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: Deutsche Welle
Apr 18, 2009
The new US government disappointed human rights activists when it chose to adhere to the Bush administration's position that detainees imprisoned at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan have no right to challenge their confinement in US courts. Critics have now begun referring to Bagram as "Obama's Guantanamo."
An estimated 650 inmates are being held at the prison north of Kabul, but the public rarely receives any details about how they're being treated, says German Green P
Source: AP
Apr 18, 2009
PHILADELPHIA – John Sotos has a theory about why Abraham Lincoln was so tall, why he appeared to have lumps on his lips and even why he had gastrointestinal problems. The 16th president, he contends, had a rare genetic disorder — one that would likely have left him dead of cancer within a year had he not been assassinated. And his bid to prove his theory has posed an ethical and scientific dilemma for a small Philadelphia museum in the year that marks the 200th anniversary of Lincoln's birth.
Source: http://www.dailypress.com
Apr 17, 2009
The College of William and Mary is hoping to make amends for its role in slavery by creating a long-term research project to chronicle the life and history of blacks at the university and greater Williamsburg.
The academic affairs committee of the university's Board of Visitors approved the "The Lemon Project: A Journey of Reconciliation," which will be an eight-year project sponsored by the Office of the Provost.
Named for a slave that William and Mary owned
Source: New Zealand Herald
Apr 17, 2009
More than 70 years after they were dug up for study and display, Rangitane tupuna returned home yesterday to one of the earliest sites of known human settlement in New Zealand.
That homecoming was witnessed by hundreds on an emotional day where the remains of more than 40 ancestors, some up to 700 years old, were reburied on the Wairau Bar in Marlborough.
Tribal member Richard Bradley said that the hurt of successive generations had finally been addressed.
Source: Reuters
Apr 17, 2009
Thirty-six passionate letters discovered on the Italian island of Lipari have revealed an illicit love affair between the daughter of former Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and a prominent Communist partisan.
Written in French, English and Italian, the secret correspondence has inspired a new book: "Edda Ciano and the Communist. The unspeakable passion of the Duce's Daughter."
"There is no novelistic embellishment," said author Marcello Sorgi, who
Source: NYT
Apr 17, 2009
The contrition tour goes beyond Latin America. In China, Mrs. Clinton told audiences that the United States must accept its responsibility as a leading emitter of greenhouse gases. In Indonesia, she said the American-backed policy of sanctions against Myanmar had not been effective. And in the Middle East, she pointed out that ostracizing the Iranian government had not persuaded it to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions.
Like other leaders around the world, Mrs. Clinton’s host, th
Source: NYT
Apr 17, 2009
In the seven years since he was named general secretary of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Dr. Hawass has been in perpetual motion. He personally announces every new discovery, was the force behind plans to construct 19 new museums, approved the restoration of nine synagogues in Cairo and has contributed to countless books, documentaries, magazine and newspaper articles all promoting Egyptian antiquities — and, of course, himself.
Naturally, this does not always win him friends,
Source: Times (UK)
Apr 17, 2009
The aftermath of the Abruzzo earthquake has witnessed the miraculous survival of people beneath collapsed buildings - and even of a small black dog which scampered out of the ruins of a house on Easter Sunday after nearly a week under the debris.
But residents of Rocca di Cambio, a village high in the Gran Sasso mountains of Abruzzo 25 kilometres from L’Aquila, are celebrating the emergence of a more longstanding survivor: a long-lost 11th Century fresco depicting the Virgin Mary a
Source: BBC
Apr 17, 2009
Now a journalism student at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), the 20-year-old believes her generation should know and care about the events of 1989.
"We found we were not familiar with what happened and many others did not know either, and we wanted to arouse their consciousness," she said.
As a vice chairperson of the university's Social Sciences Society, she helped organise an exhibition on campus featuring a series of panels explaining what led up to 4 J
Source: NYT
Apr 17, 2009
For at least 3,000 years, a drumbeat of potent droughts, far longer and more severe than any experienced recently, have seared a belt of sub-Saharan Africa that is now home to tens of millions of the world’s poorest people, climate researchers report in a new study.
The last such drought, persisting more than three centuries, ended around 1750, the research team writes in the April 17 issue of the journal Science.
