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This page features brief excerpts of news 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.
This page features brief excerpts of news 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. Because most of our readers read the NYT we usually do not include the paper's stories in HIGHLIGHTS.
Name of source: AP
Nearly 20 people were arrested, including the head of state NAACP chapter who was banned from the meeting after a trespassing arrest at a June school board gathering.
"We know that our cause is right," Barber said shortly before police put plastic handcuffs on his wrists before the meeting started.
Inside, more than a dozen demonstrators disrupted the meeting by gathering around a podium, chanting and singing against the board's policies.
After several minutes, Raleigh police intervened and asked them to leave. When they refused, the officers grabbed arms and tried to arrest the protesters. One child was caught in the pushing and shoving, as was school board member Keith Sutton, who was nearly arrested before authorities realized who he was....
Making the sharpest criticism so far aired in Britain's inquiry into mistakes made in the Iraq war, Eliza Manningham-Buller, director of the MI5 agency between 2002 and 2007, said Britain's government paid little attention to warnings that the war would fuel domestic terrorism.
Manningham-Buller also said Iraq had posed little threat before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, and insisted there was no evidence of a link between former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
The 13-6 vote sends Kagan's nomination to the full Senate, where she's expected to be confirmed as early as next week to succeed retiring Justice John Paul Stevens.
Just one Republican, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, joined panel Democrats in supporting President Barack Obama's second Supreme Court nominee. A few more Republicans are likely to back her in the full Senate, where Democrats have more than enough votes to confirm her....
SOURCE: AP (7-19-10)
German machine guns and artillery left more than 5,500 Australians and more than 1,500 British killed, wounded or missing in under 24 hours at the Battle of Fromelles, the first Australian combat operation on the Western Front.
Many of the dead were buried by Germans in a mass grave, which was covered by plants over time and discovered by an Australian amateur historian in a muddy field on the edge of a small wood in 2008....
Name of source: Deccan Herald
SOURCE: Deccan Herald (7-20-10)
We were in Palkigundu, near the town of Koppal, on the trail of an inscription of Emperor Ashoka, one of the world’s most remarkable rulers.
Despite the arrows painted on some rocks that pointed out the way, it took a few wrong turns, some backtracking, and the help of a goatherd, before we finally stood at the base of two huge boulders, the pair topped with a flat-shaped rock forming a canopy over both. It was this rock canopy that had given rise to the name Palkigundu, meaning palanquin rock, for the two boulders bore the rock canopy like a palanquin. Steep, roughly-laid steps led us to the top of the pair of boulders, and then at last, we stood in front of a message that had been incised onto the rock some time in 258 BC.
The inscription itself was barely visible and it took us a few moments to distinguish it from the natural patterns in the rock. Gazing at the 2,300-year-old writing, I thought about how quite possibly, people elsewhere might at that very moment be reading the same message of peace that I was, for the exact same edict is found in 17 places in India. In fact, the most recent one was discovered just a year ago. Earlier in the day, we had been to see the closest of these other sites, which is actually just 2.5 km away from Palkigundu, east of Koppal, at Gavimath....
Name of source: The Virginian-Pilot
SOURCE: The Virginian-Pilot (7-20-10)
What could be the oldest wreck ever found on the North Carolina coast was loaded onto the back of a truck Monday for a 90-mile trip to the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum in Hatteras.
Salvaged from the pounding surf in April, the wreck has rested under the shade of an oak tree near the Currituck Beach Lighthouse for the past three months.
But the massive beams have shrunk a little and cracked in the hot, dry weather. Experts plan to place the wreck on a concrete slab next to the museum and soak the 17-by- 37-foot remains in hopes of arresting the deterioration....
Name of source: BBC
The multi-million pound Euro study will map the terrain and its buried archaeological remains with pinpoint accuracy, organisers claim.
The millions of measurements will then be analysed and incorporated into gaming technology to produce 2D and 3D images.
The research will take three years.
Equipment will be spread over an area spanning 4km this year and a total of 14km over the next three years....
SOURCE: BBC (7-20-10)
William Jacques, 41, was found guilty of removing the works from the Lindley Library at the Royal Horticultural Society between 2004 and 2007.
Prosecutors told Southwark Crown Court he stole in a "systemic" manner.
Jacques was jailed for three-and-a-half years. He was previously jailed in 2002 for stealing 500 rare books worth £1m....
Now the secrets of Lymington's salt industry are set to be revealed by Mr Green and a team of archaeologists and volunteers.
