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: Guardian (UK)
June 13, 2010
The Terezín ghetto near Prague was home to a remarkable array of renowned Czech musicians, composers and theatrical artists, writing and performing as they and their fellow Jewish inmates awaited an unknown fate in Auschwitz. Ahead of a London concert to commemorate their lives and work, Ed Vulliamy talks to some of the survivors who remembered them
The drawing shows a performance by a string trio, to a small audience. A suited man rests his head on one hand, his left elbow on the a
Source: BBC News
June 14, 2010
US President Barack Obama has said the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico will have the same impact on the US psyche as 9/11.
In an interview with US website Politico, he said the disaster would "shape how we think about the environment... for years to come".
Mr Obama has arrived in Mississippi on his fourth visit to the affected area. He will also visit Alabama and Florida.
Directors of oil firm BP are to meet to decide whether to suspend dividen
Source: BBC News
June 15, 2010
The Green Revolution of the 1960s raised crop yields and cut hunger - and also saved decades worth of greenhouse gas emissions, a study concludes.
US researchers found cumulative global emissions since 1850 would have been one third as much again without the Green Revolution's higher yields.
Although modern farming uses more energy and chemicals, much less land needs to be cleared.
The study is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Source: BBC Magazine
June 15, 2010
Fifty years after being published, To Kill A Mockingbird is still devoured by students, while simultaneously loved by their parents. But is it just a sentimental children's book?
It's just ahead of the Bible in the nation's affections.
On the eve of its 50th birthday, To Kill A Mockingbird still has a generation of schoolchildren transfixed, while regularly figuring high on lists of the country's "favourite books".
A poll for World Book Day placed
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 15, 2010
A photograph of Winston Churchill giving his victory salute has been airbrushed to remove his signature cigar.
In the well-known original image, Churchill makes a "V" shaped symbol with his fingers – while gripping a cigar in the corner of his mouth.
But in a reproduction of the picture, hanging over the main entrance to a London museum celebrating the wartime leader, he has been made into a non-smoker through the use of image-altering techniques.
Source: AP
June 14, 2010
Using undersea scanning devices, archaeologists from the U.S. and Albania believe they have found the wreckage of an Italian ship that British forces torpedoed during World War II when Albania was occupied by Mussolini's Fascists.
The remnants — found just off Albania's coast last weekend — probably were part of the 8,000-ton Rosandra freighter, which was hit by a British submarine on June 14, 1943, the team said on Monday, the 67th anniversary of the sinking.
The vesse
Source: Culture 24 (UK)
June 14, 2010
A captured Nazi sign commemorating a buccaneering World War Two raid by the navy has been donated to the National Museum of the Royal Navy at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.
The Altmark Incident was an early wartime morale boost for Britain which saw a boarding party from the British destroyer, HMS Cossack, release 299 British prisoners from the German ship Altmark in a Norwegian fjord....
Source: Guardian (UK)
June 15, 2010
In 1964, shortly after many countries had gained independence, Unesco launched the General History of Africa, a project free from "racial prejudices ensuing from slave trade and colonisation, and promoting an African perspective". It took more than 30 years to complete....
But all this erudition was of little practical value. The political climate changed, with pan-Africanism being overtaken by hard-line nationalism, so the tomes gathered dust on the shelves of government
Source: Guardian (UK)
June 15, 2010
David Cameron today issued a formal apology on behalf of the state for the "unjustified and unjustifiable" killing of 14 civil rights marchers by British soldiers on Bloody Sunday in Derry 38 years ago.
The prime minister said Lord Saville inquiry's long-awaited report showed soldiers lied about their involvement in the killings, and that all of those who died were innocent.
He said the inquiry was "absolutely clear" and there were "no ambiguiti
Source: ANA (Turkey)
June 14, 2010
A group of American archeologists found ruins of four ancient castles dated back to the 2nd century B.C. in western Turkey.
The group including 16 students from the universities of Boston, Pennsylvania and Brown led by Assistant Professor of Archaeology Christopher H. Roosevelt has been searching for ancient ruins in Golmarmara town of the western province of Manisa upon permission of the Turkish Ministry of Culture & Tourism.
In an interview with the Anatolia news
Source: AP
June 14, 2010
Egypt's massive new museum for its famous antiquities now has a power plant, a fire station and its own conservation center, and over the next two years it will become home to some 100,000 artifacts, officials said Monday.
