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: BBC News
Dec 22, 2010
The innermost secrets of a colossal "sea monster" skull are being revealed by one of the UK's most powerful CT scanners.
The X-rays are helping to build up a 3D picture of this ferocious predator, called a pliosaur, which terrorized the oceans 150m years ago.
The 2.4m-long (7.9ft) fossil skull was recently unearthed along the UK's Jurassic coast, and is thought to belong to one of the biggest pliosaurs ever found.
The scans could establish if the
Source: BBC News
Dec 22, 2010
A 1972 book which predicts what life would be like in 2010 has been reprinted after attracting a cult following, but how hard is it to tell the future?
Geoffrey Hoyle is often asked why he predicted everybody would be wearing jumpsuits by 2010. He envisioned a world where everybody worked a three-day week and had their electric cars delivered in tubes of liquid.
These colourful ideas from his 1972 children's book, 2010: Living in the Future, helped prompt a Facebook cam
Source: BBC News
Dec 22, 2010
Scientists say an entirely separate type of human identified from bones in Siberia co-existed and interbred with our own species.
The ancient humans have been dubbed Denisovans after the caves in Siberia where their remains were found.
There is also evidence that this group was widespread in Eurasia.
A study in Nature journal shows that Denisovans co-existed with Neanderthals and interbred with our species - perhaps around 50,000 years ago.
An
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 22, 2010
The disgraced commander of US air operations during the Vietnam War has been posthumously exonerated after secret files reveal the Nixon administration ordered him to carry out "rogue" air strikes.
John D Lavelle was demoted and forced to retire in April 1972 after being relieved of duty for violating presidential restrictions on aerial bombing during the Vietnam War.
He maintained his innocence during congressional hearings held after his dismissal and died
Source: CNN
Dec 22, 2010
The hometown of the man who inspired the legend of Santa Claus is a long way from the snow and arctic lights of the North Pole.
The land Saint Nicholas is originally from rarely sees snowflakes -- it is a village of palm trees and orange groves on the Mediterranean Sea in what is modern-day Turkey. Nicholas, patron saint of sailors and children, lived and died there nearly 18 centuries ago.
The legend of the 4th century bishop who gave gifts to the poor has spread since
Source: CNN
Dec 22, 2010
The Senate on Wednesday passed a compromise version of a bill to provide free medical treatment and compensation to first responders of the September 11 terrorist attack.
The bill passed on a voice vote on what is expected to be the final day of the lame-duck session of Congress. It now goes to the House, which also is expected to approve it and send it to President Barack Obama to be signed into law.
Jubilant Democrats hailed the last-minute approval as a triumph for f
Source: BBC News
Dec 22, 2010
Not so long ago, most people did not possess a phone. Any phone. And remember when video recorders were a must-have? At a time of year when tech takes centre stage, take a trip down memory chip lane.
The season of goodwill is sandwiched, like it or not, by things: must-haves, latest crazes, always-wanteds, gadgets and treats and consumer goodies, first as gifts, then the sales.
Sorry for Go Figure's materialist turn, but it just happens that for 40 years, surveys have t
Source: BBC News
Dec 22, 2010
A 17th Century portrait by Spanish painter Diego Velazquez is back on show at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art years after it was wrongly identified as not being a genuine work.
The Met downgraded the painting of King Philip IV in 1973, determining it was likely done by an assistant or follower studying under the artist.
But experts reversed the decision after a year's worth of restoration.
The portrait can now be seen in the European Paintings galleri
Source: BBC News
Dec 22, 2010
Archaeologists in Spain have unearthed the remains of a possible family of 12 Neanderthals who were killed 49,000 years ago.
Markings on the bones show the unmistakeable signs of cannibal activity, say the researchers, with the group having probably been killed by their peers.
The remains were found in a cave in the Asturias region of Northern Spain. Details of the find appear in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Although the highly fragmente
Source: AP
Dec 22, 2010
American writer and historian Robert Katz, best known for his reconstruction of an infamous Nazi massacre in Rome, has died in Italy. He was 77.
Katz's wife Beverly Gerstel told the AP on Thursday that the author had died in the hospital in Tuscany from complications from cancer surgery the day before. Katz had been a longtime resident of Tuscany.
