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: Deutsche Welle
Dec 21, 2009
Relatives of Jewish Holocaust victims murdered by the Nazis spoke of their pain in the trial of alleged former death camp guard John Demjanjuk.
The Munich court was told of how families had been rounded up during the Second World War before being taken away and killed.
Concentration camp survivors are among 30 plaintiffs in an action that claims Demjanjuk assisted in the murders of at least 27,900 people at the Sobibor concentration camp between March and September 1943
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 21, 2009
Jewish leaders reacted with anger when he approved a decree recognising the "heroic virtues" of Pius XII, who is accused of turning a blind eye to the Holocaust.
They said the Vatican had given them private assurances the procedure leading to possible sainthood would be frozen until wartime archives had been studied further.
The timing of the decision has cast a cloud over the German Pope's plan to make his first visit to Rome's synagogue in January.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Dec 21, 2009
The Lockerbie bomber had a secret fortune of nearly £2million in a Swiss bank account before his conviction eight years ago, it was revealed yesterday.
Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was said by the Libyan government to be a low-ranking airline worker.
Yet he had a bank balance of £1.8million when he was found guilty of the murder of 270 people in the Pan Am bombing, which happened above the Scottish town of Lockerbie 21 years ago today.
Source: Fox News
Dec 21, 2009
Days before Christmas, archeologists on Monday unveiled what they said were the remains of the first dwelling in Nazareth that can be dated back to the time of Jesus — a find that could shed new light on what the hamlet was like during the period the New Testament says Jesus lived there as a boy.
NAZARETH, Israel — Days before Christmas, archaeologists on Monday unveiled what they said were the remains of the first dwelling in Nazareth that can be dated back to the time of Jesus — a
Source: BBC News
Dec 21, 2009
The "Arbeit macht frei" sign stolen from Auschwitz in southern Poland has been found in the north and five men are being questioned by police.
The five suspects, aged in their 20s and 30s, were not members of a neo-Nazi group, Krakow police said.
The metal sign from the main gate, which symbolises for many the atrocities of Nazi Germany, had been cut into three pieces, they added.
A major search was launched after the sign was stolen before dawn
Source: Pew
Dec 21, 2009
As the current decade draws to a close, relatively few Americans have positive things to say about it. By roughly two-to-one, more say they have a generally negative (50%) rather than a generally positive (27%) impression of the past 10 years. This stands in stark contrast to the public’s recollection of other decades in the past half-century. When asked to look back on the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, positive feelings outweigh negative in all cases.
By a wide margin, the 9/11 te
Source: BBC News
Dec 21, 2009
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has called for the world's highest waterfall, Angel Falls, to be given back its indigenous name.
The falls, which drop nearly 1km (0.6 miles) from a flat-topped mountain in the south of Venezuela, are currently named after a 1930s US aviator.
Jimmy Angel is believed to have been the first outsider to see them.
Mr Chavez said they should be called Kerepakupai-Meru, the name used by the indigenous Pemon people of the area.
Source: AP
Dec 20, 2009
Ugly words on the playground were his first hurtful clue.
At age 12, a furtive glance at a medical record deepened Jean-Jacques Delorme's doubts about who he was. Throughout adulthood, he unearthed relics of his long-hidden history.
He was the product, he discovered, of a shame-tainted liaison between his French kitchen servant mother and an officer in the German army occupying France — one of an estimated 200,000 such children, many of whom grew up stigmatized, their i
Source: Reuters
Dec 20, 2009
An Australian hospital ship torpedoed by the Japanese during World War Two with the loss of 268 lives has been located in waters off the coast of the northern state of Queensland, the government said on Sunday.
The loss of the Centaur in 1943 while sailing to Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea was one of Australia's great wartime disasters. Survivors and their relatives have long pressed for the wreck to be found, fearing salvagers would reach it first.
On Sunday, it said
Source: AP
Dec 20, 2009
President Barack Obama plans to deal with a Dec. 31 deadline that automatically would declassify secrets in more than 400 million pages of Cold War-era documents by ordering government-wide changes that could sharply curb the number of new and old government records hidden from the public.
In an executive order the president is likely to sign before year's end, Obama will create a National Declassification Center to clear up the backlog of Cold War documents. But the order also will
Source: AP
Dec 20, 2009
The Russian Communist Party called for a moratorium on criticizing Josef Stalin on Monday to allow the country to celebrate the Soviet dictator's 130th birthday in peace.
