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
Dec 7, 2010
Wrexham council is to negotiate with the owners of the former Brymbo Ironworks to help preserve key buildings.
The plant closed in 1990, leaving about 6,000 people out of work.
A number of historic buildings, including the Grade II-listed former agent's house, are in disrepair.
Wrexham planners agreed on Monday to strike a deal with Brymbo Developments Ltd to install a temporary roof on the Grade II-listed former agent's house.
The site include
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Dec 7, 2010
Britain feared that Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi could “cut us off at the knees, just like the Swiss”, unless the Lockerbie bomber was released, leaked WikiLeaks cables show.
Sir Vincent Fean, the UK's ambassador to Tripoli at the time, also warned that continuing to hold Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi in a prison in Scotland could have “disastrous implications for British interests in Libya”.
The warnings were contained in secret communiqués sent from US embassy staf
Source: Fox News
Dec 7, 2010
Elizabeth Edwards, who played a pivotal role in her husband's political career and captured the public's sympathy with her lengthy battle with breast cancer and her estrangement from John Edwards over his highly publicized affair, died Tuesday of liver failure, Fox News has confirmed. She was 61.
She died at her North Carolina home surrounded by her three children, siblings, friends and John, the family said.
Edwards stopped receiving treatment this month when doctors t
Source: AP
Dec 7, 2010
The Simon Wiesenthal Center's top Nazi hunter said Tuesday he is not aware of any evidence of war crimes committed by a 97-year-old former SS officer, despite a newspaper report that he allegedly admitted his signature is on an order to kill thousands of Jews.
Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff said there is evidence that Bernhard Frank was a devoted Nazi, but that he has seen nothing to indicate he was involved in ordering that Jews be killed.
Frank is best known as the SS offi
Source: Yahoo News
Dec 7, 2010
BERLIN – Germany has agreed to double its contribution toward in-home care for Holocaust survivors in order to meet the increasing need of the rapidly aging group.
Germany's Finance Ministry confirmed Tuesday it would increase its contribution for 2011 to euro110 million ($147 million), pending approval from parliament, which is widely expected....
Source: Ynet News
Dec 7, 2010
He was a senior assistant to SS and Gestapo Commander Heinrich Himmler, and befriended Adolf Hitler as well. He was responsible for signing the first order of the Reich instructing the mass murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews, later turning into the Nazi systematic extermination machine.
But for the past 65 years since the end of World War II, Dr. Bernhard Frank managed to hide his direct involvement with the Jewish genocide, walking around freely in Germany and never being pros
Source: CNN
Dec 7, 2010
Journalists occupy a unique place in history.
They are observers paid to chronicle history, and many of them did when Mark David Chapman stepped from the shadows and gunned down musical legend John Lennon late on December 8, 1980.
In honor of the 30th anniversary of the ex-Beatle's death, a few journalists shared their recollections of that fateful night and the roles they played in the coverage.
Donna Cornachio is a professor of journalism at Purchase Coll
Source: BBC News
Dec 7, 2010
A statue of former Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin has been bombed in a suburb of St Petersburg in Russia.
Police said the blast had seriously damaged the monument and shattered windows of nearby apartments.
The city governor linked the explosion to another attack last year on a larger Lenin statue in central St Petersburg.
Correspondents say statues of the Bolshevik revolutionary remain numerous in Russia, nearly 20 years after the collapse of the Soviet Unio
Source: BBC Magazine
Dec 7, 2010
John Lennon's death 30 years ago was one of those shocking, poignant "where were you when" moments that fashion collective memories out of historic events.
Many are sudden deaths - that of JFK being the most notable. Outbreaks and conclusions of war, scandalous resignations of heads of state, sporting miracles, and audacious crimes can all become a "where were you when".
But why do we remember where we were when we heard Princess Diana had died, or M
Source: BBC News
Dec 7, 2010
A coded manuscript by Leonardo da Vinci has been discovered in a public library in the French city of Nantes.
The document was found after a journalist came across a reference to it in a Leonardo biography, the library said.
It was among 5,000 manuscripts donated by wealthy collector Pierre-Antoine Labouchere in 1872 and then forgotten.
The text is written from right to left in Leonardo's trademark mirror-writing and has yet to be deciphered.
