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: Telegraph
Apr 9, 2007
YOKOHAMA -- Japan is to rebuild the historic "British wharf" at Yokohama -- an object of fascination when it was first built by British engineers almost 150 years ago.
Popularly known as the zo-no-hana or "elephant's trunk" because of its distinctive bent shape, the wharf was recorded in famous woodblock prints of the period and in early photographs.
In the mid 1800s some 90 per cent of all goods traded between Japan and the outside world were loaded
Source: Washington Post
Apr 8, 2007
Four centuries later, Jamestown is still looking for a little respect.
True, breathtaking reproductions of the tall-masted ships will set sail to mark its 400th birthday, and Virginia is hosting a multimillion-dollar bash next month with pageantry, celebrities and fireworks to honor the first permanent English colony in the New World.
Even Queen Elizabeth II is coming to the Old Dominion to acknowledge her countrymen's role in giving birth to a prosperous new nation.
Source: Reuters
Apr 8, 2007
DEN BOSCH, Netherlands -- A new stained glass window in a Dutch cathedral that contains an image of the World Trade Center attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people was blessed on Sunday by a Dutch bishop.
The window, built up of about twenty different panes with representations of heaven and hell, has the WTC pane at the bottom showing "hell on earth", its maker Marc Mulders said.
"It was an assignment by the church to make a stained glass window that was
Source: AP
Apr 8, 2007
MADISONVILLE, Ky. -- Harold Utley's got a big idea. It weighs about 2,000 tons, stands at least 275 feet tall and is at the heart of western Kentucky's economic history.
The dream sits off Kentucky 70, west of Madisonville, in the form of a dragline once used in coal strip mining that still towers over reclaimed fields.
"It's the largest land machine built in Hopkins County, ever," Utley, president of the Historical Society of Hopkins County and retiree of the
Source: Independent
Apr 8, 2007
A complete picture of who owns modern Britain is to be created as part of the biggest survey of land ownership since William the Conqueror commissioned the Domesday Book nearly a thousand years ago.
But the task is enormous as 40 per cent of land in England and Wales has not been registered by its owners. More than half of all rural land and rural buildings are unregistered...
English aristocratic families, including those of the Duke of Norfolk and the Duke of Bedford,
Source: UPI
Apr 8, 2007
LONDON -- A wedding outfit worn by socialite Jemima Khan has been made the centerpiece of the British Library's exhibition of sacred texts.
The exhibition includes 230 of the world's most precious religious texts, including an fourth-century copy of the New Testament and an eighth-century Koran, The Sunday Telegraph reported. The exhibition has been titled "Sacred: Discover What We Share" and opens April 27.
But the main attraction of the show is supposed to b
Source: NYT
Apr 8, 2007
He was ousted, captured, tried and executed. But while the dictator may be gone, his legacy visibly lives on.
There may be no starker reminder of Saddam Hussein’s tyrannical rule than the potent symbols he left behind: scores of hubristic statues, murals, frescoes and other monuments he built all over Iraq to commemorate himself. While many were destroyed in the cathartic celebration and mob violence that followed the invasion, many others still remain, serving as a constant echo of
Source: NYT (subscribers only)
Apr 8, 2007
The mayor of Harrisburg, Pa., spent $7.8 million of public funds on items for an Old West museum he hoped to open.
[Now that his city government is in the red, he's having to sell off the archive.]
Source: New York Times
Apr 8, 2007
PRISTINA, Kosovo —- Ramush Haradinaj, a stocky ethnic Albanian former guerrilla commander and, briefly, Kosovo’s prime minister, is either one of the most impressive leaders to emerge in the Balkans in recent years or a vicious war criminal. Or perhaps both.
Mr. Haradinaj and two other men began to stand trial at the United Nations tribunal in The Hague in March, charged with killing 40 people in 1998, during the conflict between the Kosovo Liberation Army guerrilla group and Serbia
Source: Times (of London)
Apr 8, 2007
Shakespeare may not have intended Lady Macbeth to be quite so vindictive after all. A new edition of his works, to be published with official backing, is to make significant changes to the characters and elements of the plots of the plays.The RSC Shakespeare Complete Works, to be published this month, will break with the literary consensus of more than three centuries to produce a version that it claims will be closer to the playwright’s intentions.