The area around the country's last two remaining sea salt boiling houses in the town is being excavated.
The New Forest National Park Authority and Wessex Archaeology is organising the archaeological excavation beside the Lymington-Pennington marshes to establish the size and scale of a typical salt working site....
The 5,000-year-old Orkney Venus, which was discovered during excavations in the island of Westray in August last year, is the earliest representation of the human form found in Scotland.
It was up for Best Discovery at British Museum awards in London.
But the title went to the Staffordshire Hoard - the largest collection of Anglo-Saxon gold - discovered in 2009.
The other competition entrants were a collection of copper and tin ingots discovered by divers off the coast of South Devon, and the Staffordshire hoard....
Eunice Bowman, who was born in 1898 and has seen six monarchs on the throne, died peacefully in her sleep at Hillside Grange Care Home in Gateshead.
Eunice was born in Lancashire on 23 August 1898, the second of 12 children.
When World War I broke out she went to work for the Armstrong munitions factory in Newcastle and the money she earned was used to help her family....
President Ivo Josipovic raised the possibility during his first trip to Belgrade since his election this year.
The government of Croatia still wants Serbia to punish individuals accused of war crimes during the 1990s war.
But both nations now say reconciliation is possible, years after the the break-up of the former Yugoslavia.
Both President Josipovic and his Serbian counterpart Boris Tadic have stressed there is a new era of cooperation between the two countries....
The rare haul of fossils includes 26 skulls from an extinct, sheep-sized marsupial with giant claws.
The finds come from the Riversleigh World Heritage fossil field in north-west Queensland.
The beautifully-preserved remains have been described in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
The giant-clawed, wombat-sized marsupial is named Nimbadon lavarackorum; researchers discovered the first of the Nimbadon skulls in 1993....
Name of source: Telegraph (UK)
The local sheriff said that the three men had probably died from dehydration during their trek in the unforgiving landscape.
The adventurers left on July 6 in search of The Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine, telling their families that they would be back in four days. Their vehicle was found on July 11 with no trace of the men, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said in a statement.
Treasure hunters have been looking for the Lost Dutchman mine for more than a century....
More than 300 paintings created by serving US servicemen and women depict various images of war that were witnessed first hand.
The paintings, most which never have been placed on public display, were selected from about 15,000 artworks collected by the US Army since the 1840s.
The exhibition, which covers every conflict fought by American soldiers from the First World War through to the current conflict in Afghanistan, focuses on the duties, sacrifices and everyday lives of troops.
Titled "Art of the American Soldier" it will be showcased at the National Constitution Centre, Philadelphia, from September....
Stauffenberg and other co-conspirators were summarily executed after a bomb the army officer planted at Hitler's east Prussian HQ failed to kill him on July 20 1944.
Stauffenberg and several others were shot dead in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock, the army HQ in the centre of Berlin, in the hours following the coup attempt. Their last resting place was never found until now.
An historical society said it will apply to disinter the victims in the coming months to ascertain whether they are those of Stauffenberg and his helpers. If so, they will be reburied with full honours.
These conspirators were the first of thousands to be executed in the aftermath of the plot. Most were hanged on piano wire in the Gestapo prison of Ploetzensee in Berlin, their death throes filmed for Hitler to view in private at his cinema at his Berchtesgaden mountain retreat....
The Prime Minister has instructed Sir Gus O'Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, to ensure that all material that "should be made public has been made public".
Downing Street signalled the move amid efforts to defuse renewed anger in the US over the compassionate release of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi last year....
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (7-18-10)
The statue – which will be up to 180ft (55m) tall – is to be erected in Southampton, the city where the aircraft was designed and first built.
The Spitfire Tribute Foundation, the organisation behind the scheme, is launching a public competition, backed by The Sunday Telegraph, to select the design.
The winner will see their concept built at a cost of £2 million.
The foundation hopes the memorial will be completed by the end of next year, the 75th anniversary of the aircraft's test flight, which took place from what is now Southampton airport.
John Hannides, chairman of the foundation and a councillor in the city, said: "We want to allow any amateur, anyone with a passion or an interest in Spitfires, right up to professional designers, to get in touch.
"We want the structure to be up to three times the size of the original aircraft and want it to be elevated, at some angle, as if it is in flight.
"Our only other stipulation is that we want it to be the recognisable shape of the Spitfire. We don't want interpretations of it, or just parts of it to be featured. We are purists. The Spitfire itself was a fantastic design. Why try to improve on it?"...
