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: ABC
March 15, 2007
Lucie Aubrac, a hero of the French Resistance who helped free her husband from the Gestapo and whose dramatic life story became a hit film, has died. She was 94.In 1943, Aubrac helped orchestrate her husband's escape from a Lyon prison after his arrest. She persuaded the local Gestapo leader, Klaus Barbie, to let her meet with him. During the visit, they planned his escape.
Aubrac led the armed commando that rescued her husband and Resistance leader Jean Moulin
Source: Reuters
March 15, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Brushing aside a veto threat, the House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to overturn a 2001 order by President George W. Bush that lets former presidents keep their papers secret indefinitely.
The measure, which drew bipartisan support and passed by a veto-busting 333-93 margin, was among White House-opposed bills the House passed that would widen access to government information and protect government whistleblowers...
The presidential papers bill nu
Source: UPI
March 14, 2007
PARIS -- The United Nations wants Israel to stop work on access to Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem's Old City and consult with Muslim religious authorities.
The U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, said Wednesday while Israeli archaeological work for an access pathway in Jerusalem's Old City does not threaten the Al-Aqsa Mosque and complies with professional standards, an expert's report said it would like I excavations stopped for meetings on a final plan with the Mu
Source: Telegraph
March 15, 2007
One of Britain's greatest secret treasures -- a collection of the first English paintings of North America -- go on public display at the British Museum today for the first time in almost 50 years.
The watercolours, painted in 1585 during an unsuccessful mission to establish England's first colony in America, are so fragile and sensitive to light that they can only be shown once a generation.
Painted just 20 years after the death of Michelangelo and more than 30 years before the Mayflowe
Source: Independent
March 15, 2007
PARIS -- An immense treasure trove of medieval wall paintings, concealed by whitewash for 300 years, has been found in a small church in south-eastern France.
Experts believe that up to 600 square metres of the upper walls of the nave of the church in Vif, near Grenoble, are decorated with frescoes painted in the last part of the 14th century.
Only small sections of the paintings have been uncovered so far, but restorers and art historians are convinced that the whitewa
Source: Telegraph
March 15, 2007
BEIJING -- A group of students [in] Taiwan has caused uproar by founding an avowedly Nazi organisation and boasting that it is inspired by Adolf Hitler.
The National Socialism Association was set up by Lahn Chao, a master's student from the National Chengchi University in the capital, Taipei, and 19 others.
Its website is a call to arms to rejuvenate the island's politics, end democracy and retake mainland China for the nationalist cause, and bears a symbol in black, re
Source: Christian Science Monitor
March 15, 2007
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam -- Paris has the Eiffel Tower. New York has the Empire State Building. Both are symbols of global cities, recognizable currency of power and prestige.
Now the master builders of Vietnam's commercial showcase are racing to put their stamp on tomorrow's skyline. Glass and steel buildings are already sprouting across the city and by 2009, a 68-story skyscraper, designed to invoke the lotus flower and the ao dai worn by Vietnamese women, promises to be this cit
Source: UPI
March 14, 2007
TEL AVIV -- Fears that discussing the Armenian genocide would disrupt Israel's relations with Turkey led lawmakers to drop the issue Wednesday.
Voting 15 to 12, the Israeli legislature rejected a call by Knesset Member Haim Oron of the dovish opposition Meretz Party to discuss the massacre that next month will mark its 80th anniversary. Ottoman Turks have killed almost 1.5 million Armenians and deported more than 500,000 others then, Oron noted...
However Haaretz noted
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
March 15, 2007
A week after civil rights groups called on the General Assembly and Gov. Sonny Perdue to apologize for slavery, a key Senate committee will consider a bill today that would designate April as Confederate History and Heritage Month.
Sen. Jeff Mullis (R-Chickamauga) is the main sponsor of Senate Bill 283, which would encourage Georgians each April to honor the Confederacy, its history, soldiers and the people who "contributed to the cause of Southern Independence."
Source: BBC News
March 14, 2007
Peers have rejected plans for a fully elected House of Lords -- setting them on a clear collision course with MPs.
Last week MPs voted in favour of 80% or all members of a reformed second chamber being elected in the future.
But a crowded House of Lords instead voted to keep a fully appointed house, voting down other options for reform.
