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: Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs
March 11, 2009
Beautiful mosaics and a dedicatory inscription were uncovered in a church that dates to the Byzantine period.
A church that dates to the Byzantine period which is paved with breathtakingly beautiful mosaics and a dedicatory inscription was exposed in an archaeological excavation the Israel Antiquities Authority is conducting near Moshav Nes-Harim, 5 kilometers east of Bet Shemesh (at the site of Horvat A-Diri), in the wake of plans to enlarge the moshav.
Various phases
Source: Spiegel
March 11, 2009
Public prosecutors in Munich have filed charges against John Demjanjuk on more than 29,000 counts of accessory to murder. Officials allege the 88-year-old, who lives in a Cleveland suburb, was a guard at the Sobibor death camp.
In what could become one of the final war crimes trials related to the Holocaust perpetrated by Nazi Germany in World War II, German prosecutors on Wednesday filed charges against alleged death camp guard John Demjanjuk. Accused of having worked in the Sobibo
Source: BBC
March 12, 2009
An Iraqi journalist hailed as a hero in the Arab world for throwing his shoes at former US President George W Bush has been jailed for three years.
Muntadar al-Zaidi had told the court his actions were "natural, just like any Iraqi" against a leader whose forces had occupied his country.
Shoe hurling is a grave insult in Arab culture, but Mr Bush - on a farewell trip to Iraq - shrugged off the attack.
Defence lawyers described the sentence as &
Source: AP
February 12, 2009
Pope Benedict XVI has acknowledged Vatican mistakes over a Holocaust-denying bishop and his efforts to reach out to ultraconservatives, saying in a highly unusual critical review that he was saddened that even Catholics attacked him with open hostility.
The pope made a personal analysis of the case in a letter to the world's Catholic bishops made public by the Vatican on Thursday, seeking to end one of the most serious crises of his nearly four-year papacy.
He said fail
Source: RawStory
March 11, 2009
Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh dropped a bombshell on Tuesday when he told an audience at the University of Minnesota that the military was running an "executive assassination ring" throughout the Bush years which reported directly to former Vice President Dick Cheney.
The remark came out seemingly inadvertently when Hersh was asked by the moderator of a public discussion of "America's Constitutional Crisis" whether abuses of executive power, like those whi
Source: Lee Ruddin
March 3, 2009
On Monday an international conference organized by the Eccles Centre for American Studies at the British Library and the Institute for the Study of the Americas, University of London, explored George Bush’s legacy and the significance of his Presidency.
The Right Man? Assessing the Legacy of George W. Bush covered Bush and the Institutions of American Government; Ideology and Ideas in the Bush Presidency; Bush Foreign Policy Legacy; and Ranking the Bush Presidency.
Yet,
Source: Times (UK)
March 12, 2009
Edward Gibbon once said: “I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know no way of judging of the future but by the past.” It is a lesson that the British nation needs to learn again.
In a recent report on the teaching of history in schools, Ofsted pointed out that, too often, British children had no clear sense of chronology and no vantage point on historical change. For too long, the idea of a story unfolding in real time has given way
Source: Times (UK)
March 12, 2009
An Auschwitz survivor is fighting to keep her full pension after the tax authorities in Sweden decided to cut it back because she received compensation from the German Government for her wartime trauma.
Miriam Landau, 84, was told by the Swedish Social Insurance Agency that it was clawing back much of the 80,000 krona (£6,400) in reparations that she was given for the time spent working in a ghetto in Hungary and in the death camp in Poland, because it counted as a pension.
Source: Times (UK)
March 12, 2009
The new evidence suggesting that Britain was aware of Witold Pilecki's plans to liberate Auschwitz will reignite the long-running debate over how much Winston Churchill knew about the death camp and whether he did enough to prevent the genocide taking place there.
There is little doubt that Churchill, in contrast to many of his contemporaries, was a staunch defender of the Jews and one of the few statesmen to grasp the enormity of the Holocaust.
As early as 1941 the cod
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
March 12, 2009
For nearly 150 years, a story has circulated about a hidden Civil War message engraved inside Abraham Lincoln's pocket watch. On Tuesday, museum curators confirmed it was true.
