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
May 18, 2009
More than 40 percent of Israel's Arab citizens say the Holocaust never happened, and barely one half think Israel has a right to exist, according to a survey published Monday. But the academic who directed it said the results were likely more statements of protest than belief.
Sammy Smooha believes the numbers, which have shown a significant shift in the past few years, signal a rising frustration among minority Arabs in the Jewish state. He said the growing Holocaust denial is fuel
Source: AP
May 18, 2009
Someone has beheaded a statue of President James Garfield that was installed last week at an Ohio college.
Hiram College spokesman Shawn Brown says the vandalism was discovered Friday morning, just a day after the sandstone statue was dedicated on the campus in Hiram, 30 miles southeast of Cleveland.
Brown says the college is hoping the head will be recovered so the 95-year-old statue can be restored, but police have no leads in their investigation.
Source: Guardian (UK)
May 18, 2009
Tony Blair last night received the $1m Dan David prize for leadership at a ceremony at Tel Aviv university, a prize awarded for "achievements having an outstanding scientific, technological, cultural or social impact on our world."
Blair's office said 90% of the money from the prize – which is named after the international businessman and philanthropist Dan David – would be donated to the Tony Blair faith foundation that promotes religious understanding, by bringing togeth
Source: Times (UK)
May 18, 2009
Squads of pro-government paramilitaries were sent to the area around Insein prison in Rangoon and shops were ordered to close as the authorities acted to pre-empt public anger before today’s trial of the Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
According to Burmese journalists in Rangoon the paramilitaries, deployed near government buildings and monasteries, are searching cars and pedestrians, apparently fearing a repeat of the events of September 2007 when tens of thousands of B
Source: Washington Post
May 18, 2009
The first planned colonial town in the New World was founded in 1494, when about 1,200 of Christopher Columbus's crew members from the 17 ships that made up his second journey to the Americas settled on the north coast of what is now the Dominican Republic.
Beset by mutiny, mismanagement, hurricanes and disease, the settlement of La Isabela lasted only a few years. The ruins remained largely intact until the 1950s, when a local official reportedly misunderstood the order from dictat
Source: NYT
May 17, 2009
Have you met Rotus?
This is a question President Obama has taken to asking some of his visitors to the White House. In a bureaucratic world awash in abbreviations and acronyms, this one in particular seems to amuse him.
Mr. Obama, of course, is Potus (president of the United States). Michelle Obama is Flotus (first lady of the United States). And the title of Rotus (receptionist of the United States) is worn by Darienne M. Page.
“This is the receptionist of
Source: NYT
May 17, 2009
As Israel celebrated its Independence Day last month — an event that Palestinians call the nakba, the catastrophe — the videotaped accounts of Mrs. Natur and Mr. Tamir are part of efforts to preserve the narratives of both sides of the war that led to Israel’s tumultuous birth in 1948.
While historians debate the reliability of first-person accounts given decades after the event, advocates argue that they give voice to ordinary people’s experiences of historic times. ...
On t
Source: The Canadian Press
May 17, 2009
The story of Geronimo epitomizes the Old West: a larger-than-life Indian warrior whose remarkable exploits in battle bordered on the supernatural.
His remains also have taken on interest beyond all expectations. Some people believe grave robbers, including Prescott Bush, the father and grandfather of future presidents, took his skull for use in a powerful secret society at Yale University.
Historians don't buy it. They say Geronimo is still buried at Fort Sill in Oklaho
Source: AP
May 17, 2009
Colorado man is facing federal looting charges after allegedly taking dinosaur bones and other artifacts from the Glen Canyon National Recreation area.
Charles Penn Lindsey, of Woodland Park, was charged with one misdemeanor count of looting public lands in Colorado's federal court this week.
Court documents say Lindsey took petrified wood, lava rock, flat red rock, garnet, stone artifact pieces, pot shards and 14 pieces of dinosaur bone from Glen Canyon in Kane County
Source: Times (UK)
May 17, 2009
THE Vatican has come under renewed pressure to purge its ranks of suspected killers after a second Rwandan Catholic priest accused of involvement in the 1994 genocide was found to be working in Italy under an assumed name.
An international arrest warrant is being prepared by Rwanda for Father Emmanuel Uwayezu following the discovery that he is working in a parish at Empoli, near Florence. It will accuse him of direct complicity in the massacre of more than 80 students, aged from 12
Source: BBC
May 17, 2009
Bahr Idriss Abu Garda is charged with taking part in an attack in north Darfur in 2007, during which 12 African Union (AU) peacekeepers were killed.
