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: New York Times
May 8, 2007
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. —- Conquistadors from Spain came, they saw and they were astonished. They had never seen anything in Europe like the bridges of Peru. Chroniclers wrote that the Spanish soldiers stood in awe and fear before the spans of braided fiber cables suspended across deep gorges in the Andes, narrow walkways sagging and swaying and looking so frail.
Yet the suspension bridges were familiar and vital links in the vast empire of the Inca, as they had been to Andean cultures for
Source: DPA (German Press Agency)
May 8, 2007
JERUSALEM -- It took 35 years, but on Tuesday Professor Ehud Netzer of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem could finally announce that he had solved a 'great mystery' and found the final resting place of the Biblical King Herod the Great, and an elaborate sarcophagus which had been smashed to 'hundreds of pieces.'
'We have located the burial site of Herod, at the Herodium,' Netzer told a packed news conference in Jerusalem, describing the find as a 'high point' for research on Herod.
Source: Raw Story
May 8, 2007
A Texas Republican Congressman invoked a founding Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in a floor speech he delivered yesterday in support of the Iraq War."Nathan Bedford Forrest, successful Confederate general, said it best about winning and victory and the means to do so. He said: 'Get there firstest with the mostest,'" said Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) in a one-minute floor speech at the beginning of Monday's session in the House of Representatives.
He then call
Source: Reuters
May 8, 2007
MUMBAI, India -- The investigation into the 1991 assassination of former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi is the subject of a Bollywood thriller which promises to reveal new facts about the suicide attack, a report said on Tuesday.
Gandhi was killed by a suicide bomber while he was on his way to address an election meeting near the southern Indian city of Chennai.
The assassination was blamed on neighboring Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels. It was seen as revenge for Ga
Source: AP
May 8, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Queen Elizabeth II...was to honor American soldiers with a visit Tuesday to the National World War II Memorial...
It will be the queen's first visit to the war memorial, which was dedicated in 2004. The queen, a teenage princess during World War II, won permission in 1945 from her father, King George VI, to join the war effort as a driver in the Women's Auxiliary Territorial Service, the women's branch of the British Army. She became No. 230873 Second Subaltern Elizabe
Source: Los Angeles Times
May 8, 2007
PERQUIN, El Salvador —- Efrain Perez moves with a slight shuffle as he escorts visitors through the Museum of the Salvadoran Revolution. His halting gait, the result of bomb shrapnel that nearly pierced his brain, has slowed the 38-year-old ex-guerrilla's body, but not his mind.
Effortlessly, he rattles off the dates of battles and assassinations, lists the names of obliterated villages and fallen comrades in arms. Then he leads his guests through narrow rooms filled with propaganda
Source: Washington Post
May 8, 2007
PHNOM PENH -- In a country where half the students who enter grammar school never finish, Cheak Socheata, 18, is among the most privileged of her generation: She made it to college.
But even Cheak, a first-year medical student at Phnom Penh's University of Health Sciences, has learned next to nothing in school about the Khmer Rouge, who in a little less than four years in power executed, tortured and starved to death an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians, about a quarter of the popula
Source: Times (of London)
May 8, 2007
Australia –- along with the rest of the world –- was first settled by a single group of settlers who left Africa more than 55,000 years ago, DNA research suggests.
Once there, they apparently evolved in relative isolation, developing genetic characteristics and technology found nowhere else until the arrival of the first European settlers.
The uniqueness of Australia’s ancient Aborigines and archaeological finds on the continent have previously threatened to undermine t
Source: New York Times
May 8, 2007
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. —- Fifty years after the epic desegregation struggle at Central High School, the school district here is still riven by racial conflict, casting a pall on this year’s ambitious commemorative efforts.In the latest clash, white parents pack school board meetings to support the embattled superintendent, Roy Brooks, who is black. The blacks among the school board members look on grimly, determined to use their new majority to oust him. Whites insist that test s
Source: Times (of London)
May 8, 2007
BRUSSELS -- The Dutch national airline is facing calls for an inquiry into its role in helping Nazis to flee to South America, after the discovery of documents suggesting that it played an active role in smuggling suspected war criminals out of Germany.
KLM, Royal Dutch Airlines, has always denied that it had a policy of assisting Nazis to escape justice at the hands of the Allies after the Second World War, when hundreds escaped to Argentina.
