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
December 22, 2009
German officials have ruled out returning an ancient bust of Queen Nefertiti to Egypt - saying it is too fragile to be transported.
And they have insisted that the bust was acquired legally by the Prussian state nearly a century ago.
Egypt first requested the return of the antiquity in 1930, but successive German governments have refused.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 22, 2009
The mistress of France's 16th century King Henry II was poisoned by a gold elixir she drank to keep herself looking young, scientists have discovered.
Diane de Poitiers was renowned for her youthful looks and porcelain skin and thought the concoction preserved her youth.
Experts say she was up to 20 years older than the king but her appearance made them look the same age. One courtier said she was "as fresh and lovable" in her final years as when aged 30 and
Source: CNN
December 22, 2009
Fitrie Ani was three months pregnant when she heard neighbors in her corner of Banda Aceh screaming: "The sea is rising! The sea is rising!"
A wall of water twice as high as a house engulfed communities like Ani's around the Indian Ocean, from Indonesia to East Africa, the day after Christmas 2004, leaving some 200,000 people dead or missing in 12 countries in a tsunami that the U.S. Geological Survey says caused more casualties than any other in recorded history.
Source: CNN
December 22, 2009
Ann Nixon Cooper, the Atlanta centenarian whose name Barack Obama invoked in his post-election speech as a symbol of America's struggles and progress, died Monday. She was 107.
In his victory speech in Chicago, Obama said of Cooper, who was African-American: "She was born just a generation past slavery ... when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons -- because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.
Cooper was born in Shelbyville, Tennessee, i
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 22, 2009
Twenty years after his execution by firing squad, the former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu has become a major tourist draw despite lingering memories of his despotic regime.
Foreign tourists are dwarfed by Alexandru Ioan Cuza hall at the parliament palace known as "The House of the People" in Bucharest Photo: AFP/Getty Images Nowhere is that so marked as at the grandiose palace in central Bucharest, which he had built at enormous human and financial cost to his long-
Source: History Today
December 22, 2009
On Friday, December 18th, Cambridge University Library took delivery of the personal archive of Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), marking the culmination of a six-month campaign to restore the collection for the nation.
The Sassoon Archive was in the possession of the poet’s son until his death in 2006. It went on the market two years later. Siegfried Sassoon studied as an undergraduate at Cambridge University and later became an Honorary Fellow of Clare College. The library already he
Source: Kansascity.com
December 21, 2009
As Kansas City’s Liberty Memorial has gained acclaim with its World War I museum, the flow of donated artifacts has also greatly increased.
But officials are reeling from the immensity of a recent gift from the widow of a lifelong collector. A semi-trailer truck was needed to haul in the roughly 1,700 items, most of them related to the ferocious machine guns of that era.
“It was like getting a whole other museum,” said Eli Paul, vice president of museum programs at Libe
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 21, 2009
A rare piece of 3D Nazi propaganda designed to show the German army's march across Europe is to be auctioned
The rare boxed set of stereo cards were a basic version of "virtual reality" and allowed families and children feel like they were on the front line from their living rooms.
They were dreamt up by Hitler's evil war machine and showed the progress of the army as it conquered the West.
Rich Nazi families, who were able to buy them with specia
Source: BBC News
December 22, 2009
Polish police have taken three men who admitted stealing the "Arbeit macht frei" sign from Auschwitz back to the site to re-enact its theft.
Police found the metal sign cut into three pieces on Sunday and arrested five men in northern Poland.
Three of the five have confessed to the theft from the site in southern Poland.
The 5m (16ft) wrought iron sign - the words on which translate as "Work sets you free" - symbolises for many the atr
Source: Spiegel Online
December 21, 2009
German historian Joachim Riecker recently published a book about Hitler's hatred of Jews. British newspapers soon printed articles containing inaccurate information about the book. Now the researcher is battling to save his reputation. In an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, Riecker expresses his frustration and demands a correction.
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Mr. Riecker, you wrote a book about Hitler and the Holocaust. Your central thesis in "Hitler's November 9," is that Germany's de
Source: Deutsche Welle
December 21, 2009
Relatives of Jewish Holocaust victims murdered by the Nazis spoke of their pain in the trial of alleged former death camp guard John Demjanjuk.
