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: Chicago Trib
Dec 25, 2012
Chicago. The site where Michael Reese Hospital once stood isn't much to look at, just a 37-acre swath of overgrown land in Bronzeville, behind a shoddy chain-link fence.Developers are itching to build a casino or perhaps a sports entertainment complex on the city-owned property located in the shadows of downtown near the south lakefront. But residents of this historic African-American community have something grander in mind.They envision a Barack Obama presidential library.
Source: The New Scientist
Dec 24, 2012
THE small steel door in the mountainside is the same shade of green as the lush vegetation surrounding us. Before we enter, my guide, prehistorian Roberto Ontañón Peredo, asks if I would like him to switch on the main lights. I decide to discover this place the way my ancestors would have done, with just a small bubble of light. As the door closes behind us, we flick on our flashlights and their beams pick out the irregular walls of the El Castillo cave. What strikes me first is the size of the cavern: I've been in churches that could fit in here.This cave, in northern Spain, was regularly visited by our prehistoric ancestors for tens of thousands of years, and as I follow Roberto inside, I see some of the extraordinary paintings they left behind. Red deer, bison and mammoths hide in the shadows, their outlines eerily materialising ...
Source: Newsweek
Dec 24, 2012
It was the story of a lifetime—and he couldn’t publish it. In Newsweek’s final print issue, former staff reporter Michael Isikoff gives the inside tale of how he uncovered President Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky in early 1998. Isikoff had been talking to Linda Tripp—a confidante of Lewinsky's—for months, and a source tipped him off that Tripp was cooperating with a Justice Department investigation.
Source: Telegraph
Dec 23, 2012
The disclosure emerged in a previously-unseen letter describing the famous match. Staff sergeant Clement Barker sent the letter home four days after Christmas 1914 when the British and German troops emerged from their trenches in peace.He described how the truce began after a German messenger walked across No Man's Land on Christmas Eve to broker the temporary cease-fire agreement. British soldiers went out and recovered 69 dead comrades and buried them. Sgt Barker said the impromptu football match then broke out between the two sides when a ball was kicked out from the British lines into No Man's Land.
Source: Raw Story
Dec 21, 2012
A Joseph Stalin statue went back up in the Georgian village of Alvani on Friday in a sign of the slipping authority of President Mikheil Saakashvili, who had ordered its removal.The pro-Western president is serving out what some are calling a lame-duck term ahead of elections next year from which he is barred on account of the end of his 10-year constitutional mandate.Saakashvili’s powers were weakened still further in October when the Georgian Dream party of his great rival, the tycoon Bidzina Ivanishvili, won parliamentary elections and appointed Ivanishvili as prime minister....
Source: British Library
Dec 20, 2012
This decree (farmān) of Babur is dated 13 (or possibly 30) Zu’l-Qaʻdah 933 (August 1527), just a few months after his decisive victory over Rana Sanga of Mewar and his confederates at the battle of Khanwa in March 1527. It was issued in the name of Ẓahīr al-Dīn Muḥammad Bābur Ghāzī (‘holy warrior’, a title he had assumed after his recent victory) and confirms the grant of a village, Panchal Gul Pinduri (the exact form of the name is uncertain!) in the Pargana of Batala, Punjab, as a hereditary grant (suyurghāl) to the Qazi (magistrate) Jalāl al-Dīn. The revenue of this village amounted to 5,000 copper coins (tankah-i siyāh) and was tax-free. The beneficiary was not required to petition annually for the renewal of this grant....
Source: Bloomberg News
Dec 20, 2012
Dec. 20 (Bloomberg) -- French President Francois Hollande called France’s 132-year colonial rule in Algeria “brutal and unjust,” stopping short of an outright apology, as he seeks to improve relations that have been troubled ever since the North African country won its independence 50 years ago.Citing France’s postwar reconciliation with Germany, Hollande told Algeria’s parliament during a two-day visit that he wants “a new age in relations” based on “recognition of the truth.”Hollande is the third French president to struggle how to frame relations with Algeria since the country’s president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, demanded in 2003 that France apologize for its “long, brutal and genocidal” rule. Bouteflika and other Algerian leaders have lately backed off those demands, and Hollande has already taken some steps toward Algeria, such as this year being the first French president to recognize the killings of 100 Algerian protesters in Paris in 1961....
