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: Der Spiegel (Germany)
January 21, 2010
Hitler's Gestapo arrested thousands of women for admitting they had affairs with foreign forced laborers in Germany, despite many confessions being false and made under duress. Men were often executed and women sent to concentration camps for the crime of "racial defilement." Some continued to suffer the consequences long after the end of the war.
On Sept. 19, 1941, Maria K. signed the record of her interrogation. In her written statement to the police detective, the 14-ye
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
January 14, 2010
The world's oldest light bulb has been burning for 109 years - so little wonder it has a fan club with thousands of members and its own website.
As EU rules deny householders the right to use traditional filament bulbs, the so-called 'Centennial Light' has been on almost constantly since 1901.
It holds pride of place in Fire Station 6, in Livermore, northern California.
The longest time the Guinness World Record-holding bulb has ever been turned off for is
Source: Vancouver Sun
January 21, 2010
The plan to change the title of The Beaver after 90 years to avoid online porn blockers has made Canada's top history magazine an international media sensation — first as joke fodder for Jay Leno and now as the subject of an editorial printed Thursday in another venerable publication: the British-based newsweekly The Economist.
"The Beaver website was attracting (albeit briefly) readers who had little interest in Samuel de Champlain's astrolabe or what Prairie settlers ate for
Source: CNN
January 21, 2010
Passengers of US Airways Flight 1549 could soon have a unique souvenir from their harrowing flight that ended in New York's Hudson River -- although it would be quite a large one.
The plane famously landed with 155 people aboard in the frigid river waters by Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger last January after a bird strike disabled its engines is up for auction.
The plane, an Airbus A320-214, is listed for sale "AS IS/WHERE IS" at a salvage yard in
Source: BBC News
January 21, 2010
Ten of the pioneering photos of snowflake crystals US farmer Wilson A Bentley began taking more than a century ago are to be sold in New York.
Bentley (1865-1931) is credited with capturing the first images of single snowflakes on camera. He made thousands of the jewel-like prints, no two alike.
His photomicrography technique involved a microscope and a bellows camera.
He caught pneumonia in a blizzard and died just weeks after the publication of his book S
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
January 20, 2010
The National University of Ireland, a century-old federal institution that comprises some of the country's leading universities and colleges, including University College Dublin, is facing dissolution. Ireland's education minister, Batt O'Keeffe, announced the move on Wednesday, saying that the umbrella institution had outlived its usefulness and that "the need to have a separate body undertaking what is now a limited set of functions" no longer exists.
His announcement, w
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 21, 2010
The decision by an Israeli court to issue the order has raised hopes among Kafka scholars that the papers will cast new light on the life and work of the great Czech writer.
The court order marks the end of the first chapter in a battle for control of his literary legacy, whose absurd twists could have ended up in one of his angst-ridden works.
Kafka scholars hope that unseen original work by the author of The Trial, perhaps even an unfinished novel, might be buried a
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 19, 2010
Archaeologists have begun the search for an ancient civilization in southern Spain that some believe could help pinpoint the legendary lost city of Atlantis.
A team of researchers from Spain's Higher Council for Scientific Study (CSIC) are examining a marshy area of Andalusian parkland to find evidence of a 3,000-year-old settlement.
They believe that Tartessos, a wealthy civilization in southern Iberia that predates the Phoenicians, may have had its capital in the hea
Source: BBC
January 21, 2010
A Rwandan doctor wanted on charges of genocide and war crimes has been arrested in France, police say.
Sosthene Munyemana, 45, who had been working in a hospital in Bordeaux for eight years, denies the charges.
His arrest on an extradition warrant from Rwanda comes weeks after France and Rwanda restored diplomatic ties.
France had rejected an asylum bid by him in 2008, saying there were "serious reasons" to suspect his involvement in war crimes
Source: BBC
January 21, 2010
The infamous Arbeit Macht Frei sign at the Auschwitz Nazi death camp in Poland - stolen last month and quickly recovered - has been returned.
Police handed the damaged wrought iron sign to officials at the camp's museum and they will now try to restore it.
The museum said it was not yet clear if the sign, which thieves cut into three pieces, will be put back in place.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 21, 2010
An Israeli exhibition celebrating antiquities which have been recovered from thieves has been robbed of artefacts including a silver ring once worn by Alexander the Great.
