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: Slate
Dec 24, 2008
On Thursday, Christians will celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. Was the Christian Messiah the first to have that name, or were there a lot of Jesuses running around back then?
Many people shared the name. Christ's given name, commonly Romanized as Yeshua, was quite common in first-century Galilee. (Jesus comes from the transliteration of Yeshua into Greek and then English.) Archaeologists have unearthed the tombs of 71 Yeshuas from the period of Jesus' death. The name also appears
Source: BBC
Dec 24, 2008
An Australian man has been arrested at Cairo airport after security staff
found ancient Egyptian animal mummies in his luggage, reports say.
An airport official said the mummies of a cat and an ibis, a long-beaked
bird, dated back to 300 BC.
He said another 19 figurines of ancient Egyptian gods were also found in
the passenger's bags.
Source: International Herald Tribune
Dec 24, 2008
President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have been
unusually talkative in recent weeks, sharing candid thoughts in a string
of exit interviews. But after eight years of a tight partnership that gave
Cheney powerful influence inside the White House, the two are sounding
strikingly different notes as they leave office, especially on one of the
most fundamental issues of their tenure: their aggressive response to the
9/11 terrorist attacks.
Bush defends his decisions as
Source: AFP
Dec 24, 2008
The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity lost more than 15 million dollars -- nearly all of its assets -- in the alleged fraud scheme run by Wall Street baron Bernard Madoff, the fund said Wednesday.
"We are writing to inform you that the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity had 15.2 million dollars under management with Bernard Madoff Investment Securities," said the foundation, which aims to combat anti-Semitism, on its website.
"This represented substan
Source: Independent (UK)
Dec 24, 2008
Impoverished by Israel's economic squeeze and persecuted by the Muslim majority, Christians are deserting Bethlehem.
The morning service at the Latin church in Beit Jala was packed, the enthusiastic congregation spanning generations filling the aisles and spilling out of the door, a powerful testimony of belief and faith. But, for many of the worshippers in the suburb of Bethlehem the driving wish was to secure their futures abroad, joining a Christian exodus from the land of the Bi
Source: FoxNews.com
Dec 24, 2008
Israeli archaeologists said they have unearthed more than 250 gold coins from the seventh century on the edge of Jerusalem's walled Old City.
A British tourist volunteering at the dig discovered the trove on Sunday.
Israel's Antiquities Authority said the Byzantine-period hoard was found in the ruins of a building where a striking 2,000-year-old gold earring from the Roman era was dug up last month.
Source: NYT
Dec 24, 2008
WASHINGTON -- It was April 1972, and American B-52 bombers were pummeling North Vietnam. President Richard M. Nixon got on the phone with his national security adviser, Henry A. Kissinger, for an update on the air assault on the port city of Haiphong. The men struggled to persuade each other that the war might still be won.
“They dropped a million pounds of bombs,” Mr. Kissinger said.
Nixon was pleased. “Goddamn, that must have been a good strike!” he said.
Source: Library of Congress website
Dec 23, 2008
President-elect Barack Obama on Jan. 20, 2009, will take the oath of office on a Bible from the Library of Congress’ collections that is steeped in history — the same Bible upon which Abraham Lincoln swore March 4, 1861, to uphold the Constitution.
The first Lincoln Inaugural is rife with historical significance, coming at a time when the survival of the United States was never more endangered, according to Clark W. Evans, an expert on Lincoln who heads the Reference Services Sectio
Source: CNN
Dec 23, 2008
Archaeologists believe they have unearthed only a small fraction of Egypt's ancient ruins, but they're making new discoveries with help from high-tech allies -- satellites that peer into the past from the distance of space.
"Everyone's becoming more aware of this technology and what it can do," said Sarah Parcak, an archaeologist who heads the Laboratory for Global Health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. "There is so much to learn."
Images
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 23, 2008
Olga Lepeshinskaya, who died in Moscow on December 20 aged 92, was the Bolshoi Ballet's prima ballerina in the 1930s and 1940s and Josef Stalin's favourite performer – rumoured to be her lover, he would bring red roses to her dressing room after performances, and he decorated her four times with the Stalin Prize.
Her combination of phenomenal virtuosity and irresistible exuberance made her the queen of comic ballet roles such as Kitri in Don Quixote and Swanilda in Coppelia, in whi
Source: Deutsche Welle
Dec 23, 2008
The 51-year-old Hutu man, Onesphore Rwabukombe, was arrested in the Frankfurt area on Monday, one month after Rwanda's own attempts to obtain his extradition from Germany collapsed.
