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: National Parks Traveler
April 25, 2011
Driving my VW Bug along
Interstate 70 in early January 1973, I was bound for the Golden West,
crossing the wide Missouri and on to Denver to report for work as a
historian with the National Park Service. With both a degree and
employment in hand, and aware that the academic job market for
historians had crashed, I felt extremely lucky. Yet the Park Service
had offered me only a temporary position, and no guarantee of a
permanent appointment.
Source: BBC News
April 23, 2011
The Austrian capital
Vienna has announced plans to erect a memorial in honour of soldiers who
deserted from Adolf Hitler's army, the Wehrmacht.
The city council has yet to decide the exact location, but
campaigners want it to be put in Heldenplatz (Heroes Square) alongside
war memorials.
The square is also where Hitler, born in Austria, addressed crowds in 1938 when Austria was annexed to Germany.
The BBC's Bethany Bell says Austria is gradually confronting its Nazi past.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 25, 2011
From conqueror to clown, a mixed review for the variety act of Prince
William’s namesake.
With the lamentable exception of William Rufus, King Williams have on the
whole served England and the monarchy pretty well. Our Prince
William can take some pride in, or at least not be too ashamed
about, his predecessors of that ilk.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/royal-weddi
Kate Middleton won’t be the nation’s first Queen Catherine, so there is plenty
for her to live up to – and to avoid
Source: AP
April 25, 2011
Book dealer Ken Sanders has seen a lot of
nothing in his decades appraising "rare" finds pulled from attics and
basements, storage sheds and closets.
Sanders, who occasionally appraises items
for PBS's Antiques Roadshow, often employs "the fine art of letting
people down gently."
But on a recent Saturday while volunteering
at a fundraiser for the small town museum in Sandy, Utah, just south of
Salt Lake, Sanders got the surprise of a lifetime.
Source: BBC News
April 25, 2011
New Zealand's prime
minister has taken part in UK services to mark Anzac Day, in memory of
the New Zealanders and Australians who died at war.
The date marks the ill-fated landing of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps at Gallipoli in Turkey in 1915.
John Key laid a wreath at the Australian War Memorial at a dawn service in London's Hyde Park.
Events are also taking place at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire and in Edinburgh.
Source: BBC News
April 25, 2011
Files obtained by the website Wikileaks have revealed that the US believed many of those held at Guantanamo Bay were innocent or only low-level operatives.The files, published in US and European newspapers, are assessments of all 780 people ever held at the facility.They show that about 220 were classed as dangerous terrorists, but 150 were innocent Afghans and Pakistanis.The Pentagon said the files' release could damage anti-terrorism efforts.
Source: WaPo
April 24, 2011
PARIS — From blanket health insurance to long vacations and early retirement, the cozy social benefits that have been a way of life in Western Europe since World War II increasingly appear to be luxuries the continent can no longer afford.
Source: NYT
April 24, 2011
Amid mounting calls by scientists for the Smithsonian Institution to cancel a planned exhibition of Chinese artifacts salvaged from a shipwreck, the institution will hold a meeting on Monday afternoon to hear from critics.
Source: The Times of India
April 24, 2011
An unknown kingdom dating back to 1046 B.C.
Source: NYT
April 24, 2011
Amid mounting calls by scientists for the Smithsonian Institution to cancel a planned exhibition of Chinese artifacts salvaged from a shipwreck, the institution will hold a meeting on Monday afternoon to hear from critics.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 24, 2011
Italians have reacted with fury to an attempt by Croatia to claim the legendary explorer Marco Polo was one of their own.
Source: 4-23-11
Telegraph (UK)
British heroes of a battle that changed the course of the Korean war remembered their fallen comrades at a memorial service in South Korea on Saturday.
Source: CNN
April 20, 2011
Peter Hohenstatt was skeptical at first, especially when he learned the drawing dated to about 1500.
The sketch was "absolutely Leonardesque," the University of Parma art historian thought, but it was probably the product of one of the master's students, imitators or admirers. When a technical exam showed the drawing originated closer to 1473, his skepticism waned.
The reason? Leonardo da Vinci was an apprentice until the late 1470s.
Source: 4-21-11
CNN
Jeff Parness still remembers the pain of September 11, 2001, when his friend and business partner, Hagay Shefi, was among the thousands killed in the World Trade Center attacks.
But Parness, a native New Yorker, also hasn't forgotten the support that his hometown received from other communities in the immediate aftermath.
Source: 4-23-11
CNN
They rumble down city boulevards and country roads across Cuba: 1950s Fords, Buicks and Pontiacs, some in mint condition, others on the verge of collapse.
But a new law regulating property ownership in Cuba could change that.
At the recent four-day summit of the country's Communist Party, President Raul Castro announced that the legal framework allowing people to buy and sell cars and homes was in the "final stages."
What will this mean to the average Cuban?
He didn't provide details, but many Cubans hope it will be the end of half
Source: CNN
April 22, 2011
It was two years in the making for a television crew to get access inside one of the holiest sites of the Greek Orthodox world, the monasteries on Mount Athos in Greece. The cluster of 20 monasteries has remained perched on the cliffs high above the Aegean Sea for centuries.
In the monasteries, also known collectively as the Holy Mountain or The Garden of the Mother of God, the monks spend most of their time in prayer and are purposefully isolated from the outside world.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 22, 2011
Taiwan’s national museum is to put the two halves of a 660-year-old Chinese landscape painting on display bringing together the work for the first time in centuries.
The Yuan Dynasty painting was torn into two pieces more than 300 years ago by a private collector who tried to burn it as he was dying, but a relative quickly saved it from the flames.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 21, 2011
Iraq's High Criminal Court on Thursday sentenced to death three Saddam Hussein-era spies convicted of assassinating the father of a sitting Iraqi lawmaker in Beirut in April 1994.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 22, 2011
The adolescent musings of the girl who became Jackie Kennedy are disclosed in a series of love letters that are to be auctioned in the US next month.
The 20 notes were sent to R. Beverley Corbin, jr.