A partial opening for the 120-acre museum complex, which will house King Tutankhamun's famed mummy and golden burial effects and a replica of his tomb, is set for the fall of 2012.
Plans for the museum, which will replace the century-old building visi
Source: BBC News
June 14, 2010
The FBI has released most of its secret files on the late Senator Edward Kennedy.
Most of the documents relate to death threats made against Senator Kennedy, the Associated Press agency reports.
The files will be scrutinised for details about the senator's controversial car accident in Chappaquiddick, in which a female passenger was killed.
Senator Kennedy died in August 2009, aged 77, after battling brain cancer.
He was the last surviving brot
Source: Science Daily
June 14, 2010
...While the evolution from the Neolithic solid stone wheel with a single hole for an axle to the sleek wheels of today's racing bikes can be seen as the result of human ingenuity, it also represents how animals, including humans, have come to move more efficiently and quicker over millions of years on Earth, according to a Duke University engineer.
Adrian Bejan, professor of mechanical engineering at Duke's Pratt School of Engineering, argues that just as the design of wheels becam
Source: Science Daily
June 14, 2010
Between 200 and 65 million years ago, fearsome marine reptiles reigned over the oceans. Were they warm-blooded like today's mammals and birds or cold-blooded like nowadays fish and reptiles? For the first time, a study has settled the debate: some large marine reptiles were warm-blooded (in other words, they were endothermic), giving them a considerable advantage to swim fast over long distances and to conquer cold regions.
This work, conducted by researchers from the Laboratoire P
Source: Science Daily
June 14, 2010
...In 2005 the archaeologists investigated a grave at Avaldsnes in Karmøy in southwestern Norway, supposed to be from the late Iron Age, i.e. from 600 to 1000 AD. Avaldsnes is rich in archeological finds. They dot an area that has been a seat of power all the way back to around 300. Archaeologist Olle Hemdorff at the University of Stavanger's Museum of Archaeology was responsible for a series of excavations at Avaldsnes in 1993-94 and 2005-06.
Plundering of graves was very common in
Source: BBC
June 15, 2010
Evacuees who were sent from London's East End to Mousehole in Cornwall have returned 70 years after first arriving.
Hundreds of children were evacuated from large cities to the safety of the English countryside in 1940 at the start of World War II.
One hundred Jewish children from the Jews' Free School (JFS) in the East End were sent to Mousehole.
To celebrate the 70th anniversary former evacuees made the train journey from London Paddington to Penzance.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
June 14, 2010
Soldiers who shot civilians on Bloody Sunday should be prosecuted but spared prison, victims’ families said last night ahead of publication of a report which will accuse the Army of unlawful killing.
The long-awaited findings of the Saville Inquiry into the deaths of 13 civil rights marchers in Londonderry on January 30 1972 are expected to exonerate the dead of involvement in violence.
The inquiry will repudiate allegations in the now-discredited Widgery report, carr
Source: AP
June 14, 2010
A stone sculpture of a woman's head by Amedeo Modigliani sold for $52.8 million at a Paris auction Monday, setting a record for the artist.
The piece, dated from between 1910 and 1912, was estimated to fetch between $6-$9 million, excluding fees. The sale price included fees.
The 26-inch head was part of an art collection owned by French businessman Gaston Levy, who founded the Monoprix chain of grocery and department stores and lived from 1893 to 1977. Shown for the fi
Source: AP
June 12, 2010
You can tell your kids how easy they have it, and maybe they'll listen for awhile. But to prove how simple it is to wash dishes or clothes in the 21st century, try showing them how pioneer children did it as they crossed the United States in the westward migration.
Before doing the dishes, they had to find water and heat it up on a fire. Washing clothes often meant handling caustic lye soap. Kids crossing the continent in the mid-19th century often had roles and responsibilities tha
Source: BBC News
June 12, 2010
A decision to name part of a military base in the Vale of Glamorgan after Winston Churchill has been criticised by a community council.
Llanmaes council say it is wrong to name the St Athan site in honour of the wartime prime minister because he sent troops to intervene in a south Wales miners' dispute in 1910.
The strike led to violent outbreaks known as the Tonypandy riots.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) plans to name St Athan's West Camp Churchill Lines..
