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: NYT
December 30, 2008
TOKYO —- It was erected in a city still scarred by war, on the grounds of an ancient Buddhist temple, using steel from scrapped American battle tanks. But when finished in 1958, Tokyo Tower gripped Japan’s imagination by pointing the way to a brighter future.
The 1,093-foot structure, which resembles the Eiffel Tower but with orange and white stripes, was the world’s tallest self-supported steel structure, a title it still holds. That, and the fact it was used to broadcast color tel
Source: Independent
December 30, 2008
In May 1978, protesters in Iran's major cities laid waste to luxury hotels, banks and government offices that symbolised the profligate regime of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. It was the first clear sign that students and Islamist revolutionaries were loosening the pro-Western dictator's iron grip on power.
But the upheaval and bloodshed that presaged the Iranian revolution did nothing to dim the belief of Her Majesty's Ambassador to Iran that the autocrat (and lucrative patron of the
Source: Guardian (UK)
December 28, 2008
As George W Bush prepares to leave the White House, at least one unpleasant episode from his unpopular presidency is threatening to follow him into retirement.
A $70m lawsuit filed by Dan Rather, the veteran former newsreader for CBS Evening News, against his old network is reopening the debate over alleged favourable treatment that Bush received when he served in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam war. Bush had hoped that this controversy had been dealt with once and f
Source: Telegraph
December 29, 2008
In a major breakthrough, Spanish scientists have discovered the blood group and two other genes of the early humans who lived 43,000 ago.
After analysing the fossil bones found in a cave in north-west Spain, the experts concluded they had human blood group "O" and were genetically more likely to be fair skinned, perhaps even with freckles, have red or ginger hair and could talk.
The investigating team from Spain's government scientific institute, CSIC, used th
Source: Times (of London)
December 30, 2008
The oddest moment in the remarkable life of Lieutenant-Colonel Eric Wilson came when he discovered that he was officially dead, and thus joined the distinguished band of people prematurely consigned to the hereafter.
Colonel Wilson died last week at the age of 97, but his first “death” took place 68 years earlier, in the desert sands of East Africa.
On August 11, 1940, Colonel Wilson, then a captain commanding the Somaliland Camel Corps machinegun company, was involved
Source: AP
December 29, 2008
WASHINGTON –- Lucy and Ethel lose their struggle with a chocolate assembly line. Joe Friday demands "just the facts" with a penetrating gaze. A secret word brings Groucho a visit from a duck.
Folks who grew up as television came of age will delight in a 20-stamp set included in the Postal Service's plans for 2009 recalling early memories of the medium...
A dozen pioneers of the civil rights movement will be honored with stamps scheduled for release Feb. 21 in
Source: Reuters
December 28, 2008
MOSCOW -- Soviet dictator Josef Stalin was voted Russia's third most popular historical figure in a nationwide poll that ended on Sunday, despite the famine and purges that marked his rule.
The "Name of Russia" contest run by Rossiya state television channel over more than six months closed on Sunday night with a final vote via the Internet and mobile phones. It drew more than 50 million votes in a nation of 143 million.
Millions of Soviet citizens perished fr
Source: Breitbart
December 29, 2008
The National Federation of the Blind (NFB), the nation's largest and oldest organization of blind people, will hold events nationwide on Sunday, January 4, 2009, to promote Braille literacy and help celebrate the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Louis Braille (1809-1852), the inventor of the reading and writing code for the blind that bears his name. In over one hundred bookstores, libraries, and other venues all across the nation, National Federation of the Blind representatives will d
Source: AFP
December 29, 2008
A US-Japanese research team announced Monday it had isolated three genes that explain why the 1918 Spanish flu, believed to be the deadliest infectious disease in history, was so lethal.
The pandemic killed between 20 and 50 million people, more than all of World War I, which ended in November 1918, and spread around the world.
The genes allowed the virus to reproduce in lung tissue, according to research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Source: International Herald Tribune
December 29, 2008
A tight-knit group of former senior U.S. government officials who were
central players in the savings and loan bailout of the 1990s are seeking
to capitalize on the latest economic meltdown, enjoying a surge in new
business in their work now as private lawyers, investors and lobbyists.
With $700 billion in bailout money up for grabs, and billions of dollars
worth of bad debt or failed bank assets most likely headed for sale or
auction, these former officials are helping their clients
Source: International Herald Tribune
December 29, 2008
Anti-smoking activists would love to see Obama use his bully pulpit to
inspire others to join him in trying to kick the habit, but he has not yet
taken up their cause.