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (7-19-10)
Four safes holding manuscripts and drawings by the author are to be opened on Monday, according to the Swiss newspaper Neue Zuercher Zeitung.
UBS declined comment when contacted by AFP.
The move in Zurich follows similar action at two Tel Aviv banks last week, after they were ordered by an Israeli tribunal to extract Kafka's works from their vaults.
The documents are at the heart of a legal fight over ownership between the Israeli authorities and the Hoffe sisters - who say they had inherited the estate from their mother, Esther Hoffe....
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (7-19-10)
Four senators have written to Downing Street requesting that Mr Cameron makes time in his schedule to discuss the growing row over the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds.
BP is facing accusations that it lobbied the previous Government to introduce a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya which paved the way for al-Megrahi's controversial release. BP has large oil contracts in the north African country.
The Prime Minister has said that he regards the Scottish Executive's decision to release the terrorist as a "mistake".
However, Mr Cameron has denied that the decision had anything to do with BP, which is already under intense pressure in America following the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico....
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (7-16-10)
The comedy called A Thief Catcher was made in 1914 and was missing for so many years that Chaplin's appearance in it as a buffoon policeman had been forgotten.
The 10-minute movie was discovered by the American cinema historian, Paul Gierucki, who bought a can of old film marked "Keystone" at an antiques sale in Michigan....
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (7-1-10)
The documents come from the archives of the Monte dei Paschi bank, which was founded in 1472 in the Tuscan city of Siena and ranks as the oldest surviving bank in the world....
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (7-15-10)
Despite the Empire's reputation for being fuelled by afternoon tea, the data indicates that coffee was still the drink of choice in Britain.
In 1840, the year Victoria married Prince Albert, Britain imported 28 million lbs of tea, but we imported more than twice as much coffee at 70 million lbs. By 1853, the trend had changed as the plantations in India started to supply England with serious quantities of tea, surpassing coffee imports for the first time....
Name of source: CNN
SOURCE: CNN (7-20-10)
It was not immediately clear if the four senators from New Jersey and New York -- Robert Menendez, Frank Lautenberg, Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer -- would be able to accept Cameron's invitation to meet with him at the British ambassador's residence in Washington Tuesday evening.
Cameron is in the United States on his first visit as Britain's leader. He's scheduled to meet with President Barack Obama and Senate leaders....
SOURCE: CNN (7-19-10)
The former Republican vice presidential nominee also posted a plea asking "peaceful New Yorkers" to "pls refute the Ground Zero mosque plan if you believe catastrophic pain caused @ Twin Towers site is too raw, too real."
Plans to build a $100 million, 13-story center have sparked an emotional debate.
The developer, Sharif El-Gamal, describes the project as an "Islamic community center" that will include a 500-seat performing arts center, a lecture hall, an exhibition space, a swimming pool, a gym, a culinary school, a restaurant and a prayer space for Muslims....
SOURCE: CNN (7-19-10)
Kentucky Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul said that if elected, he can't see himself serving more than two terms. In Rhode Island, Democratic congressional hopeful Bill Lynch has proposed a 12-year cap in the House and Senate. And in Maryland, Republican Andy Harris has assured voters that, should he go to the U.S. House, he'll be out of there by 2023.
The new wave of calls for term limits is reminiscent of the lead-up to the 1994 elections. Armed with a legislative agenda called the "Contract with America," Republicans put forth a message with an emphasis on term limits.
The GOP took back control of the House and Senate for the first time in nearly 50 years, and, for the first time ever, the House voted on legislation that would limit representatives to six two-year terms and senators to two six-year terms.
The vote was 227--204 -- a simple majority, but not the two-thirds required for a constitutional amendment....
Name of source: Newsweek
SOURCE: Newsweek (7-20-10)
Apart from brief stints in New Orleans, New York City, and Europe, Faulkner lived in only two places, Oxford, Miss., and Charlottesville, Va. He must have liked college towns. In Oxford, where he grew up and lived for most of his 64 years, he was mostly taken for granted, ignored, or joked about. Count No ’Count was his local nickname. In Charlottesville, he was treated like royalty, and that, combined with the facts that his daughter lived there and that he loved the local hunting scene (pink jackets, bugling, and riding to hounds), surely influenced his wish, cut short by his death, to move to Charlottesville permanently. Given the warm reception he got there, so audible on these recordings, it’s easy to see why....
