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 9, 2010
The Richard Nixon Presidential Library will open a trove of records at the facility and online Thursday, including 265 hours of White House tapes, officials said.
The library, in Yorba Linda, California, will also open more than 140,000 pages of presidential records and 75 hours of video oral histories, officials said. The library is part of the National Archives.
The White House tapes span February 1973 to March 1973 and include a few from early April 1973. There are n
Source: AFP
December 7, 2010
PARIS (AFP) – Mummies decaying in Siberia, pyramids vanishing under the sand in Sudan, Maya temples collapsing: climate change risks destroying countless treasures from our shared past, archaeologists warn.
Melting ice can unlock ancient secrets from the ground, as with the discovery in 1991 of "Oetzi", a 5,300-year-old warrior whose body had been preserved through the millennia inside an Alpine glacier.
But as ice caps melt, deserts spread, ocean levels rise
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 9, 2010
A lost speech by Liu Xiaobo that has never never previously been published in the West has been unearth in which he attacks China's rise to power and the country's moral and cultural bankruptcy.
In it he compares modern China to T.S.Eliot's The Waste Land and says: "A nation, ignoring its youth and children, can build all the skyscrapers it wants, but in fact is only using its cloud-capped rise to decorate hell.".
The speech, given two years ago when he was a
Source: BBC
December 9, 2010
Russia has honoured British Cold War spy Kim Philby with a plaque at the headquarters of the country's foreign intelligence agency.
Philby, who defected to the Soviet Union in 1963, is depicted in a sculptured portrait on the plaque as the two-faced Roman god of gates, Janus.
Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov attended the ceremony in Moscow.
Philby passed secrets to the Soviets while working for British intelligence.
Philby, who died in 1988
Source: BBC
December 9, 2010
Artefacts discovered at a Roman villa near Aberystwyth are making archaeologists rethink the way the Romans lived in the area.
The remains of the 4th Century building were discovered at Abermagwr in 2006 and confirmed by excavations in July 2010.
And now some of the most important finds at the dig will go on display at Aberystwyth's Ceredigion Museum.
They include pieces of a Roman cooking pot and Roman coins.
Also exhibited will be fragment
Source: BBC
December 9, 2010
A historic tree of religious significance in Glastonbury has been cut down overnight, prompting a police investigation.
The Holy Thorn tree on Wearyall Hill is thought to have been planted by Joseph of Arimathea nearly 2,000 years ago.
There are several Holy Thorn trees located around Glastonbury.
On Wednesday, a ceremony was held at nearby St John's Church where a sprig from the Holy Thorn was cut for the Queen.
This is a tradition which dates
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 8, 2010
Fourteen officials from Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship went on trial in absentia in Paris on Wednesday over the disappearance of four French citizens in the mid-1970s.
The Frenchmen were among more than 3,000 leftists murdered for political reasons during the 'Dirty War' during the 1973-1990 rule of Gen Pinochet. Many "vanished", likely kidnapped and killed, then buried in unmarked graves, leaving relatives unable to properly mourn their dead.
None of the a
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 9, 2010
Barack Obama was being assailed from all sides on Thursday night as his own party launched a rebellion in Congress and Sarah Palin ramped up her potential White House bid with a withering verbal assault on the American president.
Adding insult on one of the worst days of his presidency, Mrs Palin compared Mr Obama with Jimmy Carter, a Democrat who served one term and is regarded as one of the least successful US presidents in the post-war era.
When asked what she thou
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 9, 2010
China's attempts to upstage the Nobel Peace Prize with a rival version ended in near-farce in Beijing yesterday when the winner of the inaugural Confucius Peace Prize failed to show up to collect his prize.
But unlike Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese dissident who is unable to attend today's ceremony because he's in a Chinese prison, the first Confucius laureate said he wouldn't attend because he'd never heard of the prize in the first place.
The office of former Taiwanese vice
Source: AP
December 9, 2010
Dov Shilansky, a former Israeli parliament speaker and advocate for memorializing the victims of the Nazi Holocaust of World War II, died Thursday, a parliament official said. He was 86.
Shilansky died at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, parliament spokesman Giora Pordes told The Associated Press.
The diminutive politician with an unruly thatch of white hair was known for his hard-line political views alongside an easygoing manner and ready smile....
