late Russian president Boris Yeltsin, is back. And, in what many believe may be the opening salvo in her own bid for
Source: The Sunday Times (UK)
January 24, 2010
Scientists seeking permission to exhume the remains of Leonardo da Vinci plan to reconstruct his face to discover whether his masterpiece, the Mona Lisa, is a disguised self-portrait.
A team from Italy’s National Committee for Cultural Heritage, a leading association of scientists and art historians, has asked to open the tomb in which the Renaissance painter and polymath is believed to lie at Amboise castle, in the Loire valley, where he died in 1519, aged 67.
The iden
Source: Sky News
January 23, 2010
A multi-million dollar collection of forged art seized by police went on public display for the first time Saturday.
The exhibition, at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), featured more than 100 fake works from Lowry paintings to Barbara Hepworth sculptures.
Some forgers inserted letters, invoices and other documents into archives to invent a history for their work to make it appear authentic.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 23, 2010
George Orwell has been named as the most popular Penguin novelist in its history in a survey of its current stable of writers.
The publisher asked 50 of its authors to name their favourite book from its back list.
Orwell garnered four nominations. No other author gained more than one.
Orwell's continued dominance as a writer and thinker comes despite the fact that he died 60 years ago this January.
Source: New York Times
January 22, 2010
The DiMenna Children’s History Museum, as it will be known, is part of the $60 million renovation of the historical society building on Central Park West, Louise Mirrer, the president and chief economic officer of the museum, said this week. The roughly 4,000-square-foot museum has been designed by Lee H. Skolnick Architecture & Design Partnership with a $5 million donation from Joseph A. and Diana DiMenna.
The new museum will focus on the stories of children, from famous figur
Source: CNN
January 22, 2010
Abortion rights supporters and opponents hit the streets of the nation's capital Friday to mark the 37th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court ruling establishing a woman's constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy.
Anti-abortion activists held a rally on the National Mall and marched to the Supreme Court, followed by a walk to Capitol Hill to urge legislative action.
An annual March for Life has been held in Washington since 1974.
Source: Spiegel Online
January 22, 2010
It's no secret in Germany that there are tens of thousands of former informants for the East German secret police still around. After all, over the lifetime of the communist German state, more than 100,000 people provided information to the so-called Stasi on either an official or unofficial basis.
Concern remains high, however, that some of those who collaborated with the Stasi have ended up in positions of political influence. And on Thursday, the parliament for the German s
Source: Deutsche Welle
January 22, 2010
The German case against Videla, whom Argentina refused to extradite in 2007, stems from the reopening in December of an investigation into the disappearance of a German citizen identified by German media as Rolf Stawowiok.
Some of Stawowiok’s remains were recently exhumed in Argentina, providing forensic evidence that he had been shot during Argentina’s so-called Dirty War of the late 1970s.
A spokesman for prosecutors in the city of Nuremberg, Thomas Koch, said the n
Source: Guardian (UK)
January 22, 2010
More than 40 sites across Iraq are contaminated with high levels or radiation and dioxins, with three decades of war and neglect having left environmental ruin in large parts of the country, an official Iraqi study has found.
Areas in and near Iraq's largest towns and cities, including Najaf, Basra and Falluja, account for around 25% of the contaminated sites, which appear to coincide with communities that have seen increased rates of cancer and birth defects over the past five yea
Source: Guardian (UK)
January 22, 2010
Government officials withheld a document relating to the death of Blair Peach, the anti-fascist campaigner widely believed to have been killed by police in 1979, because they feared it would portray the coroner as biased and lend weight to calls for a public inquiry.
Peach, a 33-year-old teacher from New Zealand, died after being struck on the head at a demonstration against the National Front in Southall, west London. Witnesses said they saw him being attacked by police but after a
Source: Times (UK)
January 23, 2010
On the surface it is a typical picture-postcard Alpine community, with wooden chalets, flower tubs and the ice-clad Zugspitze mountain looming over the valley.