Source: WaPo
Dec 20, 2012
...Even if the world doesn’t end up exploding, [Dec. 21] still has some darker meaning for China, and not just because some people seem to be taking the prediction surprisingly seriously. Wong also wrote on Twitter, “Many Chinese have been buying candles because of rumors of a 3-day power outage to start on Dec. 21.” Chinese authorities recently arrested 500 members of a doomsday cult that was noisily predicting Dec. 21 as the day. The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos writes that “China is more taken with doomsday talk than you might expect,” something the government takes very seriously. “China has a long history of religion-infused political rebellions,” he writes.A new, award-winning book by historian Stephen Platt documents the Taiping Rebellion, a 19th-century religious insurrection that ended in tens of millions of deaths. Osnos writes, “But these days the Party is especially uncomfortable with obscure religious beliefs because, in the post-Socialist era, many in China have begun to hunt for something to believe.”...
Source: WaPo
Dec 20, 2012
THESSALONIKI, Greece — In a find that local Jewish groups have described as highly significant, Greek police said Thursday that hundreds of marble headstones and other fragments from Jewish graves destroyed during the Nazi occupation in World War II have been recovered.The 668 fragments were found buried in a plot of land in Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city, following a 70-year search for the remains of graves smashed when the city’s main Jewish cemetery was destroyed.The head of the city’s Jewish community, David Saltiel, said most of the gravestones found dated from the mid-1800s up until World War II....
Source: AP
Dec 20, 2012
Though the Mayans never really predicted that the world would end on Friday, some New Agers are convinced that humanity’s demise is indeed imminent. Or at least that it’s a good excuse for a party.Believers are being drawn to spots where they think their chances of survival will be better, and accompanying them are the curious, the party-lovers and people wanting to make some money.Here are some of the world’s key doomsday destinations and other places marked by fear and fascination:...RUSSIAFor $1,500, a museum is offering salvation from the world’s end in former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s underground bunker in central Moscow -- with a 50 percent refund if nothing happens.The bunker, located 65 meters (210 feet) below ground, was designed to withstand a nuclear attack. Now home to a small museum, it has an independent electricity supply, water and food — but no more room, because the museum has already sold out all 1,000 tickets....
Source: AP
Dec 20, 2012
AUSTIN, Texas — The United States is fighting a messy war alongside an unreliable ally in Asia, residents are deeply divided between conservatives and liberals, a new health care law just took effect and the nation is struggling with racial and ethnic divisions.What’s happening in the United States in 2012 could just as easily describe the nation in the 1960s: President Lyndon Baines Johnson escalating the war in Vietnam, defeating conservative Republican nominee Barry Goldwater, passing Medicare and pushing through landmark civil rights legislation.An insider’s look at how the Texan dealt with those challenges is on display at the newly remodeled LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, where the old 1970s-style exhibits now use 21st century technology to put visitors in Johnson’s shoes. Mark Updegrove, the library’s director, said the reopening comes as historians take a fresh look at Johnson’s efforts to fight poverty and improve the health of the nation by creating a Great Society....
Source: WaPo
Dec 20, 2012
JOHANNESBURG — Nelson Mandela was seriously ill but has steadily improved over the last few days after being diagnosed with a lung infection and undergoing gallstone surgery, South African President Jacob Zuma said Thursday.It was the first official acknowledgement that Mandela’s condition had been grave, and came 13 days after the anti-apartheid icon was brought to a hospital in the capital, Pretoria. The government initially said 94-year-old Mandela was undergoing medical tests, and the information that followed was terse and sometimes contradictory.“His condition was serious but he is responding well to treatment and he steadily improved over the last few days,” Zuma said at the close of a conference of the African National Congress, the governing political party....
Source: WaPo
Dec 20, 2012
WASHINGTON — Sen. Daniel Inouye, the second-longest serving senator in U.S. history, was remembered Thursday as a man who gallantly defended his country on the battlefield and gracefully sought to better it during the 50-plus years he represented his beloved state of Hawaii.Colleagues and aides lined the Capitol rotunda five deep to say farewell. The rare ceremony demonstrated the respect and good will he generated over the years. Only 31 people have lain in the Capitol rotunda; the last was former President Gerald R. Ford nearly six years ago. The last senator who died in office and was accorded the honor was Democrat Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, in 1978.“Daniel Inouye was an institution, and he deserved to spend at least another day in this beautiful building to which he dedicated his life,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev....
