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: Jaunted
December 8, 2009
If the Mayan calendar is correct, the world is going to end in 2012. That's why tourists have been heading to Tikal, Guatemala, ground zero of the conspiracy set. All this week, Jonathan Franklin and Morten Andersen, the guys behind Addict Village will be looking into the madness behind the newest tourism trend, Doomsday Tourism.
Thanks to the buzz from the Mayan calendar prophecies, local tour operators and hotels are upgrading their services. El Camino Real, a luxury hotel near th
Source: Air Education and Training Command
December 4, 2009
12/4/2009 - SHEPPARD AIR FORCE BASE, Texas -- Just after 7 a.m. on Dec. 7, 1941, a sleeping giant was woken, fresh off the heels of the worst financial times in American history. The Great Depression starved families, wore down the country's financial epicenter and depleted a military that, not long before the depression, helped win a great war against tyranny.
But the day the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked U.S. naval ports and Army Air Corps bases on Hawaii, it also brought the
Source: AP
December 10, 2009
Russian news reports say that a court in the capital has upheld a lower court's ruling against Josef Stalin's grandson in a libel suit over a newspaper article that denounced the Soviet dictator's repressions.
The RIA Novosti and ITAR-Tass news said the Moscow City Court on Thursday rejected Yevgeny Dzhugashvili's appeal of October's ruling by a district court.
Its verdict rejected Yevgeny Dzhugashvili's claim that Novaya Gazeta damaged Stalin's honor and dignity in an
Source: The Denver Channel
December 9, 2009
Anonymous donors have dropped three rare – and very valuable - gold coins into Salvation Army kettles over the past week, boosting spirits during a sluggish holiday season.
This is the second year gold coins have been dropped throughout the city. Each of the three coins is valued between $1,200 and $1,700.
The first coin, a rare 1902 $20 Liberty gold coin, was dropped in a Salvation Army kettle at the Stapleton Sam’s Club on Dec. 3. On Monday, another gold coin was drop
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 12, 2009
President Robert Mugabe's supporters have been accused of using rape as a political weapon against the opposition during the election in Zimbabwe last year.
A report by an American charity documents 380 politically motivated rapes committed by 241 individuals across all of Zimbabwe's 10 provinces.
Aids-Free World, which is led by the former United Nations envoy on Aids, Stephen Lewis, said that those behind the attacks on supporters of the Movement for Democratic Change
Source: Telegraph (UK)
October 12, 2009
Scotland's oldest book, a medieval Celtic psalter with vivid illustrations in green, red, purple and gold, will be put on public display today for the first time in 1,000 years.
The pocket-sized book of psalms dates from the 11th century and has been described as Scotland's version of the celebrated Book of Kells in Dublin.
It contains hand-written psalms in Latin, with Celtic and Pictish illustrations of dragons and other “beasts” and has previously only been available
Source: Ottawa Citizen
July 12, 2009
Two bands of Algonquins have filed competing claims for a cache of 2,000-year-old aboriginal artifacts discovered beside the Rideau River in November by a team of archeologists working for the City of Ottawa.
Gilbert Whiteduck, chief of the Kitigan Zibi Anishniabeg in Maniwaki, 130 kilometres north of Ottawa, said the National Capital Commission should have consulted Quebec Algonquins about the dig in Ottawa that uncovered aboriginal artifacts dating from 300 BC to 700 BC.
Source: BBC News
September 12, 2009
Research has revealed details of the catastrophic Zanclean flood that refilled the Mediterranean Sea more than five million years ago.
The flood occurred when Atlantic waters found their way into the cut-off and desiccated Mediterranean basin.
The researchers say that a 200km channel across the Gibraltar strait was carved out by the floodwaters.
Their findings, published in Nature, show that the resulting flood could have filled the basin within two years
Source: BBC News
October 12, 2009
The first single malt made in England for about a century has attracted the interest of UK whisky enthusiasts.
St George's Distillery, a family-run Norfolk company, is behind the drink.
Managing Director James Nelstrop said production of the whisky, which is being sold for £35 a bottle, was the culmination of a "45-year-old dream".
The distillery was built in Roudham, south Norfolk, in 2006, and now, after three years maturing its first batch, i
Source: BBC
December 9, 2009
Documents suggesting that Boy Scout founder Lord Baden-Powell illegally executed a prisoner-of-war have been sold for £3,740.
Papers relating to the Second Matabele War in 1896 say Baden-Powell, then a Colonel in the British Army, ordered the shooting of an African chief.