Votes are not binding but the division between MPs and peers suggests any attempt to draw up a reform bill will meet month
Source: Times (of London)
March 15, 2007
The University of Leeds was accused of infringing free speech last night when it cancelled a lecture on “Islamic anti-Semitism” by a German academic.
Matthias Köntzel arrived at the university yesterday morning to begin a three-day programme of lectures and seminars, but was told that it had been called off on “security grounds”.
Dr Köntzel, a political scientist who has lectured around the world on the antiSemitic ideology of Islamist groups, told The Times there were
Source: Turkish Weekly (Ankara)
March 15, 2007
The Turkish Historical Society (TTK) reportedly wants to finance the opening up of the Tashnak Archives in Boston to Turkish historians.
The president of the TTK, Professor Yusuf Halaçoğlu, said that until now his organization has been denied access to the Tashnak Archives on the basis of claims that the documents "are not classified and categorized."...
The TTK has obtained access to documents pertaining to Ottoman Armenians in the archives of a num
Source: AP
March 14, 2007
ROME -- Five former members of Argentina's military were convicted Wednesday of murdering three Italians during the 1970s "dirty war" in the South American country.
A Rome court sentenced the men to life imprisonment, which is Italy's stiffest punishment. But all were tried in absentia, and it wasn't clear Argentina would hand them over...
Four are under arrest in Argentina and face prosecution by federal courts there in connection with deaths and disappearanc
Source: Guardian
March 15, 2007
The memorial in a Bedfordshire church bristles with outrage: "To the perpetual Disgrace of Public Justice," it claims of the man it commemorates, Admiral John Byng, executed on the quarterdeck of his ship 250 years ago yesterday for failing to engage the French in battle with sufficient enthusiasm.
He was, it adds, "a Martyr to Political Persecution...when Bravery and Loyalty were Insufficient Securities for the Life and Honour of a Naval Officer."
Source: Turkish Daily News
March 14, 2007
ANKARA, Turkey -- Future commanders of the U.S. military have been touring the monumental Turkish War of Independence battle fields in order to learn about the war strategies of Turkey's founding father Mustafa Kemal Atatürk on the ground.
The group made up of 15 students from the U.S. Military Academy West Point and six from the U.S. Naval Academy was joined by four Turkish students from the Ankara Land Forces War Academy. Guided by a number of Turkish and American professors, they have a
Source: Reuters
March 14, 2007
The headless body of a Ukrainian poet, night-time raids on railway depots and the theft of priceless works of art. The ingredients of a Cold War thriller?
No, they are the latest victims of a global crime spree targeting metal sculptures, copper cables and even playground slides, as thieves take advantage of soaring metals prices to make a fast buck...
Thefts of metal are not a new phenomenon. The lead roofs of English churches and monasteries were plundered by Henry VI
Source: Christian Science Monitor
March 14, 2007
MYSTIC, Conn. -- Inside a darkened room, oceanographer Robert Ballard stares at an array of flat-screen monitors. The monitor to his left shows a crew of scientists aboard the submarine support vessel Carolyn Chouest in the Gulf of Mexico. On a monitor to his right, a roomful of Rhode Island high school students are intently focused on something unseen. And directly ahead, a large plasma TV plays live footage of what's holding everyone's attention: the ocean floor some 115 miles off the Texas co
Source: AP
March 14, 2007
WARSAW -- A 97-year-old woman credited with saving 2,500 Jewish children during the Holocaust was honored by parliament Wednesday at a ceremony during which Poland's president said she deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.
Irena Sendler, who lives in a nursing home in Warsaw, was too frail to attend the special session in which members of the Senate unanimously approved a resolution honoring her and the Polish underground Council for Assisting Jews...
Sendler was cited for or
Source: IHT
March 14, 2007
Scribbled on diaries, loose pages or even toilet paper, they are the notes left behind by Jews swept away in the Holocaust, prisoners of war and interned civilians who struggled to survive in the concentration camps of World War II.Italian researchers hope thousands of nearly forgotten works will find new life as they assemble a library of music composed or played in those dark places between 1933 and 1945.
The library, set to open in September at Rome's Third U
Source: IHT
March 14, 2007
A new law enters force in Poland on Thursday that requires up to 700,000 people in public positions in this country of 38 million — including journalists and teachers — to be screened for Soviet-era collaboration.The law is part of a push by Poland's president and prime minister, identical twins and former Solidarity activists Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, to purge from public life those who collaborated with the communist intelligence agencies — a reckoning largely avoided i