But papers revealing the a
Source: Times (of London)
May 8, 2007
A Tudor drama is to be performed in the magnificent Great Hall of Hampton Court Palace for the first time since it was staged there for Henry VIII about 480 years ago.The Play of the Weather was written in the early 1530s by John Heywood, the playwright and poet who was to inspire Shakespeare. Although he was a Roman Catholic who included extremely daring digs at the monarch in his writings, he managed to avoid having his head chopped off.The play, which u
Source: Los Angeles Times
May 8, 2007
WASHINGTON —- In 1961, Sam Jordan had just finished a six-year stint flying helicopters in the Marine Corps when he saw a want ad for an upstart airline called Air America.
"They said they wanted pilots," he recalled. "They didn't say anything about where the flying would be."...
In 14 years working for Air America, Jordan was never formally told who was footing the bill for his often-harrowing flights. But he and the other Air America pilots knew. T
Source: New York Times
May 8, 2007
TOKYO -— Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan made a ceremonial offering to a controversial Tokyo war shrine last month but did not go himself, a shrine official said Tuesday.
Yasukuni Shrine, a Shinto memorial that commemorates Japan’s wartime dead, including Class A war criminals from World War II, has been a focal point of Chinese and South Korean ire over what many in Asia see as Japan’s lack of remorse for its wartime deeds.
Mr. Abe, who has worked to improve relatio
Source: International Herald Tribune
May 7, 2007
CHIANG MAI, Thailand -- A sunburned craftsman leans over to mix slaked lime and cement, and slaps the traditional mortar mix onto the sagging base of a 200-year-old temple in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand. Cars and noisy motorized rickshaws buzz past the temple while nearby shops emblazoned with "Nokia" sell the latest mobile phones.
The temple, like the Lanna culture that originally created it, is under siege from the modern world, and the craftsman is an icon of the nasc
Source: AP
May 7, 2007
LINCOLN, N.H. -- Four years after the demise of the Old Man of the Mountain, another of New Hampshire's rocky profiles is getting a little more attention.
At about 98 feet long, the Indian Head on the side of Mount Pemigewassett [visible off Exit 33 on I-93] is nearly 60 feet longer than the Old Man of the Mountain was, but it never attracted much attention in part because the Old Man profile was more distinct and easily visible from the highway.
Stew Weldon of the Indian Head Resort
Source: Newsweek
May 7, 2007
In the basement of the largest of the mud buildings built by the Jamestown colonists starting in 1607, archaeologists stumbled on a mystery. Postholes suggested that there had been a small room under the wooden stairs, while charcoal on the floor plus clay walls that had turned red from heat indicated a fire had once burned there. But there was no evidence of a flue. Stumped by why anyone would be so foolhardy as to have roaring flames in an unventilated space, the researchers then remembered so
Source: AP
May 7, 2007
ELKINS PARK, Pa. -- The only synagogue ever designed by Frank Lloyd Wright has been designated a National Historic Landmark.
Beth Sholom, a soaring glass-and-concrete temple just outside Philadelphia, began welcoming worshippers nearly 50 years ago. On Sunday, the National Park Service recognized it as one of the architect's greatest achievements...The towering, flat-topped spire is constructed out of concrete, steel, aluminum and glass. It's the only synagogue
Source: AP
May 7, 2007
WARSAW -- Poland is preparing a law that will give local authorities a free hand to remove monuments of ''praise for the communist dictatorship'' but also will require the preservation of memorials that honor Soviet soldiers, a Cabinet minister said Monday...
Culture Minister Kazimierz Michal Ujazdowski said the Polish legislation was conceived months before the [Estonian] dispute and was intended to deal with the issue in an orderly manner.
''The point of the law is to
Source: Washington Post
May 7, 2007
On Douglas Feith's first day as a visiting professor at Georgetown last year, he dropped in on another new professor down the hall. George Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, was friendly and welcoming, Feith recalled. Feith, who as the No. 3 at the Pentagon had served in the Bush administration with Tenet, suggested they get together for lunch.
Not long afterward, Tenet moved his office, four floors down. He told friends he wanted to be as far away as possible from
Source: AP
May 7, 2007
BISMARCK, N.D. -- The U.S. Forest Service has completed the purchase of a historic Badlands ranch where Theodore Roosevelt once ran his cattle, in a deal worth $5.3 million, the federal Agriculture Department said Monday...
The deal, first announced in August, was completed April 25, the 60th anniversary of the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, said Valerie Naylor, the park superintendent. Federal Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns announced it in a statement Monday.
The 5,200-acre p
