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: NYT
December 16, 2010
WASHINGTON — At a dinner for Iowa Democrats back in November 2007, Senator Barack Obama lobbed a less than subtle insult in the direction of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, seated just a few feet away. “Triangulating and poll-driven positions because we’re worried about what Mitt or Rudy might say about us,” Mr. Obama said, referring to two of their Republican rivals, “just won’t do.”
Now the tax deal approved by the House late Thursday has given rise to an emotional debate among De
Source: NYT
December 16, 2010
WASHINGTON — Nightfall on the Kennedy era in Washington looks like this: Representative Patrick J. Kennedy’s office space surrendered to a Republican, his family memorabilia in boxes, and Mr. Kennedy yearning for a role away from the public eye.
When the lame-duck session of Congress wraps up, Mr. Kennedy, 43, will return to Rhode Island, settling into his recently renovated farmhouse in Portsmouth. When his eighth term ends early next month, it will be the first time since 1947 — w
Source: NYT
December 16, 2010
With little fanfare, Google has made a mammoth database culled from nearly 5.2 million digitized books available to the public for free downloads and online searches, opening a new landscape of possibilities for research and education in the humanities.
The digital storehouse, which comprises words and short phrases as well as a year-by-year count of how often they appear, represents the first time a data set of this magnitude and searching tools are at the disposal of Ph.D.’s, mid
Source: AFP
December 16, 2010
Nine people are under investigation for two collapses in the famous ancient Roman city of Pompeii that shocked the culture world last month, judicial sources said on Thursday.
An ancient training centre for gladiators collapsed into rubble in Pompeii on November 6 and a wall protecting a home known as the House of the Moralist fell down on November 30, causing widespread international outrage.
Among the people under investigation by prosecutors in nearby Torre Annunziat
Source: BBC
December 16, 2010
A Scots writer has suggested a new link between the famous Felix Mendelssohn composition "Hebrides Overture" and the Scottish landmark which inspired it.
Iain Thornber claims the work, also known as "Fingals Cave", was purposely launched on the only day of the year the cave is illuminated by sunlight.
The German composer completed the initial draft on 16 December 1830.
Mr Thornber said the cave is only fully illuminated around this date
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 15, 2010
Senior Kenyan politicians have been accused of leading violence that left 1,200 people dead and more than half a million displaced following elections almost three years ago.
The International Criminal Court on Wednesday accused six men including the deputy prime minister and the head of the civil service of crimes against humanity.
The Hague-based court’s chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, disclosed the names after presenting 158 pages of evidence to judges and as
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 16, 2010
The bodies of Poland's late president, his wife and those who died along with them in a plane crash may be exhumed because of fears the remains may have been mixed up.
A lawyer representing families of some of the victims of the April 10 disaster, which claimed 96 lives when President Lech Kaczynski's plane crashed in Russia, said he has information showing that the Russian autopsy reports were so muddled that it is probable that parts of different people may have been buried in di
Source: AP
December 16, 2010
Archaeologists found what may be a trove of 3,400 year old statues on the west bank of the ancient temple city Luxor, said the head of Egypt's antiquities department on Thursday.
Teams unearthed two rose granite statue fragments from an area west of the burial temple of Pharaoh Amenhotep III earlier this week, said Zahi Hawass.
One fragment, the first of its kind, he said, depicts the baboon head of the god Hapi with a human body. The other is a fragment of a statue of
Source: CHE
December 16, 2010
The English language is going through a time of huge growth. Humanity is forgetting its history more rapidly each year. And celebrities are losing their fame faster than in the past.
Those are some of the findings in a paper published on Thursday in the journal Science by a Harvard-led team of researchers. The scholars quantified cultural trends by investigating the frequency with which words appeared over time in a database of about 5.2 million books, roughly 4 percent of all volum
Source: Moscow Times
December 16, 2010
Yevgeny Dzhugashvili, grandson of late Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, has filed a defamation lawsuit against the State Duma, seeking 100 million rubles ($3.2 million) over legislature blaming his grandfather for the 1940 Katyn massacre....