Nationwide, Stalin's popularity in Russia has been climbing amid Kremlin-backed efforts to defend his image.
"We would very much like for any discussion of the mistakes of the Stalin epoch to be silenced today, so that people could reflect on Stalin's personality as a creator, a thinker and a patr
Source: BBC
Dec 20, 2009
A Yorkshire nun who was jailed for trying to promote women's rights 400 years ago has been put on the road to sainthood by Pope Benedict.
Mary Ward, who was born in Ripon, founded an order of nuns in the 17th Century but it was rejected by the Pope and she was accused of heresy.
Pope Benedict has now approved a decree recognising her "heroic virtues", giving her the title "venerable".
Her cause will now go to the next stage in the proc
Source: BBC
Dec 20, 2009
The condition of the terminally ill Lockerbie bomber has deteriorated, it has been confirmed.
Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, 57, who was jailed for life in 2001 for the 1988 bombing, was released from prison in August on compassionate grounds.
The Tripoli Medical Centre in Libya said a scan has shown that the prostate cancer from which Megrahi is suffering has spread throughout his body.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 20, 2009
A new book published in Germany says the murder of six million Jews in the Second World War was due to Hitler's belief that they "stole" victory from the country in the First World War.
"In his madness Hitler was convinced that the 'Jewish poison' had done the same thing to his beloved Germany in 1918 what the 'cancer poison' had done to his beloved mother in 1907," wrote historian and journalist Dr Joachim Riecker.
'November 9: How World War One L
Source: The Sunday Times (UK)
Dec 20, 2009
The Lockerbie bomber had £1.8m ($2.9 million USD) in a Swiss bank account when he was convicted eight years ago, it has been revealed.
The Crown Office, Scotland’s equivalent of the Crown Prosecution Service, has confirmed it refused to grant bail to Abdel Baset al-Megrahias recently as November last year because of concerns he might try to gain access to the money.
The existence of such a large sum in a personal accountcasts doubt on claims by the Libyan government tha
Source: The Economist
Dec 20, 2009
When the British government decided to split the Home Office into two separate ministries in 2007, various benefits and problems were expected. One consequence that no one foresaw was the discovery of a 200-year-old porn collection. On December 15th a ministerial delegation made its way to the Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum to hand over a smutty 40-page album turned up during the departmental move last year.
The etchings are the work of James Gillray, one of Britain's most fam
Source: The Economist
Dec 20, 2009
The birth of the cult of fine wine can be dated precisely. On April 10th 1663, Samuel Pepys, diarist and man-about-London, noted that he had enjoyed "a sort of French wine called Ho Bryan that hath a good and most particular taste that I never met with".
As Pepys was savouring his tipple, big economic shifts were under way. London was on the rise, starting to replace Amsterdam as the hub of world trade. Its merchants were growing in power, wealth and appetite—for, amongst
Source: The Economist
Dec 20, 2009
A shipwreck is a catastrophe for those involved, but for historians and archaeologists of future generations it is an opportunity. Wrecks offer glimpses not only of the nautical technology of the past but also of its economy, trade, culture and, sometimes, its warfare. Until recently, though, most of the 3m ships estimated to be lying on the seabed have been out of reach. Underwater archaeology has mainly been the preserve of scuba divers. That has limited the endeavour to waters less than 50 me
Source: The Economist
Dec 20, 2009
To examine the roots of religion, Nicholas Wade says, it is important to look at human beginnings. The customs of hunter-gatherer peoples who survived into modern times give an idea of religion's first forms: the ecstasy of dusk-to-dawn tribal dances, for example.
Mr Wade is convinced that a Darwinian approach offers the key to understanding religion. In other words, he sides with those who think man's propensity for religion has some adaptive function. According to this view, faith
Source: The Economist
Dec 20, 2009
Nicolas Sarkozy has often dwelt on the need for the French to know their history. He has required teachers to read out a letter written by a 17-year-old Communist resistance fighter to his mother just before his execution. He has proposed that every final-year primary pupil remember a child killed in the Holocaust. He has studded his speeches with references to" crusades and cathedrals, human rights and the revolution", saying that"there cannot be a nation if there is not a common history."
