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 1, 2012
ALMATY, Kazakhstan — Kazakhstan on Saturday observed a new holiday lauding President Nursultan Nazarbayev, part of a growing cult of personality around the leader of the sprawling, resource-rich former Soviet republic.The highlight of First President’s Day, which marks the anniversary of Nazarbayev’s first election in 1991, was a carefully choreographed pageant by some 30,000 performers in an arena in the capital Astana, including mass singing and banner-waving.Across the country, schoolchildren and state employees held demonstrations of affection, concerts, and sports events in his honor. To what extent the participation was voluntary was unclear....
Source: AP
Nov 30, 2012
DALLAS — A dilapidated Dallas apartment complex where Lee Harvey Oswald briefly lived before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is being demolished.After a four-year battle over code violations at the uninhabited 10-unit, two-story apartment complex built in 1925, owner Jane Bryant is in the process of taking the building down per a court order. She’s been salvaging building materials and selling off items from Oswald’s three-room apartment. The toilet already has a new owner.Bryant was never able to realize her plans to renovate the building in the Oak Cliff area of Dallas after buying it in 2007, and the next year got caught up in litigation with the city over the state of the building at 600 Elsbeth St....
Source: AP
Nov 30, 2012
MEXICO CITY — Mayan priests started off ceremonies aimed at marking the end of the current era in the Mayan long-count calendar Thursday, with dancing, incense and rituals designed to thank the gods.The Mayas performed the “New Fire” ceremony at a park in Mexico City, but complained they have been barred by authorities from performing rituals at their ancestral temples in the Maya region.The Mayas measure time in 394-year periods known as Baktuns. The 13th Baktun ends around Dec. 21, and 13 is considered a sacred number for the Maya....
Source: NYT
Nov 30, 2012
Public opinion surveys conducted since President Obama won re-election show an improvement in his job approval ratings. Compared to previous presidents, however, Mr. Obama’s post-election approval bounce has been relatively meager. Most recent presidents — whether they were running for re-election or retiring and whether they won or lost — received a larger boost to their approval ratings after Election Day than Mr. Obama, according to an examination of polling by Gallup, which has been testing presidential job approval much longer than any other polling firm. A comparison of the last Gallup poll conducted before each presidential election since 1952 to the first Gallup poll in the field entirely after the election shows that incumbent presidents have seen their net job approval (the percentage of people who approve minus the percentage that disapprove) jump by an average of six percentage points.
Source: AP
Nov 30, 2012
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — The obscure book's margins are virtually filled with clusters of curious foreign characters — a mysterious shorthand used by 17th century religious dissident Roger Williams.For centuries the scribbles went undeciphered. But a team of Brown University students has finally cracked the code.Historians call the now-readable writings the most significant addition to Williams scholarship in a generation or more. Williams is Rhode Island's founder and best known as the first figure to argue for the principle of the separation of church and state that would later be enshrined in the Bill of Rights.
Source: NARA Press Release
Nov 30, 2012
Washington, DC… On Friday, November 30, at noon (EST), the National Archives and Records Administration will release records that have been sealed under court order since the 1970s Watergate criminal trial of seven men involved in the Watergate burglary, U.S. v. Liddy, et al. The release includes 36 folders of documents totaling approximately 950 pages (in whole or in part), and is in accordance with the order from Chief Judge Royce Lamberth of the District Court for the District of Columbia. These records will be available online at www.archives.gov/research/investigations/watergate/us-v-liddy.html on Friday, November 30, 2012, at noon EST....
Source: WaPo
Nov 30, 2012
RICHMOND, Va. — Donna Gugger’s heart was heavy as she sifted through the scattered debris and devastation left by Superstorm Sandy along the Jersey Shore. Pieces of broken furniture. Shards of metal. Chairs ripped off patios. Blue jeans tossed out of bureaus.But there was something different about that swath of gray cloth with shiny brass buttons. She stopped to take a second look, leaning down to tug on an edge of the fabric that peeked out from under the sand. At first glance, she thought it was an elaborate Halloween costume — a jacket that reminded her of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper.It was no costume. Gugger had stumbled across an 80-year-old tunic owned by a 1933 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, a World War II hero described in his West Point yearbook as a soldier with a “heart like a stormy sea.”...