A watchmaker used tiny tools to carefully pry open the antique watch at the National Museum of American History, and a descendant of the engraver read aloud the message from a metal plate underneath the watch face.
"April 13 - 1861," the first line reads, "Fort Sumpter (sic) was at
Source: Spiegel Online
March 11, 2009
When the Romans weren't busy conquering their enemies, they loved to waste massive quantities of water, which gurgled and bubbled throughout their cities. The engineers of the empire invented standardized lead pipes, aqueducts as high as fortresses, and water mains with 15 bars (217 pounds per square inch) of pressure.
In the capital alone there were thousands of fountains, drinking troughs and thermal baths. Rich senators refreshed themselves in private pools and decorated their ga
Source: Spiegel Online
March 11, 2009
In economic times like these, a little historical perspective can go a long way. That, at least, was the message delivered by German Chancellor Angela Merkel in an interview with the mass-circulation tabloid Bild published on Wednesday.
"In Germany, we have overcome other major challenges," she said. "This year we are celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Federal Republic of Germany and 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. We succeeded ... in rebuilding after
Source: Deutsche Welle
March 11, 2009
Spanish lawmakers held a minute's silence in parliament to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Madrid train bombings on Wednesday, March 11.
The 2004 terrorist attack killed 191 people and injured more than 1,800 others.
"Five years on, I want to express, in the name of the government, our support and recognition for all the victims and their families of that terrible tragedy," said Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero. "I hope that a terrorist attack w
Source: AP
March 11, 2009
Retired Ohio auto worker John Demjanjuk was charged Wednesday with 29,000 counts of acting as an accessory to murder while working as a guard at a Nazi death camp in occupied Poland. The arrest warrant could move the 30-year global legal battle over his fate closer to conclusion.
The warrant by a Munich court seeks the deportation or extradition of Demjanjuk, who lives in a Cleveland suburb and denies involvement in the deaths at Sobibor. His family says he is too sick to travel.
Source: Foxnews
March 8, 2009
The Bush administration has been history for seven weeks, and most of the ex-president's senior aides from his eight years in office -- with the notable exception of Karl Rove -- have stayed largely out of public sight. But many are quietly making their mark in the private sector.
For former Vice President Dick Cheney, post-political life will revolve largely around two activities: spending time with his grandchildren and fishing in Wyoming's rivers.
On Jan. 20, Cheney
Source: Reuters
March 9, 2009
Feminists of the world sit down before you read this. The Vatican newspaper says that perhaps the washing machine did more to liberate women in the 20th century than the pill or the right to work.
The submission was made in a lengthy article titled "The Washing Machine and the Liberation of Women - Put in the Detergent, Close the Lid and Relax."
The article was printed at the weekend in l'Osservatore Romano, the semi-official Vatican newspaper, to mark interna
Source: Inside Higher Ed
March 11, 2009
Even in citations, print is the default no more. The seventh edition of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, released Tuesday, states that the Modern Language Association no longer recognizes print as the default medium, and suggests that the medium of publication should be included in each works cited entry.
Moreover, the MLA has ceased to recommend inclusion of URLs in citing Web-based works – unless the instructor requires it or a reader would likely be unable to loca
Source: Chronicle of Higher Ed
March 11, 2009
The trial in Ward Churchill's lawsuit against the University of Colorado got under way here on Tuesday with lawyers for the opposing sides painting starkly different pictures of both the controversial ethnic-studies professor and the circumstances surrounding his dismissal by the university in 2007.
In delivering their opening remarks in a crowded courtroom, both sides agreed that the university had been under intense outside pressure to fire Mr. Churchill as a result of the media u
Source: CNN
March 11, 2009
After a group of Israeli farmers sought last year to expand their property in the hills near Jerusalem, they discovered an archeological gem beneath the dirt.
A team led by Daniel Ein Mor barely had to scratch the surface before finding the remains of a Byzantine monastery, he told CNN on Wednesday.
"The excavation at Nes-Harim supplements our knowledge about the nature of the Christian-Byzantine settlement in the rural areas between the main cities in this part of
Source: LAT
March 11, 2009
With bone fragment analysis, scientists put to rest the rumors that two children might have escaped the royal family's slaying during the Russian Revolution.
