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 (subscription required)
Apr 16, 2007
The street sign is the same, but nothing else is. Sullivan Place was outside the Brooklyn Dodgers’ clubhouse, under the stands along the right-field foul line, when Jackie Robinson arrived there for opening day on April 15, 1947. But yesterday, amid the wind and rain, Sullivan Place was next to a tree-lined courtyard of the 23-story yellow-brick Ebbets Field Apartments, around the corner from the Jackie Robinson Intermediate School on McKeever Place.
All over the major leagues, on t
Source: Times (of London)
Apr 16, 2007
Some may find it strange that Prince William apparently decided to end his relationship with Kate Middleton after a meeting attended by his father and his grandparents. In a sense, though, any such gathering would have been not only constitutionally proper but a legal necessity.
Since the Royal Marriages Act 1772, the monarch of the day has had the right to veto the marriage plans of other members of the Royal Family (if they are under the age of 25, which William still is) or to re
Source: Christian Science Monitor
Apr 16, 2007
LAKE SEVAN, Armenia -- On a windswept peninsula that juts out into the blue-black waters of Lake Sevan, the ancient meets modern. Cassock-clad young seminarians wander through a sparkling new building wired for the 21st century and outfitted with a contemporary gym.
But the traditions here are among Christianity's oldest. In the corridor, between classes at Vaskenian Theological Academy, two students stop and bow to a bearded man with a large silver cross around his neck.
Source: Telegraph
Apr 16, 2007
Campaigners want to honour a remarkable but often forgotten black Briton by erecting a statue in his honour on the white cliffs of Dover.
Walter Tull was the first black officer in the Army to lead white troops into battle. He died a hero on the Western Front.
He was also the first black professional footballer to play in the outfield in England.
"His achievements are tremendous -- from orphan to footballer to soldier. In doing so, he broke through the
Source: New York Times
Apr 16, 2007
Imagine the boxing gloves Muhammad Ali wore when he knocked out Sonny Liston just steps away from a first edition of Phillis Wheatley’s 1773 book of poetry, the first published by an African-American, around the corner from the cell door behind which the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”
That is the dream of an elite group of scholars and artists, including the novelist Toni Morrison and the Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., who have been enlist
Source: Newsweek
Apr 16, 2007
Jonathan Cohn has studied health care for more than a decade, and in that time he's heard hundreds of grim tales—people who skimp on doctors' visits and skip medications so they can make the rent; patients who died because, as he writes in his new book, they "literally could not afford" to fall ill.
That book, "Sick: The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis—And the People Who Pay the Price," focuses in heart-rending detail on nine of those stories, the kind of whi
Source: Charlotte Observer
Apr 15, 2007
LINCOLNTON, N.C. -- They came with new technology to probe mysteries in a Revolutionary War battlefield.
Using ground-penetrating radar, experts searched Saturday in Lincolnton for traces of a mass grave where 70 to 100 soldiers were buried after the Battle of Ramsour's Mill on June 20, 1780.
Terry Ferguson, program director for the geology department at Wofford College in Spartanburg sat on the stump of an oak tree old enough to have been around at the time of the battle. He watched thi
Source: AP
Apr 15, 2007
A vacant Sterling [Illinois] home that once played host to Abraham Lincoln will be restored and turned into a museum. The Sterling Rock Falls Historical Society has purchased the home in northwest Illinois.
Lincoln slept in the house in 1856 when he was a 47 year old lawyer. Lincoln was visiting Sterling to speak on behalf of John C. Freemont, the first presidential candidate for the Republican party.
At the time, the house was owned by William Manahan, who was the Whit
Source: Reuters
Apr 15, 2007
WASHINGTON -- It has taken a little over 200 years, but Washingtonians finally sense that their quirky status as citizens without voting representation in the U.S. Congress might just be coming to an end.
The self-styled "capital of the free world" has been a democratic black spot for the United States -- drawing sharp criticism from rights groups and even the United Nations.
Residents of the District of Columbia, which is not legally a state, have had to figh
Source: AP
Apr 15, 2007
JERUSALEM -- Two Israeli institutions are battling for custody of an unclaimed collection of artwork plundered by the Nazis -- a dispute over who best represents the victims of the Holocaust and their descendants.
The Israel Museum, repository of such national treasures as the Dead Sea Scrolls, has control of the collection and is fighting to keep it. It is up against a company headed by a Holocaust survivor that is legally entrusted with locating the property of victims...