Source: WaPo
Nov 30, 2012
FONTAINEBLEAU, France — The single line of Napoleon’s secret code told Paris of his desperate, last order against the Russians: “At three o’clock in the morning, on the 22nd I am going to blow up the Kremlin.”By the time Paris received the letter three days later, the Russian czar’s seat of power was in flames and the diminished French army was in retreat. Its elegantly calligraphic ciphers show history’s famed general at one of his weakest moments.“My cavalry is in tatters, many horses are dying,” dictated Napoleon, the once-feared leader showing the strain of his calamitous Russian invasion, which halved his army....
Source: NYT
Nov 30, 2012
ROME — As its corporate sponsors continue to feel the pinch of the financial crisis, the Vatican has taken an unprecedented step and is appealing directly to tourists and collectors to help finance the restoration of Bernini’s 17th-century colonnade in St. Peter’s Square by buying limited edition stamps.The Vatican’s Philatelic and Numismatic Office is offering a souvenir sheet of two 10-euro stamps that could raise 3 million euros for the project, if all 150,000 are sold.“Fund-raising wasn’t going very well,” said the office’s director, Mauro Olivieri, who came up with the idea for the stamps this year after officials in various Vatican departments were invited to suggest initiatives to help pay for the colonnade’s restoration. The cleanup began in 2009 and was expected to take four years, but the work began to lag when funds dwindled....
Source: NYT
Nov 30, 2012
...[M]ost Americans in 2010 paid far less in total taxes — federal, state and local — than they would have paid 30 years ago. According to an analysis by The New York Times, the combination of all income taxes, sales taxes and property taxes took a smaller share of their income than it took from households with the same inflation-adjusted income in 1980.Households earning more than $200,000 benefited from the largest percentage declines in total taxation as a share of income. Middle-income households benefited, too. More than 85 percent of households with earnings above $25,000 paid less in total taxes than comparable households in 1980.Lower-income households, however, saved little or nothing. Many pay no federal income taxes, but they do pay a range of other levies, like federal payroll taxes, state sales taxes and local property taxes. Only about half of taxpaying households with incomes below $25,000 paid less in 2010....
Source: Business Insider
Nov 29, 2012
On Jan. 23, 1968, the USS Pueblo, a Navy intelligence-gathering ship, was captured by North Korea....The ship remained in North Korea, which eventually docked it near Pyongyang, and turned it into a tourist attraction. Visitors can take a tour of the ship, and then watch a 20-minute video officials filmed of the North Korean view of the capture.But now the Pueblo is missing, NKNews.org. reports. A tour company, Koryo Tours, discovered the disappearance after employees returned from a trip. There is evidence the ship was in place on the Taedong River recently.
Source: Archaeo News
Nov 29, 2012
In recent years, engraved ochre, bones and ostrich eggs unearthed from various Palaeolithic sites in Africa, the Near East and Europe have attracted the attention of many scholars. However, such items are rarely encountered at Palaeolithic sites in East Asia.Professor Gao Xing and Dr Peng Fei from the Chinese Academy of Sciences found an engraved stone artefact in a stone tool assemblage unearthed at the famous Shuidonggou Palaeolithic site, in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region of northwest China.Dr Peng Fei describes it as, "the first engraved non-organic artefact from the entire Palaeolithic of China"....
Source: Archaeo News
Nov 29, 2012
Beer drinkers have long held the belief that drinking it is safer and better than drinking water. Well Neolithic Man new for a fact that it was better than water, and now a team from the University of Manchester (UK) have found the remains of a 3,500 year old microbrewery near Paphos, Cyprus. It was found in the midst of a Bronze age settlement known as Kissonerga-Skalia. All the makings of a modern day brewery have been found, including wild yeast additives, a malting or drying kiln and grinding tools....
Source: WSJ
Nov 29, 2012
Ask Sally Rothemich how her husband’s doing, and you’ll usually get the same reply: “My real husband or my fake husband?”Her real husband is Don Rothemich, a teacher from Massachusetts who wears sweaters and loafers.Her fake husband is an American immigrant, originally from England, named Francis Eaton, who wears cassocks and sailed on the Mayflower.Ms. Rothemich and her fake husband are re-enactors at Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, Mass. The job makes for a mighty juggle – between work and life, and between past and present....
