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
12-20-12
AUSTIN, Texas — The United States is fighting a messy war alongside an unreliable ally in Asia, residents are deeply divided between conservatives and liberals, a new health care law just took effect and the nation is struggling with racial and ethnic divisions.What’s happening in the United States in 2012 could just as easily describe the nation in the 1960s: President Lyndon Baines Johnson escalating the war in Vietnam, defeating conservative Republican nominee Barry Goldwater, passing Medicare and pushing through landmark civil rights legislation.An insider’s look at how the Texan dealt with those challenges is on display at the newly remodeled LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, where the old 1970s-style exhibits now use 21st century technology to put visitors in Johnson’s shoes. Mark Updegrove, the library’s director, said the reopening comes as historians take a fresh look at Johnson’s efforts to fight poverty and improve the health of the nation by creating a Great Society....
Source: WaPo
12-20-12
JOHANNESBURG — Nelson Mandela was seriously ill but has steadily improved over the last few days after being diagnosed with a lung infection and undergoing gallstone surgery, South African President Jacob Zuma said Thursday.It was the first official acknowledgement that Mandela’s condition had been grave, and came 13 days after the anti-apartheid icon was brought to a hospital in the capital, Pretoria. The government initially said 94-year-old Mandela was undergoing medical tests, and the information that followed was terse and sometimes contradictory.“His condition was serious but he is responding well to treatment and he steadily improved over the last few days,” Zuma said at the close of a conference of the African National Congress, the governing political party....
Source: WaPo
12-20-12
WASHINGTON — Sen. Daniel Inouye, the second-longest serving senator in U.S. history, was remembered Thursday as a man who gallantly defended his country on the battlefield and gracefully sought to better it during the 50-plus years he represented his beloved state of Hawaii.Colleagues and aides lined the Capitol rotunda five deep to say farewell. The rare ceremony demonstrated the respect and good will he generated over the years. Only 31 people have lain in the Capitol rotunda; the last was former President Gerald R. Ford nearly six years ago. The last senator who died in office and was accorded the honor was Democrat Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, in 1978.“Daniel Inouye was an institution, and he deserved to spend at least another day in this beautiful building to which he dedicated his life,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev....
Source: NYT
12-20-12
More than two decades before Newtown, there was Stockton.In January 1989, a troubled drifter in his 20s opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle on a California elementary school yard packed with students. Five children, ages 6 to 9, were killed in the fusillade of bullets; 29 others were wounded, along with one teacher.The resulting national shock and outrage plunged Congress into a debate over whether to ban military-style assault weapons.“The American people are fed up with the death and violence brought on by these assault weapons,” Senator Howard M. Metzenbaum, an Ohio Democrat, declared on the Senate floor. “They demand action.”...
Source: USGS
12-18-12
Four previously undiscovered photos of undocumented Russian Crown Jewels were recently discovered in the USGS library. The photos appear in a 1922 album called “Russian Diamond Fund,” that was uncovered in the rare book room of the library.The four unique photos were originally part of the personal collection of George F. Kunz (1856-1932), a mineralogist and gemologist, gentleman explorer, and employee of the USGS and Tiffany & Co. These four photos are unique because they are not included in the official documentation of the Russian Crown Jewels, “Russia’s Treasure of Diamonds and Precious Stones,” published in 1925. The USGS also has a copy of this 1925 publication in Kunz’s collection.“Russia’s Treasure of Diamonds and Precious Stones” is considered the most complete inventory of the Russian Crown Jewels and 22 of the photographs from Kunz’s 1922 album appear to be the same images used in the official Russian 1925 publication. The four pieces portrayed in the album discovered by the USGS that do not appear in the later publication include a sapphire and diamond tiara, a sapphire bracelet, an emerald necklace, and a sapphire brooch in the shape of a bow....
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
12-17-12
A photograph taken during a royal visit to Bethlehem to prove the biblical city's existence will be going on display among photographs and diary extracts from a royal tour 150 years ago.Queen Victoria's eldest son King Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, was sent on an educational trip to the Middle East in 1862, accompanied by Francis Bedford - the first photographer on a royal tour.His previously unseen photos include a view of Bethlehem from the roof of the Church of the Nativity, said to be built on the spot where Jesus was born....
