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: BBC
July 8, 2010
A wedding outfit on show at a Scottish museum is to take a starring role in a film being directed by Madonna.
She has asked for the dress for her directorial feature debut, W.E., about Edward VIII's wife Wallis Simpson.
The outfit is currently part of a Marriage in the Movies exhibition at the National Museum of Costume at Shambellie House near Dumfries.
The dress was worn by Joely Richardson, who starred in the 2005 television production Wallis and Edward.
Source: BBC
July 8, 2010
A Turner masterpiece has sold for almost £30m - a new auction record for the British master.
Joseph Mallord William Turner's Modern Rome - Campo Vaccino, fetched £29,721,150 at Sotheby's in London.
The painting was sold by a descendant of the fifth Earl of Rosebery, who bought it in 1878 while on honeymoon with his wife Hannah Rothschild.
The previous record for a Turner was £20.5m for a view of Venice, which went under the hammer in April 2006....
Source: BBC
July 8, 2010
One of the largest ever finds of Roman coins in Britain has been made by a man using a metal detector.
The hoard of more than 52,000 coins dating from the 3rd Century AD was found buried in a field near Frome in Somerset.
The coins were found in a huge jar just over a foot (30cm) below the surface by Dave Crisp, from Devizes in Wiltshire.
Since the discovery in late April, experts from the Portable Antiquities Scheme at the British Museum have been working
Source: BBC
July 8, 2010
Speculation is mounting that the Austrian capital, Vienna, might be the venue for a cloak and dagger prisoner exchange straight out of a Cold War thriller.
And with a long history as a stomping ground for secret services from all over the world, Vienna has what it takes for a smooth spy swap.
After all, it is the capital of a neutral country at the heart of Europe.
And more than a century of spying history makes this romantic city a place where, 20 years a
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 7, 2010
The Queen placed a wreath on the site of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks in her first visit to New York City in more than 30 years.
The monarch, 84, braved 100F (38C) heat to pay respects at Ground Zero near the footprint of the World Trade Center's south tower.
She wore a straw hat and pastel-colored long-sleeved dress while greeting victims' family members and first responders....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 8, 2010
Britain's ambassador to Lebanon has been condemned by victims of Middle East terror groups for writing an appreciation of the spiritual leader of Hizbollah who masterminded the 1980s Lebanese hostage crisis.
Frances Guy, who has been ambassador since 2008, wrote a blog marking the death of Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah who died last week. She described the ayatollah as a "decent" man who ranked as the person she most admired out of all those she had encounter
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 8, 2010
Four US senators have written a letter calling on Britain to investigate the circumstances surrounding last year's release of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmet al-Megrahi.
New York Democratic senators Frank Lautenberg, Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer and New Jersey Democratic Senator Robert Menendez have written to the British ambassador in Washington.
The letter follows British cancer expert Professor Karol Sikora's admission to a newspaper earlier th
Source: Telegraph (UK)
July 8, 2010
A woman from a remote mountain village in Georgia is turning 130, making her the oldest person on Earth, officials in the former Soviet republic said.
A spokesman for the national register said Antisa Khvichava from western Georgia was born on July 8, 1880.
Authorities visited the woman on Thursday in her village of Sachire and displayed two Soviet-era documents noting her date of birth as indicated in her birth certificate, which had been lost....
Source: AP
July 8, 2010
A collection of paintings, antiques and assorted household items owed by the aristocratic family of the late Princess Diana sold for a total of 21.1 million pounds ($32 million) in London, Christie's auctioneers said Thursday.
The eclectic collection featured hundreds of items in a range of prices — from a masterpiece portrait by Peter Paul Rubens to horse carriages, dishes and jugs.
All the items offered at the three-day sale once belonged at Althorp House, the Spence
Source: AP
July 8, 2010
Some of the most notorious figures of Argentina's "dirty war" were convicted Thursday of kidnapping, torturing and murdering 22 people at the beginning of the 1976-1983 military dictatorship when the country cracked down on leftist dissent.
Family members of the victims cheered and hugged as a judge handed down the sentences for Gen. Luciano Menendez and former police intelligence chief Roberto Albornoz: life in prison for crimes against humanity committed at a secret dete
Source: Catholic.net
July 1, 2010
The recently opened sections of the Vatican Secret Archives have revealed that Pope Pius XII not only helped save thousands of Jews, but also their patrimony, from the Nazis.