Name of source: Guardian (UK)
SOURCE: Guardian (UK) (7-19-10)
The boxes are believed to contain thousands of manuscripts by Kafka and Brod, including letters, journals, sketches and drawings, some of which have never been published and could provide literary detetectives an insight into one of the 20th century's greatest writers.
The move in Zurich follows similar action at two Tel Aviv banks, which were ordered by an Israeli tribunal to extract Kafka's works from their vaults.
Name of source: WaPo
SOURCE: WaPo (7-21-10)
General Washington's Tavern Porter takes its cue from a home-brew recipe, preserved in the New York Public Library, that Washington jotted down while he was serving in the Continental Army. It calls for fermenting a "small beer" from molasses, evidently a more common ingredient than barley in that era.
Yards President Tom Kehoe compromised, beginning with a base rich in dark, heavily roasted malts, then adding four pounds per barrel of baking molasses during the second fermentation. The sugar-rich molasses kicks up the alcohol to 7 percent by volume, but enough residual sweetness remains in the beer to balance the sharper, coffeelike flavors....
Name of source: Philadelphia Inquirer
SOURCE: Philadelphia Inquirer (7-20-10)
In 1980, he joined the conservation department of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and was thrown into preparations for the large retrospective of Thomas Eakins' work the museum would be mounting in 1982.
That's when he first encountered Eakins' 1875 masterpiece, The Gross Clinic, owned at the time by Jefferson Medical College.
"I did a very, very minor treatment on it," Tucker said the other day. "It had surface grime on it and I removed that. So I had my nose up close to the painting at a very early point."
Even then, he sensed that a more extensive treatment might someday be warranted. That day has come....
Name of source: ANDINA
SOURCE: ANDINA (7-18-10)
A team co-led by Peruvian archaeologist Carlos del Carpio found the tomb, along with many burial artifacts, about 1,500 meters west of the Lord of Sican's tomb in Huaca Las Ventanas archaeological site, near the Pomac Forest Historical Sanctuary, in the northern Lambayeque region.
According to Peruvian daily El Comercio, the ancient nobleman was buried in lotus posture (sitting with his legs half-crossed) and the finds included a winged eye mask, a ceremonial knife and a metal cup....
Name of source: Live Science
SOURCE: Live Science (7-19-10)
The 1,600-year-old tomb was discovered on May 29 beneath the El Diablo pyramid in the city of El Zotz. It is packed with of carvings, ceramics, textiles, and the bones of six children, who might have been sacrificed at the time of the king's death.
However, much more work is needed before the scientists can piece together all the clues about the tomb's owner.
"We still have a great deal of work to do," said Stephen Houston an archaeologist at Brown University in Rhode Island. "We've only been out of the field for a few weeks, and we're still catching our breath after a very difficult, technical excavation. Royal tombs are hugely dense with information and require years of study to understand."
Before making the actual discovery, Houston said the team thought "something odd" was happening in the deposit where they were digging. They knew a small temple had been built in front of a sprawling structure dedicated to the sun god, an emblem of Maya rulership.
"When we sunk a pit into the small chamber of the temple, we hit almost immediately a series of 'caches' — blood-red bowls containing human fingers and teeth, all wrapped in some kind of organic substance that left an impression in the plaster. We then dug through layer after layer of flat stones, alternating with mud, which probably is what kept the tomb so intact and airtight."...
Name of source: Congress.org
SOURCE: Congress.org (7-20-10)
According to figures collected by the National Park Service , nearly 6.8 million people visited sites associated with Lincoln last year, including his memorial on the National Mall, Ford's Theatre and childhood homes in Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois.
By contrast, 2.7 million people visited two sites associated with Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Also high on the list were Founding Fathers Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and John Adams....
Name of source: Vancouver Sun
SOURCE: Vancouver Sun (7-18-10)
Canada's former national archivist, Ian Wilson, doesn't expect to precisely emulate the Australian example in the quest he's leading — along with renowned historian Jack Granatstein and bestselling author Charlotte Gray — to liberate the 1867 British North America Act for Canada from a musty storeroom in the British public records office.
That, he says, would involve arranging a loan from the United Kingdom to display the historic artifact for a special occasion — then refusing to give it back afterward.
"It was lent to them in 1988 for a bicentennial exhibit," Wilson says with a chuckle, "and it sounds like they didn't return it."...