He is suspected of either overseeing or calling for multiple murders in both 1990 and 1994.
"In particular, he is accused of involvement in a massacre at Nyarubuye in mid-April 1994 in the course of which several thousand people were killed," said a statement in Karlsruhe, where t
Source: AFP
Dec 23, 2008
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged Monday that the Bush administration fell short of goals it had set for itself but maintained that history would prove it right.
In an interview with AFP, the chief US diplomat conceded that eight years after President George W. Bush came to power, his administration's popularity was "not very great" in the Arab world.
"I understand that a lot of the history between the US and the Arab world is one that Arabs l
Source: Denver Post
Dec 23, 2008
Presents, traditional foods and loved ones — a sure sign of Hanukkah, the dedication of miracles.
"It's a common misconception, but Hanukkah is not the 'Jewish Christmas.' There is no parallel in Judaism," said Rabbi Bernard Gerson of Denver's Congregation Rodef Shalom. "Presents and the time of year tend to make the two holidays seem more similar than they are."
Celebrated Dec. 21 through Dec. 29 this year, Hanukkah, known as the Festival of Lights,
Source: http://murraywaas.crooksandliars.com
Dec 23, 2008
Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a still-highly confidential FBI report, admitted to federal investigators that he rewrote talking points for the press in July 2003 that made it much more likely that the role of then-covert CIA-officer Valerie Plame in sending her husband on a CIA-sponsored mission to Africa would come to light.
Cheney conceded during his interview with federal investigators that in drawing attention to Plame’s role in arranging her husband’s Africa trip rep
Source: BBC
Dec 23, 2008
A comet, an eclipse, a supernova, an alignment of planets - was the Star of Bethlehem, said to have led the wise men to the Baby Jesus, a real astronomical event?
Some 2,000 years ago, wise men saw an incredible star shining over the Holy Land. It was their signal to embark on an epic journey to visit the new Messiah. But what exactly was the Star of Bethlehem?
Modern science is unravelling the mystery behind one of the most famous astronomical stories in history. New develop
Source: CNN
Dec 23, 2008
Anyone can work a simple swindle, but you have to be a special kind of con
man to have your name become synonymous with"fraud." Ponzi pulled it off,
though. After arriving in the U.S. from Italy in 1903, Ponzi knocked
around in a variety of unskilled jobs that usually ended when he got into
trouble for theft or cheating customers.
A few years later, he moved to Canada, where he spent a hitch in prison
for passing a forged check. When he eventually drifted back down to the
U.S., he n
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 23, 2008
Seven hours north of Tokyo by train and bus, Shingo only had garlic
farming to to put it on the map until a scroll was found in 1935 by a
Shinto priest in nearby Ibaraki Prefecture that was identified as Christ's
will and, bizzarely, identified Shingo as his last resting place.
The scroll is on display in the"Village of Christ Legend Museum," which
closes in the tourist off-season between October and April, and is the
basis of a very different take on the incredible tale.
Acco
Source: CNN
Dec 23, 2008
The U.S. Army says it will honor the"heroism and sacrifice" of 350 U.S.
soldiers who were held as slaves by Nazi Germany during World War II.
The decision by the Army effectively reverses decades of silence about
what the soldiers endured in the final months of the war in 1945 at Berga
an der Elster, a subcamp of Buchenwald where soldiers were beaten,
starved, killed and forced to work in tunnels to hide German equipment.
More than 100 U.S. soldiers died in the camp or on a for
Source: Chicago Tribune
Dec 23, 2008
By their count, Mary and Chuck Schantag of the P.O.W. Network have exposed
close to 1,900 impostors since 1998, when they began to check POW claims.
They say they have exposed another 2,000 men who claimed they were in
elite units.
"It's taken over our lives," said Mary Schantag."We check reports of
phonies when we get up in the morning and before we get to bed at night."
Their motivation is simple."The lies are changing history. It's wrong. It
causes the real heroes to be groupe
Source: http://www.calcuttanews
Dec 23, 2008
Villagers in Arunachal Pradesh have stumbled upon a World War II
camp-cum-observation post used by American forces, close to a graveyard
where over 1,000 soldiers of the Allied Forces are buried, officials said
Tuesday.
A government spokesman said villagers discovered the post, spread over
about 500 square metres, near Wintong village in Changlang district, about
600 km east of state capital Itanagar.
'The area was probably used as a monitoring and observation camp by
America