Source: International Herald Tribune
Apr 15, 2007
CRAONNE, France -- Barbara Hendricks sang a requiem at Verdun. Prince Charles spoke at the Somme. And last week Queen Elizabeth paid homage at Vimy, another of the great battle sites of World War I.
But ceremonies will be decidedly less elaborate Monday as France observes one of its most tortured and enigmatic anniversaries: the start nine decades ago of the battle of Chemin des Dames, which led to the largest mutiny in modern military history.
The battle, fought on a b
Source: Reuters
Apr 15, 2007
CANBERRA -- Australia's Serb community vowed on Monday to fund a battle in the country's highest court to stop the extradition of a former Serb commander accused of Balkan war crimes.
Dragan Vasiljkovic, 52, who lives in Australia and also has Serbian citizenship, was arrested in January 2006 and remains in jail pending an extradition request launched by Croatia...
Croatia holds Vasiljkovic responsible for torturing and killing Croat soldiers and civilians, as well as
Source: Observer
Apr 15, 2007
PARIS -- It is a battle of superlatives. A battle of art and politics, pitting one of Europe's richest families against one of America's wealthiest dynasties. A battle for the chance to use the world's most famous architects to turn the most prestigious site in the most beautiful city of Europe into one of the continent's most high-profile museums of contemporary art.
And it is a battle that, unless there is a late last-minute hitch, the French luxury goods magnate Francois Pinault,
Source: Yonhap News (Seoul)
Apr 15, 2007
South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun expressed disappointment Sunday over Japan's"no-action, talk-only" apologies for its past wrongdoing, including sexual enslavement of South Korean women during World War II."While Japan has issued statements of regret and apologies for its past wrongdoing at various occasions, we are led to question their sincerity when they are marred by acts that contradict their expression of repentance," Roh wrote in Global Asia, an English-language maga
Source: Reuters
Apr 15, 2007
POINTE AUX SABLES, Mauritius -- In the nearly 40 years since she was turned her out of her home on the Chagos Islands, 81-year-old Rita Isou has concluded: "The British can do anything they want with the law."
Now a grandmother, she is one of a shrinking group of Indian Ocean islanders still fighting in the courts to relive the memories of plentiful fish and mangoes in the home she was forced out of to defend British and American military interests.
In the 196
Source: Reuters
Apr 15, 2007
JERUSALEM -- The Vatican said its envoy to Israel would attend a state Holocaust memorial on Sunday after threatening to stay away in protest at a display implying the wartime Pope Pius XII was indifferent to the deaths of Jews.
Archbishop Antonio Franco had asked the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, which hosts the ceremony, to remove the controversial photo caption. The museum's chairman Avner Shalev told the envoy in a letter he would be open to reviewing the matter...
Source: Guardian
Apr 15, 2007
Development Secretary Hilary Benn will risk the wrath of Tony Blair's closest international ally by warning that US rhetoric has given terrorists a "shared identity".
Mr Benn is to say openly that President George Bush's phrase "War on Terror" strengthens small disaffected groups with widely differing aims by making them feel part of something "bigger".
He will confirm that British ministers and civil servants have decided to stop using the
Source: Independent
Apr 15, 2007
Ed. note: The looting and destruction of some of the world's most precious archaeological sites, first reported by [The Independent], have continued unabated despite a British pledge to protect them from armed gangs stealing to order for antiquities dealers.
Looters using mechanical diggers and protected by their own private armies are destroying Iraq's ancient archeological sites -- shattering priceless artefacts from the dawn of civilisation -- despite a pledge by Britain t
Source: Independent
Apr 15, 2007
When Marks & Spencer recruited singer Bryan Ferry to be the face of its menswear collection, it believed his reputation as rock's "king of cool" would help them to boost sales.
But customers and management of the retailer, founded by Russian-Jewish refugees, will be alarmed to learn that the elegant singer has admitted he draws inspiration from the aesthetics of Nazi Germany.
Ferry, the lead singer of Roxy Music, has caused outrage at home and abroad for r
Source: Times (of London)
Apr 15, 2007
NEW YORK -- A ghost from the Cold War has returned to haunt the CIA. A book to be published this month by a veteran American spy is raising startling new questions about Yuri Nosenko, the Russian defector who played a key part in the inquiry into the assassination of President John F Kennedy.
Conspiracy theorists have long been obsessed with Nosenko’s supposed role as the KGB officer who handled the Moscow file of Lee Harvey Oswald, JFK’s assassin, who had lived for three years in t
