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: AP
Dec 30, 2008
BUENOS AIRES -– Workers digging to lay the foundation of a luxury apartment complex in Argentina uncovered a Spanish ship believed to be from the 18th century.
It was found in Buenos Aires' upscale Puerto Madero neighborhood, on the banks of the Plata River. The area used to be the city's old port, but was eventually filled in and developed.
Source: AP
Dec 30, 2008
WASHINGTON – A federal judge on Tuesday awarded more than $65 million to several men who were captured and tortured by North Korea after the communist country seized the U.S. spy ship USS Pueblo during the Cold War. North Korea never responded to the lawsuit filed by William Thomas Massie, Donald Raymond McClarren, Dunnie Richard Tuck and the estate of Lloyd Bucher. U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. entered the judgment against the country.
The USS Pueblo was seized off North
Source: MSNBC
Dec 30, 2008
Israel began a massive assault on the Gaza Strip on Dec. 27, inflicting scores of casualties over the following days. History provides some clues to what is behind this violence.
Where is the Gaza Strip?
The Gaza Strip is, as its name implies, a 146-square-mile strip of coastal land running along Israel's southwestern flank on the Mediterranean Sea and on the border with Egypt. Around 1.5 million Palestinians live there and it is governed by militant Islamist group Hamas.
Source: http://www.concordmonitor.com
Dec 30, 2008
Is Franklin Pierce due for a promotion? Pierce, the only New Hampshire man elected to the White House, is a perennial nominee for Worst President Ever. But as that office's current occupant finds his own reputation under attack from many historians and the public, Pierce could move up a notch from the bottom of the presidential rankings - a boost Pierce partisans say is long past due.
"When I speak to groups, somebody always asks, 'How does it feel to know your man is no longer
Source: McClatchy
Dec 30, 2008
An ancient mariner who lived and died 10,000 years ago on an island west of Ketchikan probably doesn't have any close relatives left in Alaska.
But some of them migrated south, and their descendants can be found today in coastal Native American populations in California, Mexico, Ecuador, Chile and Argentina.
That's some of what scientists learned this summer by examining the DNA of Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian Indians in Southeast Alaska.
Source: CNN
Dec 30, 2008
A NASA report on the last minutes of Space Shuttle Columbia cited problems
with the crew's helmets, spacesuits and restraints, which resulted in"lethal trauma" to the seven astronauts aboard.
But the report also acknowledged that"the breakup of the crew module ...
was not survivable by any currently existing capability."
The spacecraft broke up while re-entering Earth's atmosphere near the end
of its mission on February 1, 2003.
Source: BBC
Dec 30, 2008
More than a dozen skeletons thought to be thousands of years old, have
been found by Oxford archaeologists working at an ancient burial site in
Dorset.
Excavations are taking place at the site in Weymouth before builders move
in to build an access road to the Olympic sailing centre for 2012.
Archaeologist David Score said they had catalogued finds from almost every
period of human life.
Source: http://macedoniaonline.eu
Dec 30, 2008
Uncovered are the first traces of the old Macedonian language in the
country, says"Dr. Dushko Aleksovski, paleolinguistics professor and
honorary president of the World Rock Art Academy."This is a very rare artifact, the name of the Goddess Vesta is written on
it. However, the first written name is Bsefa, which later became Vesta.
This is the oldest artifact written in the old Macedonian language
discovered on our territory." says Dr. Aleksovski.
The 4,000 year old signs written o
Source: http://www.china.org.cn
Dec 30, 2008
About a fifth of the Great Wall built in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) has
disappeared in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, an
archaeologist said on Tuesday.
The vanished parts were 157.515 km long, said Tala, head of the Inner
Mongolia Autonomous Regional Institute of Cultural and Historical Relics
and Archaeology.
The statistics were based on newly-released survey results from the Inner
Mongolia Autonomous Regional Surveying and Mapping Bureau and the Inner
Source: LAT
Dec 30, 2008
More than 1,100 American troops died building the road in what is now
Myanmar. Today China and some in India see the long-neglected route as
their lifeline.
Source: International Herald Tribune
Dec 30, 2008
The tsunami that crashed over southern Asia on Dec. 26, 2004, and killed
230,000 people washed away nearly everything Kangasuriyam held dear.