It will use as
Source: AP
Apr 8, 2007
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson left Saturday with a delegation of past and present U.S. officials for North Korea, where he hopes to reclaim the remains of American soldiers killed in the Korean War...
As with many of Richardson's freelance diplomatic missions, this one benefits from fortunate timing. Endorsed by President George W. Bush's Republican administration, it comes days before a crucial deadline in a landmark nuclear accord the North agreed to in February, four months aft
Source: AP
Apr 7, 2007
NEW YORK -- New DNA technology developed by a Virginia laboratory to help identify years-old remains of Sept. 11 victims is working for all but the smallest slivers of bones, a scientist says.
But identifying a Sept. 11 victim still takes weeks of painstaking review and often depends on factors like the quality of DNA samples originally provided by families from items like toothbrushes, a city spokeswoman said Saturday.
"The last thing we want to do is submit an ID
Source: LAT
Apr 7, 2007
The Chinese characters are barely visible etched into the headstones and burial bricks. The markers are cracked and missing pieces that would have completed a name or hometown. The artifacts leave an enticing but ultimately elusive clue to the fledgling Chinese community that existed in Los Angeles more than 100 years ago.
The markers were discovered in 2005 by construction workers in Boyle Heights building an extension of the Gold Line commuter rail. Now, the Metropolitan Transport
Source: Telegraph
Apr 7, 2007
ROME -- The Pope shocked many Catholics last night with a dramatically revised version of the Stations of the Cross, one of the central rituals of the Easter ceremony...
The Pope carried the cross for the first and last of the 14 stops on a candle-lit procession around the Coliseum in Rome. However, this year the Pope chose to change both the route and the content of the ceremony...
One of the boldest changes came on the third stop, where Jesus is given up to Pontius Pi
Source: Telegraph
Apr 7, 2007
BERLIN -- Hubertus Knabe looks through his office window at the cluster of grey, socio-realist buildings outside. "This whole area did not officially exist 20 years ago; it was simply a white spot on the map," he says.
He is in Hohenschönhausen, a district in East Berlin once reserved for the top echelons of the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, or Stasi, the notorious secret service of the former German Democratic Republic. The district is widely known as Stasiville.
Source: Telegraph
Apr 7, 2007
The National Gallery has shelved plans for a major refurbishment because of fears that a number of works it holds on loan are to be sold on the open market.
Instead of improving the lower galleries, trustees have decided to boost a fighting fund that will be used should any of up 40 famous paintings lent to the gallery be removed and put up for sale.
The collection, estimated to be worth up to £1 billion, is vulnerable because a number of private owners, who were previo
Source: AP
Apr 7, 2007
PHNOM PENH -- A senior U.S. official urged Cambodian and foreign lawyers on Saturday to put aside their squabble over legal fees and move forward with the much-delayed Khmer Rouge genocide tribunal.
"The Khmer Rouge tribunal is really the opportunity for Cambodia to show the international community how far it's advanced," said Eric G. John, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asia and Pacific affairs.
"And it would be a shame not to be able
Source: Islamic Republic News Agencty (Tehran)
Apr 7, 2007
MADRID -- Iranian Ambassador to Madrid Seyed Davoud Salehi on Saturday thanked the Spanish government for paying attention to protection and reconstruction of historical Islamic monuments in the country.
He made the remark at a ceremony marking the auspicious birth anniversary of the holy Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) and Imam Jafar Sadeq (AS), which was attended by a number of Iranian expatriates residing in Spain.
"The special attention of Spain's government to safegua
Source: AP
Apr 7, 2007
BAGHDAD -- In the three years since he took over the Iraqi National Library, Saad Eskander has repaired the damage from theft and arson, played detective and advised his employees on staying alive.
He has transformed the library, burned and looted in the aftermath of Saddam Hussein's ouster in 2003, into a symbol of hope in a country mired in sectarian violence, crime and political bickering.
The three-story, tan-brick building has been restored, new furniture procured,
Source: Independent
Apr 7, 2007
Ministers are to open up the entire English coastline to the public in a historic and controversial extension of the "right to roam".
The move, which will make it possible to walk all 9,040 miles around the coast of Great Britain and create the first ever right of access to thousands of beaches, is provoking a bitter backlash from landowners and celebrities with expensive seaside properties, who will not be compensated.
It will also boost the profile of the fa
