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: BBC
Jan 7, 2009
Tens of thousands of Cambodians have packed into a stadium in Phnom Penh to mark the 30th anniversary of the fall of the murderous Khmer Rouge.
Senate President Chea Sim lauded "those who sacrificed their lives to save us from genocide", when Vietnamese-led forces ousted the regime in 1979.
Up to two million people died over the four years of Khmer Rouge rule.
But none of its surviving leaders have yet faced justice, triggering criticism of foo
Source: IHT
Jan 7, 2009
This time, Israeli military commanders are leading from the front, not trying to direct the infantry from television screens. This time, the military has clear plans, in stages, drawn up with a year's preparation. This time there is no illusion about winning a war only from the air. This time, the military chief of staff has kept his silence in public, all cellphones have been confiscated from Israeli soldiers and the international press has been kept out of the battlefield.
In thes
Source: AP
Jan 6, 2009
At least nine Detroit area high school juniors are in trouble for wearing sweat shirts bearing a design that evokes the terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center's Twin Towers.
Dearborn Public Schools spokesman David Mustonen has told The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press that the shirts the boys wore to Edsel Ford High School on Monday are "offensive" and in "poor taste."
The boys are Arab-American, as are about half the school's 1,7
Source: HR Gov website
Jan 6, 2009
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) today introduced six bills on the first day of the 111th Congress. Today’s legislation includes a proposal to create a War Powers Commission...
National Commission on Presidential War Powers and Civil Liberties will establish a Blue Ribbon Commission comprised of experts outside government service to investigate the broad range of policies of the Bush administration that were undertaken by the Bush administration under cla
Source: McClatchy
Jan 6, 2009
When Barack Obama lifts his hand from Abraham Lincoln's Bible at his inauguration, he won't be just the new president of the U.S. He'll be the face of a new era.
He's not the cause of the changing times, either the upheaval in the land or the hunger for something new seen in the million or more faces who'll stream into Washington to watch him take the oath.
Rather, he reflects a new age that's already dawning. It's one marked by sweeping cultural, demographic and economic cha
Source: CNN
Jan 6, 2009
Talk about a power lunch. President Bush, President-elect Barack Obama and three living former presidents will meet in the Oval Office for a private gathering on Wednesday afternoon.
Former presidents Jimmy Carter, George Herbert Walker Bush and Bill Clinton will join Obama and Bush at the White House for lunch. Obama initially came up with the idea that all of the men get together after meeting with President Bush last month.
Perino speculated that they will discuss wh
Source: CNN
Jan 6, 2009
As a candidate, Barack Obama promoted hybrid cars. As president, he'll be handed the keys to one. Sort of.
In keeping with recent tradition, the Secret Service will place a brand-new presidential limousine into service January 20 to drive the new president on the 2-mile jaunt down Pennsylvania Avenue during the inaugural parade.
In the post-Lincoln horse-and-buggy era, it was customary for a security detail to closely trail the president, according to a Secret Service h
Source: Foxnews
Jan 6, 2009
President Bush won the praise of environmentalists Tuesday for leading the largest marine conservation effort in history, but his critics are still bitter over his environmental legacy.
Some went so far as to compare Bush to Teddy Roosevelt, who created the national park system a century ago.
But others said Bush's conservation effort, while laudable, was not enough to erase the lowlights of his environmental record. Groups like the National Resources Defense Council
Source: BBC
Jan 6, 2009
Turkey says it is to restore the citizenship of one of its most illustrious poets and playwrights.
Nazim Hikmet was stripped of his citizenship for his Marxist beliefs in the 1950s after he fled the country, having spent years in Turkish prisons.
Hikmet, who died in exile in Moscow in 1963, revolutionised Turkish poetry during the 1930s and has had his work translated into some 50 languages.
Deputy PM Cemil Cicek said it was time for the government to ch
Source: AP
Jan 6, 2009
The year ahead will challenge Chinese security officials increasingly nervous about social stability, the nation's top police officer said Tuesday, amid concerns about gang violence, separatism and dissident plans to mark the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests.
Leaders are particularly anxious about how the cooling economy, and the accompanying loss of jobs, will affect social order.