Name of source: LC Sun News
SOURCE: LC Sun News (7-16-10)
U.S. Marshal Historian Dave Turk of Washington, D.C., and retired Federal Criminal Investigator Steve Sederwall of Capitan began the hunt to find the sample of the counterfeit bank notes passed by the Kid. They knew that at least one would have been preserved after the trials were over that convicted the ring of the crime.
What they found was contrary to, and more than, what is currently recorded.
"History has it that the plates used to print the counterfeit were never found," Sederwall said. "That's not true. There were 22 plates on three different Eastern banks and the illegal bank notes passed in Lincoln County were from a New Bedford bank. This operation was not cowboys with a press in a barn here in Lincoln County. It was organized crime, fine-tuned, clever, very sophisticated and much bigger than recorded by historians."...
Name of source: ABC (AU)
SOURCE: ABC (AU) (7-17-10)
The rock painting is a picture of a sailing boat and it is located at a remote shelter in north-west Arnhem Land.
Archaeologist Paul Tacon says there are telling signs it is a depiction of a Perahu - a boat popular in Indonesia and Malaysia around the 17th century....
Name of source: The Independent
SOURCE: The Independent (7-19-10)
It was a scene slightly reminiscent of a Victorian detective novel, in which the robber and his looted candlesticks is unveiled before an impressed gathering of country house guests.
Only today's unveiling took place inside the Colosseum rather than on the pages of a 19th century novel and while there was no criminal present, there was plenty of loot, which consisted of objects such as Etruscan ceramic vases, bronze statues from Sardinia and frescoes from Pompeii – 337 objects in total.
A investigation, code-named Andromeda, led by the carabinieri and the Swiss authorities, discovered about 20,000 artefacts in the free port of Geneva, stored in warehouses that were associated with an unnamed Japanese dealer....
Name of source: Tehran Times
SOURCE: Tehran Times (7-20-10)
Members of the Baghmalek Cultural Heritage Enthusiasts Society, who recently visited the ruins of site, found shards scattered around the illegal excavations dug by the Smugglers, society director Yunes Shafiei told the Persian service of the Mehr News Agency on Sunday.
The structure, known by the locals as the Dalkhuni Fort, was used by local rulers after the defeat of the Sassanid Empires.
Initial studies show that the shards date back to the Seljuk era, Shafiei said.
Since the fort lies on a hill surrounded by agricultural land, farmers do not welcome experts on cultural heritage who occasionally visit this site, he noted....
Name of source: The Observer
SOURCE: The Observer (7-18-10)
A total of 5,398 objects were found in the tomb, covering every aspect of ancient Egyptian life, from weapons and chariots to musical instruments, clothes, cosmetics and a treasured lock of the royal grandmother's hair. A few, like Tutankhamun's gold burial mask, are instantly recognisable, but many are not well known, even to experts.
A succession of secretaries scanned and transcribed Carter's notes in between other work, then Malek proofread the results at evenings and weekends. Jonathan Moffett, head of IT at the affiliated Ashmolean Museum, built a database that could hold images of the original material as well as transcripts, so the text could be easily searched. In 1995 the team started posting the records in one of the first websites dedicated to Egyptology. They called it Tutankhamun: Anatomy of an Excavation .
More than 15 years later, the internet has been transformed: a Google search for Egyptology now returns more than 3 million results. And Malek's project is almost complete. Around 98% of the material is available, with the last pages to follow within the next three months....
Name of source: Foreign Policy
SOURCE: Foreign Policy (7-19-10)
Then there is the perennial debate over Lenin's Tomb in Red Square, which Russian leaders acknowledge "does not quite fit today's realities" but is still too politically sensitive to move....
Name of source: DW World
SOURCE: DW World (7-15-10)
The Remembrance, Responsibility and Future Foundation (EVZ) began paying compensation to victims of Nazi forced labor in 2000. Funded by the German government and about 6,500 German companies, EVZ paid 4.4 billion euros ($5.7 billion) to 1.7 million former forced workers over seven years.
When payments ended in 2007 - and with them EVZ's original mission - the organization faced the challenge of redefining itself....
SOURCE: DW World (7-15-10)
The link between the paintings and their origins was discovered by Beth McFadden, whose great uncle, US Army Sergeant Harry Gursky, had been stationed near the town.
"Without the integrity and good will of Beth Ann McFadden, the repatriation of these paintings to the Pirmasens Museum could not have taken place," said a statement from New York southern district attorney Preet Bharara.
"Each work of art returned symbolizes an act of justice, bringing us one step closer to the goal of repatriating all of the surviving pieces taken from museums during World War II."...
