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
April 27, 2007
WELLINGTON, New Zealand -- The explosive-laden wreck of a World War II [patrol] torpedo boat has risen from the Pacific Ocean off the Solomon Islands, pushed above the water by a powerful earthquake, an official said Friday.
The boat was exposed when reefs rose 10 feet above sea level during a 8.1-magnitude quake that caused a devastating tsunami, killing 52 people in the western Solomons in early April, said Jay Waura of the National Disaster Management Office.
The Sol
Source: BBC News
April 27, 2007
One of the world's last surviving Lancaster bombers has taken to the skies to mark 50 years of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.
The aircraft, taking part in a flypast at RAF Coningsby, Lincolnshire, is one of only two airworthy Lancasters.
More than 7,000 Lancasters were built during the 1940s and played a major part during World War II...
The Battle of Britain Memorial Flight is an historic collection of aircraft that commemorate the RAF's involvement in all the campaigns
Source: Newsweek
April 30, 2007
Clarence Thomas is arguably the most powerful black man in America, one whose position as a Supreme Court justice merits more than a modicum of respect. Yet as authors Kevin Merida and Michael Fletcher make clear in "Supreme Discomfort," a new biography, Thomas has yet to get his due.
Though most Italian-Americans are liberals, "they're all proud of me," conservative Justice Antonin Scalia tells the authors. Scalia's implicit question is: why do blacks not feel t
Source: UPI
April 27, 2007
PONCA CITY, Okla. -- The symbol known as the Pioneer Woman will probably be featured on Oklahoma's state quarter but she may not be carrying her trademark Bible.
There are five proposed designs for the quarter, which will be produced by the U.S. Mint as part of the 50 State Quarters Program. Oklahoma's coin would be released in 2008.
Four of the proposed designs feature Pioneer Woman and the other features the scissortail flycatcher, the state bird, the Daily Oklahoman
Source: Reuters
April 27, 2007
WASHINGTON -- An active-duty U.S. Army officer criticized U.S. generals in a journal article published on Friday for failing to prepare the military and the country for war in Iraq, and urged Congress to intervene.
In a rare public airing of a vigorous debate within the U.S. military, Lt. Col. Paul Yingling compared generals' management of Iraq to their conduct in Vietnam and warned of a crisis facing the armed forces due to the "intellectual and moral failures" of U.S. ge
Source: AP
April 27, 2007
JACKSON, Miss. -- Historical sites along the Hurricane Katrina battered Mississippi Gulf Coast and including Picayune’s Colored Gymnasium are among 10 Most Endangered Historic Places in Mississippi.
The list was released Thursday by the Mississippi Heritage Trust.
The three coastal counties of Harrison, Hancock and Jackson were grouped as the Mississippi Gulf Coast on the 2007 list.
“The whole coast is in danger of its historical character changing,” MHT’s
Source: AP
April 27, 2007
MANSFIELD, Mo. -- A narrow wooden desk in a corner of an Ozarks farmhouse has been known to move visitors to tears.
Some readers have such fond memories of the "Little House" novels about Laura Ingalls Wilder's frontier childhood that they cry when they walk into her Missouri home and see the desk where she wrote many of the books.
April marks the 75th anniversary of the first publication in 1932 of "Little House in the Big Woods." The story of Laura
Source: AP
April 27, 2007
TOKYO -- Japan's Supreme Court upheld a ruling Friday denying compensation to two Chinese women who were forced to work in military brothels during World War II.
Backing a Tokyo High Court ruling, the Supreme Court said that the women had no right to seek war compensation from Japan because of a 1972 agreement with China, a court spokesman and Japanese media reports said.
Source: BBC
April 27, 2007
The Estonian authorities have removed a contentious Red Army war memorial in the capital, Tallinn, despite overnight protests that left one person dead.More than 40 people were injured and 300 arrested during clashes at the site as police used tear gas to disperse mainly ethnic Russian demonstrators.
Russia says the memorial should not be removed, but many Estonians see it as a reminder of decades of Soviet rule.
The move provoked angry condemnation
Source: Los Angeles Times
April 27, 2007
In an act unparalleled since the Vietnam War, Congress passed legislation Thursday that directs the president to begin bringing home U.S. troops from Iraq and extricating America from the midst of a bloody civil war.
