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: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 9, 2010
A lost speech by Liu Xiaobo that has never never previously been published in the West has been unearth in which he attacks China's rise to power and the country's moral and cultural bankruptcy.
In it he compares modern China to T.S.Eliot's The Waste Land and says: "A nation, ignoring its youth and children, can build all the skyscrapers it wants, but in fact is only using its cloud-capped rise to decorate hell.".
The speech, given two years ago when he was a
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 9, 2010
Barack Obama was being assailed from all sides on Thursday night as his own party launched a rebellion in Congress and Sarah Palin ramped up her potential White House bid with a withering verbal assault on the American president.
Adding insult on one of the worst days of his presidency, Mrs Palin compared Mr Obama with Jimmy Carter, a Democrat who served one term and is regarded as one of the least successful US presidents in the post-war era.
When asked what she thou
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 9, 2010
China's attempts to upstage the Nobel Peace Prize with a rival version ended in near-farce in Beijing yesterday when the winner of the inaugural Confucius Peace Prize failed to show up to collect his prize.
But unlike Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese dissident who is unable to attend today's ceremony because he's in a Chinese prison, the first Confucius laureate said he wouldn't attend because he'd never heard of the prize in the first place.
The office of former Taiwanese vice
Source: AP
Dec 9, 2010
Dov Shilansky, a former Israeli parliament speaker and advocate for memorializing the victims of the Nazi Holocaust of World War II, died Thursday, a parliament official said. He was 86.
Shilansky died at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, parliament spokesman Giora Pordes told The Associated Press.
The diminutive politician with an unruly thatch of white hair was known for his hard-line political views alongside an easygoing manner and ready smile....
Source: CNN
Dec 9, 2010
The Richard Nixon Presidential Library will open a trove of records at the facility and online Thursday, including 265 hours of White House tapes, officials said.
The library, in Yorba Linda, California, will also open more than 140,000 pages of presidential records and 75 hours of video oral histories, officials said. The library is part of the National Archives.
The White House tapes span February 1973 to March 1973 and include a few from early April 1973. There are n
Source: CNN
Dec 9, 2010
A U.S. soldier who had been missing in action for 92 years will be buried with full military honors Thursday.
On Wednesday, the Department of Defense's POW/Missing Personnel Office said the remains of Army Private Henry A. Weikel, 28, of Mt. Carmel, Pennsylvania, had been identified and returned to his family for burial.
Weikel will be laid to rest in Annville, Pennsylvania, the office said in a statement.
Weikel was part of the 60th Infantry Regiment, 1st
Source: World Socialist Web Site
Dec 9, 2010
The publication of US State Department internal documents by WikiLeaks has prompted a vociferous response in Germany. With few exceptions, officials and media commentators have echoed Washington’s witch-hunting attacks.
The vast majority of journalists and politicians have condemned WikiLeaks and defended secret diplomacy. This is true not only for right-wing and conservative circles, but also for the so-called “liberal press,” the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens.
Source: World Socialist Web Site
Dec 9, 2010
On November 25, the Netherlands judiciary issued a European arrest warrant for the SS (Hitler’s elite division) war criminal, Klaas Carel Faber. This warrant demands the extradition of the 88-year-old man, who has lived largely undisturbed in the Federal Republic of Germany, since his escape from a war crimes prison in the Dutch city of Breda 58 years ago.
All attempts by the Netherlands courts to bring Faber back into their judicial system after his escape on Boxing Day 1952 have s
Source: Nature
Dec 9, 2010
Peter Debye, the Dutch winner of the 1936 Nobel Prize in Chemistry whose reputation was sullied in 2006 by allegations that he was a Nazi sympathizer, could in fact have been an anti-Nazi informer to the Allies during the approach to the Second World War.
Jurrie Reiding, a retired chemist in the Netherlands, examined Debye's private correspondence and concluded that he might have supplied information to a spy working for the British intelligence agency MI6 in Berlin. The finding is
Source: Expatica
Dec 9, 2010
Germany's state-owned rail company pledged Wednesday to donate five million euros (6.6 million dollars) to a fund for Nazi victims, mostly in projects in eastern Europe.
"Sixty-five years after the end of the war, the suffering of the victims of Nazism is not forgotten," Deutsche Bahn chief executive Ruediger Grube said....