Mr Abu Garda is the first Darfur rebel to have voluntarily answered a summons from the ICC, the court said.
The former senior member of the Jem rebel group denies any involvement.
"I will go, no problem. I know I was not involved," Mr Abu Garda, who now heads the United Resistance Movement (URF) re
Source: New York Daily News
May 17, 2009
The history of Queens can in many respects be divided into two eras - the days before the Queensboro Bridge and everything that happened after.
The 7,449-foot span is being feted over the next few weeks with an array of tributes, exhibits, lectures and tours coordinated by the NYC Bridge Centennial Commission.
The main event is a historic reenactment of the first ride over the bridge, complete with politicians in period dress, antique cars and a nighttime fireworks sho
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 17, 2009
Adolf Hitler might not be alone among 20th century dictators in missing a sensitive part of his anatomy, it has been claimed.
A new book suggests that the Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco lost a testicle when injured on the battlefield in 1916, the same year that the future Nazi leader is believed to have suffered his own, much mocked, loss.
In a new book by the Spanish historian José Maria Zavala, Ana Puigvert, who is a doctor, is quoted claiming that her gra
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 17, 2009
The son of a Royal Navy stoker forced to work in a coal mine owned by the family of the Japanese prime minister Taro Aso has begun a one-man campaign to secure an apology and compensation for his father's suffering.
James McAnulty, 62, from Wishaw in Lanarkshire, told The Daily Telegraph that his father, Patrick James McAnulty, never fully recovered from more than three years of captivity in Japan. He died in 1971.
Until January, Mr Aso had steadfastly refused to confi
Source: AP
May 17, 2009
Newt Heisley, the designer of the POW/MIA flag adopted by Congress in 1990 as a symbol of the nation's concern for those missing during military actions in Southeast Asia, died. He was 88.
Donna Allison, Heisley's fiancee, told The Associated Press Heisley died suddenly Thursday at his home after years of failing health. His death was first reported by The Gazette.
Heisley's image sketched in pencil in 1971 during the Vietnam War shows the silhouette of a gaunt man, a s
Source: The Daily Beast
May 17, 2009
Might Donald Rumsfeld be left off the guest list for Bush administration reunions? In a piece for GQ, Robert Draper interviews former officials and discovers"intense feelings of ill will toward Donald Rumsfeld." In interviewing these officials, Draper writes, it"becomes evident that Rumsfeld impaired administration performance on a host of matters extending well beyond Iraq to impact America's relations with other natio
Source: Herald Sun (Australia)
May 16, 2009
Greece heaped scorn overnight on plans by Macedonia to erect a gigantic equestrian statue of Alexander the Great, the famed warrior-king of antiquity that both countries claim as their own.
The 22-metre statue of the ancient king of Macedon is to be placed on the main square of Macedonia's capital Skopje at an estimated cost of €4.5 million ($8.08 million), local authorities said.
In recent years, Greece has faced a challenge from the former Yugoslav republic over the s
Source: NYT
May 16, 2009
You have to marvel at how Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, a former Special Operations commander and the newly appointed leader of American forces in Afghanistan, does it. Mastermind the hunt for Al Qaeda in Iraq and plot stealth raids on Taliban strongholds in the Hindu Kush while getting just a few hours of sleep a night, exercising enough to exhaust a gym rat and eating one meal a day to avoid sluggishness. One meal. Who was it who said an army runs on its stomach?
It was, lore ha
Source: Telegraph (UK)
May 16, 2009
The long-awaited Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) report into the suicide bombings which left 52 people dead and hundreds injured in July 2005 will effectively clear MI5 and the police of failing to prevent the attacks.
Sources have revealed that the report, to be published on Tuesday, will state that no new intelligence has emerged since the publication of the first report in May 2006.
The ISC report is said to be the most detailed ever compiled by the commi
Source: BBC
May 16, 2009
The RAF has ended its involvement in Iraq, after 19 years of operations that began with the 1990 Gulf War.
From today, most British air personnel remaining in the country will return to the UK.
The RAF Ensign - flown at Basra Airport in southern Iraq since 2003 - has been lowered at a ceremony for 903 Expeditionary Air Wing.
A total of 22 RAF personnel died in Operation Telic, the name given to the UK military mission in Iraq since 2003.
The RAF w
