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: Times (of London)
Mar 10, 2007
They were known to sailors as"the isles at the edge of the world" but, more than 75 years after the last inhabitants were evacuated, the story of St Kilda is being taken this June to four European countries in a £1.8 million Gaelic opera.
The language may be spoken by only 1.2 per cent of the population in Scotland, but this has not stopped the producers of St Kilda: A European Opera from seeking, in local-language productions, to introduce its sounds and rhythms to audiences in Fra
Source: Turkish Daily News (Ankara)
Mar 10, 2007
ISTANBUL -- The Darphane-i Amire Building, which was given in 1995 to the History Foundation (Tarih Vakfı) for 49 years with the aim of founding an Istanbul city museum, was sealed due to risk of collapse.
The building has been a subject of dispute between the History Foundation and Culture Ministry. Based on a report from last year citing the building was seriously damaged, orders were given for the building to be evacuated by Feb. 22...
History Foundation Ch
Source: AP
Mar 10, 2007
NEW ORLEANS -- With the boom of cannons, the Navy commissioned the USS New Orleans before thousands of onlookers Saturday, marking the first time since at least World War II a Navy ship has been built and commissioned in its namesake city...
The $1.3 billion USS New Orleans is a transport ship that can embark a landing force of up to 800 Marines. It is the fourth ship to bear the New Orleans name. The last one was an amphibious assault vessel that served during the Vietnam War and i
Source: Reuters
Mar 10, 2007
TOKYO -- Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sought on Sunday to contain fallout from his remarks about women forced to act as wartime sex slaves for Japanese soldiers as the furor threatened to cloud summits with Chinese and U.S. leaders.
Abe sparked outrage abroad when he said in February there was no evidence that Japan's government or army had forced the mostly Asian women to work in military brothels during World War Two.
Abe has endorsed a 1993 government apology to the &qu
Source: Telegraph
Mar 10, 2007
ROMe -- A teenage fad to attach padlocks to Rome's oldest bridge as a sign of unbreakable love has caused a political ruckus and triggered a mysterious theft.
Every week, hundreds of teenage couples visit the Ponte Milvio and testify to their everlasting love by writing their names on a padlock and clipping it to a chain wrapped around two of the bridge's lampposts. They then throw the keys into the Tiber.
The fad was immortalised last year in I Want You, a romantic nov
Source: NYT
Mar 10, 2007
The picture on Page 95 of “An Age of Voyages: 1350-1600,” a seventh-grade history book used in California schools since last fall, had been unremarkable to state education officials: a stiff 19th-century portrait of a man with a trimmed beard holding a few beads and wearing a crown.
But for Sikhs, that image of Guru Nanak (1469-1538), their religion’s founder, is anathema to everything they believe about the prophet, a simple man who preached to the poor and certainly, they say, nev
Source: NYT
Mar 10, 2007
A prominent Turkish politician was convicted Friday of breaching Swiss antiracism laws by saying that the early 20th-century killing of Armenians could not be described as genocide.
The Turkish Foreign Ministry reacted swiftly to the decision, saying in a statement that it was saddened by the Swiss court’s ruling to punish the politician, Dogu Perincek, leader of the Turkish Workers’ Party, and to ignore “his freedom of expression.”
Mr. Perincek was ordered to pay a fin
Source: Independent
Mar 10, 2007
It could be shrugged off as an argument over fish, but in fact it is a classic dispute over ancient rights and local pleasures, over privileges and prerogatives, which stretches back centuries into the Celtic mist.
A few unemployed southern Irish anglers are taking on a scion of Britain's high nobility in the person of the 12th Duke of Devonshire, Peregrine Andrew Morny Cavendish, friend of the Prince of Wales and inheritor of fabulous wealth. And some prize salmon are at stake.
Source: NYT
Mar 10, 2007
A pilgrimage to Israel by 27 Roman Catholic bishops from Germany last week was meant to be a historic symbol of reconciliation between Jews and German Catholics.
Instead, after two bishops drew a link between the plight of Palestinians in the West Bank and Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II, it has become a fresh source of recrimination.
Jewish groups in Germany and Israel’s ambassador to Germany condemned their comments, which were reported in newspapers he
Source: AP
Mar 10, 2007
BELGRADE, Serbia -- Admirers of late president Slobodan Milosevic marked the first anniversary of his death with wreaths and speeches on Saturday, even as Serbia continues to grapple with consequences of his ruinous rule.