Source: NYT
Dec 20, 2012
More than two decades before Newtown, there was Stockton.In January 1989, a troubled drifter in his 20s opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle on a California elementary school yard packed with students. Five children, ages 6 to 9, were killed in the fusillade of bullets; 29 others were wounded, along with one teacher.The resulting national shock and outrage plunged Congress into a debate over whether to ban military-style assault weapons.“The American people are fed up with the death and violence brought on by these assault weapons,” Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum, an Ohio Democrat, declared on the Senate floor. “They demand action.”...
Source: Jewish Tribune
Dec 20, 2012
(JTA) – Human Rights Watch has removed Richard Falk, United Nations special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, from one of its local committees.Falk, who has compared Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to the actions of the Nazis and suggested that the US government may have had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks, was removed last Tuesday from the international non-governmental organization’s local committee in Santa Barbara, CA....
Source: NYT
Dec 20, 2012
Robert H. Bork, a former solicitor general, federal judge and conservative legal theorist whose 1987 nomination to the United States Supreme Court was rejected by the Senate in a historic political battle whose impact is still being felt, died on Wednesday in Arlington, Va. He was 85.His death, of complications of heart disease, was confirmed by his son Robert Jr.Judge Bork, who was senior judicial adviser this year to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, played a small but crucial role in the Watergate crisis as the solicitor general under President Richard M. Nixon. He carried out orders to fire a special prosecutor in what became known as “the Saturday Night Massacre.” He also handed down notable decisions from the federal appeals court bench. But it was as a symbol of the nation’s culture wars that Judge Bork made his name....
Source: WaPo
Dec 19, 2012
Sixty years ago this month (December), London was enveloped under a toxic mix of dense fog and sooty black smoke for four days. This episode of polluted air is among the deadliest environmental disasters in recorded history.The event became known as the Great Smog of 1952. Over 4,000 more people died than usual for that time of year with an estimated 8,000 more fatalities in the following weeks from exposure to the noxious air pollution.While not as deadly – and not as well-known - hundreds of deaths have been attributed directly to episodes of severe smog in the U.S. over the 60 intervening years - including three killer smog events in New York City....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 19, 2012
The festive act of reconciliation was made possible after the letters, hidden away in a grand piano since the theft in 1941, were handed in to archivists.A gang of youths, all aged 15 or 16, had stolen the 90 letters from a Wehrmacht field post office in St Helier, in a perhaps rash bid to give the hated occupiers a bloody nose. They would have faced severe penalties if caught.Fearing discovery, the youths handed them to a friend, who stashed them in a grand piano for 66 years, before taking them to the official Jersey Archive....
Source: USGS
Dec 18, 2012
Four previously undiscovered photos of undocumented Russian Crown Jewels were recently discovered in the USGS library. The photos appear in a 1922 album called “Russian Diamond Fund,” that was uncovered in the rare book room of the library.The four unique photos were originally part of the personal collection of George F. Kunz (1856-1932), a mineralogist and gemologist, gentleman explorer, and employee of the USGS and Tiffany & Co. These four photos are unique because they are not included in the official documentation of the Russian Crown Jewels, “Russia’s Treasure of Diamonds and Precious Stones,” published in 1925. The USGS also has a copy of this 1925 publication in Kunz’s collection.“Russia’s Treasure of Diamonds and Precious Stones” is considered the most complete inventory of the Russian Crown Jewels and 22 of the photographs from Kunz’s 1922 album appear to be the same images used in the official Russian 1925 publication. The four pieces portrayed in the album discovered by the USGS that do not appear in the later publication include a sapphire and diamond tiara, a sapphire bracelet, an emerald necklace, and a sapphire brooch in the shape of a bow....
Source: CNN.com
Dec 18, 2012
(CNN) -- Forget old conspiracy theories about snake bites and fatal poisons. Egyptian King Ramesses III died after a brutal throat slashing, a new study says.The study provides the latest twist in a mystery that has long perplexed researchers.Did a venomous viper take him out? Poison? An assassination plot in a reign tainted by war?And if it were the latter, who did it?...