The Munich court was told of how families had been rounded up during the Second World War before being taken away and killed.
Concentration camp survivors are among 30 plaintiffs in an action that claims Demjanjuk assisted in the murders of at least 27,900 people at the Sobibor concentration camp between March and September 1943
Source: Times (UK)
December 22, 2009
War Horse, the children’s story that became a huge West End hit, is galloping towards the silver screen after it emerged yesterday that Steven Spielberg has bought the film rights.
Theatre audiences have been mesmerised by the tale of a boy who braves the trenches of the First World War in the hope of finding his beloved horse. Michael Morpurgo, who wrote War Horse in 1982, welcomed news that his story was being developed by the director. “I can think of no one better to do this,”
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 21, 2009
Jewish leaders reacted with anger when he approved a decree recognising the "heroic virtues" of Pius XII, who is accused of turning a blind eye to the Holocaust.
They said the Vatican had given them private assurances the procedure leading to possible sainthood would be frozen until wartime archives had been studied further.
The timing of the decision has cast a cloud over the German Pope's plan to make his first visit to Rome's synagogue in January.
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
December 21, 2009
The Lockerbie bomber had a secret fortune of nearly £2million in a Swiss bank account before his conviction eight years ago, it was revealed yesterday.
Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi was said by the Libyan government to be a low-ranking airline worker.
Yet he had a bank balance of £1.8million when he was found guilty of the murder of 270 people in the Pan Am bombing, which happened above the Scottish town of Lockerbie 21 years ago today.
Source: AP
December 20, 2009
The Russian Communist Party called for a moratorium on criticizing Josef Stalin on Monday to allow the country to celebrate the Soviet dictator's 130th birthday in peace.
Nationwide, Stalin's popularity in Russia has been climbing amid Kremlin-backed efforts to defend his image.
"We would very much like for any discussion of the mistakes of the Stalin epoch to be silenced today, so that people could reflect on Stalin's personality as a creator, a thinker and a patr
Source: BBC News
December 21, 2009
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has called for the world's highest waterfall, Angel Falls, to be given back its indigenous name.
The falls, which drop nearly 1km (0.6 miles) from a flat-topped mountain in the south of Venezuela, are currently named after a 1930s US aviator.
Jimmy Angel is believed to have been the first outsider to see them.
Mr Chavez said they should be called Kerepakupai-Meru, the name used by the indigenous Pemon people of the area.
Source: Fox News
December 21, 2009
Days before Christmas, archeologists on Monday unveiled what they said were the remains of the first dwelling in Nazareth that can be dated back to the time of Jesus — a find that could shed new light on what the hamlet was like during the period the New Testament says Jesus lived there as a boy.
NAZARETH, Israel — Days before Christmas, archaeologists on Monday unveiled what they said were the remains of the first dwelling in Nazareth that can be dated back to the time of Jesus — a
Source: BBC News
December 21, 2009
The "Arbeit macht frei" sign stolen from Auschwitz in southern Poland has been found in the north and five men are being questioned by police.
The five suspects, aged in their 20s and 30s, were not members of a neo-Nazi group, Krakow police said.
The metal sign from the main gate, which symbolises for many the atrocities of Nazi Germany, had been cut into three pieces, they added.
A major search was launched after the sign was stolen before dawn
Source: Pew
December 21, 2009
As the current decade draws to a close, relatively few Americans have positive things to say about it. By roughly two-to-one, more say they have a generally negative (50%) rather than a generally positive (27%) impression of the past 10 years. This stands in stark contrast to the public’s recollection of other decades in the past half-century. When asked to look back on the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, positive feelings outweigh negative in all cases.
By a wide margin, the 9/11 te
Source: AP
December 18, 2009
A Las Vegas teacher has been told to stay home while district officials investigate a claim that she denied in class the Holocaust happened, a newspaper reported Friday.
Clark County schools spokesman Michael Rodriguez said Northwest Career and Technical Academy teacher Lori Sublette was assigned to remain home, and appropriate action would follow an investigation.
Student Katie Piranio told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that Sublette said during a Nov. 25 class that his
