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
December 23, 2009
The Vatican said Tuesday that moving Pope Pius XII closer to sainthood is not a hostile act against Jews, even though the wartime pontiff has been criticized for not speaking out enough against the Holocaust.
A Vatican statement said Tuesday that the move should not be an obstacle to dialogue between Jews and the Catholic Church, and insisted Pope Benedict XVI has sentiments of "great friendship and respect" for the Jews.
The statement sought to quell the outr
Source: NYT
December 24, 2009
The partridge is a deal, and so is the pear tree, for the generous giver who wants to bestow the gifts listed in the song “The 12 Days of Christmas” on a beloved this season. But despite a tattered economy, the memorable mix of leaping lords, milking maids and a slew of fowl will cost slightly more this year.
At $21,465.56, the eclectic collection of goods and services is about 1.8 percent more expensive than a year ago, largely because of higher gold prices, according to PNC Wealth
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 23, 2009
Cheery and chubby, Father Christmas towers over our annual festival. Yet St Nicholas, his Christian inspiration, was a far more intriguing character, says Alastair Sooke.
Nothing captures the commercialisation of Christmas quite as effectively as the history of Santa Claus. To illustrate the point, look at a wonderful 16th-century painting that hangs in Room 7 of the National Gallery in London. Most people who pass by it are unaware of its significance. But this panel, circa 1555-60
Source: BBC
December 22, 2009
The CIA used at least two secret detention centres in Lithuania after the 11 September 2001 terror attacks on the US, a Lithuanian inquiry has found.
The report by a Lithuanian parliamentary committee says that in 2005 and 2006 CIA chartered planes were allowed to land in Lithuania.
It says that no Lithuanian officials were allowed near the aircraft, nor were they told who was on board.
Poland and Romania hosted similar CIA "black sites", media
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 22, 2009
Former President Bill Clinton came within minutes of being assassinated in the Philippines by terrorists controlled by Osama bin Laden, a new book has revealed.
The US leader was saved shortly before his car was due to drive over a bridge in Manila where a bomb had been planted.
The foiled attack came during Mr Clinton's visit to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in the city in 1996. Prof Gormley’s book, for which he intervie
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 22, 2009
The leading English seminary in Rome has unveiled documents that suggest William Shakespeare was a Roman Catholic.
The Venerable English College has claimed that England's leading playwright was a secret Catholic who spent "lost years" in Rome.
Father Andrew Headon, the vice-rector of the college, said that college records correspond with a previously undocumented period in Shakespeare's life after he left Stratford in 1585 and before he emerged as a playwri
Source: Science Daily
December 21, 2009
When a team of archaeologists began excavating an old coral reef in Vanuatu in 2008 and 2009, they soon discovered it had served as a cemetery in ancient times. So far, 71 buried individuals have been recorded, giving new information on the islands' inhabitants and their funeral rites.
Relatives did not treat their dead gently. Besides being headless, some of them had had their arms and legs broken, in order to fit into the coral reef cavities. Ravn suggests they may have been left
Source: AP
December 20, 2009
President Barack Obama plans to deal with a Dec. 31 deadline that automatically would declassify secrets in more than 400 million pages of Cold War-era documents by ordering government-wide changes that could sharply curb the number of new and old government records hidden from the public.
In an executive order the president is likely to sign before year's end, Obama will create a National Declassification Center to clear up the backlog of Cold War documents. But the order also will
Source: MSNBC
December 21, 2009
Sign will be welded, restored to death camp gate; five arrested.
The three pieces of the infamous sign proclaiming "Arbeit Macht Frei" ("Work Sets You Free)" will be welded together and restored to the main gate at the former Auschwitz death camp after an improved security system is put in place to guard against another theft.
Officials at the Auschwitz memorial museum said Monday the new system would be aimed at better protecting not just the recove
Source: AP
December 20, 2009
Ugly words on the playground were his first hurtful clue.
At age 12, a furtive glance at a medical record deepened Jean-Jacques Delorme's doubts about who he was. Throughout adulthood, he unearthed relics of his long-hidden history.
He was the product, he discovered, of a shame-tainted liaison between his French kitchen servant mother and an officer in the German army occupying France — one of an estimated 200,000 such children, many of whom grew up stigmatized, their i
Source: Times (UK)
December 24, 2009
Christmas Day memories are made of this: a turkey dinner, exchanging gifts, watching television, family togetherness, peace on Earth and goodwill to all men. Dorin-Marian Cirlan’s abiding memory is of the Christmas Day he shot a dictator.