The chief, Uwini, had been promised his life would be spared if he surrendered.
The papers reached double their expected price at auction in South Cerney, Gloucestershire.
Source: Yahoo
December 7, 2009
Y2K, the first year of a new century, arrived after much anticipation. Any decade is going to be full of the predictable and the unexpected — this one was no different. We talked to a few historians to make sense of what happened.
Brian Balogh, a history professor at the University of Virginia, pointed out that 9/11 demonstrated the power of non-state actors and has kept us talking about “homeland security,” a term not widely used before the attacks. Hoffman said 9/11 revealed that
Source: National Geographic News
December 9, 2009
Meticulous ancient notetakers have given archaeologists a glimpse of what life was like 3,000 years ago in the Assyrian Empire, which controlled much of the region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Persian Gulf.
Clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform, an ancient script once common in the Middle East, were unearthed in summer 2009 in an ancient palace in present-day southeastern Turkey.
Palace scribes jotted down seemingly mundane state affairs on the tablets during
Source: Science Daily
December 7, 2009
Tel Kabri is the only site in Israel where wall paintings similar in style to those found in the Aegean 3,600 years ago have been found; researchers say this was a conscious decision made by the city rulers to lean toward Mediterranean culture.
The remains of a Minoan-style wall painting, recognizable by a blue background, the first of its kind to be found in Israel, was discovered in the course of the recent excavation season at Tel Kabri. This fresco joins others of Aegean style t
Source: The Times (UK)
December 9, 2009
The 400-year-old freedom of the high seas would be lost under United Nations plans to limit environmental damage.
Military forces of several nations are in discussions with conservationists over pooling surveillance resources to enforce the changes.
The “freedom of the seas” has given mariners legal rights to roam the high seas — a boundary that usually occurs 200 nautical miles from shore — at will. Specialists gathered at a London conference are saying that fisherme
Source: NYT
December 8, 2009
NONGOMA, South Africa — The bull was badly outnumbered, and while its muscular body, thick black hide and rock-hard horns offered significant advantages, this was not a brawl the animal was likely to win. Forty Zulu warriors were circling about, there to kill it with their bare hands.
Penned up in the royal kraal, the bull trotted around for a while, looking nervously for an escape. Then it hesitated, and the warriors — all in their late teens or early twenties — moved in, their han
Source: NYT
December 8, 2009
On that still-quiet Tuesday morning, the sales staff was in a basement room eating breakfast, waiting to open the doors to the first shoppers at 10 a.m.
There was no immediate sign of the fiery cataclysm that erupted overhead starting at 8:46. But out of a baby-blue sky suddenly stained with smoke, a plane’s landing-gear assembly the size of a World War II torpedo crashed through the roof and down through two empty selling floors of the Burlington Coat Factory.
The Sept
Source: Politico
December 9, 2009
It wasn’t supposed to be this calm for Eric Mogilnicki. Not at this point, with the health care bill in the homestretch.
He came to the Senate to be Ted Kennedy’s chief of staff, expecting to help guide home Kennedy’s careerlong ambition of national health care reform. He ended up being the liberal lion’s last skipper.
Now Mogilnicki finds himself serving Kennedy’s replacement, Sen. Paul Kirk (D-Mass.), the most junior Democrat on the Armed Services and Homeland Securit
Source: BBC
December 8, 2009
The US government has settled a long-running case over royalties owed to American Indians.
Under the deal the interior department will share $1.4bn (£859m) among 300,000 tribe members as compensation.
The tribes claim they have been cheated out of billions of dollars worth of natural resources since 1887.
The agreement ends a case which has been running for 13 years. The secretary of the interior department said it would aid reconciliation.
Source: BBC News
September 12, 2009
A record-breaking auction in London saw two works of art, a Rembrandt and a Raphael, sell for almost £50m.
The drawing by Raphael, Head of a Muse, sold for £29.2m, a world record price for any work on paper to go under the hammer, Christie's said.
It was also a world record price for the artist.
The Rembrandt painting, entitled Portrait of a Man, Half-Length, With His Arms Akimbo, fetched £20.2m, a record price for the artist at auction.
Chri
Source: Fox News
December 9, 2009
Former vice president says holding trial in lower Manhattan near ground zero will make self-professed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed "a hero in certain circles."
The former vice president called Attorney General Eric Holder's decision in November to try Mohammed and four other 9/11 suspects in a civilian federal court near ground zero "a huge mistake."
The trial will put Mohammed "on the map," he contended.
The Repu