Source: AP
Nov 29, 2012
NEW YORK — Trace Adkins wore an earpiece decorated like the Confederate flag when he performed for the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting but says he meant no offense by it.Adkins appeared with the earpiece on a nationally televised special for the lighting on Wednesday. Some regard the flag as a racist symbol and criticized Adkins in Twitter postings.But in a statement released Thursday, the Louisiana native called himself a proud American who objects to any oppression and says the flag represents his Southern heritage....
Source: NYT
Nov 29, 2012
JERUSALEM — The black-and-white photos show masses of people yearning for independence, celebrating a vote recognizing a state in Palestine. It was a day that generations of pupils would be taught to remember with reverence: Nov. 29.The jubilant revelers were Jews, the year was 1947, and the vote was held in the United Nations General Assembly. The Palestinians rejected the partition plan, which called for Jewish and Arab states to be established after the imminent expiration of the British rule over Palestine. The outraged Arabs soon started a war they eventually lost.Sixty-five years later to the day, the tables are somewhat reversed: Palestinians have turned to the General Assembly for a second chance — and it is the Israelis who have dismissed the vote, which resoundingly upgraded the Palestinians’ U.N. status, as a symbolic trifle....
Source: LiveScience
Nov 29, 2012
Call it a card player's dream. A complete set of 52 silver playing cards gilded in gold and dating back 400 years has been discovered.Created in Germany around 1616, the cards were engraved by a man named Michael Frömmer, who created at least one other set of silver cards.According to a story, backed up by a 19th-century brass plate, the cards were at one point owned by a Portuguese princess who fled the country, cards in hand, after Napoleon's armies invaded in 1807.At the time they were created in 1616 no standardized cards existed; different parts of Europe had their own card styles. This particular set uses a suit seen in Italy, with swords, coins, batons and cups in values from ace to 10. Each of these suits has three face cards — king, knight (also known as cavalier) and knave. There are no jokers. [See Photos of the Silver Playing Cards]...
Source: CBS News
Nov 29, 2012
NORFOLK, Va. -- On Saturday, a legendary naval veteran will retire after a half-century of service. The USS Enterprise was the world's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and traveled the world in war and in peace.In five decades as one of the most powerful warships on the sea, the USS Enterprise's moment of greatest peril came one morning in 1969 during a final battle drill before heading to Vietnam...."On each F-4 Phantom, there were eight five-inch rockets and six 500-pound bombs," says [Michael] Carlin, the author of TRIAL: Ordeal of the USS Enterprise 14 January, 1969.The exhaust from a service vehicle overheated the fuse on one of those rockets, touching off what one sailor called "the vortex of hell" -- and all of it was recorded in silent horror by a deck camera.
Source: Bloomberg News
Nov 29, 2012
Central Intelligence Agency employees murdered military scientist Frank Olson in 1953 after he raised concerns about testing chemical and biological weapons on human subjects without their consent, according to a lawsuit brought by his two sons.
Eric and Nils Olson, in a complaint filed against the U.S. yesterday in Washington, said the agency has covered up the cause of their father’s death for 59 years. Frank Olson, who the CIA admitted was given LSD a few days before his death, didn’t jump from a 13th floor window of the Statler Hotel in New York City, but rather was pushed, they claim.
“The circumstances surrounding the death mirrored those detailed in an assassination manual that, upon information and belief, the CIA had drafted that same year,” Scott Gilbert, a lawyer for the Olsons, wrote in the complaint.
Source: LA Times
Nov 29, 2012
In "Hyde Park on Hudson," the retelling of the visit of the king and queen of England to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in upstate New York in 1939, there's a particularly remarkable scene: Roosevelt's mother — who owned the house where everyone stayed — had purchased a brand-new toilet seat for the royals. But after they left she returned it to the store where she bought it. The shop owner was delighted, hanging the seat in his front window. That's in the movie — and it happened in real life."People will think that was made up," says screenwriter Richard Nelson. "But that's hard to make up, and it's all true."
