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: Independent
May 12, 2007
The new Ireland of good neighbourliness continued to assert itself over the old Ireland of historical dispute when the Rev Ian Paisley, Northern Ireland's new First Minister, ventured south of the border to one of the most hallowed sites of Protestantism and Unionism.
In the latest in a remarkable series of highly symbolic events, Mr Paisley visited the river Boyne, where in 1690 a Protestant king defeated a Catholic monarch in a major military clash. Each year in Northern Ireland, tens of th
Source: Washington Post
May 12, 2007
JAMESTOWN, Va. -- With a procession of flags and the world premiere of a symphony saluting the English settlement of North America, the commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown kicked off tonight.
Virginia Governor Timothy M. Kaine welcomed the thousands of visitors gathered on the Jamestown's Anniversary Park grounds to what he predicted"will be a magical and memorable weekend."
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Source: Telegraph
May 12, 2007
ELBA, Italy -- Napoleon's will to succeed even in exile and defeat has been revealed with the first full restoration of his two villas on the island of Elba.The French despot was banished to the island, 12 miles off the [Tuscany] coast, in 1814 after abdicating following his defeat by Britain and her continental allies.
Lord Liverpool, the prime minister, said Napoleon's exile had hit the Corsican "as hard as one can, and in the most vulnerable place".
Source: New York Times
May 12, 2007
LOS ANGELES -— The J. Paul Getty Museum inched a step closer to relinquishing ownership of one of its most prized artifacts, a 2,400-year-old statue of a goddess [often called 'Aphrodite of Morgantina'] claimed by Italy, at a conference of international experts to discuss the artifact this week, its director [Michael Brand] said.The Getty has not reached a formal conclusion based on the conference, which was convened at the museum on Wednesday and was closed to the public. B
Source: Telegraph
May 12, 2007
WARSAW -- Poland's constitutional tribunal has blown a hole in a controversial law aimed at purging former communist agents from public office after it ruled that much of the law was unconstitutional.
Speaking to a crowded court, the head of the tribunal, Janusz Niemciewicz, listed a lengthy litany of points which the 11-judge panel deemed at odds with the constitution.
The law required some 700,000 people, including school directors and board members of public companie
Source: Times (of London)
May 12, 2007
DELHI -- India has begun reconstructing the 1,000-mile Stilwell Road connecting it to China via Burma, more than six decades after the route was built to supply Chinese forces fighting Japanese occupation.
Work began on the Indian section last month and the whole road is scheduled to re-open by 2009, providing the fastest land route between India, Southeast Asia and China.
The road –- named after Joseph Stilwell, the American general who supervised its construction -– p
Source: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
May 11, 2007
From Tajikistan's capital city, Dushanbe, to remote districts and villages, authorities are busy removing Soviet-era statues, replacing some with monuments celebrating the Tajik nation.
The removal of monuments has attracted little attention -- unlike in Estonia, where the recent relocation of a Soviet war memorial from the center of the capital, Tallinn, provoked violent protests and diplomatic furor. But in contrast to the Estonia, World War II memorials in Tajikistan have been le
Source: International Herald Tribune
May 11, 2007
ROME -- The anarchist Giovanni Passannante is becoming a cause célèbre 97 years after his death.
Until this week, Passannante's skull and brain -- preserved in formaldehyde -- were on display at a criminology museum in Rome in what ranked as one of Italy's more macabre showcases. It was a strange punishment in a museum-loving society for someone who tried to kill the king of Italy 120 years ago. [That attempt on Umberto I was in 1878. The king was killed by another anarchist in 1900
Source: Christian Science Monitor
May 11, 2007
LONDON -- On a balmy Friday morning a decade ago, Britain's last and youngest prime minister of the 20th century emerged bleary-eyed into the spring sunshine and promised the country a different society: fair, modern, progressive –- less cynical and divisive. The tune from an all-night victory party still resounded: Things can only get better.
On Thursday, 10 years and eight days from that heady May morning, Tony Blair finally resigned as Labour Party leader, setting his departure f
Source: Columbia News Service
May 11, 2007
After digging around James Madison's sprawling Virginia estate, Matthew Reeves, an archaeologist, has determined that the former president spent a lot of time and money preparing for guests to arrive.
Anticipating visits from hundreds of academics and dignitaries once he returned home from the White House, Madison undertook massive efforts to revamp his estate. He directed his slaves to build an artificial lawn, almost unheard of at the time, by moving thousands of tons of earth.