"The present situation of maintaining national security and social stabil
Source: ESPN
Jan 6, 2009
The legal fight over exhuming the remains of Notre Dame football great George Gipp may have ended.
The Michigan Court of Appeals last month refused to hear an appeal of a decision to reject a lawsuit filed by two men who say they are Gipp's distant cousins. Ron Gipp and Karl Gipp live near George Gipp's boyhood home in the Upper Peninsula and sued in November 2007.
The previous month, his body had been removed from a cemetery near Laurium to determine if he had fathered
Source: BBC
Jan 6, 2009
While Iraq struggles to return to peaceful normality, the British have been working to restore some of the country's pride in its past - with a museum.
British soldiers withdrew from the palace compound in September 2007. Now, the building itself is deserted, and I have to wait for an Iraqi police colonel to turn up with the key.
In his mind's eye, John Curtis, keeper of the Middle East department at the British Museum, can already see the site transformed into a muse
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 6, 2009
A man kidnapped by SS soldiers as a child to be brought up as part of the Aryan 'master race' in Nazi Germany has discovered his true identity.
Folker Heinecke, 67, spent 34 years researching his past before discovering that two soldiers came to his village in the Russian Crimea and kidnapped him under the German Lebensborn - Fount of Life - programme.
He launched his bid to discover his origins after the death of his Nazi foster parents in 1975. "For years the fil
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 6, 2009
Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso has admitted for the first time his family's company used prisoners of war as slave labourers during the Second World War.
Taro Aso said new documents showed captured serviceman, including Britons, were forced to work in mines.
The admission yesterday prompted British war veterans to step up demands for compensation and a proper apology.
Source: AP
Jan 5, 2009
The Pentagon's senior judge overseeing terror trials at Guantanamo Bay dropped charges Thursday against an al-Qaida suspect in the 2000 USS Cole bombing, upholding President Barack Obama's order to freeze military tribunals there. The charges against suspected al-Qaida bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri marked the last active Guantanamo war crimes case.
The legal move by Susan J. Crawford, the top legal authority for military trials at Guantanamo, brings all cases into compliance with O
Source: Radio Netherlands
Jan 5, 2009
The province of North Holland has agreed to partially fund a new investigation into the Velzer Affair, a murky World War II case involving the betrayal of communist resistance fighters and collaboration with the Nazi occupiers.
So far there have been 12 investigations into the case as well as dozens of books, including the best-selling novel The Scandal by Conny Braam, along with several films, including The Girl with Red Hair. But despite all that, the truth has not yet surfaced.
Source: BBC
Jan 5, 2009
An Estonian court has acquitted four ethnic Russians accused of leading riots that shook the capital, Tallinn.
The riots started after the government decided in 2007 to relocate a Soviet-era war memorial, considered a reminder of Soviet occupation by many Estonians.
More than one-third of Estonians are ethnic Russians, who viewed the move to a military cemetery as an insult to Soviet troops killed fighting in WWII.
Russia, and many ethnic Russians in Est
Source: National Security Archive
Jan 5, 2009
American Presidents from Eisenhower to George W. Bush have sought to distinguish themselves from their predecessors with sudden shifts in Middle East policy and questionable strategies that have contributed to undermining American credibility in the region, according to a new book, "A World of Trouble," by veteran correspondent Patrick Tyler, a fellow of the National Security Archive at George Washington University.
Tyler's account begins with a raucous night of recriminat
Source: Politico.com
Jan 5, 2009
On inauguration night, Barack and Michelle will make their first stop – and dance their first dance – at a ball that will be Webcast to living rooms and community centers around the country as part of the Presidential Inaugural Committee’s plan to make this the most accessible swearing-in in history.
Some of the tickets will go free to District of Columbia residents, and some will be offered to grassroots supporters around the country.
Planners are borrowing from the h
Source: Politico.com
Jan 5, 2009
Laura Bush has signed with Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, to write her memoirs for publication in the spring of 2010.
The first lady plans to write about her experiences in the White House and Texas governor’s mansion, and to touch on universally relevant themes like having a strong-willed mother-in-law, dealing with loss and raising children.
More specifically, she plans to describe what it’s like to have issues you’re passionate about described in the