&
Source: BBC News
Dec 7, 2010
A Japanese discount chain has said it will remove a Nazi costume from its shelves after receiving a complaint from a Jewish group in the US.
The costume is on sale at Don Quijote Co for about 5,000 yen (£38; $60) in at least two stores in Tokyo.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles sent a letter on Monday, requesting the costume be withdrawn from sale immediately.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews and others during World War II.
The centr
Source: NYT
Dec 7, 2010
Nineteen years ago, Peter Robyn’s 10-year-old son came home from school on a day that, for Mr. Robyn, will live in infamy.
It was Dec. 7, 1991, the 50th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Mr. Robyn asked his son if he had learned about the event in class. He was surprised when his son said no.
“My father served in World War II, and it was very important to him,” Mr. Robyn said. “That day should have been remembered.”
Fifteen years later, Mr. Rob
Source: New Scientist
Dec 6, 2010
Sacrifice is an age-old ritual, but the inhabitants of 10th-century Peru brought sinister novelty to their rites by slaughtering children.
In the Lambayeque valley on the north coast of the country, the earliest definitive evidence of ritual child sacrifice has been uncovered. The bloodletting took place at a site called Cerro Cerrillos.
This practice, which emerged between 900 and 1100 AD, may have been a way for a particular ethnic group – the Muchik – to solidifying
Source: Science Mag
Dec 6, 2010
Earth is warming, climate researchers say, and sooner or later we will have to adjust our lifestyles if we want to adapt and survive. Perhaps we should take a cue from earlier occupants of North America. A new study finds a strong correlation between changing climate and changing culture in the prehistoric United States.
Archaeologists divide the prehistory of North America into three broad cultural phases: the Paleoindian, Archaic, and Woodland periods. They are characterized by an
Source: USA Today
Dec 6, 2010
Emerging archeological evidence points to early human habitation 120,000 years ago in a Persian "Gulf Oasis" now underwater, suggests one archeologist.
In the upcoming Current Anthropology journal study, Jeffrey Rose of the United Kingdom's University of Birmingham, points to stone tools from 40 archeological sites throughout the Middle East to suggest that modern humans left Africa earlier than many model suggest (typically around 60,000 years ago), and populated Arabian
Source: Reuters
Dec 6, 2010
Maybe being a serf or a villein in the Middle Ages was not such a grim existence as it seems.
Medieval England was not only far more prosperous than previously believed, it also actually boasted an average income that would be more than double the average per capita income of the world's poorest nations today, according to new research.
Living standards in medieval England were far above the "bare bones subsistence" experience of people in many of today's poor
Source: The Atlantic
Dec 6, 2010
The Library of Congress has released 700 portraits of Americans taken during the Civil War. They were a gift of the Liljenquist Family Collection and most of the people who appear in them are unidentified. In fact, through Flickr commons, the Library is hoping to tap the collective knowledge of the crowd to find out more about t
Source: PR Newswire
Dec 6, 2010
GETTYSBURG, Pa., Dec. 6, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Award-winning filmmaker Ken Burns, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author David McCullough, President Eisenhower's granddaughter Susan Eisenhower and Medal of Honor recipient Paul W. Bucha discuss their heartfelt objections to the proposed Gettysburg casino (1/2 mile from the Gettysburg National Military Park) in four emotional videos just released from No Casino Gettysburg and the Civil War Preservation Trust.The musical acco
Source: Fox News
Dec 6, 2010
As a gentle breeze binds the scent of oil and tropical air, Paul Rom rises from his wheelchair and grabs hold of the rail. The sky and water nearly match in brilliant blue and just feet a way an American flag whips atop the mast of ship still watching over the harbor. With a little help Paul gazes just to his left, the front gun turret rusted, but visible above the water and the smells from 'the tears of the Arizona' drift up from below. For Paul, a native of the Bronx, this is his first and lik
Source: New Scientist
Dec 6, 2010
Sacrifice is an age-old ritual, but the inhabitants of 10th-century Peru brought sinister novelty to their rites by slaughtering children.
In the Lambayeque valley on the north coast of the country, the earliest definitive evidence of ritual child sacrifice has been uncovered. The bloodletting took place at a site called Cerro Cerrillos.
"The scale and sheer complexity of the blood sacrifice of children at Cerro Cerrillos appears to be something completely new,&quo