Pave the Way Foundation reported Tuesday that its researchers found documents of "great importance."
Michael Hesemann, a historian and foundation representative from Germany, has been researching documents in the Vatican archives and he found a letter sent by Cardinal Eugenio Pacell
Source: NYT
July 5, 2010
The gates of the Gulf Coast International Jousting Championships opened at 6 p.m. one Friday in January at a 4,500-seat arena 13 miles outside Pensacola, Fla. Some of the spectators were dressed in leather doublets and velvet gowns; some wore jeans and cowboy hats or American-flag-patterned do-rags. Most seemed to have come out of idle curiosity rather than any previous knowledge of the sport. “From what I hear, the combat’s going to be smackin’,” a man named Paul Johnson told me, punching his k
Source: NYT
July 7, 2010
In his barbershop on Church Street here, 78-year-old Sam Johnson can close his eyes and dance once more as a teenager inside the cracker box Emerson Street branch of the Y.M.C.A.
“Oh, the music, the ballgames,” said Mr. Johnson, who also remembers scraped knees, games of checkers and first kisses. “It was the place to be.”
The place not to be, for Mr. Johnson and other blacks in the 1950s, was the main branch of the Y.M.C.A. in this lakefront Chicago suburb. Even in Eva
Source: Slate
July 8, 2010
It's a question that drives the extraordinary German site Lost Films. Begun in December 2008 by the Berlin museum Deutsche Kinemathek, it's a collaborative effort with other archives that now encompasses an astonishing range of films: The more than 4,000 movies listed as M.I.A. range from an actual jazz-era version of The Great Gatsby (1926) to a re-enactment of The Battle of Gettysburg (1913) staged while the veterans were still alive. But even more curious is the site's "Identify" section—an open call to other museums and the public to I.D. films that sometimes survive without title cards, without canister labels, without so much as a cast or director or country of origin....
Source: Talking Points Memo
July 8, 2010
...As we'd reported, Glenn Beck kicked off his "Beck University" online lecture series last night, and the first topic was "Faith 101." We signed up for the $9.95/month "university." Last night's class was subtitled "Black-Robed Regiment," and "Professor" and right-wing historian David Barton talked for half an hour about happier times in American history, when clergy were a welcome and influential part of American politics.
The lect
Source: LA Times
July 7, 2010
The Mexican media conglomerate Televisa employs actors in blackface during a popular morning program on the World Cup, underscoring once more the conflicting attitudes held by Mexico and the United States about race and racism. Tracy Wilkinson writes in The Times:
Source: Houston Chronicle
July 7, 2010
Those gooey dime- and quarter-size tar balls washing up in the Texas surf last weekend bore more than just an ugly reminder of the catastrophic oil gushing into the northern Gulf of Mexico.
Tar balls carry a biological legacy of the algae, plants and marine life that died and, over millions of years, formed oil. And this particular oil has much to tell us about the hot, dry and salty origins of the Gulf.
"With each bit of oil you have a window into the chemistry of
Source: NYT
July 7, 2010
You can find just about anything on the sidewalks of New York, so when John Lankenau happened upon a tombstone while walking his dog one night a few years ago, he took his grim discovery in stride. Then he did what any self-respecting citizen would do: He carted the two-and-a-half-foot-high granite marker, home for safe-keeping.
The tombstone, which John Lankenau found leaning against a fire hydrant in Manhattan, cited the year — 1910 — that Hinda Amchanitzky died.
“I d
Source: BBC News
July 8, 2010
One of the largest ever finds of Roman coins in Britain has been made by a man using a metal detector.
The hoard of more than 52,000 coins dating from the 3rd Century AD was found buried in a field near Frome in Somerset.
The coins were found in a huge jar just over a foot (30cm) below the surface by Dave Crisp, from Devizes in Wiltshire.
"I have made many finds over the years, but this is my first major coin hoard," he said....
Source: Inside Higher Ed
July 8, 2010
An economist's research into the Nazi regime's dismissals of Jewish mathematics professors in the 1930's has led him to conclude that in Ph.D. supervision, big is beautiful.
Between 1933 and 1934, about 18 per cent of all mathematics professors in Germany were stripped of their posts by the Nazis, including some of the most eminent scholars of the day. Fabian Waldinger, assistant professor in the department of economics at the University of Warwick, in Britain, studied the impact of