Source: Chicago Tribune
May 11, 2007
The first American astronauts captured the imaginations of a proud country nearly 50 years ago when they were selected to be part of Project Mercury, the first of a series of manned spacecraft missions.
But a lesser-known group of aspiring astronauts never was given a chance to join the program for one primary reason: They were women.On Saturday, the 13 women, all renowned pilots, will be granted honorary degrees at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh for the
Source: AP
May 11, 2007
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Seven years after the Confederate flag was moved from South Carolina's Statehouse dome, it still shadows visiting presidential candidates.
The banner -- a symbol of Southern pride to some and racism to others -- continues to fly near the Capitol, just feet from one of this city's busiest streets...[It is] never more visible to the rest of the nation than every four years when White House hopefuls troop through this early primary state and field
Source: New York Times
May 11, 2007
PARIS -- Repentance for the sins of the past has come easy to President Jacques Chirac. He will be remembered as the first French leader to recognize the country’s crimes against Jews in World War II and to commemorate formally its complicity in African slavery.
President-elect Nicolas Sarkozy, by contrast, does not believe in saying he is sorry.“I’m going to make the French proud of France again,” Mr. Sarkozy said in his speech after he was elected president on
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
May 11, 2007
The Golden Gate Bridge district issued a formal report on 70 years of stewardship of the famous bridge Thursday -- and decided to right an old wrong by giving major credit for the design of the bridge to an engineer it had ignored.
The engineer was Charles Ellis, a University of Illinois professor of engineering. He did much of the technical and theoretical work that built the bridge but until Thursday got none of the credit.
The bridge district always considered chief
Source: AP
May 11, 2007
WASHINGTON -- The commander of the USS Constitution was relieved of duty because of a ''loss of trust and confidence in his ability to command,'' a Navy spokesman said Thursday.
The Navy declined to provide specifics about why Commander Thomas C. Graves was removed [two months early] as senior officer of the historic warship, known as ''Old Ironsides.''...
Graves was the 69th commander of the oldest commissioned ship afloat in the world...
The Constitution
Source: Telegraph
May 11, 2007
NEW DELHI -- Concerns are mounting in India for the well-being of [the descendant of] a sacred tree under which Lord Buddha first attained enlightenment more than 2,500 years ago.
The "Bodhi tree" in Bihar state, eastern India, has been afflicted with a mystery ailment, causing it to shed its leaves.The giant peepal, or ficus religiosa, situated outside the Mahabodhi shrine is sacred to Buddhists who make pilgrimages from all around the world to worshi
Source: New York Times
May 10, 2007
MOSCOW -- President Vladimir V. Putin seemed to obliquely compare the foreign policy of the United States to the Third Reich in a speech on Wednesday commemorating the 62nd anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany.
The comments were the latest in a series of sharply worded Russian criticisms of the foreign policy of the United States — on Iraq, missile defense, NATO expansion and, more broadly, United States unilateralism in foreign affairs.“We do not have the
Source: Reuters
May 10, 2007
A U.S.-based group that fights anti-Semitism urged Pope Benedict on Thursday to suspend the sainthood process for Pope Pius XII, whom critics accuse of turning a blind eye to the death of Jews during World War Two.
The Anti-Defamation League said the process should stop until secret World War Two Vatican archives are declassified and fully examined "so that the full record of the Pope's actions during the Holocaust may finally be known."
The Vatican's saint-ma
Source: BBC News
May 10, 2007
London's Natural History Museum has struck a deal with Australian aboriginal leaders over the remains of 17 indigenous Tasmanians it holds.
The museum had agreed to return the remains to Tasmania, but not until tests were carried out on the bones.
But Tasmanian aborigines viewed the tests as a desecration of their beliefs and took their case to the High Court.
Under the settlement, four DNA samples from the 19th Century specimens will be preserved in Tasman
Source: Times (of London)
May 10, 2007
ROME -- An ''Unknown Englishman'' murdered outside Rome by fleeing Nazis was a secret agent who had been landed by submarine to organise anti-Fascist resistance on Sardinia, a historian claimed yesterday.
The officer, whose anonymous grave lay in a wood dedicated to victims of a 1943 massacre, was named last month by Second World War veterans as ''Captain John Armstrong''. But they cautioned that this could have been an alias and appealed for those who might know the truth to come f
