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 15, 2010
NEW YORK — You couldn’t help but feel this week that a certain generation was passing, perhaps the last of the great liberal interventionists who felt that America needed to lead the world in the progress of freedom.
I’m speaking first and foremost of the death on Monday of Richard C. Holbrooke, President Barack Obama’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan and a man who deserved the phrase the president used to describe him: a “towering figure.”...
Mr. Ho
Source: Shalom Life (Canada)
December 14, 2010
On Sunday, Israel, along with other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean, got a taste of the region’s winter weather, as parts of the ancient archeological port of Caesarea were damaged in the storm.
A more modern sea wall that had been built around Caesarea fell in the storm, leaving the rest of the site exposed to the harsh waves.
Archeologists had actually predicted the area would eventually suffer damage at the hands of the sea, unless substantial restoration work cou
Source: Andina (Peru)
December 13, 2010
Rangers at the Cordillera de Colan Reserved Zone in Amazonas, northern Peru, have found what is believed to be an Inca citadel as well as some stone and metal artifacts during a routine patrolling in the Cajaruro district.
Biologist Leyda Gueiler said the metal artifact (pictured) seems to be a war shield while the stone ornaments were carved into the shape of leaves.
"This well preserved artifact is strong evidence that the ancient cultures in Amazonas did develop metal
Source: Salisbury Journal (UK)
December 12, 2010
DRUID leader King Arthur Pendragon went to The Royal Courts of Justice in London last week in a bid to see the return of cremated human remains taken from Stonehenge in 2008.
The Senior Druid and Pagan Priest presented a 36-page document asking for a Judicial Review on the decision by the Minister of Justice to grant Sheffield University an extension to retain the remains for five years.
King Arthur said: ‘This is not just a Druid or Pagan issue, and we have the support
Source: National Parks Traveler
December 15, 2010
The National Park System has grown by one with the formal establishment of the President William Jefferson Clinton Birthplace Home National Historic Site in Hope, Arkansas.
"We are very proud to include this important historical birthplace home within the National Park System and to interpret the story of President William Jefferson Clinton's early, small-town life for the American public,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Tuesday in announcing the site's addition to the par
Source: BBC News
December 14, 2010
Alderney is celebrating 65 years of freedom since it was used for German concentration camps during World War II.
A Homecoming Day community service is being held at 1100 GMT at Braye Harbour involving all the island's churches and St Anne's School choir.
Co-ordinator Barbara Benfield said it would end with Charlie Greenslade playing the same cornet he played to welcome islanders home in 1945.
"[It's] very emotional," she said.
In Jun
Source: BBC News
December 14, 2010
The Dowager Duchess of Devonshire is the youngest and last surviving of the six aristocratic Mitford sisters who were famed for their high profile relationships and political affiliations.
She talks to Newsnight's Kirsty Wark about her extraordinary life - including joining her sister Unity for tea with Adolf Hitler when he was leader of Germany....
Source: BBC News
December 15, 2010
A terror suspect living in Manchester was part of an al-Qaeda plot to launch co-ordinated international bombings, US Justice Department lawyers have said.
The lawyers are seeking to extradite Abid Naseer to the US to stand trial over alleged plots to plant bombs in Manchester, New York and Norway.
Mr Naseer carried out reconnaisance and bought material for bombs, David Perry QC told Westminster Magistrates' Court.
The 24-year-old, who came from Pakistan on
Source: WaPo
December 14, 2010
LONDON -- After nine months of tests, researchers in France have identified the head of France's King Henry IV, who was assassinated in 1610 aged 57. The scientific tests helped identify the late monarch's embalmed head, which was shuffled between private collections ever since it disappeared during the French Revolution in 1793.
The results of the research identifying Henry IV's head were published online Wednesday in the medical journal, BMJ.
Henry IV was buried in th
Source: WaPo
December 14, 2010
IOTO, Japan -- In a rare visit to Iwo Jima, Japan's prime minister offered prayers at two recently discovered mass graves and vowed to find remains of 12,000 fallen soldiers still missing on the remote island after some of World War II's fiercest fighting.