Source: Times (UK)
Dec 9, 2010
The BBC had to apologise today for showing footage from a Nazi rally during the German occupation of the Channel Islands - instead of the weather forecast.
A human error meant the wrong footage was uploaded on to the BBC's South West region website which includes the Channel Islands.
Web users globally would have been able to spot the error which was quickly changed by BBC staff.
A BBC insider said: 'This is another BBC cock-up. People in the Plymouth HQ we
Source: Sky News
Dec 9, 2010
A source close to the family of the Lockerbie bomber Abdul Baset al Megrahi told Sky News Thursday his death is imminent and every day is "expected to be his last."
Suffering from prostate cancer, the Libyan's health has rapidly deteriorated -- and his relatives said he has been in a coma and on life support for around a week.
Al Megrahi -- who was convicted of killing 270 people by bombing a Pan Am jet in 1988 -- has been unable to walk for a number of weeks
Source: CNN
Dec 9, 2010
The charismatic but unpredictable lead singer of the American rock band The Doors may receive a posthumous pardon almost 40 years after he was convicted of exposing himself on stage during a show in Miami, Florida.
Outgoing Florida Governor Charlie Crist -- an admitted Doors fan -- is proposing an official let-off for the late legendary hell-raiser Jim Morrison. And the state clemency board meets Thursday to consider the request.
Under state law, a pardon must have the consen
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 8, 2010
Virgin birth, the star over Bethlehem - you know the story. But does it have a basis in scientific fact? We take a look.
The Star of Bethlehem
Upon Christ’s birth, legend has it, a star appeared in the sky over Bethlehem, leading the three magi to the manger where Jesus lay. The question of whether it had a non-miraculous astronomical explanation - was there really an extra bright star that night? - has been debated for some time.
Two possible explanations
Source: BBC News
Dec 8, 2010
A rare Native American canoe thought to be more than 250 years old has been found on a family estate in Cornwall.
The birch bark canoe was discovered in a barn on the Enys estate near Penryn.
It is believed the Canadian boat was brought to Cornwall by Lt John Enys who fought in Quebec during the American War of Independence.
The canoe will be preserved and put on display to the public at the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth before being repatriated to C
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 8, 2010
Fourteen officials from Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship went on trial in absentia in Paris on Wednesday over the disappearance of four French citizens in the mid-1970s.
The Frenchmen were among more than 3,000 leftists murdered for political reasons during the 'Dirty War' during the 1973-1990 rule of Gen Pinochet. Many "vanished", likely kidnapped and killed, then buried in unmarked graves, leaving relatives unable to properly mourn their dead.
None of the a
Source: ABC News
Dec 8, 2010
The estate tax at a glance:
— The modern estate tax was enacted in 1916, imposing a 10 percent tax on the portion of estates above $50,000.
— The rate peaked at 77 percent from 1941 to 1976. From 1942 to 1976 it was imposed on estates larger than $60,000....
Source: Guardian (UK)
Dec 8, 2010
...The Ambassador stressed the USG's interest in direct discussions between the Spanish government and Claude Cassirer, the AmCit claimant of a painting by Camille Pisarro ("Rue St. Honore") in the Thyssen Museum. The Ambassador noted also that while the Odyssey and Cassirer claim were on separate legal tracks, it was in both governments' interest to avail themselves of whatever margin for manuever they had, consistent with their legal obligations, to resolve both matters in a way that
Source: NYT
Dec 8, 2010
The curators of a Smithsonian art exhibition that has sparked a firestorm in the last week — first because of the inclusion of a video that included an image of ants crawling on a crucifix, then because of the video’s removal from the show — will talk about the show at the New York Public Library next Wednesday....
Source: NYT
Dec 8, 2010
For Larisa Shchetinina, now 72, the decision to leave Ukraine — though not the act itself — came suddenly. In 1992, she went to Kiev to say goodbye to her brother, who was moving to Israel. In the center of the country’s capital she saw graffiti on a wall that read, in large letters: “Let’s drown Russians in Jewish blood.”
She and her husband, Victor, 73, survived Hitler and Stalin, tough postwar years and the challenges of perestroika. In the early 1990s, they faced the consequence
