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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.
Highlights
Breaking News
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
SOURCE: AP (4-28-10)
The step was a gesture to Poland in a case that looms large in Polish history and has soured relations between the two countries for decades.
President Dmitry Medvedev ordered the documents posted on the archives' Russian-language website, reflecting a new willingness in Russia to accept responsibility for the killings at Katyn and elsewhere in 1940.
Relations between Russia and Poland have warmed following the tragic April 10 plane crash that killed Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and 94 others on a flight to visit the Katyn forest in western Russia for a memorial ceremony on the 70th anniversary of the massacre.
But while Medvedev's order was clearly intended as a positive gesture, the documents posted Wednesday were made public long ago and already have been published in Poland and Russia. Many more documents remain classified, despite dogged Polish appeals for the archives to be opened....
SOURCE: AP (4-27-10)
Hagan, 69, has said he was one of three gunmen who shot Malcolm X as he began a speech at Harlem's Audubon Ballroom on Feb. 21, 1965. But Hagan has said the two men convicted with him were not involved.
They maintained their innocence and were paroled in the 1980s. No one else has ever been charged.
The assassins gunned down Malcolm X out of anger at his split with the leadership of the Nation of Islam, the black Muslim movement for which he had once served as chief spokesman, said Hagan, who was then known as Talmadge X Hayer....
SOURCE: AP (4-25-10)
But it was old maps, not GPS or Google Earth, that ultimately found the common ground for the towns of St. George and neighboring Shelburne. The process has pointed up the art of trying to read the minds of the original surveyors and land granters to establish where the lines were drawn.
"It's a matter of 'let's get this defined,'" said Phil Gingraw, chairman of the St. George Select Board. "Two-hundred-and-fifty years ago, people would not really have cared. Today, I think, things have changed a lot, and that's why we need definition."
Vermont itself was a byproduct of a land dispute between the colonies of New Hampshire and New York.
Both issued land charters for the area between the Connecticut River and Lake Champlain. Much of what became Vermont was first surveyed in the 1760s using primitive equipment in near-trackless wilderness.
"Sometimes, the early surveying errors were so spectacular, we've found areas that had never been in any town," said state archivist Gregory Sanford....
Name of source: City Hall News
SOURCE: City Hall News (4-27-10)
This article has been updated
He's fresh," went John Lindsay’s mayoral campaign slogan from 1965,"everyone else is tired."
Now, 45 years after the dashing silk-stocking Republican first hit the hustings, a cadre of former Lindsay aides and family members are launching a media blitz in an attempt to keep the former mayor’s image fresh in the minds of New Yorkers.
On May 4, the Museum of the City of New York will open an exhibit entitled “America’s Mayor: John V. Lindsay and the Reinvention of New York.” The exhibit will be accompanied by a book edited by New York Times reporter Sam Roberts and co-published by the museum and Columbia University Press. And airing May 6 on Channel 13 will be Fun City Revisited: The Lindsay Years, a one-hour documentary showcasing the mayor’s term in office, which lasted from 1966 to 1973.
All of which begs the question: Why Lindsay? And why now?
A tight-knit circle of former aides and associates that are unsatisfied with the current historical record of their boss’s administration provided some of the funding for the efforts said Roberts, a veteran reporter who got his start during the end of the Lindsay era. Roberts made clear, however, that his book and the exhibit were put together independently, growing out of a confluence of interest in rethinking the two-term mayor.
“There’s a feeling, for better or for worse, that Lindsay really hadn’t been considered in the context of his time,” Roberts added. “You could argue that New Yorkers had better and worse mayors than Lindsay, but very few of them had to govern in more trying times.”...
Name of source: Times Online (UK)
SOURCE: Times Online (UK) (4-27-10)
William Fraser, chief constable of Invernessshire in the 1930s, was convinced that not only was “some strange creature” bobbing about in Scotland’s second largest loch but it was in danger of being hunted to extinction. He contacted the Under Secretary of State at the Scottish Office in 1933 to raise concerns about the animal’s plight. “That there is some strange creature in Loch Ness now seems beyond doubt,” he wrote. “But that the police have any power to protect it is very doubtful.”
Mr Fraser, who served as chief constable between 1936 and 1951, was responding to a flurry of sightings of a large acquatic beast, or pieces of wood that looked like one. Ministers were sceptical that grainy photographs published by newspapers constituted proof, but questions were asked in the House of Commons as to whether an investigation should be conducted in the interests of science.
Civil servants considered installing “reliable observers” at the side of the loch equipped with cameras to provide definitive evidence of Nessie. Aerial observation was also suggested....
Name of source: FOX News
SOURCE: FOX News (4-27-10)
The group claims that carbon dating proves the relics are 4,800 years old, meaning they date to around the same time the ark was said to be afloat. Mt. Ararat has long been suspected as the final resting place of the craft by evangelicals and literalists hoping to validate biblical stories.
Yeung Wing-Cheung, from the Noah's Ark Ministries International research team that made the discovery, said: "It's not 100 percent that it is Noah's Ark, but we think it is 99.9 percent that this is it."
There have been several reported discoveries of the remains of Noah's Ark over the years, most notably a find by archaeologist Ron Wyatt in 1987. At the time, the Turkish government
officially declared a national park around his find, a boat-shaped object stretched across the mountains of Ararat....
Name of source: The Root
SOURCE: The Root (4-20-10)
The Coon Festival, more recently renamed the Minstrel Festival, has been an annual affair in Cape Town for over 150 years and may be the most public manifestation of an engagement between African Americans and black South Africans that goes back to the U.S. Civil War.
The interaction between the two groups has ebbed and flowed at critical moments in history, and recently, it has been near its nadir. But an esteemed group of South Africans and African Americans living in South Africa have joined to reclaim that history and to plot a way forward that will expand a frayed relationship.
The newly minted South African American Partnership Forum (SAAPF) held a recent day-long symposium at the University of Johannesburg to explore the history and future prospects of the relationship in the areas of education, arts and culture, business, the media and politics.
The symposium was part of a week-long series of activities called USA Week produced by Kennedy Khabo, a South African and American resident. Khabo also produces a South Africa Week in Washington, D.C., every September. The goal of both organizations is to increase the number of people-to-people contacts. There are an estimated 3,000 African Americans living in South Africa--which appears to have overtaken Ghana as African Americans' preferred point of return to the continent....
Name of source: BBC
SOURCE: BBC (4-27-10)
Professor Michael Fulford said that 13 years of excavations at Calleva had revealed evidence of the first gridded Iron Age town in Britain.
The site also bears the scars of possible early Roman military occupation, and evidence of later, widespread burning and destruction.
This suggests the site could have been destroyed at the hands of Boudicca.
Queen Boudicca waged war against the Romans in Britain from 60 AD after the Romans decided to rule the Iceni directly and confiscated the property of the leading tribesmen.
SOURCE: BBC (4-26-10)
Fighting has shifted from densely populated areas to remote regions where the fate of tens of thousands of people is almost invisible, the ICRC says.
ICRC staff recorded 800 alleged human rights violations last year, including murder and sexual violence.
Left-wing rebel groups have fought the Colombian government since the 1960s.
SOURCE: BBC (4-24-10)
The prison housed both republican and loyalist prisoners during the Northern Ireland Troubles.