Source: Independent (UK)
December 16, 2010
...Human rights campaigners often suggest that child-soldiering is the product of modern, post-colonial conflict, but that's obviously untrue. Goliath may have fatally underestimated David "for he was but a youth, ruddy and of fair countenance", but children were a constant presence on the pre-industrial battlefield, serving as spear-carriers, mechanics and messengers for the Greeks and Romans, and using conflict to mark their transition into adulthood in tribal societies from the Nati
Source: The Local (Germany)
December 16, 2010
The North Rhine-Westphalian city of Dülmen struck Adolf Hitler from its list of honorary citizens on Thursday. But the Nazi dictator still retains similar recognition in towns across Germany, experts say.
After two previous attempts failed, the Dülmen city council plans to remove Hitler, the town’s fifth honorary citizen, from the list posthumously – a move historians say is long overdue.
On April 6, 1933 city officials voted unanimously to honour the Nazi leader.
Source: Jackson Sun
December 16, 2010
HOLLOW ROCK — Several people remarked Wednesday morning on the unusually frigid weather that coincidentally mirrored the day of a historic visit to a tiny West Tennessee city nearly two centuries ago.
About 25 people, bundled in coats as freezing rain briefly descended, gathered on U.S. 70 in Hollow Rock, where French aristocrats Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont spent four days at a former log cabin inn. The ceremony included the unveiling of a state marker detailing th
Source: The State (SC)
December 16, 2010
CHARLESTON — - Organizers of Civil War anniversary events sought Wednesday to distance themselves from a ball being held Monday to celebrate secession.
“I won’t be going,” Charleston Mayor Joe Riley said after a news conference held at the Historic Charleston Foundation’s headquarters on East Bay Street, where the mayor and those organizing events to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War underscored their desire to bring attention to historic events without
Source: WaPo
December 16, 2010
MEXICO CITY -- Mexican researchers said Wednesday they have identified jaw bones found in the pre-Hispanic ruins of Teotihuacan as those of wolf-dogs that were apparently crossbred as a symbol of the city's warriors.
The National Institute of Anthropology and History said the jaw bones were found during excavations in 2004 and are the first physical evidence of what appears to be intentional crossbreeding in ancient Mexican cultures.
The jaw bones were found in a warrio
Source: WaPo
December 16, 2010
In protest of the removal of a controversial video, Canadian artist AA Bronson, one of the pioneers of gay-themed contemporary art, on Wednesday asked for a major work of his to be withdrawn from the Smithsonian exhibition, "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture," which explores imagery by and about homosexuals.
The exhibition, at the National Portrait Gallery through Feb. 13, has been the source of controversy since Nov. 30, when Christian activists and
Source: WaPo
December 15, 2010
NEW YORK - The Catholic League's William Donohue, the man who scared the Smithsonian into pulling a David Wojnarowicz video from a highly acclaimed exhibition of gay and lesbian portraiture at the National Portrait Gallery, takes a pragmatic view of the culture wars.
"You have to know when to step on the gas and when to step on the brakes," Donohue said Wednesday afternoon from his 34th-floor office in midtown Manhattan. Which is one reason that he was going a for a beer
Source: WaPo
December 16, 2010
An official push to rehabilitate the reputation of a long-deceased Air Force general has hit a wall in the Senate, where some of the most influential names in U.S. foreign policy are tangling, once again, over fateful decisions from the Vietnam War.
After years of trying, the family of Gen. John D. Lavelle thought it had achieved a breakthrough in August, when the White House formally asked the Senate to restore his honor, 38 years after the four-star commander was fired and demote
Source: NYT
December 15, 2010
On the brink of extinction last spring, the nonprofit organization charged with restoring Ellis Island will benefit from a $100,000 gift from American Express, the credit card company is to announce on Thursday.
“It’s an enormous boost,” said Judith R. McAlpin, the president of the organization, Save Ellis Island. “American Express has long been associated with the very best in historic preservation. It’s like the Good Housekeeping seal of approval.”...
Source: NYT
December 16, 2010
WASHINGTON — When President Obama signed the health care bill into law last spring, White House aides predicted that the political benefit to their party would be almost immediate, going so far as to suggest that some provisions, like the one requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions, would help Democratic chances in the November elections....
The pattern here is perhaps best illustrated by Social Security. Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the program into law in 19
