This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 21, 2010
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is about to make a public plea for the United States to release Jonathan Pollard, an Israeli spy jailed 25 years ago, his office said on Tuesday.
Mr Netanyahu has decided to "accede to Jonathan Pollard's personal request and will, in the coming days, officially and publicly appeal to US President Barack Obama regarding Pollard's release," his office said.
Pollard, a former US Navy analyst, is serving a life sentence
Source: AP
December 21, 2010
Two Dutch reporters were questioned by police Tuesday after a convicted Nazi criminal complained they had violated his privacy by secretly filming him in his room at a retirement home.
Heinrich Boere, 89, was sentenced to life in prison earlier this year for killing Dutch civilians during World War II. His appeal was rejected by Germany's highest criminal appeals court on Monday, but he continues to live in freedom in Eschweiler, Germany, pending a procedure to have him jailed.
Source: AP
December 21, 2010
Israel's Holocaust memorial says it has now identified four million of the six million Jews who were killed by Nazis in the Holocaust of World War II.
Yad Vashem has made the recovery of the names a main mission in order to keep the memory of the murdered Jews alive.
In 2004, it launched a database of victims' names on its website. It had 3 million names at the time and since then has been compiling the names of other victims. It said Tuesday that the database now has 4
Source: CNN
December 21, 2010
An investigation into the release of convicted Pan Am Flight 103 bomber Abdelbeset al Megrahi has found the medical prognosis used to justify his release from a Scottish prison "was inaccurate and unsupported by medical science," according to a U.S. Senate report released Tuesday.
The release of the report, led by Sen. Robert Menendez, D-New Jersey, coincided with the 22nd anniversary of the bombing, which occurred over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988, killing 259 pe
Source: CNN
December 21, 2010
A group of 9/11 first responders joined lawmakers in Washington on Tuesday to urge the Senate passage of a health care bill meant to provide free medical treatment to those suffering from the health effects of working in and near ground zero following the 2001 attacks.
In the years following the attacks, health experts have noted respiratory and mental health conditions, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, in those who engaged in ground zero rescue and cleanup efforts.
Source: LA Times
December 19, 2010
Reporting from Newport News, Va. —
When archaeologists and Navy divers recovered the warship Monitor's steam engine from the Atlantic in 2001, the pioneering Civil War propulsion unit was enshrouded in a thick layer of marine concretion.
Sand, mud and corrosion combined with minerals in the deep waters off Cape Hatteras, N.C., to cloak every feature of Swedish American inventor John Ericsson's ingenious machine, and they continued to envelop the 30-ton artifact after nine yea
Source: MSNBC
December 9, 2010
The great grandmother of Jesus was a woman named Ismeria, according to Florentine medieval manuscripts analyzed by a historian.
The legend of St. Ismeria, presented in the current Journal of Medieval History, sheds light on both the Biblical Virgin Mary's family and also on religious and cultural values of 14th-century Florence.
"I don't think any other woman is mentioned" as Mary's grandmother in the Bible, Catherine Lawless, author of the paper, told Discov
Source: LA Times
December 19, 2010
Reporting from Albuquerque —
Nearly 130 years after the death of Henry McCarty, alias William Bonney, but better known as Billy the Kid, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson will take some of the final hours of his administration to decide whether to pardon the baby-faced gunslinger.
Richardson will review evidence that in 1881, one of his predecessors promised to pardon Bonney for killing a sheriff in return for his testimony in a murder case. The record suggests that New Mexico
Source: AOL News
December 21, 2010
Scientists are trying to unravel the mystery of whether pills found in a 2,000-year-old shipwreck were, in fact, created and used as effective plant-based medicines.
And the bigger question: Could the ingredients of these ancient tablets still work to help with modern illnesses?
Around 130 B.C., a ship, identified as the Relitto del Pozzino, sank off Tuscany, Italy. Among the artifacts found on board in 1989 were glass cups, a pitcher and ceramics, all of which suggeste
Source: ANA-MPA
December 21, 2010
Archaeological finds were located during maintenance works on the electric train (ISAP) line tracks in the eponymous Thission district of central Athens, which lies on the boundary of the Acropolis archaeological site and near the ancient Agora and Forum.
An announcement on Friday informed passengers that the Monastiraki-Thission section of the line will open after the conclusion of the Archaeological Service's excavations.