The last president to smoke more than occasionally was Gerald Ford, who
was quite fond of his pipes. Jimmy Carter and both Presidents George Bush
were reportedly abstainers, but Bill Clinton liked cigars from time to
time - though he may have chewed more than he smoked.
Obama's heaviest smoking was seven or eigh
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 29, 2008
More than 100,000 South Korean civilians were massacred by allied troops
fighting alongside Britain and the US in the Korean War, an official
investigation has revealed.
Authorities in the country have discovered mass burial sites containing
thousands of bodies, including scores of children.
Trawls of records including declassified files in Washington have
uncovered evidence of the massacres of at least 100,000 people suspected
of having sympathy with the North Koreans.
Source: NYT
December 27, 2008
If Nelson Mandela was South Africa’s George Washington, Thabo Mbeki was his John Adams — a short, touchy, fiercely intelligent infighter doomed to labor in the shadow of the great man.
Jacob Zuma, who is expected soon to be the third democratically elected president of Africa’s most influential country, is no Thomas Jefferson — though he, like Jefferson, may ultimately play an important (if unwitting) role in the birth of a real two-party system in a nascent democracy.
Source: CNN
December 29, 2008
[CNN is featuring a look back at the Cuban revolution.]
The people and places at the heart of Fidel's rebel campaign.
Highs and lows: Cuba's successes and failures in the past 50 years.
Property pressure: Shortages fuel black market housing boom.
Exiles' stories: Five Cubans tell of why they left and life in the US.
Cuba Today: Images from Cuba 50 years after Fidel Castro's revolution.
Source: New Scientist
December 19, 2008
Replication of a notorious"torture" experiment – in which people obediently delivered painful shocks to others if encouraged to do so by authority figures – has come to the same disturbing conclusion.
Seventy per cent of volunteers continued to administer electrical shocks – or at least they believed they were doing so – even after an actor claimed they were painful, Jerry Burger of Santa Clara University, California, found.
"What we found is validation of the same argument – if you p
Source: http://www.philly.com
December 28, 2008
Aleksander Szekal was besieged by Soviets and Nazis. At 103, he looks back
- and ahead.
Tortured by Stalin's henchmen and attacked by Hitler's forces, Aleksander
Szekal almost became one of World War II's millions of victims.
But he survived the Soviet Gulag and a famous battle against the Nazis,
and was honored on his 103d birthday this month as the oldest living
veteran of a celebrated Polish unit that helped defeat Hitler's army in
Italy.
Military attaches brought greeting
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 29, 2008
A controversial French comedian has sparked outrage by giving a"heroism"
award to a Holocaust denier.
Dieudonné, 42, gave the award for"social unacceptability and insolence"
to Robert Faurisson, an academic with a string of convictions in France
for denying the existence of Nazi death camps.
Dieudonné himself has a conviction for making anti-Semitic remarks.
The far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen and several figures on the French
far-left were in the audience at Le Zenith,
Source: BBC
December 27, 2008
About 500,000 people whose families had to flee Spain during the civil war
and the subsequent Franco era now have the right to apply for Spanish
citizenship.
Spain's new Law of Historical Memory, enacted a year ago, applies to
people whose mother or father was Spanish, and the grandchildren of those
who fled.
They can start submitting applications for Spanish citizenship on Monday.
Most of those who qualify live in Argentina, Uruguay, Cuba, Chile,
Venezuela, Mexico and
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 28, 2008
As George W Bush prepares to leave the White House, his supporters are
busy putting a positive spin on his eight years in office. Tim Shipman
reports from Washington on how history will judge a 'consequential'
presidency.
On Wednesday Mundtadhar al-Zaidi will go on trial in Iraq, charged with
throwing his shoe at George W Bush. In Istanbul, entrepreneur Ramazan
Baydan has had 300,000 orders for the same shoe. He is renaming it the
“Bye Bye Bush.” In Washington, the President of the
Source: Telegraph (UK)
December 27, 2008
In 1909, the year Woolworths opened its first UK store, these were the
other major events.
* Unemployment stood at 698,000, 7.7 per cent of the working population
* A manual worker earned 23 shillings a week, with a dozen eggs costing a
shilling, a pound of butter 1s2d and a pint of beer two shillings. A pair
of ladies’ shoes cost 7s11d, a man’s suit 6s11d and a girl’s school frock
2s8d.
* 168 men and boys were killed in a pit disaster in West Stanley, County
Durham