It was known as Long Kesh and was home to the famous H-Blocks where ten men died in the 1981 republican hunger strikes where they fought with the Government to be recognised as political prisoners.
The jail was closed in 2000 after the early release of inmates following the Good Friday Agreement.
Name of source: Telegraph (UK)
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (4-27-10)
But now islanders are complaining that the rodent's disappearance has led to thousands of rabbits invading the island because there are no rats to keep their numbers down.
The problem is so bad that locals say historic monuments are being "devastated" by the rabbits and they are devouring the self-sufficient islanders' gardens away.
Even the island's only restaurant has responded to the bounty and put on dishes of rabbit and cranberry with pistachio and rabbit pie in a rosemary and thyme cream sauce.
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (4-27-10)
A French court in 1999 sentenced him to 10 years in prison after convicting him in absentia for laundering $7 million of drug money through French bank accounts and by buying luxury flats in Paris.
The 76-year-old now faces a retrial, but his lawyers will argue that he should be freed and returned to Panama. He was remanded in custody by a judge at his court appearance on Tuesday. He is expected to be tried within two months.
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (3-27-10)
German Lukyanov, a spokesman for Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, the disputed head of the Romanov Dynasty, said he was profoundly shocked by the idea and demanded an explanation.
The idea, they say, is to hold regular 'Tsar's Marathons' starting and finishing at the city's so-called Church on the Blood which was built on the site where Bolshevik executioners shot Tsar Nicholas II and his family in 1918. Runners would head for a monastery where the bones of the murdered Romanovs were found and then loop back to the church again.
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (4-27-10)
Little remains of the wooden ship but its cargo of earthenware amphora - ceramic vases - still remain stacked row upon row.
The vases, which originally contained olive oil and wine, are still tightly packed into the cargo hold as they were centuries ago.
Its cargo - one of the best preserved from an ancient wreck - has great historical significance and has an estimated value of £5m on the black market.
Croatian authorities are so concerned about looters plundering the valuable artefacts they have now protected the site - with a metal cage.
The heavy-duty cage features a large hinged door, which is kept locked with occasional access granted for divers under strict supervision.
Underwater photographer Neil Hope, of Torpoint in Cornwall, was among those given permission to dive the wreck....
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (4-27-10)
The second century Greek trading vessel lies on the sea bed off the coast of Cavtat.
Little remains of the wooden ship but its cargo of earthenware amphora - ceramic vases - still remain stacked row upon row.
The vases, which originally contained olive oil and wine, are still tightly packed into the cargo hold as they were centuries ago.
Its cargo - one of the best preserved from an ancient wreck - has great historical significance and has an estimated value of £5m on the black market.
Croatian authorities are so concerned about looters plundering the valuable artefacts they have now protected the site - with a metal cage.
The heavy-duty cage features a large hinged door, which is kept locked with occasional access granted for divers under strict supervision.
Underwater photographer Neil Hope, of Torpoint in Cornwall, was among those given permission to dive the wreck.
He said: ''I'm an experienced diver and I've dived wrecks all over the world, but this was the most unique experience.
''I was taken down there by the man who discovered it. As soon as we were finished they closed the door and locked it up again.
''Obviously when you are inside you can't touch any of the cargo as it is very valuable, so they don't just let anyone inside the cage.
''You need excellent buoyancy skills so you're not damaging these valuable things.''
He was working on an assignment for the British Sub-Aqua Club's (BS-AC) DIVE magazine.
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (4-26-10)
According to Crown Publishing, Decision Points, will offer "gripping, never-before-heard detail" about key events such as the disputed 2000 election, the September 11 attacks and the launch of the war on Iraq.
Aided by a former White House speech-writer Chris Michel, Mr Bush also writes about his decisions on the financial crisis, Hurricane Katrina, Afghanistan and Iran, as well as discussing his battle with alcohol, his discovery of faith and family relationships.
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (4-26-10)
'Dear Uncle Adolf' was the first documentary detailing the tens of thousands of surviving fan letters Hitler received while in power which were seized by the Soviets when they conquered Berlin in 1945.
For years these love notes, advice letters, gifts and health-tips lay undiscovered in Russian archives. Discovered in 2007, they formed the basis of a German book called 'Letters to Hitler'. Last night the Svengali-like grip that the Austrian-born Hitler exerted over Germany was unveiled as actors read out the letters that would fill a truck.
They were letters that often accompanied gifts, in the case of Margarethe Wagner, a pair of socks sent in 1938 after Hitler occupied the Czech Sudetenland border region.
"I knitted these for you as you freed us," she wrote.
Frau Troeltzsch of Berlin sent Hitler three silk handkerchiefs with pictures of Hitler sewn into them which Hitler deputy Rudolf Hess sent back saying "you do not have permission to send handkerchiefs with pictures of Herr Hitler!"
Such women were later put under Gestapo monitoring as Hitler feared that his cult of personality could lead to a destabilisation of home life in the Reich. As he climbed further up the ladder of power, so the tempo of the letters increased.
A special department was created in the postal services in both Munich and Berlin to deal with the tsunami of paper wending its way to him every day. On April 25 1932, one day after elections made the party an unstoppable force in national politics, a Peter Beck from Silesia - now part of Poland - wrote: "We don't want to know about the government any more - we only want Adolf Hitler as leader, as dictator.
"We National Socialists want to see a ban on all newspapers that inject poison into our Fuehrer, to see Jews classified as what they are, a reckoning with all local government chiefs who have cheated their citizens. We will give our blood to Adolf Hitler! Take an iron hand and fulfill your programme with a dictatorial will. Do not negotiate but act!
"We trust our Fuehrer and donate to him our hearts with every pulse!"
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (4-26-10)
A Lotus has been grown from a 700-year-old seed which dates back to Korea's Goryeo Dynasty.
The plant has been grown in Haman County, South Gyeongsang Province, South Korea.
The flower has been grown from one of the 10 lotus seeds discovered during an excavation of an ancient castle last year.
Scientists at the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources, have confirmed two of the seeds to be as old as 650 years and 760 years, respectively
The county also planted the eight other seeds and three of them sprouted.
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (4-23-10)
Campaigning on an anti-immigrant, anti-Islam, anti-feminist ticket, Barbara Rosenkranz, 51, is poised to pave the way for her party to return to its glory days a decade ago under Jörg Haider, the popular and charismatic leader who died in a car crash in 2008.
Mrs Rosenkranz has shocked Austria by calling for the country’s Holocaust denial laws to be repealed. She later signed a statement distancing herself from Nazism.
Germany’s Central Council of Jews has described Mrs Rosenkranz’s position as the main electoral challenger to Heinz Fischer, 71, the Austrian president, as part of a “terrifying shift to the Right” across Europe, following recent gains for far-Right parties in Hungary and France over the last two months.
Earlier this month, the far-Right took more parliamentary seats in neighbouring Hungary’s national elections than at any time since the Second World War and French regional elections last month saw an electoral revival for the National Front. In June, Dutch elections could propel Geert Wilders, whose anti-Islamic, hard-Right Freedom Party leads the polls, into power.
While the role of president in Austria is largely symbolic, it still has significant moral influence, and Mrs Rosenkranz’s personal background and political views have polarised the campaign.