“I know what I would rather have been doing,” said Mr Cirlan, who was a member of the three-man squad that killed Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, on December 25, 1989. “As a Christian it is a horrible thing to have to take someone’s life —
Source: Guardian (UK)
December 23, 2009
They were one of the world's most famous couples, who lived lives of power and glory – but who spent their last hours in despair and confusion. Now, more than 2,000 years since Antony and Cleopatra walked the earth, historians believe they may finally have solved the riddle of their last hours together.
A team of Greek marine archaeologists who have spent years conducting underwater excavations off the coast of Alexandria in Egypt have unearthed a giant granite threshold to a door t
Source: Guardian (UK)
December 23, 2009
Some will always believe that Tony Blair took the country to war in Iraq on a lie, but the most damning charge emerging from the Iraq war inquiry so far is that Britain went to war on a wing and a prayer. The main charges, after four weeks of cross examination, are that Britain had minimal influence over American diplomatic and military strategy, did not plan correctly for the aftermath of war, and utterly misconstrued post-war Iraqi society.
It is these charges as much as whether i
Source: LiveScience
December 23, 2009
The ancient Mayans may have had enough engineering know-how to master running water, creating fountains and even toilets by controlling water pressure, scientists now suggest.
Perhaps the earliest known example of the intentional creation of water pressure was found on the island of Crete in a Minoan palace dating back to roughly 1400 BC. In the New World, the ability to generate water pressure was previously thought to have begun only with the arrival of the Spanish.
S
Source: Times (UK)
December 24, 2009
After more than 20 years as president of the Communist Party Council and de facto sole ruler, Nicolae Ceausescu was killed by firing squad, with his wife, on December 25, 1989. A trial lasting two hours had found the couple guilty of war crimes and bankrupting the nation.
The Ceausescus had been held captive by the militia for three days after their capture on December 22, as they tried to flee a rally in Bucharest by helicopter. Despite widespread regional unrest, when protests bro
Source: Deutsche Welle
December 23, 2009
A German court has ordered the release of a former member of the Baader-Meinhof Gang, a far-left militant group active in West Germany during the late 1970's and early 1980's. Verena Becker, 57, was arrested in August on suspicion of complicity in the killing of chief federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback and two other people on April 7th, 1977. Although she is set to be released, she still remains a suspect in connection with the murders.
"At the current stage of the investigat
Source: USA Today
December 22, 2009
The decade began with a national sigh of relief — no Y2K terrorist attack or computer meltdown. A traveler named Luis Salcedo, boarding a flight in New Orleans on Jan. 1, 2000, summed it up: "Nothing to worry about now."
Not with the lowest unemployment rate in nearly 30 years and a stock market that had just closed at a historic high. Not in the world's only superpower.
So began a decade when America experienced its worst attack by foreigners and its worst na
Source: Time
December 22, 2009
It's hard to imagine any of Russia's current leaders getting a birthday party like the one thrown Monday at Moscow's Ismailovsky Hotel for the former despot, Josef Stalin. The grand hall was packed beyond capacity with more than 2,000 revelers — some of whom wept as patriotic poems were read. Famous actresses sang ballads with the backing of a full military orchestra. And towering over the stage was an enormous portrait of the birthday boy in his military regalia, adding an element of the surrea
Source: New York Times
December 21, 2009
Midtown Manhattan has been overhauled so thoroughly in the last two decades that any structure not made of glass and steel looks old. In that realm, the tightly packed pile of stones that appeared at the base of 11 Times Square last week looked positively ancient.
Its sudden unveiling caused passers-by and neighbors to wonder how old it was and what purpose it had served.
Was it a furnace? A fireplace? A coal vault?Time to call in an ex
Source: Reuters
December 20, 2009
An Australian hospital ship torpedoed by the Japanese during World War Two with the loss of 268 lives has been located in waters off the coast of the northern state of Queensland, the government said on Sunday.
The loss of the Centaur in 1943 while sailing to Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea was one of Australia's great wartime disasters. Survivors and their relatives have long pressed for the wreck to be found, fearing salvagers would reach it first.
On Sunday, it said