The historic 51-46 Senate vote for a $124-billion war spending bill — which followed House passage of the measure Wednesday — thrust a withdrawal timeline on a fiercely resistant White House....Over the last three decades, lawmakers have repeatedly
Source: Lee White at National Coalition for History (NCH) website
April 24, 2007
On April 24, 2007, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties held a hearing on H.R. 1995, the “Tulsa-Greenwood Riot and Accountability Act of 2007.” The bill extends the statute of limitation to allow survivors to seek damages for losses incurred by the hundreds of families who lost homes and businesses in the Tulsa Race Riots of 1921.During the race riots, which occurred in Tulsa, Oklahoma from May 30—June 1, 1921, nearly 300 Afr
Source: Reuters
April 27, 2007
Britain's slave trading past gets a human face on Friday as an ancestry-tracing Web site starts putting the personal histories of the victims online for the first time.The Web site, www.Ancestry.co.uk, posted 100,000 names of Barbados slaves registered in 1834 in the colony.
By December the site will contain the names of 3 million slaves from 700 registers in 23 British colonies, from South Africa to Sri Lanka between 1812
Source: German Press Agency
April 27, 2007
Hungary's junior coalition party on Friday called
for the nation's security archives to be opened up after the latest in a long line of public figures was accused of having spied for the communist authorities."We have asked the same question countless times: should we reveal every spy one-by-one or finally solve the problem and bring openness to the issue of spying?" the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats said
in a statement.
The liberals' chal
Source: Times (of London)
April 27, 2007
BERLIN -- Deep beneath the earth of Ronneburg, under a radiant carpet of daffodils and yellow rape fields, lies one of the deadliest secrets of the Cold War: the uranium mine that supplied the Soviet nuclear arsenal.
From today this unhappy corner of eastern Germany becomes a tourist attraction with the Federal Garden Show 2007, expected to draw up to 1.5 million visitors. It features a newly planted meadow and landscape area scattered with art installations, including a flock of bl
Source: AP
April 27, 2007
Japan's practice of enslaving women to provide sex for its troops during World War II has a little-known sequel: After its surrender -- with tacit approval from the U.S. occupation authorities -- Japan set up a similar system for U.S. troops.An Associated Press review of historical documents shows that U.S. authorities permitted the official brothel system to operate, despite internal reports that women were being coerced into prostitution.
Tens of thousands of
Source: AP
April 26, 2007
WASHINGTON -- When CIA Director George Tenet uttered the now-infamous phrase "slam dunk" at a 2002 White House meeting, he says he was referring broadly to the case that could be made against Saddam Hussein -- not his alleged weapons of mass destruction.
"We can put a better case together for a public case. That's what I meant," Tenet said, explaining his remark for the first time in an interview to air Sunday on CBS' "60 Minutes." Short excerpts were r
Source: New York Times
April 27, 2007
UNION, N.J. -— The letter from George Washington is pasted between poetry and party invitations, stuffed into a dusty scrapbook amid jokes and cutouts of handsome men, and all the highlights of a lucky little girl’s life.
It was written in May 1787 and addressed to Jacob Morris, grandfather of Julia Kean, the precocious 10-year-old who started the brown leather scrapbook in 1826 and put the letter under a portrait of the nation’s first president.
The letter is just 111
Source: AP
April 26, 2007
TALLINN, Estonia -- Police clashed with protesters Thursday at a Soviet war memorial in Estonia's capital as authorities prepared to remove the bodies despite Russia's angry objections.
After largely peaceful rallies throughout the day, a group of protesters tried to break through a line of police officers guarding the grave and the Bronze Soldier statue next to it...
Dozens of police had formed lines to keep some 600 protesters away from the monument after workers erec
Source: Reuters
April 27, 2007
TOKYO -- Chinese slave laborers who were forced to work in Japan during World War II lost their bid for compensation on Friday when the Supreme Court overturned a landmark ruling that had ordered a Japanese company to pay them...
In 2004, the Hiroshima High Court ordered Japanese construction firm Nishimatsu Construction Co. Ltd. to pay a total of 27.5 million yen ($230,000) to a group of five Chinese in compensation for forcing them to work in Japan during World War II.
Source: AP
April 26, 2007
DUBLIN -- Prime Minister Bertie Ahern announced Thursday he will meet Northern Ireland Protestant leader Ian Paisley on a hallowed battleground where Catholic and Protestant armies clashed three centuries ago -- an act symbolizing a new mood of reconciliation.
The May 11 event is timed to come three days after the formation of a power-sharing government in Northern Ireland led by Paisley, long a bellicose opponent of cooperation with the north's Catholic minority -- and with Ahern's