The scientists warned that more such mega-droughts are i
Source: AP
Apr 17, 2009
The family of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. has charged the foundation building a monument to the civil rights leader on the National Mall about $800,000 for the use of his words and image — an arrangement one leading scholar says King would have found offensive.
The memorial — including a 28-foot sculpture depicting King emerging from a chunk of granite — is being paid for almost entirely with private money in a fundraising campaign led by the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memo
Source: Politico (Mike Allen)
Apr 17, 2009
April 29 is Day 100 of the Obama administration. Look for lots of attention from the press, but none from the White House, where they don't want to shorten the president's landing strip or accept a three-month scorecard at a time of unprecedented challenges. If you buy the storied hundred-days construct, it means you're less special or fresh on Day 101. Two different top Obama staffers derided the marker yesterday as 'A HALLMARK HOLIDAY.'
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 17, 2009
The year 1536 changed Henry VIII from a handsome, popular and athletic king to a corpulent tyrant who thought little of dispatching his many wives, a historian has claimed.
A new look at the life of one of England's most famous monarchs argues that a series of calamitous events within the space of 12 months had an irreversible effect on his life.
Suzannah Lipscomb, a research curator at Hampton Court Palace and Oxford scholar, said the apparent betrayal by his wife, a d
Source: AP
Apr 17, 2009
A South Carolina archaeologist says he'll begin exploring the wreckage of a Civil War-era ship submerged in the Charleston Harbor.
James Spirek will led a team Friday in search for the remains of the U.S.S. Patasco, a Union ironclad that was torpedoed and sank in 1865.
Friday's search is part of Spirek's efforts to create the first comprehensive historical map of the Charleston harbor bottom. The University of South Carolina archaeologist hopes to record everything from
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 17, 2009
Mussolini's hometown has finally banned the sale of daggers, cudgels and other fascist souvenirs relating to the late dictator after years of cashing in on trade from fervent admirers and tourists.
Crowds who flock to Predappio – many of them skinheads and black-shirted supporters of Italy's far-right – visit Mussolini's stone mausoleum, which is presided over by a stern-looking marble bust of Il Duce.
They then converge on shops offering a large and imaginative select
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 17, 2009
An illicit love affair between the daughter of Benito Mussolini, the former fascist dictator, and a prominent communist partisan has been revealed after 36 love letters chronicling the affair were made public.
The secret correspondence, discovered on the Italian island of Lipari, has inspired Marcello Sorgi’s new book: “Edda Ciano and the Communist. The unspeakable passion of the Duce’s Daughter”.
The letters, dated from September 1945 to April 1947, chart the affair b
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 17, 2009
Polish authorities claim to have identified three survivors of an infamous SS unit that garnered a reputation for brutality that shocked even German wartime commanders.
Prosecutors attached to Poland's Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), the body charged with investigating crimes committed during the war, have announced that they intend to bring the men to justice for their apparent involvement in the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising while serving with the SS Dirlewanger Bri
Source: Foxnews
Apr 17, 2009
The Justice Department says it wants to clear the way to deport John Demjanjuk to Germany and end what it considers delay tactics.
The government said in a letter released on Friday that it plans to ask a federal appeals court in Ohio to dismiss a stay that on Tuesday stopped the deportation of Demjanjuk a few hours after immigration officers took him from his home.
In a letter to the clerk of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Assistant U.S. Attorney
Source: CNN
Apr 17, 2009
The Cuban government, long the object of a U.S. economic blockade, is prepared to meet with the Obama administration, Cuba's leader said.
The response came days after President Obama lifted all restrictions on the ability of American citizens to visit relatives in Cuba as well as to send them remittances. Travel restrictions for Americans of non-Cuban descent will remain in place.
This week's move represents a significant shift in a U.S. policy that had remained largely
Source: NYT
Apr 17, 2009
“Our horse chestnut is in full bloom,” Anne Frank told her diary on Saturday, May 13, 1944, “thickly covered with leaves and much more beautiful than last year.”
She would have been 79 this year, turning 80.
Had she survived, Miss Frank would still be able to see the horse chestnut tree by which she measured the seasons of life during her two years of hiding from the Nazis, not just behind the building in Amsterdam from which she and her family were taken by the Gestapo
