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: The Christian Science Monitor
Dec 7, 2009
Washington - How did the Japanese do it? That question remains 68 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, a day that spawned some of the greatest unanswered questions of US military history.
The completeness of the surprise, as well as the enormity of the attack's destruction, have led conspiracy theorists to surmise that President Franklin D. Roosevelt must have known what was coming, and allowed it, to rouse the nation for World War II.
Most historians don't believe t
Source: The Chronicle Herald (Canada)
Dec 7, 2009
WITH BLOWING SNOW and frigid temperatures Sunday, it wasn’t hard to evoke the memory of the Halifax Explosion.
As those familiar with the story know, Mother Nature twisted the knife the day after the Dec. 6, 1917, catastrophe by whipping up a snowstorm that crippled a city already laid bare by the disaster.
Sunday’s nor’easter was a reminder of conditions 92 years ago was not lost on those attending the annual outdoor service at the bell tower in Fort Needham Memorial P
Source: Examiner
Dec 7, 2009
Former United States Vice-President Al Gore met with President Barack Obama on Monday ahead of the climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark to discuss climate change and the goals of the United Nations.
The climate summit of 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark began on Monday and in the opening talks, the Saudi Arabian climate negotiator called for an independent international investigation into Climategate, reports Digital Journal...
... NPR reports that the White House issued an
Source: The American Task Force on Palestine
Dec 7, 2009
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's visit to Beirut on Monday casts the spotlight on the plight of nearly 300,000 Palestinians in Lebanon who fear they are doomed to be refugees for life.
His brief trip comes amid renewed efforts to revive the Middle East peace process and concern in Lebanon's political circles that any deal struck on the refugee issue would be at the expense of the Lebanese...
... The majority of the refugees arrived in Lebanon following the creation
Source: BBC
Dec 7, 2009
Researchers at an Isle of Wight museum have begun the painstaking process of assembling an almost complete 30ft (9m) dinosaur skeleton, the BBC can reveal.
Visitors to the Dinosaur Isle Museum will be able watch experts build the vertebra of an Iguanodon, which roamed the earth 130 million years ago.
It was uncovered over several years by fossil hunter Nick Chase, who then donated it to the Sandown museum.
Work on the skeleton, known as "Big Iggy&quo
Source: BBC
Dec 7, 2009
A man whose great-great grandfather was killed and eaten by cannibals has taken part in a unique reconciliation event in the South Pacific.
In the 1830s, the Reverend John Williams was the most famous missionary of the age.
Now, 170 years after his murder the descendants of those responsible invited his family to Erromango, part of the island nation of Vanuatu.
Charles Milner-Williams, of Hampshire, was among those who made the journey.
Source: BBC
Dec 7, 2009
A Gwynedd-based artist is developing his passion for Victorian era black and white photography.
After initial experiments with more up-to-date technology, Richard Cynan Jones, is using technology developed by photographers in the 1850s.
Based at Mynydd Llandygai, near Bangor, the artist is concentrating on character portraits, lugging his large box camera, and on-site developing equipment with him.
Source: BBC
Dec 7, 2009
A Chilean judge has charged six people over the death in 1982 of the country's ex-President, Eduardo Frei Montalva.
The judge said there was now evidence that Mr Frei, a vocal critic of military leader Augusto Pinochet, had been poisoned in hospital.
The arrests come less than a week before Chile's presidential election, in which Mr Frei's son, Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, is a leading candidate.
The former president's family have long argued he was murdered.
Source: BBC
Dec 7, 2009
A distant US relative of Dr Hawley Crippen, executed in London in 1910 for murdering his wife, has failed in a bid to secure a posthumous pardon for him.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission refused to send the case back to the Court of Appeal, saying the applicant was not a "properly interested person".
James Patrick Crippen, 73, of Ohio, a second cousin three times removed, said he was "disappointed" by the decision.
Source: Politico
Dec 7, 2009
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) upped the rhetorical ante this morning by comparing opponents of health care reform to conservatives who tried to block emancipation and equal rights -- prompting the Republican national chairman to question his sanity.