Sixteen close relatives were killed. His seaside village was razed, his
house demolished, his business destroyed.
Four years later, with international aid and prodding from his remaining
family, the 30-year-old has rebuilt his life. He has a new family. He has
a bigger house in a resettlement village set back from the ocean.
He opened a
Source: Times (UK)
Dec 30, 2008
The oddest moment in the remarkable life of Lieutenant-Colonel Eric Wilson came when he discovered that he was officially dead, and thus joined the distinguished band of people prematurely consigned to the hereafter.
Colonel Wilson died last week at the age of 97, but his first “death” took place 68 years earlier, in the desert sands of East Africa.
On August 11, 1940, Colonel Wilson, then a captain commanding the Somaliland Camel Corps machinegun company, was involve
Source: Times (UK)
Dec 30, 2008
The 50th anniversary of equal women’s suffrage was a cause for celebration in 1978, but James Callaghan and his allies were determined that Margaret Thatcher did not feature too strongly in the commemoration.
As Leader of the Opposition, she was the most prominent female politician of the day and there was concern that she might steal the limelight.
Michael Foot’s wife, Jill Craigie, had suggested a programme of celebration as a means of helping the beleaguered Labour
Source: Times (UK)
Dec 30, 2008
Documents detailing Government plans to rule from an underground bunker have been revealed.
At the height of the Cold War in the 1960s ministers were briefed on the location of a top-secret “check point” railway station in West London, from which they would be taken to a vast underground bunker known as Stockwell, where they would hope to sit out the onslaught if nuclear missiles were launched.
Among the confidential Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) files, released
Source: BBC
Dec 30, 2008
Three people listed as"disappeared" in Chile during General Augusto Pinochet's military rule have been found or died in other circumstances, it has emerged. Their names surfaced as investigators looked into a previous non-victim who has lived in Argentina for 35 years.
Gen Pinochet's supporters have long said reports of the missing, officially put at more than 1,183, are false.
President Michelle Bachelet, who was detained the 1970s, said these cases must not cast
Source: BBC
Dec 30, 2008
The papers paint a picture of a 1970s Britain that would have been virtually helpless in the face of a Soviet attack.
As the public were being advised on how to prepare for a three-minute warning, government briefings made it clear their efforts would have been a waste of time.
Just released by the National Archives, conversations in 1978 between the then Prime Minister James Callaghan and his defence secretary, Fred Mulley, describe the country's defences as "ou
Source: NYT
Dec 30, 2008
A defining moment of the cold war came in 1955 when Moscow detonated its first hydrogen bomb — a weapon roughly a thousand times more powerful than atom bombs and ideal for obliterating large cities.
The bomb ended the American monopoly and posed a lethal danger. So Washington dealt far more gingerly with Moscow, beginning a tense era dominated by fear of mutual annihilation.
Now, a new book says Moscow acquired the secret of the hydrogen bomb not from its own scientist
Source: NYT
Dec 30, 2008
TOKYO —- It was erected in a city still scarred by war, on the grounds of an ancient Buddhist temple, using steel from scrapped American battle tanks. But when finished in 1958, Tokyo Tower gripped Japan’s imagination by pointing the way to a brighter future.
The 1,093-foot structure, which resembles the Eiffel Tower but with orange and white stripes, was the world’s tallest self-supported steel structure, a title it still holds. That, and the fact it was used to broadcast color tel
Source: Independent
Dec 30, 2008
In May 1978, protesters in Iran's major cities laid waste to luxury hotels, banks and government offices that symbolised the profligate regime of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. It was the first clear sign that students and Islamist revolutionaries were loosening the pro-Western dictator's iron grip on power.
But the upheaval and bloodshed that presaged the Iranian revolution did nothing to dim the belief of Her Majesty's Ambassador to Iran that the autocrat (and lucrative patron of the
Source: Times (of London)
Dec 30, 2008
The oddest moment in the remarkable life of Lieutenant-Colonel Eric Wilson came when he discovered that he was officially dead, and thus joined the distinguished band of people prematurely consigned to the hereafter.
Colonel Wilson died last week at the age of 97, but his first “death” took place 68 years earlier, in the desert sands of East Africa.
On August 11, 1940, Colonel Wilson, then a captain commanding the Somaliland Camel Corps machinegun company, was involved
