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: Telegraph (UK)
May 30, 2009
Fang Zheng's last memory before he passed out was the sight of the bone popping out of his upper right leg as the Red Army tank rolled into him.
He woke up the next day in a Beijing hospital, both legs mangled and inoperable. But he was among the lucky ones - 11 fellow students were crushed to death in the tank attack on pro-democracy protestors retreating from Tiananmen Square in the early hours of June 4, 1989.
Nobody knows how many people were killed that night in th
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 30, 2009
Historians enjoy the most active sex lives according to a survey of students at Oxford University.
The survey of more than 850 students by Oxford University student newspaper Cherwell also revealed that students who do not have sex more than once a month are most likely to get a first in their degree.
But students who claimed to have a more active sex life are more likely to attain a 2:1 or 2:2 in their degree.
Historians were found to claim to be more s
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 30, 2009
A remarkable set of letters from the sister of the last Russian Tsar, which were written at the height of the Communist Revolution and have never been seen in public, have come to light
The 60 letters from the Grand Duchess Olga to her mother and sister reveal her desperation to discover the truth about the disappearance of Nicholas II a first cousin of George V, his wife, and their five children.
The correspondence, which is a fascinating insight into the bloody uphea
Source: Time
May 30, 2009
"Welcome to the Bill and George Show."
That was how former President George W. Bush greeted a crowd of 5,000 Friday evening in Toronto who had paid a few hundred dollars to hear Bush and fellow former leader of the free world Bill Clinton share their experiences — and perhaps their differences — as commander-in-chief.
Thwart them they did. For the most part, the two men, who have been friendly for a couple of years now, traded stories and compliments, part of
Source: Times (UK)
May 30, 2009
Outside China he is known simply as Tank Man. Inside the country he is not known at all. No trace is to be found of the young man armed only with shopping bags who 20 years ago blocked a column of tanks rolling through Beijing. His defiance became the defining image of the student demonstrations crushed by the People’s Liberation Army.
It was on the morning of June 5 that he appeared from nowhere. A line of 18 tanks began to pull out of Tiananmen Square and drove east along the Ave
Source: Deutsche Welle
May 30, 2009
The proposals put forward by Germany’s liberal Free Democrats suggested that everyone who had held a seat in parliament from 1949 onwards should be subjected to what it called a ‘Stasi check’.
But the motion met with resounding resistance from across the political spectrum, with the vast majority of Christian Democrats, Christian Social Union, Social Democrats and Left Party MPs voting against it. The Green Party abstained from the ballot altogether.
The FDP move was s
Source: BBC
May 30, 2009
After observing a two minutes' silence, he was taken on a tour of the site before meeting firefighters who were involved in the rescue attempt.
He will also visit a memorial to the 67 Britons who died in the 2001 attacks.
During his two-day trip, the prince will meet wounded Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans at a medical centre.
Source: Times Online (UK)
May 29, 2009
We are not yet approaching the level of the events of November 1979 when Iranian students overran the US Embassy and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. But the seizing of high-level local staff at the British Embassy gives this crisis its own flavour: in the 1979 Islamic Revolution the Iranians who worked at the US Embassy were left alone.
Today the defunct US Embassy in Tehran houses a detachment of Revolutionary Guards and an anti-American museum. It is the scene of ritual a
Source: Telegraph
May 29, 2009
Fifty years ago, Dr Dorian Paskowitz dropped out of society and embarked on a 14-year global surfing safari, raising nine children in a 24ft camper van, and catching every wave he could. He dreamt that they could all live untainted by money, school and fatty foods, and never imagined the wipeout that followed.
Source: Spiegel Online
May 29, 2009
In spring 1989, Hungary began dismantling its fortified border with Austria. A few months later, the first crack in the Iron Curtain opened when hundreds of East Germans fled across the Austrian-Hungarian border. Now new details about the quiet heroes of that historic event are coming to light.
Source: AP
May 29, 2009
A drastic plan to slash California's budget could mean closing down 220 state parks, including scenic attractions that draw millions of visitors.