Officials of the formerly Milosevic-led Socialist Party gathered at his grave in the eastern town of Pozarevac, praising the man who led Serbia through several wars and ended up facing the U.N. war crimes court for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague...
Source: AP
Mar 10, 2007
VATICAN CITY -- The Rome diocese has wrapped up its examination of Pope John Paul II's virtues and life, an important step in the Catholic Church's process that could lead to sainthood for the late pontiff.
Rome Cardinal Camillo Ruini said Saturday he had been informed that completion of work by the diocese on the cause for beatification and sainthood will be marked with a ceremony in St. John's Lateran Basilica on April 2 in the capital. The date is the second anniversary of John P
Source: BBC News
Mar 10, 2007
THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- The old chestnut tree that comforted Anne Frank while she was in hiding during the Nazi occupation of The Netherlands is to be cut down.
Amsterdam city council said the diseased tree behind the building in which the Jewish Frank family took refuge has been attacked by a fungus.
But after protests by environmental groups and the Anne Frank Museum, a cutting of the tree will be replanted.
The chestnut tree is listed as a monument and
Source: Ottawa (Ont.) Citizen
Mar 10, 2007
The Canadian War Museum, refusing to bow any further to demands from several veterans' organizations, has announced it will not change a controversial display that raises questions about the morality and military value of the Allied bombing campaign in Germany during the Second World War.
The decision quickly prompted the Royal Canadian Legion to renew calls for a public boycott of the museum and to ask a Senate committee on veterans affairs to "investigate the matter" --
Source: San Bernardino (Calif.) Sun
Mar 10, 2007
CHINO, Calif. -- Federal agents dismantled two F-14 Tomcat fighter jets Thursday afternoon at Chino Airport, leaving only metal skeletons on the tarmac.
It was unclear if a third jet seized from a Chino museum two days earlier had been moved or stripped.
The former military aircraft were taken from the Yanks Air Museum and the Planes of Fame Museum after a 17-month investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Defense Criminal Investigation Service and
Source: Daily Times (Lahore, Pakistan)
Mar 10, 2007
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistan and India should follow in France and Germany’s footsteps and compile a joint history manual of their culture and war memories to improve bilateral relations, said German Ambassador Guntar Mulack while addressing the launch ceremony of the first ever ‘Franco-German history manual’ at the Alliance Francaise.
Mulack said that Germany and France had different cultures, languages and traditions, with a history of wars, and yet they had managed to make a j
Source: NPR
Mar 10, 2007
David Slone arrived in the small Kentucky town of Corbin in 2005, seeking a haven after Hurricane Katrina ripped through his hometown of Biloxi, Miss.
He was in a shelter in Gulfport, Miss., and saw a flier left by the Corbin church offering to house displaced families.
Slone didn't know until he arrived that he would be one of only a few blacks living in Corbin, a town still trying to come to terms with a troubled racial history.
In 1919, more than 200 bl
Source: Times (of London)
Mar 10, 2007
NICOSIA, Cyprus -- Greek Cypriots today finished demolishing a wall that has for decades split Europe's last divided capital in two, in a dramatic move which officials hope may kick-start reconciliation moves.
The move to demolish the wall on Ledra Street, which runs through the heart of Nicosia, started under cover of darkness last night, and was not publicised earlier in the day. It followed the Turkish Cypriot dismantling of a disputed elevated walkway in January, which was at the centr
Source: Telegraph
Mar 10, 2007
Evidence of a Roman sacred site has been discovered [in Wiltshire] at the foot of a man-made hill created thousands of years before the Romans arrived in Britain, it was announced yesterday.
English Heritage called the uncovering of the settlement a "startling discovery", and all the more so because it lies next to 5,000-year-old Silbury hill, which at 130ft is Europe's largest man-made prehistoric monument.
The original purpose and use of the Neolithic hill,
Source: AP
Mar 9, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO -- A bronze bust of the first openly gay man to hold a prominent elected office in the United States is going up in City Hall, more than 28 years after he was assassinated.
Harvey Milk was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977 and shot to death a year later, along with Mayor George Moscone, by fellow supervisor Dan White. White was convicted of manslaughter, and served a little more than three years in prison before committing suicide.
The bronze scu
Source: AP
Mar 9, 2007
GUATEMALA CITY —- Mayan priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate "bad spirits" after President Bush visits next week, an official with close ties to the group said Thursday.
"That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture," Juan Tiney, the director of a Mayan nongovernmental o