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (4-24-10)
Loosely based on the Greek myth of Perseus, the re-make of the 1981 hit Clash of the Titans topped box offices in America for two weeks after its recent release.
But its first screenings were delayed while it was converted into the 3D format that audiences now seem to like.
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (4-25-10)
The Nottingham-born writer, whose novels marked him out as one of the Angry Young Men of British fiction who emerged in the 1950s, died at Charing Cross Hospital in London.
His son David said he hoped his father would be remembered for his contribution to literature.
Both are regarded as classic examples of kitchen sink dramas reflecting the reality of life in Britain at the mid-point of the 20th century.
Sillitoe also published several volumes of poetry, children's books and plays.
Name of source: Guardian (UK)
SOURCE: Guardian (UK) (4-27-10)
Photographs seized by police suggested that the sculptures – funerary busts and a marble statue of a youth from the second century AD – were illicitly excavated, archaeologists told the Guardian.
A spokesman for Bonhams auctioneers said: "Whenever a serious question is raised about an item's provenance we withdraw it from sale pending an internal investigation. We take rigorous care to ensure that we only sell items that have a clear provenance."
Dr David Gill, reader in Mediterranean archaeology at Swansea University, said that the four antiquities bore soil traces that indicated they were excavated during illegal digs. Images in the Bonhams auction catalogue show the same sculptures cleaned and restored.
Archaeologists remain concerned about illegal trading of antiquities and some believe insufficient checks are carried out into their provenance.
Name of source: MSNBC
SOURCE: MSNBC (4-27-10)
But researchers who have spent decades studying the region – and fending off past claims of ark discoveries – caution that a boatload of skepticism is in order.
Cornell archaeologist Peter Ian Kuniholm, who has focused on Turkey for decades, was even more direct - saying that the reported find is a "crock."
The quest to find remnants of the Bible's most famous cargo ship goes back to, well, virtually biblical times (or at least back to the time of the ancient historian Josephus). In the Book of Genesis, God tells Noah to build a boat that would be longer than a modern-day football field and more than three stories high. Animals were sent to seek shelter in the ship and ride out a flood that wiped out the entire world.
Name of source: Live Science
SOURCE: Live Science (4-27-10)
Many of the more famous records of the Mayan civilization come from the writing and images about royals carved into monuments.
Even though the records differed between the classes
, the buried artifacts Lucero found support an idea that many of the elaborate rituals performed by Maya rulers and elites had a basis in the domestic rituals of their subjects. The elite versions were just scaled-up.
Name of source: WaPo
SOURCE: WaPo (4-27-10)
So what if they were innocent POWs. A band of rebels had massacred captured Union soldiers and their commanding officer a few weeks before. Now, Union commanders just needed to select a Confederate officer for death, to complete the eye-for-an-eye transaction.
There was no gallantry to this bloody affair in 1864, no stirring charge worthy of Currier and Ives. It was but a dark footnote to the epic of the American Civil War. And it was just what the National Archives sought for the major exhibit that will debut Friday: "Discovering the Civil War."
The exhibit, designed to launch Washington's celebration of the coming 150th anniversary of the war years, seeks to explore more of the little-known aspects of the battle and glimpse some of the dimmer corners of the conflict that remade the country and that so many Americans think they know so well.
Yet 150 years later, the anniversary of the war that tore the nation apart finds a country that remains racially divided, politically fractured and historically split -- even over the causes and legacy of America's most wrenching conflict.
The governors of two Southern states, Virginia and Mississippi, sparked controversy this month by neglecting or sounding dismissive of the role of slavery in the war. And one noted Civil War historian says the nation might be too divided to properly mark the key unifying event in its history.
"I think it's going to be impossible to get all the American people to gather to commemorate a portion of American history that's so important to the country," said Virginia Tech's James I. Robertson Jr., who 50 years ago directed the U.S. Civil War Centennial Commission. "People just aren't that together anymore....
Name of source: Medieval News
SOURCE: Medieval News (4-23-10)
The free event organised by Birmingham City Council and Birmingham St George’s Day Association will host an exciting mix of new and traditional activities in the city centre.
New for 2010 is the creation of an Anglo-Saxon village in Chamberlain Square where history re-enactors ‘Regia Anglorum’ will recreate an Anglo-Saxon Slave market, give warrior demonstrations and stage a main battle between Saxons and Vikings. In keeping with the Anglo-Saxon theme the now world famous Hoard of Anglo-Saxon treasure will also be on show at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Earlsdon Morris Men will also be dancing in Chamberlain Square, and there will be storytelling and family folk dancing at the Centre for the Child at the Central Library.
Partners BBC WM will compere the stage in Victoria Square with live music and entertainment including Sovereign Brass, the Demon Barbers, The Old Dance School, Roxy Magic and Hannah & Sam, plus performances by local school children.
Another feature will be a traditional English market at the Victoria Square end of New Street, where food and crafts will be on sale. In Victoria Square refreshments, will include a whole pig roast, fish and chips, cakes and pasteries and event sponsors Davenports will have a bar in serving ales and English wine with cider provided by Hogans Cider. The free day-time celebrations will be concluded with a sell-out concert of English music at the city’s world class Symphony Hall in the evening.
Cllr Martin Mullaney, Cabinet Member for Leisure, Sport & Culture said, “Birmingham’s St George’s Day event grows every year in celebration of England’s patron saint. It is an exciting part of our annual calendar of events that makes our city such a vibrant place to live e to live, work or visit. As we bid for UK City of Culture this event shows our ability to bring people together in celebration of the city’s great heritage and culture.”
Professor Carl Chinn MBE, Chair of Birmingham St George’s Day Association said, “The West Midlands is the real epicentre of the St George’s Day celebrations. Now in its 13th year the range of events and activities on offer underline our English traditions in an innovative and exciting way. The Association is proud to be taking the helm with Birmingham’s annual festivities.
The St George’s Day Celebrations are organised by Birmingham City Council in partnership with Birmingham St George’s Day Association. The Association are also organising the annual Celebrating England Concert at Symphony Hall in the evening. For more information call 0121 303 3008 or go to www.birmingham.gov.uk/st-george
SOURCE: Medieval News (4-26-10)
The Minister stated “This funding package underlines the continued commitment to the preservation and conservation of our rich built heritage by the State. Our built heritage is inextricably linked with our sense of pride in this country and affirms our cultural and historical identity. It is essential that we continue to invest in built heritage conservation to ensure the ongoing preservation of Ireland’s renowned heritage. Investment in the heritage stock can also bring economic benefits in the form of cultural tourism and employment.”
The funding for the Irish Walled Towns Initiative will allow conservation works to continue to be carried out on Walled Towns in Ireland. The Minister said that ”Walled Towns are a significant tourist attraction and contribute positively to the areas that have such iconic features.”
The Irish Walled Towns Network was established by The Heritage Council in 2005 and currently comprises 21 walled towns and villages throughout Ireland. Their aim is to coordinate conservation and management efforts, as well as help boost interest in these historic areas.
