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: CBN
Mar 25, 2007
Last December, CBNNews.com published an article concerning the announcement by a group of Tennessee university researchers that they had found the legendary battle site where Sergeant Alvin C. York won the Medal of Honor on October 8, 1918.
The research team led by geographer Tom Nolan, a member of the geosciences faculty at Middle Tennessee State University, and Michael Birdwell, an Alvin York scholar and member of Tennessee Tech University's history faculty, uncovered more than 1,
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Mar 25, 2007
The desert battlefield of El-Alamein, where Field Marshal Montgomery's Desert Rats famously defeated Rommel's Afrika Korps in the Second World War, is being developed into a golf resort by Egyptian businessmen.
British war veterans reacted angrily yesterday after hearing of the plans to turn the historic site into a complex including luxury villas.
Source: http://www.palmbeachpost.com
Mar 25, 2007
A music teacher hopes he can convince state lawmakers to adopt a new state song to replace "Old Folks at Home," the 1851 Stephen Foster tune that has been criticized as racist.
Temple Terrace music teacher Stephen Ulrey is pitching a version of "I Want to Wake Up in the Morning Where the Orange Blossoms Grow" to replace the current state song, also known as "Swanee River."
Critics have said Foster's minstrel show tune is racist. They also
Source: Times (of London)
Mar 25, 2007
Brigitte Mohnhaupt, once a leader of the Baader-Meinhof gang and regarded as the most dangerous and evil woman in Germany, was released today after 25 years in prison for her involvement in some of the radical left-wing group’s most notorious murders.
Mohnhaupt, 57, was released from the Aichach prison in Bavaria and picked up by acquaintances, the prison director, Wolfgang Deuschl, said.
A Stuttgart court last month approved parole for Mohnhaupt, ruling that she could
Source: Times (of London)
Mar 25, 2007
They are barely old enough to remember the cold war. Deep in the jungles and mountains of the Philippines, thousands of young communists fight a battle begun by their grandfathers. By Andrew Marshall
Comrade Giegie is getting married. Her wedding will be held in a jungle clearing, which she will enter through an archway of raised assault rifles. The bride and groom will make their vows draped in a red flag bearing the spear and Kalashnikov of the 7,500-strong New People's Arm
Source: BBC News
Mar 25, 2007
A [Stanford] university professor has won the right to quote letters between Irish writer James Joyce and his daughter in a book after settling a court case.
Joyce's estate has agreed not to sue Carol Schloss if her research is only made available in the US.
The Joyce estate said it wanted to"protect the privacy and memory" of Lucia, who was mentally ill. [Lucia died in 1982.]
Ms Schloss's book, Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake, says she was Joyce's
Source: UPI
Mar 25, 2007
CHICAGO -- A U.S. researcher's new translation of a controversial section of the Koran pertaining to women has been met with strong criticism by fundamentalists.
Laleh Bakhtiar, a woman of Iranian-American descent, told the New York Times she has been strongly criticized by Islamists who claim her translation of the word"draba" from the Koran is wholly inaccurate.
The word is used in a section of the Koran that details how a rebellious woman should be treated and most experts have tr
Source: Navy Times
Mar 25, 2007
NAVAL STATION MAYPORT, Fla. -— And then she was gone.
After nearly 39 years of service, the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy was decommissioned the morning of March 23 at Naval Station Mayport.
"In my judgment, the legacy of this ship is the role she played in winning the Cold War,” said Adm. John B. Nathman, commander of the Navy’s Fleet Forces Command and himself a naval aviator. “This ship sent a powerful message to the Soviet Union and made them quit..."
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mar 25, 2007
State Rep. Al Williams (D-Midway) sparked a fierce public debate this month when he announced that he would introduce a resolution that would ask Georgia to express "contrition" for its role in African-American slavery.
The resolution has been framed as a political issue, but it also raises a moral question that's divided people in countries as diverse as Japan and Australia: Should people apologize for something their ancestors did?
Similar debates are taking
Source: NYT
Mar 25, 2007
THE words, as always, come easier than the resolve. “We don’t negotiate with terrorists,” Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesman told reporters on Thursday. “We don’t advise others to do so as well.”