Source: CNN
December 9, 2010
A U.S. soldier who had been missing in action for 92 years will be buried with full military honors Thursday.
On Wednesday, the Department of Defense's POW/Missing Personnel Office said the remains of Army Private Henry A. Weikel, 28, of Mt. Carmel, Pennsylvania, had been identified and returned to his family for burial.
Weikel will be laid to rest in Annville, Pennsylvania, the office said in a statement.
Weikel was part of the 60th Infantry Regiment, 1st
Source: ABC News
December 8, 2010
The estate tax at a glance:
— The modern estate tax was enacted in 1916, imposing a 10 percent tax on the portion of estates above $50,000.
— The rate peaked at 77 percent from 1941 to 1976. From 1942 to 1976 it was imposed on estates larger than $60,000....
Source: World Socialist Web Site
December 9, 2010
On November 25, the Netherlands judiciary issued a European arrest warrant for the SS (Hitler’s elite division) war criminal, Klaas Carel Faber. This warrant demands the extradition of the 88-year-old man, who has lived largely undisturbed in the Federal Republic of Germany, since his escape from a war crimes prison in the Dutch city of Breda 58 years ago.
All attempts by the Netherlands courts to bring Faber back into their judicial system after his escape on Boxing Day 1952 have s
Source: World Socialist Web Site
December 9, 2010
The publication of US State Department internal documents by WikiLeaks has prompted a vociferous response in Germany. With few exceptions, officials and media commentators have echoed Washington’s witch-hunting attacks.
The vast majority of journalists and politicians have condemned WikiLeaks and defended secret diplomacy. This is true not only for right-wing and conservative circles, but also for the so-called “liberal press,” the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens.
Source: Guardian (UK)
December 8, 2010
...The Ambassador stressed the USG's interest in direct discussions between the Spanish government and Claude Cassirer, the AmCit claimant of a painting by Camille Pisarro ("Rue St. Honore") in the Thyssen Museum. The Ambassador noted also that while the Odyssey and Cassirer claim were on separate legal tracks, it was in both governments' interest to avail themselves of whatever margin for manuever they had, consistent with their legal obligations, to resolve both matters in a way that
Source: Nature
December 9, 2010
Peter Debye, the Dutch winner of the 1936 Nobel Prize in Chemistry whose reputation was sullied in 2006 by allegations that he was a Nazi sympathizer, could in fact have been an anti-Nazi informer to the Allies during the approach to the Second World War.
Jurrie Reiding, a retired chemist in the Netherlands, examined Debye's private correspondence and concluded that he might have supplied information to a spy working for the British intelligence agency MI6 in Berlin. The finding is
Source: NBC Montana
December 1, 2010
MISSOULA, Mont. -- University of Montana archaeologists are using DNA technology to get to the bottom of the Donner Party's deadly migration to the West.
The surviving travelers are rumored to have resorted to cannibalism, but recent research has turned up no proof.
Local scholars tell me many questions still remain.
In 1846, The Donner Party dreamed of gold and land in the West.
"They were going on the trail west for manifest destiny,&quo
Source: Macon.com
December 7, 2010
An ancient civilization of mound builders who lived near the Ocmulgee River just northeast of what is now downtown Macon may have been home to more native people than originally thought.
Though the research, much of it done with a ground-scanning instrument to roughly map underground shapes and forms, is still under way, early analysis seems to indicate more unearthed dwellings at the site than were previously known to have existed.
Dan Bigman, an archaeologist and doct
Source: Expatica
December 9, 2010
Germany's state-owned rail company pledged Wednesday to donate five million euros (6.6 million dollars) to a fund for Nazi victims, mostly in projects in eastern Europe.
"Sixty-five years after the end of the war, the suffering of the victims of Nazism is not forgotten," Deutsche Bahn chief executive Ruediger Grube said....
Source: BBC News
December 5, 2010
The Jesuit church of Concepcion dominates the town's cobblestone main square. Its orange and yellow images of saints and ornate flower designs painted on the facade glow in the full splendour of 18th century architecture.
On a starry night, recalling the days of Jesuit evangelisation a few centuries ago, a sonata for double violin by Domenico Zipoli resonates inside the huge church.
A baroque ensemble of young players is serenading international visitors who have come t