Among the work they have done is:
Trim Town Walls Conservation Plan
Rindoon, Co. Roscommon: A Management Plan
Carlingford and Derry - A Tale of Two Historic Irish Walled Towns
Medieval Walls of Kilkenny City
The other funding announced will go to a variety of projects, including the conservation of historic churches as well as money handed over to local authorities for heritage projects. Minister Gormley added “local authorities are best placed for recognising structures at a local level that are deserving of funding and make a significant impact on our built heritage as a whole. Many of the protected structures that receive funding are a valuable and irreplaceable element of our heritage and give character to our cities, towns and villages.”...
SOURCE: Medieval News (4-26-10)
The Binchois Consort will be performing a varied programme of choral music, including a selection of chants from the Wollaton Antiphonal, a huge 15th century illustrated medieval service book. They will demonstrate vividly in sound the rich legacy of the Antiphonal, and of English sacred music of the time.
The concert in the Djanogly Recital Hall at Lakeside on Saturday May 8 at 7.30pm will bring to life some of the medieval music contained within the 412 vellum leaves of the manuscript.
The Antiphonal was made in about 1430 for Sir Thomas Chaworth of Wiverton, the richest man in Nottinghamshire. When he died it was bought for the Parish Church, St Leonard’s in Wollaton. It survived the Reformation when many such service books were destroyed because it was moved into Wollaton Hall library for safekeeping. It was then returned to the church in 1924 when the family sold the Hall but its deteriorating condition prompted St Leonard’s to place it in the care of the University where work is being carried out to conserve and protect it.
Several leaves from the Antiphonal will be on display in an exhibition Saints Sinners and Storytellers, which can be viewed at the Weston Gallery, Lakeside Arts Centre on University Park from April 30 until August 8 2010.
Early music expert, Philip Weller, from the University’s Music Department, is one of the few scholars who has had the opportunity to view the Antiphonal owing to the fragile state of the leaves. Once the preservation of the manuscript is complete it will be possible for scholars to make a detailed study of the contents.
He said, “The Antiphonal is a rare survival, not only for its physical size and visual splendour but also for the valuable information it has to offer us. It gives us a vivid idea of the religious culture of the time, and how it was expressed musically — and also, not least, how incredibly varied it was. In the Binchois Consort recital, we’ve tried to show how the chants contained in the Antiphonal relate more widely to the kinds of polyphonic music (music arranged in several parts) that might have been heard during the various phases of its early history, from its origins up to the time of its arrival, and subsequent use, in Wollaton.”
It is known from preliminary study that the Antiphonal contains music for the daily services of the medieval church, and has chants that were standard in the Sarum Use of the medieval English liturgy, as well as some later additions of chants that derive from the York Use, and which point, interestingly, towards evidence of Nottinghamshire ownership. The manuscript also includes chants for a whole range of special feasts and saints’ days.
The Wollaton Antiphonal is particularly famous as the only known source for the chants written in honour of a little-known English saint, St John of Bridlington. He was a local English saint from Thwing in East Yorkshire. Known then as John Twenge, the cleric held a number of posts with St Mary’s Abbey in Bridlington and died in 1379. He was canonised in 1386, the last English saint before the Reformation, after he ‘appeared’ to five sailors from Hartlepool whose ship was in danger of sinking. The story goes that he appeared to them wearing his habit and brought them back to the safety of the shore. The men left their vessel at the harbour and walked to the monastery where they thanked John in person for saving their lives. The stained glass window in the priory church in Bridlington depicts St John as a teacher and prior. He is also the patron saint of women in difficult labour.
Henry V's victory at Agincourt was attributed to the aid of Saint John of Bridlington and Saint John of Beverly and in 1415 King Henry V made a pilgrimage to St John's tomb in Bridlington to give thanks for victory at the battle of Agincourt.
The Binchois Consort will perform several chants and also sections of the three-voice Mass which is one of the earliest known masses to be unified by a single plainchant melody, the ‘Quem malignus spiritus’. This mass exists in a source in Cambridge University Library, but also, more intriguingly, in Continental manuscript sources as well: the Trent Codices in northeastern Italy, and a fragment of a manuscript in Lucca, originally from Bruges. So the survival of the Bridlington chants in Nottinghamshire proves to have a thoroughly international resonance!
The polyphonic works that will be performed together with the chants from the Antiphonal were written by musicians associated with the household chapels of the Lancastrian kings: Henry V (r.1413-1422) and Henry VI (r.1422-61, 1470-1) and their close associates. The composers include the famous twin lights Leonel Power (d.1445) and John Dunstable (d. 1453), as well as others such as Thomas Damett, John Cooke (d.c. 1442) and Nicholas Sturgeon. A later generation is represented by the great figure of Walter Frye (d.1474), one of whose motets was known the length and breadth of Europe. The concert opens with a Gloria ascribed to ‘Roy Henry’, very probably Henry V himself.
After the concert at Lakeside Arts Centre on May 8 the Binchois Consort will record the ‘Quem Malignus Spiritus’ Mass for release on the prestigious Hyperion label in late 2010.
More information is available from Sofia Nazar, Lakeside Arts Centre on +44 (0)115 846 7393, sofia.nazar@nottingham.ac.uk; or Dr Catherine Hocking, Lakeside Arts Music Manager on +44 (0)115 951 3959, catherine.hocking@nottingham.ac.uk
SOURCE: Medieval News (4-27-10)
The Medieval Churches of the City of Norwich published by Norwich Heritage Economic and Regeneration Trust (HEART) reveals the city's compelling ecclesiastical set, celebrating the churches as medieval works of art and valuable social documents, as well as ancient places of prayer. Author Nicholas Groves, an acknowledged authority on the subject, describes the 31 surviving medieval churches in Norwich city centre, as well as many that have been lost since the Reformation.
Contemporary photography and fascinating archive material capture the churches' history, architecture, stained glass, monuments and other exquisite features. Many of the contemporary photographs were entries to HEART's 2009 photography competition on the city's medieval churches, reflecting how the buildings are viewed and valued by local people today. Others have kindly been provided by various local organisations and photographers. The book also contains specially commissioned interviews by Christina Lister with people closely associated with each church, providing personal reflections on each church and an absorbing insight into their surprising variety of uses today.
HEART is publishing the book as a follow-up to its award-winning and popular Norwich 12 guidebook, published in 2008. The book's original and stunning design has been created by local publishing agency East Publishing, which also produced the Norwich 12 guidebook for HEART.
Michael Loveday, Chief Executive of Norwich HEART, said: "We are incredibly proud to be publishing such a beautiful and informative book celebrating one of our city's most remarkable heritage treasures. We hope it will appeal to visitors, local people and indeed anyone with an interest in history or archaeology, religion or culture, architecture or crafts."
Nicholas Groves said: "Although many of the churches have their own guidebooks, it is over 30 years since there has been a readily available single book with details of all of them. I am very pleased that HEART has agreed to publish this one, and I hope that it will appeal to a wide variety of people."
Nicholas Groves, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a member of the Ecclesiastical History Society, has written several works including a study of St Fursa, a seventh-century Irish missionary who worked in Norfolk.
Anthony Denny, Publishing Director at East Publishing, said: "Creating this book was both a challenge and a pleasure. There was an enormous amount of detail to work through, photographic and otherwise, but it was great to engage with subject matter that required all our skills, from planning and editing to design and print management. And in the end, it's wonderful to have produced a book that will be of such value to local people and to visitors to Norwich."
