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
February 19, 2007
Another irony of history: laws passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks aimed at keeping terrorists out of the United States have disqualified many Hmong refugees, the very people specially recognized by Congress for helping American troops in the Vietnam war.
Under provisions of the USA Patriot Act and the Real ID Act, the Hmong who fought alongside the Americans in the "secret war" against communists in Laos are considered terrorists and are therefore ineligibl
Source: NYT
February 20, 2007
MATSUE, Japan — As snow silently fell on the miniature garden outside, Bon Koizumi sat on the same tatami mat floor where, more than a century before, his great-grandfather wrote down some of Japan’s best-loved folk tales.
It was the perfect image of Japanese repose, except for the sepiatoned photo of Mr. Koizumi’s ancestor, whose bushy mustache and aquiline nose highlighted an unmistakably Western face.
His great-grandfather was Lafcadio Hearn, the Irish-Greek author w
Source: New York Times
February 18, 2007
[Note: In a Sunday Times 'Week in Review' article by C.J. Chivers about a recent friendly-fire incident in Iraq in which an American pilot accidentally killed a British soldier (see link below), reference was made to a once-secret Vietnam War report by an Army captain"that provided a glimpse at [the] grim, ineludible facts [of friendly fire]. Replying to a request from another headquarters, he compiled a list of the small-arms mishaps in which American soldiers were killed or injured in the fir
Source: Times (of London)
February 19, 2007
BEIJING -- When Deng Xiaoping came to power in the late 1970s, the tallest building in China was the 18-floor Beijing Hotel. Today the Jingguang building soars to 53 storeys and by 2008 will be eclipsed by the 330-metre China World Trade Centre.
China might still be low-rise but for Deng’s determination to open the country after decades of isolation, and to try to end grinding poverty by forcing through market-style economic reforms.
But despite his role in reshaping th
Source: UPI
February 19, 2007
BERLIN -- Maurice Papon, an infamous French Nazi collaborator, died Saturday in a Paris hospital at the age of 96. How France dealt with the man is exemplary for how the country continues to deal with dark chapters of its past.
A leading official in the Vichy regime, which collaborated with the Nazis during France's occupation in World War II, Papon had personally organized the deportation of 1,690 Jews in southwestern France...Yet after the war, Papon embarked on a successful caree
Source: NYT
February 19, 2007
KONOPISTE CASTLE, Czech Republic — When a young Serb named Gavrilo Princip stepped forward on a Sarajevo street and fired a pistol at a middle-aged couple 93 years ago, he sent history stumbling down an unexpected new path.
The couple, of course, was Franz Ferdinand, archduke of Austria-Este, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his wife, Sophie. They were killed. The world went to war. Millions of people died and the political map of Europe was redrawn.
Now, Franz
Source: NYT
February 19, 2007
IVREA, Italy, Feb. 18 — For the uninitiated, the annual orange battles of Ivrea in northern Italy are a lesson in both physics — the impact of the thrown fruit as it hits the flesh — and the history of this medieval town and its need to act out a legendary tale of civic rebellion in such a bruising fashion.
“It’s a bit masochistic,” admitted Elisabetta Dottelli, 20, an Ivrea native and a member of one of the participating teams, during a short lull in fighting at Piazza P. Ottinetti
Source: VOA News
February 19, 2007
LONDON -- A large-scale survey commissioned by the BBC finds that, despite current global tensions, the majority of people around the world reject the notion of a clash of civilizations between the west and Islam.
A violent clash between the west and the Islamic world is not inevitable. That is the view of the majority of those surveyed for the BBC.
The research, carried out by pollsters from GlobeScan, examined the views of around 28,000 people in 27 countries aro
Source: Reuters
February 19, 2007
DALLAS, Tex. -- Previously unreleased footage of John F. Kennedy's motorcade in Dallas moments before he was gunned down was released Monday, a surprising new twist in a saga that has gripped the United States for four decades.
The silent 8mm film shows a beaming Jacqueline Kennedy close up in vivid color waving to the crowd.
A group of excited bystanders -- women sporting big 1960s hairstyles -- waves to the cameraman shortly before the motorcade sweeps past.
Source: AP
February 19, 2007
ORANGEBURG, S.C. -- Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday that South Carolina should remove the Confederate flag from its Statehouse grounds, in part because the nation should unite under one banner while at war.