Parks on the list include Lake Tahoe's Emerald Bay, Will Rogers' Southern California ranch and Humboldt Redwoods State Park, which boasts the world's tallest tree. The Governor's Mansion in Sacramento is on the list, and so is Bodie State Historic Park, one of the best-preserved Old West ghost towns.
A parks spokesman calls t
Source: BBC
May 29, 2009
Serb nationalist leader Vojislav Seselj is to go on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for contempt of court.
Mr Seselj is accused of disclosing the names and details of three protected witnesses at his war crimes trial.
He went on trial in 2007 for alleged crimes committed in Bosnia-Hercegovina and Croatia between 1991 and 1994.
The 54-year-old denies contempt as well as the three counts of crimes against humanity and
Source: NYT
May 29, 2009
WHEN Sonia Sotomayor first set foot in the Bronxdale Houses along Bruckner Boulevard in 1957, they encapsulated New York’s promise. The towers beckoned to the working class as a coveted antidote to some of the city’s unlivable residential spaces and, later on, its unfathomable rents. These were not the projects of idle, stinky elevators, of gang-controlled stairwells where drug deals go down. In the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, when most of the city’s public housing was built, a sense of pride and comm
Source: NYT
May 29, 2009
In 1996, Judge Sonia Sotomayor delivered a speech comparing campaign contributions to “bribes” and asking whether elected officials could credibly say they were “representing only the general public good, when private money plays such a large role” in helping them win office.
“If they cannot, the public must demand a change in the role of private money or find other ways, such as through strict, well-enforced regulation, to ensure that politicians are not inappropriately influenced
Source: CNN
May 29, 2009
A chain link fence now stands between Tim Lambert's land and the impact site of United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed here on September 11, 2001. The property has been in Lambert's family for almost 80 years.
Lambert says he had no plans for the land, he just knew he wanted to hold on to it. "There's a lot of natural resources in this area -- natural gas, coal," he says.
In the seven years since, some of the most important land needed for the massive proje
Source: USA Today
May 29, 2009
Taxpayers are on the hook for an extra $55,000 a household to cover rising federal commitments made just in the past year for retirement benefits, the national debt and other government promises, a USA TODAY analysis shows.
The 12% rise in red ink in 2008 stems from an explosion of federal borrowing during the recession, plus an aging population driving up the costs of Medicare and Social Security.
That's the biggest leap in the long-term burden on taxpayers since a Med
Source: NYT
May 29, 2009
Every so often, Britons in large numbers seem to rally around a common theme, a newly coined orthodoxy that brooks no dissent and rudely demands change. And, as events over the years — indeed the centuries — have shown, their leaders ignore such junctions in the nation’s history at their peril.
It happened, perhaps mawkishly, when Princess Diana died in 1997 and the royal family — perceived as stuffy and unresponsive, remote and unfeeling — seemed to disdain its subjects’ communal g
Source: AP
May 29, 2009
A small-town newspaper is apologizing for running a classified advertisement calling for the assassination of President Barack Obama.
Warren Times Observer Publisher John Elchert says the ad appeared Thursday. It read, "May Obama follow in the steps of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy!" The four presidents were all assassinated.
Elchert tells The Associated Press that the newspaper's advertising staff didn't make the historical connection.
Source: CNN
May 29, 2009
A chain link fence now stands between Tim Lambert's land and the impact site of United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed here on September 11, 2001. The property has been in Lambert's family for almost 80 years.
"My grandfather purchased about 200 acres in the 1930s, and he would cut timber and sell the timber off, and he would build cabins as well," Lambert says. "That's how he got the family through the Depression."
Lambert says he had no plans fo
Source: CNN
May 29, 2009
It was a journey that took more than a hundred years.
Missing for decades, the remains of Cpl. Isaiah Mays, a Buffalo Soldier and Medal of Honor recipient, were laid to rest Friday at Arlington National Cemetery.
Paying respects were African-American veterans, U.S. Army soldiers and those who rode for days as part of a motorcycle escort -- members of the Missing in America Project, who traveled from as far away as California and Arizona at their own expense to make sur