The 160-page colour book is priced at £12.95 for the paperback version and £19.95 for the limited edition hardback version and is available from stockists including: Jarrold, Norwich Tourist Information Centre, Colman's Mustard Shop & Museum, Norwich Cathedral, Hungate Medieval Art Waterstones Norwich and the Norwich Christian Resource Centre. It can also be purchased by calling HEART on 01603 305575 or visiting their website.
SOURCE: Medieval News (4-27-10)
Dr Philip Shaw, a Lecturer in English Language and Old English, offered his expertise on how the Vikings named their children. He discussed the practice of giving names derived from male names to female children, which was commonplace in the Viking Age.
He said, “My paper on 'Viking Thomasinas' examines the use of female names developed directly from male names, similar to the more recent name Thomasina. Viking Age Scandinavia saw a remarkable surge in the creation of such names, reflecting in some cases a need for a new way of signalling relationships between female children and their fathers. In other cases, the female versions of new male names are actually more popular than the male originals, suggesting a more conservative attitude to naming boys than girls.
“Such conservatism is, in fact, still with us today. Anxieties about the masculinity of names are very much alive and well: witness the switch of Evelyn from male to female during the twentieth century - and expect Jo(e) to follow suit in due course. This says a lot about our - and the Vikings' - attitude to the importance of male children, and the relative impact of experimental/cross-gender naming on boys and girls."
The symposium sought to broaden the picture of Viking men, opening up the range of ways in which men were men in the Viking world. Dr Shaw added, “The Midlands Viking Symposium brings cutting edge research to a wider public, but it's just as important that it brings the wider public to the researchers - looking beyond academia opens up ways of thinking about the Vikings and their legacy that feed back into and enrich research.”
Name of source: CNN
SOURCE: CNN (4-7-10)
He was dressed in prison greens as he addressed the New York parole board. He had been before that body 14 other times since 1984. Each time, he was rejected.
He was sentenced to 20 years to life imprisonment after being found guilty at trial with two others in 1966. Since March 1992, Hagan has been in a full-time work-release program that allowed him to live at home with his family in Brooklyn five days a week while reporting to a minimum-security prison just two days.
To win his release, Hagan was required to seek, obtain and maintain a job, support his children and abide by a curfew. He must continue to meet those conditions while free. He told the parole board he's worked the same job for the past seven years. He told the New York Post in 2008 he was working at a fast-food restaurant.
SOURCE: CNN (4-26-10)
The elections were the first in 24 years in the oil-rich African nation, which has been riven by fighting in Darfur and a civil war between north and south.
Al-Bashir, a former military officer who took power in a bloodless coup in 1989, has been indicted over allegations of war crimes by the International Criminal Court.
His implementation of Islamic law created divisions between the north and south.
SOURCE: CNN (4-26-10)
To James Shapiro, however, it matters a great deal.
The Columbia University professor and Shakespeare scholar spent 15 years working on his 2005 book, "A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599." The work exhaustively details a key year in the Bard's career, when he wrote "Henry V" and "Julius Caesar" and became the man thought of as history's greatest English-language dramatist.
And yet he couldn't convince the doubters, who believe that the name "William Shakespeare" is a front for the real author.
SOURCE: CNN (4-26-10)
After losing the Democratic primary to Ned Lamont, Lieberman ran in the general election as an independent, besting Lamont and the Republican challenger in order to hold onto his Senate seat.
Lieberman told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King that being an independent has worked to his benefit.
SOURCE: CNN (4-26-10)
The book, titled "Decision Points," will focus on 14 "critical and historic" decisions the former president has made throughout his life and in the White House, said Tina Constable, the Vice President of Crown Publishers – a division of Random House.
Bush has made few public appearances since leaving office more than 15 months ago and has yet to sit for a formal media interview. Instead, Crown says, he has spent "almost every day" reflecting on his presidency and writing the upcoming memoir.
Name of source: Newsweek
SOURCE: Newsweek (4-27-10)
Name of source: NYT
SOURCE: NYT (4-26-10)
Defenders of Benedict cite his role in dealing with Cardinal Hans Hermann Groër of Vienna as evidence that he moved assertively, if quietly, against abusers. They point to the fact that Cardinal Groër left office six months after accusations against him of molesting boys first appeared in the Austrian news media in 1995. The future pope, they say, favored a full canonical investigation, only to be blocked by other ranking officials in the Vatican.
A detailed look at the rise and fall of the clergyman, who died in 2003, and the involvement of Benedict, a Bavarian theologian with many connections to German-speaking Austria, paints a more complex picture.
Benedict, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, had the ear of Pope John Paul II and was able to block a favored candidate for archbishop of Vienna, clearing the way for Father Groër to assume the post in 1986, say senior church officials and priests with knowledge of the process. His critics question how this influence failed him nine years later in seeking a fuller investigation into the case.
Benedict’s ambiguous role has made the Groër case a kind of Rorschach test of the future pope’s treatment of sexual abuse during his long stewardship of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s powerful doctrinal body.
There are indications that Benedict had a lower tolerance for sexual misconduct by elite clergy members than other top Vatican officials....
SOURCE: NYT (4-25-10)
Eighteen years later, 58 people, most of them Hindu pilgrims, died in an inferno on a train in Gujarat, in western India. The fire was blamed on Muslims, and within days 1,000 died in widespread riots.
These two spasms of horrific sectarian bloodletting have stood as direct challenges to India’s status as a democratic, secular state governed by the rule of law. In both instances, senior officials of the party in power were accused of looking the other way or, in some cases, even orchestrating the bloodshed. In both cases, a mere handful of the killers were ever convicted. In both cases, the political fortunes of politicians accused of fomenting the violence flourished in the aftermath.
But that pattern of official impunity may be changing. In the past month, two senior politicians have found themselves in the cross hairs of legal action that could, after all these years, force them to face accusations that they egged on killers in the two mass killings.
As investigators and prosecutors move in on these officials — a former member of Parliament for the governing Congress Party, and a chief minister and one-time rising star of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party — hope is rising that India might at last be ready to face up to some of its darkest moments and deliver justice for crimes that undermined the core of its national identity....
Name of source: Star Tribune
SOURCE: Star Tribune (4-22-10)
"He was very personable, smart and articulate," said Kathryn Sikkink, a political science professor who taught Clegg in a graduate seminar. "I'm not surprised he's done well, but this was not a guy you thought was going to someday be the prime minister of Great Britain."
After attending Cambridge University as an undergraduate, Clegg spent the 1989-90 academic year at the University of Minnesota, studying politics and international relations, Sikkink's specialty....
Name of source: Stuff (NZ)
SOURCE: Stuff (NZ) (4-27-10)
Wyonne Wright's husband, Whitfeld, and his sherman tank crew from the NZ 18th Armoured Regiment claimed the flag from a building evacuated by the Germans in Italy in 1944.
The 66-year-old war relic was on its first ever display at Raglan and District's Museum exhibition entitled Raglan and the Anzac, celebrating the district's involvement in the two world wars.
