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
Apr 27, 2007
WARSAW -- Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko and his Polish counterpart Lech Kaczynski signed a cooperation pact Friday, aiming to improve ties between the two neighbors with a troubled post-World War II history.
Yushchenko was in Warsaw briefly to mark the 60th anniversary of the expulsion of 140,000 Ukrainians, who were ruthlessly removed from their homes in southeastern Poland in 1947 in an attempt by the communist authorities to consolidate control of the region.
Source: CNN
Apr 27, 2007
ATLANTA -- When the artists of Florence, Italy, swung open the doors of the Baptistery of the Duomo (cathedral) now known as the "Gates of Paradise" in 1452, a new world was waiting on the other side.
Twenty feet tall and weighing three tons, this single work is considered the gateway to the Italian Renaissance, an upheaval so fundamental to how we see our world and think of ourselves that centuries later no Western culture is left untouched by it...
Legend ha
Source: AP
Apr 27, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO -- The CIA warned the Bush White House seven months before the 2003 Iraq invasion that the U.S. could face a thicket of bad consequences, starting with "anarchy and the territorial breakup" of the country, former CIA Director George Tenet writes in a new book.
CIA analysts wrote the warning at the start of August 2002 and inserted it into a briefing book distributed at an early September meeting of President Bush's national security team at Camp David, he wri
Source: Xinhua/China View
Apr 27, 2007
SEOUL -- South Korean and Japanese scholars will resume joint research of the history in June after a two-year suspension, South Korea's Yonhap News Agency said on Friday.
According to Yonhap, the second-term South Korea-Japan joint history research committee will convene a meeting on June 23 in Japan to discuss the future path of their activities.
The committee will be composed of 17 historians from each side and decide items for joint history research after plenary me
Source: Gulf Daily News (Bahrain)
Apr 27, 2007
Bahrain's ancient burial mounds are under threat of being wiped out due to population needs and construction projects, says a local historian.
Bahrain University Islamic History Professor Ali Al Shehab said while Bahrain and other Gulf countries were developing their infrastructure, historical sites were suffering.
"Developing countries need more land, so they demolish historical sites such as the graves in Saar and A'ali," he told the [Gulf Daily News]...
Source: William Grimes, New York Times
Apr 27, 2007
...The big book is a new one-volume edition of the complete works, commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company and published by the Modern Library. Two eminent Shakespeareans, Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, have applied modern editing techniques and recent scholarship to correct and update the First Folio, the first collection of the plays, published in 1623.
Unlike the smaller-format editions of individual plays known as quartos, the folio edition is thought to preserve the plays as th
Source: AP
Apr 27, 2007
WELLINGTON, New Zealand -- The explosive-laden wreck of a World War II [patrol] torpedo boat has risen from the Pacific Ocean off the Solomon Islands, pushed above the water by a powerful earthquake, an official said Friday.
The boat was exposed when reefs rose 10 feet above sea level during a 8.1-magnitude quake that caused a devastating tsunami, killing 52 people in the western Solomons in early April, said Jay Waura of the National Disaster Management Office.
The Sol
Source: BBC News
Apr 27, 2007
One of the world's last surviving Lancaster bombers has taken to the skies to mark 50 years of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.
The aircraft, taking part in a flypast at RAF Coningsby, Lincolnshire, is one of only two airworthy Lancasters.
More than 7,000 Lancasters were built during the 1940s and played a major part during World War II...
The Battle of Britain Memorial Flight is an historic collection of aircraft that commemorate the RAF's involvement in all the campaigns
Source: UPI
Apr 27, 2007
PONCA CITY, Okla. -- The symbol known as the Pioneer Woman will probably be featured on Oklahoma's state quarter but she may not be carrying her trademark Bible.
There are five proposed designs for the quarter, which will be produced by the U.S. Mint as part of the 50 State Quarters Program. Oklahoma's coin would be released in 2008.
Four of the proposed designs feature Pioneer Woman and the other features the scissortail flycatcher, the state bird, the Daily Oklahoman
Source: Reuters
Apr 27, 2007
WASHINGTON -- An active-duty U.S. Army officer criticized U.S. generals in a journal article published on Friday for failing to prepare the military and the country for war in Iraq, and urged Congress to intervene.