He was denouncing the swap Italy made last week with the Taliban: five Taliban prisoners held in Afghan jails for an Italian reporter kidnapped in southern Afghanistan. The trade, officials around the globe warned, was wrong all around: It rewarded terror and encouraged more abduc
Source: NYT
Mar 25, 2007
IT is not easy to think of Spain as Poland. Stroll around this southern city at dusk, beneath the palms, beside the handsome bridges on the Guadalquivir River, past the chic boutiques and the Häagen-Dazs outlet, the Gothic cathedral and the Moorish palace, and it is scarcely Warsaw that comes to mind.
But, insisted Adam Michnik, the Polish writer, “Poland is the new Spain, absolutely.” He continued: “Spain was a poor country when it joined the European Union 21 years ago. It
Source: Washington Times
Mar 25, 2007
John Bruton, former prime minister of Ireland, has been the European Union ambassador to the United States since November 2004. He spoke last week with reporter David R. Sands at the EU's Washington headquarters about the bloc's past, present and future.
Q. What do you consider the EU's biggest achievement in its first 50 years?
A. It's important to say at the outset that the European Union was conceived as a political project. The founders of the organization
Source: Times (of London)
Mar 25, 2007
Israel's finance minister is to be questioned this week by police investigating the funding of an annual march at Auschwitz in memory of Holocaust victims.
The police have already interviewed Abraham Hirchson, one of the most senior members of the cabinet, under caution over allegations in the Israeli press that £662,000 was embezzled from Nili, a nonprofit wing of the National Workers Union that he once headed. They talked to him for seven hours last week.
As the inves
Source: Guardian
Mar 25, 2007
Mao Anqing lived through the most tumultuous era in the history of modern China. But he spent his last years as an unknown recluse.
He was the reclusive, mentally ill son of one of the most powerful and feared figures of the 20th century, and his 84-year life echoed one of the deepest traumas of modern history.
Yesterday a brief notice in the China News Service recorded the death of Mao Anqing, who survived his father to live on into a new China that the dictator would
Source: Independent
Mar 25, 2007
Nelson Mandela has boycotted plans to commemorate the bicentennial of the Act abolishing the slave trade in Bristol after hearing of bitter divisions within the community and accusations of racism and intolerance.
Mr Mandela had been invited to Bristol, once one of the busiest slave ports in Britain, by the Lord Mayor, councillor Peter Abraham, for a service of remembrance due to take place today.
But South Africa's former president declined the invitation after local b
Source: New York Times
Mar 25, 2007
When confronted with the prickly question of whether to disclose their illnesses, Presidents Calvin Coolidge, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy divined a simple strategy, historians say. They dissembled. They lied. They covered up or simply kept their mouths shut to keep Americans in the dark.
One can only imagine that those presidents would be rubbing their eyes in disbelief this week.
Not only at the sight of John Edwards, the North Carolina De
Source: American Statesman
Mar 24, 2007
George W. Bush's supporters often compare him to men they consider
among the greatest presidents of American history: George Washington,
Harry S. Truman, Ronald Reagan.
Friday's Watergate symposium at the University of Texas suggested a
less flattering point of comparison: Richard Milhous Nixon.
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who broke the Watergate story for The
Washington Post more than 30 years ago, spent three hours Friday
afternoon at the University of Texas discussing th
Source: http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk
Mar 24, 2007
AN ancient castle which has been off limits to the public since it was built in 1088 is about to reveal its secrets for the first time.
Aberlleiniog Castle, located on the south east corner of Anglesey, has been witness to a long and fascinating series of owners and events.
The little-known castle has been the site of a murder mystery, love triangles and even fatal duels, but few people are aware of its significance and no one has been allowed to visit for almost a thou
Source: Times (of London)
Mar 24, 2007
BERLIN -- The intimate details of a royal love affair were exposed yesterday when seven erotically charged letters between Tsar Alexander II and his mistress went on sale in Germany. "I am expecting to make love three times tomorrow," writes Ekaterina Dolgorukaya in a letter to the Tsar dated 1871.
She goes on to describe, in remarkably free terms, how she was preparing to sleep with the Russian emperor. "I want to drink your juices," she says, slipping a Russian
Source: Independent
Mar 24, 2007
Tony McNally is still haunted by the day, 25 years ago, when his missiles malfunctioned and he watched his comrades die aboard the stricken 'Sir Galahad' in the Falklands. Paul Bignell reports
Published: 25 March 2007
Time has passed, but the memories will never fade for Tony McNally. There are "Bogies incoming", Argentine jets in attack formation sweeping across San Carlos Bay. There are the nights spent shivering in trenches, hoping the enemy will not attack. And