The flag, which was hanging from a doorway, was stolen along with a copy of a photo of Mr Wright and his tank crew posing with the flag and their descriptions which were pinned to the wall. The theft took place sometime between 3pm and 3.15pm on Sunday.
Mrs Wright and Raglan Museum bosses expressed their disgust at the theft yesterday.
"It's been a big family loss," Mrs Wright said. "The family are all devastated by it. It's been a great keepsake and I think all those men (in the photo) have passed on now."
A second Raglan local, Rex Tucker, was also in Mr Wright's tank crew and is also in thephoto.
The flag was estimated to be worth about $1500 on its own but could be worth more with offical descriptions and the period photograph.
Museum president Patrick Day said the theft had been distressing for him and his staff.
A flying helmet and German propaganda sheet were also stolen the same day but its unknown if the two thefts were linked.
"It's very distressing especially coming in this month. We lost much of our reserve collection on the Raglan Wharf fire."
Mr Day wanted the museum to stay closed until the Waikato District Council makes up its mind up on plans for a new museum, which he hoped would boast a security and fire alarm system.
Name of source: 960 ABC Hobert
SOURCE: 960 ABC Hobert (4-26-10)
Although it only operated for eleven years before being closed in 1833, Sarah Island in Macquarie Harbour had a reputation as one of the British Empire's most hellish prisons.
Hemmed in by impenetrable wilderness, it housed the colony's hardest criminals, including the notorious cannibal Alexander Pearce.
A team of ten archaeologists recently finished a three week dig on the island.
Parks and Wildlife archaeologist, Jody Steele, says one of the most interesting finds was graffiti etched into the bricks of the one metre by two metre cells.
"We're hoping we can pull the convict records for the island - the men who were actually stationed out on the island - and cross reference them," he she said.
"Hopefully get some evidence as to who was in the cells at the time, so we might have a clearer idea about who was being locked up and when."
A pile of black swan egg shells found in a fireplace, reveal it was a popular menu item.
The artefacts will be taken to Britain for analysis by experts from the University of Manchester.
Name of source: LA Times
SOURCE: LA Times (4-24-10)
Recent work by archeologist Christopher Fisher and a team from Colorado State University, however, is shedding new light on the group's history, The Times' Thomas H. Maugh II reports. Researchers say they have discovered and mapped a previously unknown Purepechan city on Lake Patzcuaro, six miles from the remains of Tzintzuntzan, considered the civilization's last capital. Fisher believes that the recently mapped city could have operated similarly as a modern "suburb" would to the capital before the Purepecha -- or Tarascans -- consolidated their empire and moved their main ceremonial center to Tzintzuntzan.
The new urban center, still not officially named, may be as large as two square miles (five square kilometers) and includes house mounds, small temples, plazas, and a pyramid (depicted above), reports Colorado State. The discovery was made in summer 2009 as part of an ongoing survey of the Lake Patzcuaro basin, Maugh writes:
Because the lake level has been dropping, the Purepecha site now sits a couple of miles east of the lake -- Fisher is vague about the precise location because of fears of looting -- but at its height was probably no more than a quarter mile from the shore.
The site sits on a landform called malpais, a young, rugged volcanic landscape "that looks like gravel dumped into a big pile," he said.
Fisher's team used handheld computers and GPS receivers to map about 1,300 of the center's features. The team's findings were presented last week in St. Louis at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
Fisher tells La Plaza that the site is not a government INAH zone, so the risk of looting remains high.
"We are not excavating and are more concerned with the mapping and preservation of the site at the moment," Fisher said.
Name of source: Eurekalert
SOURCE: Eurekalert (4-26-10)
Tom Andrews, an archaeologist with the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife and lead researcher on the International Polar Year Ice Patch Study, is amazed at the implements being discovered by researchers.
"We're just like children opening Christmas presents. I kind of pinch myself," says Andrews.
Ice patches are accumulations of annual snow that, until recently, remained frozen all year. For millennia, caribou seeking relief from summer heat and insects have made their way to ice patches where they bed down until cooler temperatures prevail. Hunters noticed caribou were, in effect, marooned on these ice islands and took advantage.
"I'm never surprised at the brilliance of ancient hunters anymore. I feel stupid that we didn't find this sooner," says Andrews.
Ice patch archeology is a recent phenomenon that began in Yukon. In 1997, sheep hunters discovered a 4,300-year-old dart shaft in caribou dung that had become exposed as the ice receded. Scientists who investigated the site found layers of caribou dung buried between annual deposits of ice. They also discovered a repository of well-preserved artifacts.
Andrews first became aware of the importance of ice patches when word about the Yukon find started leaking out. "We began wondering if we had the same phenomenon here."
In 2000, he cobbled together funds to buy satellite imagery of specific areas in the Mackenzie Mountains and began to examine ice patches in the region. Five years later, he had raised enough to support a four-hour helicopter ride to investigate two ice patches. The trip proved fruitful.
"Low and behold, we found a willow bow." That discovery led to a successful application for federal International Polar Year funds which have allowed an interdisciplinary team of researchers to explore eight ice patches for four years.
The results have been extraordinary. Andrews and his team have found 2400-year-old spear throwing tools, a 1000-year-old ground squirrel snare, and bows and arrows dating back 850 years. Biologists involved in the project are examining dung for plant remains, insect parts, pollen and caribou parasites. Others are studying DNA evidence to track the lineage and migration patterns of caribou. Andrews also works closely with the Shutaot'ine or Mountain Dene, drawing on their guiding experience and traditional knowledge.
"The implements are truly amazing. There are wooden arrows and dart shafts so fine you can't believe someone sat down with a stone and made them."
Andrews is currently in a race against time. His IPY funds have run out and he is keenly aware that each summer, the patches continue to melt. In fact, two of the eight original patches have already disappeared.
"We realize that the ice patches are continuing to melt and we have an ethical obligation to collect these artifacts as they are exposed," says Andrews. If left on the ground, exposed artifacts would be trampled by caribou or dissolved by the acidic soils. "In a year or two the artifacts would be gone."
Name of source: BBC News
SOURCE: BBC News (4-27-10)
Noriega will argue French courts do not have jurisdiction to try him as he is immune from prosecution and because the statute of limitations has expired.
He was convicted in France in his absence in 1999 for money laundering but will face a new trial.
He spent more than 20 years in jail in the US on drugs charges.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday signed a "surrender warrant" and Noriega was taken to Miami airport and handed to French prison officials on an Air France plane.
'Incompetent'
Noriega's plane arrived in Paris shortly before 0800 local time (0600 GMT).
Noriega, who is in his mid-70s, was taken to appear before prosecutors and notified of the international arrest warrant against him.
One of Noriega's French lawyers, Olivier Metzner, said after the closed-doors hearing that his client appeared "much weakened" and was "receiving medical treatment".
Noriega was then driven away in an armoured car. In the afternoon he will return and a judge will decide whether to place him under temporary detention until his case is referred to a criminal court.
His lawyers say they will argue for his immediate release, although analysts say if he could achieve house arrest it would be a major success.
A spokesman for the French justice ministry, Guillaume Didier, said that Noriega could go on trial within two months.
However another Noriega lawyer in France, Yves Leberquier, signalled a tough legal battle ahead.
He said Noriega would challenge French jurisdiction on the grounds of his immunity from prosecution as a former head of state and because the statute of limitations had expired.