Source: CNN.com
12-18-12
(CNN) -- Forget old conspiracy theories about snake bites and fatal poisons. Egyptian King Ramesses III died after a brutal throat slashing, a new study says.The study provides the latest twist in a mystery that has long perplexed researchers.Did a venomous viper take him out? Poison? An assassination plot in a reign tainted by war?And if it were the latter, who did it?...
Source: Telegraph (UK)
12-19-12
The festive act of reconciliation was made possible after the letters, hidden away in a grand piano since the theft in 1941, were handed in to archivists.A gang of youths, all aged 15 or 16, had stolen the 90 letters from a Wehrmacht field post office in St Helier, in a perhaps rash bid to give the hated occupiers a bloody nose. They would have faced severe penalties if caught.Fearing discovery, the youths handed them to a friend, who stashed them in a grand piano for 66 years, before taking them to the official Jersey Archive....
Source: Jewish Tribune
12-20-12
(JTA) – Human Rights Watch has removed Richard Falk, United Nations special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, from one of its local committees.Falk, who has compared Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to the actions of the Nazis and suggested that the US government may have had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks, was removed last Tuesday from the international non-governmental organization’s local committee in Santa Barbara, CA....
Source: NYT
12-20-12
Robert H. Bork, a former solicitor general, federal judge and conservative legal theorist whose 1987 nomination to the United States Supreme Court was rejected by the Senate in a historic political battle whose impact is still being felt, died on Wednesday in Arlington, Va. He was 85.His death, of complications of heart disease, was confirmed by his son Robert Jr.Judge Bork, who was senior judicial adviser this year to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, played a small but crucial role in the Watergate crisis as the solicitor general under President Richard M. Nixon. He carried out orders to fire a special prosecutor in what became known as “the Saturday Night Massacre.” He also handed down notable decisions from the federal appeals court bench. But it was as a symbol of the nation’s culture wars that Judge Bork made his name....
Source: NYT
12-16-12
Since their publication in 1971 the Pentagon Papers have been examined seemingly from every possible historical, political, legal and ethical angle.But to Lisa Gitelman, a professor of English and media studies at New York University, there’s at least one aspect of Daniel Ellsberg’s leaking of top-secret Defense Department documents that scholars have failed to consider adequately: the Xerox technology that allowed him to copy them in the first place.Actually, make that “copy and recopy.” In a chapter of her book in progress about the history of documents Ms. Gitelman describes the way Mr. Ellsberg obsessively made copies of his copies, even enlisting the help of his children in what she describes as an act of radical self-publishing....
Source: WSJ
12-17-12
We all know the story well: On a cold morning, a troubled man armed with legally purchased guns and a large supply of ammunition walks into a small-town school.He happens upon some of the youngest children in the school, opens fire on them and their teachers, then kills himself. Panicked parents rush to the scene; the nation beyond reacts in horror; two days later, the nation's leader arrives to share in the grief.Newtown, Conn., in 2012? No, Dunblane, Scotland, in 1996.But the parallels between the two massacres are haunting. The victims in the Dunblane school attack were 5- and 6-year-olds, while in Newtown they were 6- and 7-year-olds. Sixteen students died in Dunblane, 20 in Newtown. In both cases, teachers went down with their students. One died in Dunblane; six adults perished at the Newtown school....
Source: WaPo
12-14-12
A Danish architect named Jan Gehl has been hired to create a vision of Moscow 15 years down the road. At a conference here the other day, he waxed enthusiastic about the beautiful possibilities for Europe’s largest city:Traffic cut down to two lanes in each direction. Sidewalks wide enough for strolling, shaded by millions of trees. Trams zipping this way and that, no more dank underground street crossings. With the noble skyline intact, and Tverskaya Street reconfigured as a “fabulous boulevard, the Champs Élysées of the East,” there would be parks along the 104 miles of riverfront (if you count both sides of the river) and a citywide feeling of uplift to inspire residents — an end, in short, to all the Sovietesquerie that weighs so heavily on Moscow today.Oh, and no fewer than 200 neighborhood squares, to create anchors of local identity....