Speaking on the floor of the Senate, Reid blasted GOP leaders who have urged Democrats opt for a slower, incremental approach to reform instead of the mega-bill the majority hopes to push through the Senate by Christmas
Source: Fox News
Dec 7, 2009
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took his GOP-blasting rhetoric to a new level Monday, comparing Republicans who oppose health care reform to lawmakers who clung to the institution of slavery more than a century ago.
The Nevada Democrat, in a sweeping set of accusations on the Senate floor, also compared health care foes to those who opposed women's suffrage and the civil rights movement -- even though it was Sen. Strom Thurmond, then a Democrat, who unsuccessfully tried to filibus
Source: CNN
Dec 7, 2009
One major group in the Tea Party movement -- named after the famous Boston Tea Party -- is set to host its first convention in February, with former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin as its keynote speaker.
But there are fractures in the movement that threaten its future. And if history's any guide, such movements tend to flame out.
The Tea Party movement erupted on April 15 -- tax day -- over criticism of President Obama's econ
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 7, 2009
A senior Army officer has told the Iraq Inquiry he urged Tony Blair to delay the invasion of Iraq two days before the start of the war because preparations for the aftermath of the conflict were not "anywhere near ready".
Major General Tim Cross, who was attached to the Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance (Orha) set up by the US to manage post-war reconstruction, said plans were "woefully thin".
Previous witnesses have told the in
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 7, 2009
Adolf Hitler’s hatred of Jews stemmed from the mistaken belief that his mother was poisoned by a Jewish doctor, according to a new book.
Hitler’s mother Klara had breast cancer but died as a result of poisoning from the idoform which was given to her by Dr Eduard Bloch. The use of idoform as a treatment for breast cancer was a standard medical practice when she died in 1907 at the age of 47.
The future dictator was 18 at the time and the author of the book, Joachim Ri
Source: Fox News
Dec 7, 2009
Secret Service report reveals dozens of security breaches since 1980 surrounding U.S. presidents.
A report compiled by the Secret Service reveals security surrounding the president has been breached at least 91 times since 1980, The Washington Post reported on Monday.
A summary of the secret 2003 report, along with descriptions of more recent breaches by federal homeland security officials, details scores of breaches, including a family who was mistakenly allowed onto W
Source: Fox News
Dec 7, 2009
Researchers have discovered the remains of a Japanese mini-submarine they say was used to attack Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7 1941, the Los Angeles Times reports.
The discovery provides evidence that the submarine fired its torpedoes at Battleship Row and could therefore resolve a long-standing dispute among historians, the paper reports.
Five mini-submarines were intended to be used to launch a strike against Pearl Harbor, but four ended up not being used for various reasons
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education
Dec 6, 2009
In 1991, Donald W. Livingston threw a party—well, a conference—and nobody showed up.
It was during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and Mr. Livingston, a professor of philosophy at Emory University and raised in South Carolina, decided there should be more thoughtful discourse on the topic of secession.
A political philosopher who specializes in David Hume, he searched philosophy papers published since 1940 and turned up only seven on the matter of secession from fe
Source: NYT
Dec 6, 2009
OTTAWA — Like public health care, Canada’s tight gun-control laws help distinguish the country from its powerful neighbor to the south. But as Canadians commemorated the 20th anniversary of one of the country’s most notorious shooting sprees on Sunday, their Parliament was on course to eliminate one of its most significant gun-control measures.
A long-gun registry, which requires the registration of rifles and shotguns, emerged largely from public revulsion over the massacre in 198
Source: RGJ
Dec 6, 2009
It’s been 68 years since the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, but Howard J. Spreeman of Carson City says he remembers nearly every detail of the attack that drew America into World War II.
“I was just ordering breakfast,” said Spreeman, who was an aviation radioman stationed at Naval Air Station Kaneohe Bay, across from Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii. “I ordered bacon and eggs. It’s one of those things I’ll never forget.
“And a plane came over and almost took the roof of th
Source: AP
Dec 6, 2009
Ed Johann will always remember the sound of planes diving out of the sky to bomb U.S. battleships, the explosions and the screams of sailors. He still recalls the stench of burning oil and flesh.
The 86-year-old retired firefighter is due to return Monday to Pearl Harbor for the first time since World War II to attend a ceremony marking the 68th anniversary of the Japanese attack.
For years, Johann said he wouldn't go to the annual observance in Hawaii in honor of those