Kneeling in a deep pit with dozens of remains spread out before him, Naoto Kan clasped his hands in prayer Tuesday and then helped searchers exhume a badly decayed set of bones swathed in a faded green body bag. Workers said it wa
Source: WaPo
December 14, 2010
Twelve years ago, the U.S. Agency for International Development turned its lobby in the Ronald Reagan Building into a shrine to then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. Its centerpiece was an 800-pound bronze plaque, 6 feet wide by about 9 feet high, bolted to a marble wall.
The plaque, which cost $27,388, plus tens of thousands more for shipping and installation, had an engraved excerpt from a speech she gave about "expanding the circle of human dignity."
Then
Source: NYT
December 14, 2010
MARIEHAMN, Finland — When Christian Ekstrom, a local diver, finally got to explore a sunken two-masted schooner he had known about for years, he found bottles, lots of bottles, so he brought one to the surface.
“I said, ‘Let’s taste some sea water,’ ” he said with a laugh, over coffee recently. “So I tasted it straight from the bottle. It was then that I noticed, ‘This is not sea water.’ ”
Mr. Ekstrom, 31, a compact man with a shock of blond hair, brought the bottle to
Source: NYT
December 15, 2010
“We are against forcing all citizens, regardless of need, into a compulsory government program,” said one prominent critic of the new health care law. It is socialized medicine, he argued. If it stands, he said, “one of these days, you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.”
The health care law in question was Medicare, and the critic was Ronald Reagan. He made the leap from ac
Source: Jewish Telegraph Agency
December 14, 2010
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- It should have been ancient, if unsavory, news: A cavalier reference to gassing Jews, an aside in a conversation nearly 40 years old.
But the aside was pronounced by Henry Kissinger, a German-born Jew who fled Nazi horrors as a child and who has been honored by multiple Jewish organizations as one of Israel’s saviors during its darkest days, when he was secretary of state to President Nixon.
“If they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it
Source: AFP
December 14, 2010
JERUSALEM (AFP) – A massive storm that battered the eastern Mediterranean caused the collapse of a cliff in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, revealing a rare Roman-era marble statue, officials said on Tuesday.
"The big storm earlier this week caused the cliff to collapse and a statue from Roman times was found by a passer-by," said Yoli Schwartz, spokeswoman for the Israel Antiquities Authority.
The white marble statue of a woman, which weighs about 200
Source: China Post/Asia News
December 14, 2010
BEIJING, China - More than 30 archaeological shipwreck sites have been discovered off China's shoreline, the national oceanic body has reportedly said.
The shipwrecks were discovered during a research project called 908, China News Service quoted an unidentified official with the State Oceanic Administration's department of science and technology as saying.
The findings were released during a seminar on the project in Xiamen, Fujian province....
Source: MSNBC
December 13, 2010
Prehistoric humans, along with Neanderthals and Homo antecessor, made meals of each other, suggests new research on probable human teeth marks found on prehistoric human bones.
The findings, which will be published in the January issue of The Journal of Human Evolution, support prior theories that the first humans to re-colonize Britain after the last ice age practiced nutritional cannibalism 12,000 years ago at a site called Gough's Cave in what is now Somerset, England.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
December 13, 2010
A 1,400-year-old monastery in the United Arab Emirates that is the only pre-Islamic Christian site in the region has opened to the public.
The site at Sir Bani Yas island in Abu Dhabi dates back to around 600AD. It was built by a community of 30 to 40 monks and is understood to have been established by pilgrims travelling from India.
The remains, which also include a church, chapel and tower, were unearthed in 1992 during an archaeological study. Excavations will contin
Source: WaPo
December 13, 2010
The Virginia Military Institute (VMI) and the
Stonewall Jackson House Foundation are close to finalizing an agreement that would transfer the Lexington, Va., house museum where VMI professor Thomas Jackson lived for two years to the institute, according to officials involved in the transaction.
In May, the foundation approached VMI about acquiring the historic house as a way to protect the building and its collections, which the foundation purchased in 1994. Foundation execut
Source: McClatchy Newspapers
December 11, 2010
COLUMBIA, S.C. | Members of South Carolina’s NAACP will protest a “secession ball” in Charleston this month that will commemorate the 150th anniversary of South Carolina’s secession from the Union.
State NAACP leaders held two news conferences last week, spreading the word they will object to any sesquicentennial events that they deem disrespectful.
“We are not opposed to observances,” said Lonnie Randolph, state president of the National Association for the Advancement