Organisers of the "Antiquities Theft in Israel" in Jerusalem could not have chosen a more fitting name for their exhibition.
On Wednesday burglars broke into the a museum in Ashdod where hundreds of artefacts recovered from the black market were on show and snatched several valuable items,
Source: Telegraph (UK)
January 21, 2010
Iran has threatened to cut cultural ties with the UK after the British Museum refused to hand over a 23cm clay cylinder inscribed by Cyrus the Great, the Persian king.
The museum had promised to lend Iran the cylinder, thought to be inscribed with the first declaration of human rights, after borrowing several key works form Iranian museums for its exhibition oon Shah Abbas, the Iranian emperor, last year.
But researchers are now insisting on keeping the Cyrus Cylinder
Source: AP
January 21, 2010
The effort to help Haiti recover from its devastating earthquake can draw on lessons learned in other large-scale tragedies, particularly the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed at least 230,000 people across a dozen countries, rescue officials say.
The same scenes of bodies littering the ground or stacked along roadways in Haiti are flashbacks to the tsunami devastation, but Bakri Beck, who headed relief activities in Indonesia's devastated Banda Aceh province — where 167,000 peo
Source: The Times (UK)
January 21, 2010
Usama bin Laden is worth more to the United States alive than dead because his death could unleash "very, very nasty" attacks by militants, his son Omar Ossama bin Laden claims.
In an at times rambling interview with Rolling Stone magazine, which was conducted in part in a Damascus strip club, the terror leader's fourth eldest son said his father had already won the war on terror because he had achieved his aim of humbling the United States, and would probably not feel the
Source: Franklin Press (North Carolina)
January 20, 2010
A project whose aim is identify important natural and cultural places and preserve and protect Native American sites and cultural resources throughout the Southeast is hoping to see restored a section of streambank in Macon County where there once stood a Cherokee village called Tassee.
Some artifacts such as pottery shards have already been found at the Tassee site, which lies at the confluence of the Little Tennessee and Cullasaja rivers near the soccer fields along the Greenway.
Source: Chicago Tribune
January 20, 2010
A man accused of looting thousands of artifacts, including human bone fragments, from an Illinois national wildlife refuge has been sentenced to a month in jail and five years of probation as caretakers work out what to do with the prehistoric trove.
A federal judge this week also ordered 50-year-old Leslie Jones of Creal Springs, Ill., to perform 500 hours of community service after his 30-day jail term and pay the Cypress Creek National Wildlife Refuge in southern Illinois more t
Source: Truthout
January 21, 2010
In a 5-4 Supreme Court decision that portends massive changes in campaign finance, corporations will no longer be banned from spending money on presidential or Congressional elections.
The conservative wing of the court, with Anthony Kennedy joining, overruled two long-held precedents in reaching the decision, which said that corporations have the same right to use their own money to fund campaign ads as individuals do.
Kennedy, in his opinion for the majority, wrote th
Source: Haaretz.com
January 20, 2010
The Republican upset in the race for the U.S. Senate seat held for nearly half a century by liberal Edward M. Kennedy reflects a huge victory for opponents of U.S. President Barack Obama - and also for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Scott Brown defeated once-favored Martha Coakley for the Massachusetts seat even after U.S. President Barack Obama rushed to Boston on Sunday to try to save her candidacy.
Over the past nine months, Netanyahu has managed to curb pressure
Source: AFP
January 21, 2010
Britain was keen to avoid the 2003 war in Iraq, its foreign secretary at the time said Thursday, insisting ministers made the "best judgements" possible in the run-up to the invasion.
Jack Straw, the first serving Cabinet minister to give evidence to the public inquiry into the conflict, added that backing the war was "the most difficult decision I have ever faced in my life".
Straw, currently justice secretary in Prime Minister Gordon Brown's govern
Source: Secrecy News
January 14, 2010
A recent book written by two Israeli writers and published in translation (pdf) by the DNI Open Source Center (OSC) traces what the authors see as the decline of Israel’s political left.
“The Left died the day the Six-Day War ended,” wrote Shmuel Hasfari and Eldad Yaniv.
“Until 1967, the Left actually managed some impressive deeds — it took control of the land, ploughed, sowed, harvested, founded the state, built the army, built its industry from scratch, fought Arabs,