Mr Leberquier also said there were question marks about Noriega's status as a prisoner of war.
A Miami judge declared Noriega a POW after the 1992 drugs sentencing, allowing him prison privileges that included the ability to wear his military uniform and insignia.
Mr Leberquier said the French system could not accommodate such a status.
He told the Associated Press news agency: "We're not here to eventually make a moral judgment, we've got legal rules that have to be applied and respected.
"For justice to be served, the judiciary must acknowledge it is incompetent to put him on trial."
Noriega's original French sentence of 10 years was for laundering $3m in drug trafficking proceeds by buying luxury apartments in Paris.
However, part of the extradition process with the US included an agreement Noriega would be given a new trial.
Noriega had wanted to be sent back to Panama after finishing his 17-year jail sentence in 2007.
But in February the US Supreme Court rejected his final appeal against extradition to France.
Panama's government said it respected the "sovereign decision" but insisted it would seek his return to serve outstanding prison sentences there.
Noriega's lawyer in Miami, Frank Rubino, said he had not been notified of the extradition and had only learned of it from the media.
"I'm surprised [the government] didn't put a black hood over his head and drag him out in the middle of the night."
Mr Rubino said Panama was "terrified" that Noriega would return "even though all he would do is sit on his porch and play with his grandchildren. He knows where the skeletons are buried".
Invasion
Noriega became de facto ruler of Panama in 1983 and was supported by the US until 1987. But in 1988 he was indicted in the US for drug trafficking.
The US invaded following the death of a US marine in Panama City and Noriega surrendered on 3 January 1990.
In 1992, he was convicted in Miami of drug trafficking, money laundering and racketeering. He was handed a 40-year prison sentence, later reduced to 30 years, and then 17 years for good behaviour.
SOURCE: BBC News (4-27-10)
SOURCE: BBC News (4-25-10)
But local cowboys have a different concern: the sertao's spiny vegetation. Known as caatinga, it is decent fodder for cows and goats, but ferociously inhospitable to human clothes and skin.
So, while many in the region are inseparable from their parasols, cowboys can be found dressed head-to-toe in protective leather. They know it is better to get very hot than wholly perforated.
Smallholder Eduardo Araujo and his farmworker Antonio are in search of miscreant goats.
Like many local farmers, they let their herds graze freely over their neighbours' land (the caatinga seems inexhaustible).
But when the animals need rounding up, the leather quickly comes out. The two men equip themselves with boots, trousers, waistcoats, jackets, and caps, and head out into the evening.
Somehow the men's horses, themselves fitted with leather breastplates, don't buckle under the weight.
An hour later, the goats are duly penned, although in the meantime one of the farm's donkeys has fled into the bush to (probably temporary) freedom.
"For me, this is the best sport there is," says Mr Araujo. "It's a pleasure to work with the animals, to give them food and antibiotics, [to feel] that they depend on humans just as we depend on them."
Romantic past
This is the image of the north-eastern cowboy: the hero of the sertao, eschewing the delights of the Brazilian coastline and choosing instead to tame the barren interior.
It's a life that is celebrated by the Catholic Church through the annual Cowboys' Mass, as well as by local authorities.
While Rio de Janeiro has its famous Sambadrome, the sertaneja city of Petrolina takes pride in the stews and grills of its publicly-built Goat-drome.
The cowboy's life has also been etched in Brazil's national consciousness through the art and poetry of the cordel: flimsy pamphlets of rhyming verse which reached tens of millions of Brazilians in the early 20th Century and which are still sold today.
Countless cordeis feature cowboys braving the heat and exoticism of the sertao.
The only other figures to receive such attention are the bloody sertao bandits of the 1920s and 1930s. The most renowned of them, Lampiao, is reputed to have used pieces of caatinga to pierce his enemies' eyes.
Yet if the history of the sertanejo cowboy seems romantic, it shouldn't.
"Life was hard, very hard," says J Borges, the most famous modern-day cordel poet. "I prefer the north-east as it is today. It's more democratic."
Second income
At a cattle market in the town of Serra Talhada, cowboy Genesio Valeriano agrees with Mr Borges.
"When we were children, we didn't have electricity or a fan. All the work used to be by hand," he says, explaining why eight of his nine siblings migrated south to the industrial hub of Sao Paulo.
Today those siblings and their children see the sertao simply as a horse-riding retreat.
But for Mr Valeriano, the land remains something more. "Now we have machines, we have electricity. Life here is getting better. It's sweat and toil, but you get used to that and come to like it."
As the cowboys have endured, they have had to evolve. Eduardo Araujo himself is a sign of the times: he works the land that once belonged to his great-grandfather, but combines it with other jobs in the nearby town of Lagoa Grande.
"[The livestock alone] isn't not enough. The income is small. So I help out at my wife's clothes shop, doing the bureaucratic things, and I drive a bus."
He later admits to also having trained as a nurse after having cared for his sick father. How does he manage such different trades?
"It's a Brazilian knack," he says.
Railway 'lifeline'
This hints at the sertao's problem: for all the cowboys' perseverance, Brazil has many more productive areas for livestock.
There is no shortage of land in the sertao - indeed, among the caatinga bush, drug traffickers have found room to create Brazil's biggest area of marijuana production - but sometimes it seems hardly worth tending.
Rafael Fernandes, the local agriculture secretary in Serra Talhada, remains defiant: "You can't leave an area like this to become a desert. What would small producers do?"
In his office, and across the sertao, plans are being hatched to ensure that the cowboy of the north-east doesn't become an extinct breed.
The most recent hopes are in fact returns to past successes: cotton and the railway.
Mr Fernandes remembers dozens of cotton trucks leaving the area each week during his childhood.
He hopes that the current biodiesel boom will revive cotton cultivation in Serra Talhada, thereby supplementing cowboys' income.
The national government also plans to rebuild a north-eastern train line, providing cheap transport to the coast.
For Mr Fernandes as for many, the timeworn images of the Brazilian backlands can still hold true.
SOURCE: BBC News (4-26-10)
His power once held Yugoslavia together under the banner of brotherhood and unity. But now his memory divides it - or the many republics into which it has disintegrated.
Thirty years after the death of Josip Broz Tito, there are still some Serbs, Croats, Bosnians and others who describe themselves, rather wistfully, as "Yugo-nostalgics".
The country wielded an influence beyond its size.
It successfully played off one superpower against the other, and was one of the leaders of the non-aligned movement.
Mixed feelings
When the man who was Yugoslavia died in May 1980, the list of mourners at his funeral read like a roll call of world leaders.
And yet there are others who blame him for the wars that tore the region apart some 11 years after his death.
Having reported those wars myself, I have tried to trace their origins while retracing my steps through Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia, talking to Tito's comrades in arms and to some of the politicians - new and old - including Stjepan Mesic, who stepped down in February as President of Croatia.
I also spoke to Tito's youngest grandson Andre who, like Mr Mesic, is proud to be a part of the new Croatia.
'Seeds of nationalism'
But one of the primary witnesses was Raif Dizdaravic, now in his 80s, whom I met in the cavernous coffee shop of the old Hotel Europa in Sarajevo.