Source: WaPo
12-16-12
PYONGYANG, North Korea — North Korea unveiled the embalmed body of Kim Jong Il, still in his trademark khaki jumpsuit, on the anniversary of his death Monday as mourning mixed with pride over a recent satellite launch that was a long-held goal of the late authoritarian leader.Kim lies in state a few floors below his father, national founder Kim Il Sung, in the Kumsusan mausoleum, the cavernous former presidential palace. Kim Jong Il is presented lying beneath a red blanket, a spotlight shining on his face in a room suffused in red.Wails echoed through the chilly hall as a group of North Korean women sobbed into the sashes of their traditional Korean dresses as they bowed before his body. The hall bearing the glass coffin was opened to select visitors — including The Associated Press — for the first time since his death....
Source: AP
12-17-12
COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley picked U.S. Rep. Tim Scott to be the state’s next U.S. senator Monday, making him the only black Republican in Congress and the South’s first black Republican senator since Reconstruction.Scott, 47, takes over for Jim DeMint, who announced earlier this month he would forgo the remaining four years of this term to lead The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. His resignation takes effect Jan. 1....
Source: WaPo
12-17-12
Martin Scorsese will produce and direct a documentary on President Bill Clinton for HBO, the pay cable network announced Monday afternoon.The docu is being made with the full cooperation of Clinton, the Time Warner-owned network added.The film will explore the perspectives of the country’s 42nd POTUS on history, politics, culture and the world, the network said, adding that Steve Bing is producing....
Source: WaPo
12-17-12
DES MOINES, Iowa — A 115-year-old Iowa woman’s granddaughter says the woman has died less than two weeks after inheriting the title of world’s oldest person.Dina Manfredini’s granddaughter Lori Logli says Manfredini died Monday morning. Logli wouldn’t elaborate on her grandmother’s cause of death.Manfredini lived at the Bishop Drumm Retirement Center in Johnston. Guinness World Records confirmed she inherited the title of world’s oldest living person less than two weeks ago. Bessie Cooper of Georgia previously held the title at age 116.Guinness spokesman Robert Young says a Japanese man is believed to now hold the title. Jiroemon Kimura was born on April 19, 1897, which makes him just 15 days younger than Manfredini. Young says Kimura, of Kyotango in Kyoto, also is believed to be the second-oldest man in documented history....
Source: The New Republic
12-14-12
"As a country, we have been through this too many times," said President Barack Obama on Friday afternoon as he wiped tears from his eyes while addressing the horrific shooting at a Connecticut elementary school. He might have added, "this year." Because it's not your imagination--while mass shootings have terrified and grieved us over the past three decades, this year has been the worst by far. With more than 140 casualties (injuries and deaths), the toll from mass shootings in 2012 has been nearly twice that of any other year....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
11-5-12
There’s nothing the theatre-going middle classes like more than being abused. So they should be rushing to watch Alan Bennett attack their favourite institution – the National Trust – in his new play, People.The text is as yet unpublished, but Bennett has provided a summary in an article for the London Review of Books. The play was sparked off by his irritation at going round National Trust houses and being required to play up to the role of reverential visitor. He was particularly annoyed by the guides who come up to you, unbidden, when you’re looking at pictures or furniture.Bennett often gets his laughs by exposing uncomfortable truths. He did it with The History Boys – which skewered history teachers and TV dons for placing titillating, untrue theories above dull historical truth. And now he’s doing it with the National Trust.And the thing is, he’s right. It’s not just the guides – though I, too, have sprinted through agonisingly lovely rooms in National Trust houses, so as not to be collared by the officials, who painstakingly take you through the genealogy of the eighth earl, and describe the seven Canalettos he bought on the Grand Tour. It’s their whole approach....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
12-15-12
A source with knowledge of the excavation told the Telegraph archaeologists will name the skeleton found beneath a Leicester car park in September as the Plantagenet king even if long-awaited DNA results on the bones prove inconclusive.Additional evidence not revealed at a major press conference after the remains were found demonstrates beyond all reasonable doubt that the body is the King's, even without genetic proof, the source said.Leicester University experts announced earlier this year that there was convincing evidence suggesting the remains were those of Richard III, but have always insisted DNA analysis is needed before a conclusion can be reached....