Name of source: Fox News
SOURCE: Fox News (7-16-10)
Opponents of the bronze sculpture say it has no right to be placed in the National D-Day Memorial next to the busts of Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill because Stalin's murderous rule led to the deaths of at least 20 million people, surpassing even the number of murders under Hitler's bloody reign....
Name of source: Yahoo News
SOURCE: Yahoo News (7-16-10)
Yesterday, the fight took a pretty bizarre turn: Tea Party Express leader Mark Williams posted an imaginary letter to President Abraham Lincoln on his personal website that accused the NAACP of being racist for using the word "colored" in its name.
This afternoon, Williams removed the post, saying it's time to "move forward" and end the name calling. He said he "heard from many very sober and thoughtful people who counseled me that my comments were an obstacle to progress and that I missed my intended target."...
Name of source: Discovery.com
SOURCE: Discovery.com (7-14-10)
Malaria, not poison as long rumored, killed Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and his second wife, Bianca Cappello, according to research to be published in Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.
The couple died a few hours apart in October 1587 after 11 days of agony. Their almost simultaneous deaths led to speculation that they had been murdered....
Name of source: This is Grimsby (UK)
SOURCE: This is Grimsby (UK) (7-10-10)
The remains – including complete skeletons – were found during a dig at the site of the Talbot Inn, in Caistor, which is being transformed into a £1.3-million Lincolnshire Co-operative foodstore....
Name of source: Herald Sun (AU)
SOURCE: Herald Sun (AU) (7-13-10)
Jane Korman, an artist who lives in Ashwood and is Jewish, posted the video of her 89-year-old father Adolk - who survived the Holocaust - and her three children dancing to the hit inside the Auschwitz death camp in Poland where as many as 1.1 million people were killed during World War II.
Although first displayed at a Monash University gallery in Caulfield last December and published on the online video site YouTube in January, the Dancing Auschwitz video has gone viral over the past few days, racking up more than 200,000 hits....
Name of source: Deutsche Welle (Germany)
SOURCE: Deutsche Welle (Germany) (7-18-10)
It's one of the country's worst-kept secrets. Yet questions still surround the presence of former Nazis and war criminals in West Germany's police, secret service (BND) and politics. Who were those people, what positions did they hold in Nazi Germany and later in post-war West Germany?
Crucial information about the BND's past has long been hidden in the Stasi files - the vast archive of information meticulously gathered by former Communist East Germany's secret police, the Stasi. The aim was to either blackmail Western agents or to discredit its capitalist neighbor to the west.
After reunification some of those documents were made available, but parts of the archives remained locked away for reasons of data privacy.
Continuity between Nazis and West Germany
Recently, the last remaining documents from the Stasi files were released to the public. Journalist Andreas Foerster had requested them as early as the year 2000, but his request was turned down twice. After persisting for years, he was finally granted access....
Name of source: NY Times
SOURCE: NY Times (7-17-10)
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There were notorious camp guards like Ilse Koch and Irma Grese. And lesser known killers like Erna Petri, the wife of an SS officer and a mother who was convicted of shooting to death six Jewish children in Nazi-occupied Poland; or Johanna Altvater Zelle, a German secretary accused of child murder in the Volodymyr-Volynskyy ghetto in Nazi-occupied Ukraine.
The Nazi killing machine was undoubtedly a male-dominated affair. But according to new research, the participation of German women in the genocide, as perpetrators, accomplices or passive witnesses, was far greater than previously thought.
The researcher, Wendy Lower, an American historian now living in Munich, has drawn attention to the number of seemingly ordinary German women who willingly went out to the Nazi-occupied eastern territories as part of the war effort, to areas where genocide was openly occurring....
Name of source: BBC News
SOURCE: BBC News (7-19-10)
The painting depicts the martyrdom of St Lawrence and belongs to the Jesuits in Rome.
It will now be examined in detail by art historians to find out if it really is the work of the famous Baroque painter.
Italy celebrated the life of the great master over the weekend on the 400th anniversary of Caravaggio's death.
A gallery housing his work and several churches stayed open overnight to mark the anniversary.
An image of the work was published on the front page of the Vatican's L'Osservatore Romano on Saturday.
It shows a semi-naked man, with one arm outstretched as he leans over leaping flames beneath him.
But while the Vatican newspaper article points out that the painting is typical of Caravaggio's style - such as the perspective from which the subject is seen - it conceded that no known document mentions St Lawrence in relation to Caravaggio....