Source: Yahoo News
December 20, 2010
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour won't say if he's running for president in 2012, but he's already working to shape the narrative around a potential bid, especially when it comes to issues like race and his background as a former lobbyist.
In an interview with the Weekly Standard's Andrew Ferguson, the GOP governor offers up some provocative comments about growing up in the racially charged deep South in the 1960s. By Barbour's account, things weren't "that bad" in his homet
Source: BBC News
December 17, 2010
Veteran US broadcaster Larry King has presented the final edition of his long-running CNN talk show after 25 years with the cable news channel.
The 77-year-old fought back tears as he told his audience: "Thank you, and instead of Goodbye, how about So Long?"
President Barack Obama paid tribute to the star in a taped message, in which he said his show had "opened our eyes to the world beyond our living rooms".
Larry King Live has ended af
Source: Korea Herald
December 20, 2010
Korea’s ancient royal books, looted by the French navy in the late 19th century and kept by the National Library of France until now, may return to Korea in May next year, officials at the Foreign Ministry said Monday.
Their comments came one month after President Lee Myung-bak and his French counterpart Nicholas Sarkozy agreed on the return of 297 books of “Uigwe,” or royal protocols of the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910) on the sidelines of the G20 Seoul Summit on Nov. 12.
Source: AAP
December 21, 2010
An elderly man will spend Christmas behind bars for lying about being a prisoner of war in order to scam welfare payments.
Arthur "Rex" Crane, 84, posed as a World War II veteran for 22 years before his deceit was finally uncovered in 2009 by a military historian who thought his story didn't add up.
Before his fraud was exposed, however, the former president of the Ex-POW Association of Australia claimed $689,491 in commonwealth war pension and disability paym
Source: BBC News
December 21, 2010
Spanish police have recovered stolen art worth millions of euros after one of the thieves tried to sell a sculpture to a scrap dealer.
Thirty-five works by Pablo Picasso, Eduardo Chillida and others were stolen from a warehouse south of Madrid on 27 November.
Police were tipped off that Chillida's bench-like 'Topos IV', worth 800,000 euros (£675,000), had been offered to a scrapyard for 30 euros (£25).
The haul was found nearby.
When the heist
Source: NYT
December 21, 2010
Deep in a cave in the forests of northern Spain are the remains of a gruesome massacre. The first clues came to light in 1994, when explorers came across a pair of what they thought were human jawbones in the cave, called El Sidrón. At first, the bones were believed to date to the Spanish Civil War. Back then, Republican fighters used the cave as a hide-out. The police discovered more bone fragments in El Sidrón, which they sent to forensic scientists, who determined that the bones did not belon
Source: NYT
December 20, 2010
For nearly 60 years the portrait of a baby-faced Philip IV by Velázquez hung in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s European paintings galleries, a stunning example of the only 110 or so known canvases by that 17th-century Spanish master. Majestic in size, it was rare in its depiction of a young, uncertain monarch and was the earliest known portrait of Philip by Velázquez, who, as the king’s court painter, went on to record his image for decades.
So it was quite a shock when, in 1973,
Source: Press Release
December 15, 2010
NOMINATE AN ELEMENTARY TEACHER $10,000 NATIONAL HISTORY TEACHER OF THE YEAR AWARDNomination deadline: February 1, 2011
National winner receives: $10,000
State winners each receive: $1,000 Do you know an outstanding K-6 teacher passionate about American history? All Social Studies and elementary educators who teach American History are welcome.The National History Teacher of the Year Award
Source: ABC News
December 20, 2010
It's been 150 years since South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union ahead of Civil War, and today the legacy of that watershed moment in American history remains a flashpoint for debate.
Organizers say the "Secession Gala" in Charleston tonight will commemorate the event as a show of courage in the face of encroachment by the federal government on state's rights. But some historians and civil rights groups are protesting the event as the glorification
Source: NYT
December 21, 2010
SUITLAND, Md. — Stashed in a Smithsonian storage building in this Washington suburb are some of the engineering wonders of the space race.
These marvels are far smaller than the towering rockets and streamlined spacecraft that took men into orbit and to the Moon. Far softer, too. They are the spacesuits that kept the astronauts alive beyond Earth.
Most of the National Air and Space Museum’s collection of about 300 spacesuits is here, laid out five high on steel racks in