"I think about how many South Carolinians have served in our military and who are serving today under our flag and I believe that we should have one flag that we all pay honor to, as I know that most people in South Carolina do every sing
Source: AP
February 19, 2007
President Bush honored the 275th birthday of the nation's first president on Monday, likening George Washington's long struggle that gave birth to a nation to the war on global terrorism.
"Today, we're fighting a new war to defend our liberty and our people and our way of life," said Bush, standing in front of Washington's home and above a mostly frozen Potomac River.
"And as we work to advance the cause of freedom around the world, we remember that the
Source: Australian Broadcasting Corporation
February 19, 2007
Japan has denounced a resolution before the US Congress demanding that Tokyo make amends for forcing foreign women into sexual slavery during World War II. Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso says his country has already said and done enough on the issue of "comfort women"."[The resolution] is extremely regrettable and not based on objective facts," Mr Aso said.
"Their action does not take into account the Japanese Government's response t
Source: Outer Banks Sentinel
February 19, 2007
Scott Dawson, a native of Hatteras Island and now a resident of Colington, has shared the location of a discovery he made on National Park Service property with that agency, which has now secured the area and posted surveillance to insure that intruders don't disturb the site.Doug Stover, park historian of the Park Service, said that park officials think that the site may be the remains of Fort Blanchard, a Civil War fort.
But if proven correct in his beliefs, D
Source: US News & World Report
February 19, 2007
It's too soon to judge the current one, but for past presidents, the verdict is in. U.S. News has averaged the results of five presidential polls to make a gallery of the worst chief executives. The years before the Civil War produced an era of failure: Six of seven presidents who served from 1841 to 1861 made the list.
Buchanan
Harding
A. Johnson
Pierce
Fillmore
Tyler
Grant
Wm. Henry Harrison
Hoover
Nixon
Taylor
Source: Times (of London)
February 18, 2007
When Irène Némirovsky [one of France's leading novelists] was sent to Auschwitz she left behind a hidden literary sensation – [a suitcase full of manuscripts] ....
... The manuscripts inside the suitcase contained the text of Suite Française, the French publishing sensation of 2004 that is taking the Anglo-Saxon world by storm. It tells in vivid prose the story of the early days of the second world war and the reaction of the French to the German invasion.
Source: Times (of London)
February 19, 2007
ROME -- It was an architectural gem that Michelangelo never completed. Now the magnificent façade that he designed for the Basilica of San Lorenzo, Florence, is to be erected five centuries late, thanks to the detective work of Renaissance scholars.
Gabriele Morolli, an architectural historian and a member of the reconstruction team, said that he had traced three of the façade’s columns to a depository at Pisa.
One has already been brought to Florence and is being guard
Source: Telegraph
February 19, 2007
Until Wednesday night, Margaret Thatcher will be hidden in a wooden box in the House of Commons. Then the Speaker, Michael Martin, will unveil her, and Britain's first woman Prime Minister will face Winston Churchill in the Members' Lobby.
The version of Lady Thatcher which will give her a permanent place in the Palace of Westminster is a 71-stone [994-pound], full-length, 7-foot 4-inch statue of silicon bronze.
As Mr Speaker sits in his chair and looks down the Chambe
Source: Independent
February 18, 2007
[London's] Natural History Museum has been accused by Tasmanian Aboriginals of "mutilating" the remains of their ancestors. Native Australians say the institution has defiled the 17th-century bones by removing parts for scientific tests.
The dispute centres on 17 skeletons held by the museum in London since the 1940s. Although it has agreed to return the remains in its possession, the museum has been collecting samples from skulls and bones for DNA analysis.
T
Source: Washington Post
February 19, 2007
It was a speech so moving the crowd wept. It was a speech so personally important George Washington's hand shook as he read it until he had to hold the paper still with both hands. After the ceremony, he handed the thing to a friend and sped out the door of the State House in Annapolis, riding off by horse.
For centuries, his words have resonated in American democracy even as the speech itself -- the small piece of paper that shook in his hands that day -- was quietly put away, out
Source: Reuters
February 18, 2007
WARSAW -- A local joke runs that the luckiest man in Warsaw is the caretaker who lives on the top floor of its towering Palace of Culture -- because he is the only one who can look out of his window and not see it.
Loathed by many older Poles as a symbol of oppression, the 754-foot (230-meter) neo-Gothic skyscraper was a "gift" from Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in the 1950s, but as a post-Communist generation matures it is finding a new role.
The grey-brown s
