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: CNN
December 13, 2010
Richard C. Holbrooke, the high-octane diplomat who spearheaded the end of the Bosnian war and most recently served as the Obama administration's point man in the volatile Afghan-Pakistani war zone, has died, officials said.
The 69-year-old diplomat died Monday at George Washington University Hospital in Washington. He was admitted last Friday after feeling ill. Doctors performed surgery Saturday to repair a tear in his aorta.
One of the world's most recognizable diploma
Source: CNN
December 13, 2010
Ukraine says it will lift restrictions on tourism in the zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 2011, formally opening the scene of the world's worst nuclear accident to visitors.
A limited number of visitors already are allowed into the 30-kilometer (19-mile) exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, which exploded and burned in 1986. The Ukrainian government will present a detailed plan for lifting the remaining restrictions on travel to the area December
Source: Journal-Gazette and Times Courier
December 10, 2010
CHARLESTON - The Eastern Illinois University Naming Committee voted Tuesday to recommend not changing Douglas Hall's namesake from Stephen Douglas to Frederick Douglass.
The committee also suggested that EIU take steps to emphasize that Douglas Hall, part of a complex with Lincoln Hall, is named as part of a commemoration of the Sept. 18, 1858, Lincoln-Douglas debate in Charleston, not in tribute to Stephen Douglas as an individual, and to promote this debate history.
&
Source: Huffington Post
December 10, 2010
WASHINGTON -- When former President Bill Clinton visits the White House on Friday, both he and Obama will have no shortage of political conversation topics. Chief among them will be reversing the course of a presidency stalled out by a mid-term electoral drubbing -- a fork in the road that both have faced. Somewhere lower down the list will be dealing with insurrection within the party ranks.
While talk has been pervasive this past week over the possibility (or lack thereof) of a pr
Source: Press Release
December 10, 2010
(Spring Hill, Tenn.) – The Civil War Preservation Trust is please to announce that this week it successfully closed on the purchase of an 84-acre portion of the Spring Hill battlefield from General Motors, LLC, ensuring that the historic landscape will be protected forever. Significant funding for the $2 million acquisition was provided by a grant from the American Battlefield Protection Program, an arm of the National Park Service.
“The completion of this landmark transaction is g
Source: CNN.com
December 9, 2010
New York (CNN) -- One of the most expensive sports-related documents, Dr. James Naismith's "Founding Rules of Basketball," will be up for auction Friday in New York.
The original rules are 119 years old and still intact. Naismith's youngest grandson, Ian, owner of the pages, will sell the family treasure to benefit the Naismith Foundation for children.
The two pages may go for at least $2 million.
"This is the birth certificate. It started he
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
December 11, 2010
Nazi hunters from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre say they will continue to press for the extradition of an 89-year-old Perth man to Hungary for questioning over alleged war crimes, after another Federal Court decision in his favour on Friday.
Charles Zentai is accused of being one of three Nazi-backed Hungarian soldiers who assaulted and murdered Jewish teenager Peter Balazs in Budapest in November 1944.
In 2005, a Hungarian military judge issued an arrest warrant for Mr Z
Source: WaPo
December 9, 2010
John Demjanjuk's attorney has filed a motion in the Munich state court where Demjanjuk is on trial saying his client's rights are being violated by keeping him in jail and demanding damages "in the millions."...
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 11, 2010
The rooms where Gen Francisco Franco lived for much of his 36 year dictatorship have been closed to the public having been declared of "no historical or cultural interest".
The Palace of El Pardo, an old royal residence set in hunting grounds on the northeastern outskirts of Madrid, served as el Caudillo's home following his victory in the Spanish Civil War until his death in 1975.
But guided tours around the palace will no longer include a look into his priva
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 11, 2010
The only U.S. flag not captured or lost during George Armstrong Custer's Last Stand at the Battle of Little Bighorn in southeastern Montana sold at auction on Friday for £1.4 million.
The 7th U.S. Cavalry flag – known as a "guidon" for it's swallow-tailed shape – was sold by Sotheby's in New York on behalf of the Detroit Institute of Arts, which bought the flag for just $54 ($34) in 1895.
The buyer was identified only as an American private collector.