If Garmisch-Partenkirchen is to realise its dream of hosting the 2018 Winter Olympics, it has some serious rebranding to do. This Bavarian ski resort has a history of anti-Semitism and last hosted the Games in 1936.
Next month a German government delegation will head to Vancouver to set out Garmisch’s joint bid
Source: Times (UK)
January 23, 2010
A multimillion-pound collection of forged artwork seized by police will go on display for the first time today. More than 100 fakes, from Lowry and Banksy paintings to Barbara Hepworth sculptures, form part of an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
The garden-shed workshop of one of the most diverse art fakers in British history, Shaun Greenhalgh, has also been re-created. The master forger was jailed for four years and eight months in 2007 after police discovered an aston
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
January 21, 2010
A sixteenth century edition of predictions by Nostradamus has become the first book from France's vast archive of literature to be digitally preserved by Google.
The collection of prophecies is from a vault containing 500,000 classic French books stored at the Municipal Library of Lyon.
Nostradamus is best known for The Prophecies, the first edition of which appeared in 1555 and has rarely been out of print since his death.
France has a 750million euro (£65
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
January 21, 2010
A 600-year-old skull believed to be that of a legendary German pirate has been stolen from a museum in Hamburg.
Klaus Stoertebeker was the most famous German pirate of the Middle Ages. He is believed to have been beheaded by authorities in 1400 in Hamburg, together with 30 of his followers.
The heads were nailed on pillars at the entrance of the Hamburg harbour in an effort to deter would-be pirates.
Source: BBC
January 22, 2010
Nicolas Sarkozy will travel to Rwanda next month to pay the first visit by a French president to Kigali since the 1994 genocide, Rwandan officials say.
Rwanda's foreign ministry made the announcement after the new French ambassador presented his credentials.
The states severed ties in 2006 after a French judge said President Paul Kagame helped spark the genocide, while Rwanda accused France of arming Hutu militias.
Rwanda and France agreed to restore rela
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 22, 2010
A company which supplies British forces with rifle sights has offered to remove controversial Biblical references from the equipment, it said today.
The Ministry of Defence has ordered 400 advanced combat optical gunfights (ACOGs) from US-based Trijicon but yesterday it emerged that they are routinely marked with the characters JN8:12, a reference to the book of John, chapter 8, verse 12.
Trijicon, which has used Biblical references for more than 20 years, said today t
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 22, 2010
The remains of Claude Monet could be moved from his resting place in the village of Giverny to the Panthéon, the last resting place of France's official heroes.
Eighty-four years after the artist's death, President Nicolas Sarkozy is considering whether to honour a promise made by his predecessor, and move the remains of the Impressionist painter to the Panthéon, the Independent reports.
Eleven years ago, former President Chirac promised Mr Wildenstein's father, Daniel
Source: Fox News
January 22, 2010
Charges against 9/11 suspects were dropped "without prejudice" -- a procedural move that allows federal officials to transfer the men to trial in a civilian court and also leaves the door open to again bringing charges in military commissions.
Currently no suspects stand charged in the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11. U.S. officials sent notification to Congress and families of 9/11 victims Friday afternoon.
The Obama administrati
Source: Guardian (UK)
January 17, 2010
Israel is to fund a rare genetic study to determine whether there is a link between the lost tribes of Israel and the Pashtuns of Afghanistan and northern Pakistan.
Historical and anecdotal evidence strongly suggests a connection, but definitive scientific proof has never been found. Some leading Israeli anthropologists believe that, of all the many groups in the world who claim a connection to the 10 lost tribes, the Pashtuns, or Pathans, have the most compelling case. Paradoxicall
Source: Time.com
January 22, 2010
Use of the word Negro to describe a black person has largely fallen out of polite conversation — except on the U.S. Census questionnaire. There, under "What is this person's race?" is an option that reads, "Black, African Am., or Negro." That has raised the ire of certain black activists and politicians as the Census Bureau gears up to mail out its once-a-decade questionnaires. The controversy has been cast by many as an instance of a tone-deaf agency not keeping up with the