His works looked at some crucial events in modern Italian history, including the Nazi massacre of 335 Italians at the Ardeat
Source: Jewish telegraph Agency
Dec 21, 2010
(JTA) -- The World Jewish Congress has called on U.S. courts to facilitate a quick extradition of alleged Nazi war criminal Peter Egner to Serbia.
Serbia's justice minister on Nov. 26 formally requested the extradition of Egner, 88, who lives in a retirement community outside of Seattle, Wash.
“The accusations brought against Egner are so horrendous that no further time must be wasted," Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, said Tuesday in a state
Source: Bloomberg
Dec 21, 2010
However history judges the 535 men and women in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate the past two years, one thing is certain: The 111th Congress made more law affecting more Americans since the “Great Society” legislation of the 1960s.
For the first time since President Theodore Roosevelt began the quest for a national health-care system more than 100 years ago, the Democrat-led House and Senate took the biggest step toward achieving that goal by giving 32 million Americans
Source: WaPo
Dec 21, 2010
CHARLESTON, S.C.- "Dixie," that emotionally freighted and much-debated anthem of the old Confederacy, starts soft when it's done right, barely above a whisper. But each sotto voce syllable of the opening verse, each feather-light scrape of the fiddle strings, could be heard without straining when the ladies in the hoop skirts and the men in the frock coats rose in reverence to celebrate the 150th anniversary of South Carolina's secession.
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Source: WaPo
Dec 21, 2010
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) is trying to quell the political storm kicked up over controversial comments he made about the struggle for civil rights in his state.
In a Weekly Standard magazine profile published Monday, Barbour said he didn't remember it "being that bad" and referred benignly to white groups called Citizens Councils, which were known to enforce segregationist policies throughout the South.
His office released a statement Tuesday morning
Source: Stars and Stripes
Dec 21, 2010
Germany lay defeated and in ruins, responsible for the recent murder of millions and a world war. Yet it also became an unlikely haven for some soldiers.
“For black GIs, especially those out of the South, Germany was a breath of freedom,” Colin Powell, a former secretary of state, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and America’s most famous African-American soldier, noted in his memoir.
“They could go where they wanted, eat what they wanted and date whom they wanted
Source: Fox News
Dec 21, 2010
Starting from a watch dial, Mexican researchers are following a number of clues to find a purported treasure from Spain, while also hoping to find a survivor of that story that goes back to the 1930s exile of Spanish Republicans to Mexico.
The 7-centimeter (2 3/4-inch) watch dial was found Nov. 20 by divers from the underwater archaeology division of Mexico's National Anthropology and History Institute, at the bottom of a lake in the crater of Nevado de Toluca volcano, at 4,200 mete
Source: BBC
Dec 21, 2010
The remains of an Anglo-Saxon settlement have been discovered at a surface mine in Northumberland.
Buildings and artefacts dating from the 6th to 8th centuries have been uncovered at Shotton Surface Mine, on the Blagdon Estate, near Cramlington.
The site had been investigated by archaeologists before the start of open-cast mining work.
Experts said the find had provided "the first direct evidence" of Anglo-Saxon settlement in that part of the coun
Source: CNN
Dec 21, 2010
The Ides of March was indeed a portentous day for the Confederate gunboat Peedee and its the 90-man crew, which heaved three artillery pieces overboard and torched the doomed vessel in the waning weeks of the Civil War.
The C.S.S. Peedee, built inland between Florence and Marion, South Carolina, was unable to reach the Atlantic Ocean because Union forces had taken coastal Georgetown. The crew scuttled the wooden Peedee on March 15, 1865, leaving its remains in the Pee Dee River.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 21, 2010
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is about to make a public plea for the United States to release Jonathan Pollard, an Israeli spy jailed 25 years ago, his office said on Tuesday.
Mr Netanyahu has decided to "accede to Jonathan Pollard's personal request and will, in the coming days, officially and publicly appeal to US President Barack Obama regarding Pollard's release," his office said.
Pollard, a former US Navy analyst, is serving a life sentence
Source: AP
Dec 21, 2010
Two Dutch reporters were questioned by police Tuesday after a convicted Nazi criminal complained they had violated his privacy by secretly filming him in his room at a retirement home.
Heinrich Boere, 89, was sentenced to life in prison earlier this year for killing Dutch civilians during World War II. His appeal was rejected by Germany's highest criminal appeals court on Monday, but he continues to live in freedom in Eschweiler, Germany, pending a procedure to have him jailed.