In a rare public airing of a vigorous debate within the U.S. military, Lt. Col. Paul Yingling compared generals' management of Iraq to their conduct in Vietnam and warned of a crisis facing the armed forces due to the "intellectual and moral failures" of U.S. ge
Source: AP
Apr 27, 2007
JACKSON, Miss. -- Historical sites along the Hurricane Katrina battered Mississippi Gulf Coast and including Picayune’s Colored Gymnasium are among 10 Most Endangered Historic Places in Mississippi.
The list was released Thursday by the Mississippi Heritage Trust.
The three coastal counties of Harrison, Hancock and Jackson were grouped as the Mississippi Gulf Coast on the 2007 list.
“The whole coast is in danger of its historical character changing,” MHT’s
Source: AP
Apr 27, 2007
MANSFIELD, Mo. -- A narrow wooden desk in a corner of an Ozarks farmhouse has been known to move visitors to tears.
Some readers have such fond memories of the "Little House" novels about Laura Ingalls Wilder's frontier childhood that they cry when they walk into her Missouri home and see the desk where she wrote many of the books.
April marks the 75th anniversary of the first publication in 1932 of "Little House in the Big Woods." The story of Laura
Source: AP
Apr 27, 2007
TOKYO -- Japan's Supreme Court upheld a ruling Friday denying compensation to two Chinese women who were forced to work in military brothels during World War II.
Backing a Tokyo High Court ruling, the Supreme Court said that the women had no right to seek war compensation from Japan because of a 1972 agreement with China, a court spokesman and Japanese media reports said.
Source: Los Angeles Times
Apr 27, 2007
In an act unparalleled since the Vietnam War, Congress passed legislation Thursday that directs the president to begin bringing home U.S. troops from Iraq and extricating America from the midst of a bloody civil war.
The historic 51-46 Senate vote for a $124-billion war spending bill — which followed House passage of the measure Wednesday — thrust a withdrawal timeline on a fiercely resistant White House....Over the last three decades, lawmakers have repeatedly
Source: Reuters
Apr 27, 2007
Britain's slave trading past gets a human face on Friday as an ancestry-tracing Web site starts putting the personal histories of the victims online for the first time.The Web site, www.Ancestry.co.uk, posted 100,000 names of Barbados slaves registered in 1834 in the colony.
By December the site will contain the names of 3 million slaves from 700 registers in 23 British colonies, from South Africa to Sri Lanka between 1812
Source: German Press Agency
Apr 27, 2007
Hungary's junior coalition party on Friday called
for the nation's security archives to be opened up after the latest in a long line of public figures was accused of having spied for the communist authorities."We have asked the same question countless times: should we reveal every spy one-by-one or finally solve the problem and bring openness to the issue of spying?" the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats said
in a statement.
The liberals' chal
Source: BBC
Apr 27, 2007
The Estonian authorities have removed a contentious Red Army war memorial in the capital, Tallinn, despite overnight protests that left one person dead.More than 40 people were injured and 300 arrested during clashes at the site as police used tear gas to disperse mainly ethnic Russian demonstrators.
Russia says the memorial should not be removed, but many Estonians see it as a reminder of decades of Soviet rule.
The move provoked angry condemnation
Source: AP
Apr 27, 2007
Japan's practice of enslaving women to provide sex for its troops during World War II has a little-known sequel: After its surrender -- with tacit approval from the U.S. occupation authorities -- Japan set up a similar system for U.S. troops.An Associated Press review of historical documents shows that U.S. authorities permitted the official brothel system to operate, despite internal reports that women were being coerced into prostitution.
Tens of thousands of
Source: New York Times
Apr 27, 2007
UNION, N.J. -— The letter from George Washington is pasted between poetry and party invitations, stuffed into a dusty scrapbook amid jokes and cutouts of handsome men, and all the highlights of a lucky little girl’s life.
It was written in May 1787 and addressed to Jacob Morris, grandfather of Julia Kean, the precocious 10-year-old who started the brown leather scrapbook in 1826 and put the letter under a portrait of the nation’s first president.
The letter is just 111
Source: Times (of London)
Apr 27, 2007
BERLIN -- Deep beneath the earth of Ronneburg, under a radiant carpet of daffodils and yellow rape fields, lies one of the deadliest secrets of the Cold War: the uranium mine that supplied the Soviet nuclear arsenal.
From today this unhappy corner of eastern Germany becomes a tourist attraction with the Federal Garden Show 2007, expected to draw up to 1.5 million visitors. It features a newly planted meadow and landscape area scattered with art installations, including a flock of bl