Source: AP
December 11, 2010
The daughters of a slain American Indian Movement activist said Saturday they are pleased with the latest conviction in the 35-year-old murder case but remain convinced there are others who haven't been charged.
Former AIM member John Graham was convicted Friday in the murder of Annie Mae Aquash in 1975 on South Dakota's Pine Ridge reservation. Her death remains synonymous with AIM and its often-violent clashes with federal agents in the 1970s.
Marty Jackley, the state
Source: WaPo
December 11, 2010
NEW YORK — Declassified CIA files reveal that US intelligence officials went to great lengths to protect a Ukrainian fascist leader and suspected Nazi collaborator from prosecution after World War II and set him up in a New York office to wage covert war against the Soviet Union, according to a new report to Congress.
Mykola Lebed led an underground movement to undermine the Kremlin and conduct guerrilla operations for the CIA during the Cold War, said the report, prepared by two sc
Source: BBC News
December 8, 2010
A rare Native American canoe thought to be more than 250 years old has been found on a family estate in Cornwall.
The birch bark canoe was discovered in a barn on the Enys estate near Penryn.
It is believed the Canadian boat was brought to Cornwall by Lt John Enys who fought in Quebec during the American War of Independence.
The canoe will be preserved and put on display to the public at the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth before being repatriated to C
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 12, 2010
The BBC will devote nearly a whole day of Radio 4 to readings from the King James Bible to mark the 400th anniversary of its publication.
Regular shows will be dropped from the schedule to make way for the readings, which will run from early morning till midnight.
While the move has been welcomed by the Church, it has prompted secularists to complain to the BBC at what they believe is "excessive" coverage....
Source: WaPo
December 13, 2010
RICHMOND - A federal judge in Virginia ruled Monday that a key provision of the nation's sweeping health-care overhaul is unconstitutional, the most significant legal setback so far for President Obama's signature domestic initiative.
U.S. District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson found that Congress could not order individuals to buy health insurance.
In a 42-page opinion, Hudson said the provision of the law that requires most individuals to get insurance or pay a fine by
Source: Hurriyet (Turkey)
December 13, 2010
The ancient city of Allianoi, near Turkey’s Aegean coast, has been completely covered with sand in preparation for building a dam in the area, despite protests from activists and archaeologists.
Though officials say covering the Roman-era spa settlement with sand is the only way to protect the ruins while they are submerged under the waters of the new dam, experts disagree with that assessment.
“The method is obsolete and it will destroy, rather than protect, the ancien
Source: Art Daily
December 13, 2010
The recent finding of 2 sculptures with the shape of a serpent’s head that 1,500 years ago were part of the Ballgame at the Maya city of Tonina, Chiapas today, were found by archaeologists of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH). This discovery allows the consolidation of the hypotheses of how this ritual place looked like in the Prehispanic age; due to its architectural position it is the one that resembles more the one described in Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the Mayas.
Source: Discovery News
December 10, 2010
A tiny bone fragment could provide crucial information about the fate of Amelia Earhart, the legendary pilot who disappeared 73 years ago while flying over the Pacific Ocean in a record attempt to fly around the world at the equator.
Collected on Nikumaroro, an uninhabited tropical island in the southwestern Pacific republic of Kiribati, the bone has raised the interest of The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR), which has long been investigating the Earhart
Source: Guardian (UK)
December 13, 2010
The country has changed so much that young people can't conceive their grandparents had any link to the Nazis.
n a scenario that seems like it could have been written as a bad comedy sketch, a Japanese discount chain recently recalled a "Hitler costume" from its shelves after complaints from an American Jewish group. Such a move is reminiscent of the clever Mitchell and Webb skit where two vaingloriously unaware Nazi SS soldiers are chatting and one suddenly remarks to the
Source: Baltimore Sun
December 13, 2010
The ornate baton of a Nazi field marshal convicted of war crimes against Italian citizens during World War II caused a sensation in Towson Saturday when it brought $731,600 at auction, far more than Alex Cooper auctioneers or the baton's owner ever expected.
The 19-inch ceremonial baton, once the property of Field Marshal Albert Kesselring of Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe, had been listed with an estimated value of between $10,000 and $15,000 by Alex Cooper before the auction. The baton