Once an officer in Tito's Partisans he was Yugoslavia's foreign minister, speaker of its parliament, and then one of the rotating presidents after the dictator's death.
He was there at the beginning and there at the end.
Mr Dizdaravic believes that the seeds of nationalism were sown in a new constitution in 1974, which loosened the federal structure without introducing necessary economic reforms.
Politicians in the richer republics harvested votes by wondering aloud why they should subsidise the poorer ones.
He told me: "When we actually decided to move towards decentralisation, we were not giving time to the economy. Instead we were giving time to the republics."
'Politics of identity'
The old flags and anthems were banned under Tito, but out of sight did not mean out of mind.
The dream of One Yugoslavia fell apart under the pressure of this resurgent nationalism.
I remember some of the fiercest battles of the war in Croatia were fought on the so-called Highway of Brotherhood and Unity. In the war in Bosnia, they were fought on the Bridge of Brotherhood and Unity in Sarajevo.
Tito's legend faded faster than that of any comparable historical figure of our time.
Few of the statues remain, or the Marshal Tito streets, except in Sarajevo itself.
One of the effects of the Bosnia war especially - which cost 97,000 lives over three years - has been the separation of its peoples.
Muslims, Croats and Serbs - who used to live alongside each other - mostly do so no longer. This is the politics of identity.
Sarajevo is now identifiably a Muslim city in a sense that it was not when the war began. More mosques are in it now, say the Serbs, than in Tehran.
The Bosnian Serbs in their mini state, with its capital in Banja Luka, are determined to save the separate status conferred on them by the Dayton agreement in late 1995.
It was Dayton that brought an end to the war but produced a constitution that was a recipe for deadlock.
'National space'
The Bosnian government, under the leadership of Haris Silajdzic, is pressing for something closer to a unitary state.
Both Serbs and Croats feel threatened.
One of the outcomes is that there is hardly a functioning government at all.
Elections are coming and that means playing the nationalist card yet again.
Some Bosnian Serbs are threatening a referendum on independence, a breakaway state on the model of Kosovo.
But no-one would recognise it. And Bosnia without its Serbs would not be Bosnia.
Stjepan Mesic, the Croatian ex-President, has even suggested armed intervention to break the Serbian mini-state (the Republika Serbska) into two.
Thirty years after Tito's death, there is not so much to celebrate in his legacy, except that the wars are over.
Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia are not mutually hostile states, although their entangled histories weigh heavily upon them.
They all aspire to membership of the European Union, which might over time blunt the edge of nationalism and return to them that sense of a "national space" which they have not had since the death of Tito and the fall of Yugoslavia.
Name of source: Yahoo News
SOURCE: Yahoo News (4-26-10)
The U.K. Guardian reported over the weekend that it appears unlikely that Ambrose spent "hundreds and hundreds" of hours conducting interviews and research with Eisenhower's guidance as he worked on the project between 1964 and 1969, the year Eisenhower died. "I think five hours is a generous estimation of the actual time they spent together," Tim Rives, deputy director of the Eisenhower Presidential Library, told the British paper. "I personally would push it back to less than two or three."
Rives discovered the discrepancy as the Eisenhower library was preparing to mount an exhibition on Ambrose's relationship with Eisenhower. First there was a letter from Ambrose — then a professor at Johns Hopkins University — that requested an interview with Eisenhower for a biography, a petition that contradicts Ambrose's frequent claim that Eisenhower's former executive assistant had contacted Ambrose to pen the president's life story after the assistant had read one of Ambrose's Civil War histories. Digging further, Rives found that seven interview sessions cited in the footnotes of "Supreme Commander" could not have occurred — he says Eisenhower was either meeting with other people at the times indicated or actually travelling to another part of the country. "The whole story just kind of unraveled from there," Rives told the Guardian.
The fallout from Rives' discovery won't likely be confined to the "Supreme Commander." As Richard Rayner notes in the New Yorker, more than half of the books in Ambrose's 32-title roster of publications deal with Eisenhower-related material.
Name of source: Discovery News
SOURCE: Discovery News (4-26-10)
The elaborate structure was discovered at Torre Satriano, near the southern city of Potenza, in Basilicata, a region where local people mingled with Greeks who settled along the southern coast and in Sicily from the 8th century B.C. onwards.
Much like the instruction booklets of the Swedish home furnishings company, various sections of the luxury building were inscribed with coded symbols showing how the pieces slotted together.
Name of source: News.com.au (Australia)
SOURCE: News.com.au (Australia) (4-25-10)
Mr Collett escaped the clutches of the Germans in a rickety old wooden dinghy at the height of the war, dodging bombs at sea for three weeks to warn fellow soldiers of the enemy advance.
But 69 years after his daring escape from a PoW camp in Greece to the island of Crete in April 1941, the Federal Government has told the ailing war hero "you're not eligible" for compensation.
Mr Collett believes the Government wants him to "hurry up and drop dead" in his rundown shack at Mount Ossa, north of Mackay, after the Department of Veterans' Affairs "controversially" knocked back his claim for a one-off $25,000 payment for being a PoW in Europe.
"They have shirked out of paying what they promised and if they give it to me they have to give it to the others," he said. "They don't want to pay it out even though they squander hundreds of millions of dollars in these American wars."
Mr Collett's case, which he has taken to the Federal Court on appeal and lost, was the first test for changes to Veterans' Affairs laws, introduced in 2007, to give hope to 772 surviving PoWs who were held in Europe.
Since the introduction of the compensation scheme in 2007, the Federal Government has paid out 2456 PoWs held in Europe.
But because Mr Collett escaped - which was his military duty under the law of the time - he is sadly destined to get nothing for his wartime heroics.
However, men who surrendered and served out the rest of the war in a PoW camp in Austria are all eligible for the money.
Mr Collett's lawyer, Terry O'Connor, believes an exception should be made to pay compensation to the veteran Digger, who is now too ill to fight the case on appeal to the full Federal Court.
"Here is a man that the man on the street would regard as a hero," Mr O'Connor said.
"If he stayed and chose not to resume the fight, he would have got his $25,000.
"The only reason he didn't qualify is because two hours after the Germans captured them he decided he wasn't going to sit out the war in a PoW camp and was going to fight the good fight."
Although Federal Court Justice John Logan found Mr Collett was a genuine PoW, because his unit had surrendered, he ruled the Digger had never actually been "interned" by the Germans.
However, Justice Logan accused the military of using "rather terse and cryptic entries" on Mr Collett's service record, ending in a "controversy" in Mr Collett's 100th year.
"Mr Collett had, in my opinion, the status of a PoW from the moment his unit was surrendered to the enemy by his superior officers," Justice Logan wrote.
"That is so, even though he was not at that moment or when he left the surrender area under armed German guard ... (but) ... the spending of two hours in the designated surrender area did not residence make.
"In escaping and rejoining his unit he conspicuously and commendably did his duty. That does not mean that ... he met what decades later became the eligibility criteria for a compensation payment."
Veterans' Affairs Minister Alan Griffin said the case would not be revisited and only Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner could approve an "Act of Grace" payment. The Sunday Mail has launched an online petition for Fred Collett to receive an ex-gratia payment from the Federal Government. Go to thesundaymail.com.au to add support. We need 20,000 signatures.
