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: ireland.com
Feb 15, 2007
Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain has been caught up in a political storm today over an apology he made in the United States about the slave trade.
He appeared to apologise in a BBC Wales television interview for Northern Ireland and Wales's role in the slave trade.
Mr Hain, who addressed an event on slavery, said: "I'm here on behalf of both Northern Ireland and Wales to say we have had a part to play in the slave trade.
"We acknowledge that.
Source: UPI
Feb 15, 2007
SAN ANTONIO, Tex. -- The body of U.S. Army Air Corps 2nd Lt. Dudley Ives is set to return to his Texas home after being lost in New Guinea nearly 63 years ago.
The Corpus Christi (Texas) Caller-Times reported that since Ives' plane was downed by a massive storm on April 16, 1944, the airman's body was lost until plane wreckage was found in 2002.
Among the wreckage discovered in the jungles of Papua, New Guinea, authorities found 10 bodies and using DNA from relatives of
Source: AP
Feb 15, 2007
AMSTERDAM -- Concentration camp and incarceration records would be the first Nazi documents released under a just-completed plan to make millions of files stored in Germany accessible to Holocaust researchers, the archive director said Thursday.
The 11 nations overseeing the huge archive must still ratify the plan approved by technical experts at a three-day meeting in Bad Arolsen, Germany. The plan is a critical step toward opening files maintained by the International Tracing Serv
Source: AP
Feb 15, 2007
LONDON -- A permanent memorial to the victims of the 2005 bombings of three London subway trains and a bus will be built in Hyde Park, the government said Thursday.
The 350-acre park -- already home to a memorial to Princess Diana -- had been chosen because of its "prominence, history and central London location," said Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell.
Four suicide bombers killed 52 commuters and wounded 700 during the morning rush hour on July 7, 2005.
Source: AP
Feb 15, 2007
MANNHEIM, Germany -- A far-right activist was convicted of incitement and sentenced to the maximum five years in prison Thursday for anti-Semitic activities, including contributing to a Web site dedicated to Holocaust denial.
Ernst Zundel was deported to his native Germany from Canada in 2005 and has also lived in Tennessee. He and his supporters have argued that he is a peaceful campaigner denied his right to free speech.
Zundel, 67, showed no emotion when Judge Ulrich
Source: AP
Feb 15, 2007
BRUSSELS -- A group of Greeks seeking compensation from Germany for a Nazi massacre in 1943 suffered a setback Thursday when the European Union's high court said the claim was not covered by an EU convention on civil and commercial law.
Irini Lechouritou and other descendants of victims of the World War II atrocity have been fighting since 1995 in Greek courts to secure compensation from Germany for financial loss, nonmaterial damage and mental anguish.
An earlier bid w
Source: Reuters
Feb 15, 2007
CALGARY, Alberta -- Here's a hot, new discovery: archaeologists have traced what they believe is evidence of the first home-grown chili peppers, used in South America 6,100 years ago.
And it was people in tropical, lowland areas of what is now western Ecuador who first spiced up their cuisine, not those from higher, drier Mexico and Peru as was previously assumed, said Scott Raymond, a University of Calgary archaeologist.
His team, led by Linda Perry, researcher with th
Source: AP
Feb 15, 2007
TALLINN, Estonia -- Estonian lawmakers on Thursday approved a bill calling for the removal of a disputed Soviet war memorial, ignoring warnings from Moscow, but the president said he would veto the measure.
In a 46-44 vote, lawmakers in the 101-member assembly approved the Law on Forbidden Structures, which prohibits the public display of monuments that glorify the five-decade Soviet occupation of Estonia. Eleven lawmakers were absent or abstained.
The measure was speci
Source: AP
Feb 15, 2007
Three women who say they endured rape and torture at the hands of Japanese soldiers during World War II and a lifetime of mental and physical scars are asking that U.S. lawmakers urge the Japanese to apologize.
The two Koreans and a former Dutch colonist were among as many as 200,000 "comfort women" who historians say were forced to have sex with millions of Japanese soldiers during the war. Japan objects to a proposed congressional resolution calling for an apology, and t
Source: Scotsman
Feb 15, 2007
A campaign to honour Britain's first woman doctor, who was forced to pretend to be a man for 53 years in order to practise medicine, has been launched in the Capital. Miranda Stewart had to don the disguise in the early 1800s to gain entry to the exclusively male world of Edinburgh University.The teenager adopted the name James Barry, later becoming a pioneering Army surgeon and keeping her elaborate deception a secret until she lay on her deathbed in 1865.
Now
Source: Washington Post
Feb 15, 2007
Two things we know for sure about the desk: It is an exact replica of the one on which Abraham Lincoln is believed to have drafted the Emancipation Proclamation.
And it was not in the White House at the time, but in the president's cherished cottage retreat three miles away, where Lincoln penned the document freeing the slaves.
Are historians certain he committed his seminal prose to paper at said desk? No.
Nonetheless, the meticulous replica goes on displa
Source: NY Review of Books
Feb 15, 2007
To the Editors:
We the undersigned Iranians,
Notwithstanding our diverse views on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict;
Considering that the Nazis' coldly planned "Final Solution" and their ensuing campaign of genocide against Jews and other minorities during World War II constitute undeniable historical facts;
Deploring that the denial of these unspeakable crimes has become a propaganda tool that the Islamic Republic of Iran is using
Source: WaPo
Feb 14, 2007
That little spat between Oliver North and the Smithsonian? Everyone kissed and made up -- and now North has permission to film in front of the Enola Gay and can talk about nuclear weapons, reports our colleague Jackie Trescott. The Smithsonian originally rejected his request to film in front of the historic bomber for a Fox News docu-series, claiming the production wanted more than "incidental use" of the plane and the site; North countered that the decision was fueled by the Smithsoni
Source: Aruna Lee in New America Media
Feb 14, 2007
Editors Note: The addition onto class reading lists of a novel written by a
Japanese American depicting her experiences in wartime Korea has led to a
bitter dispute between supporters of the novel and the Korean American
community, who say their history being distorted. Aruna Lee is a writer for
New America Media.
SAN FRANCISCO -- Korean American parents in Los Angeles, New York and Boston
are protesting the addition of a novel in school reading lists that they say
inaccurately
Source: NYT
Feb 14, 2007
It was a moment of public sentimentality that seemed almost un-Bush-like.
Speaking on C-Span on Monday, President Bush said of his father, “I am actually more concerned about him than I have ever been in my life, because he’s paying too much attention to the news.”
Mr. Bush continued: “I understand how difficult it is for a person who loves somebody to see them out in the political process and to kind of endure the criticism. My answer to him is, ‘Look, don’t pay atten
Source: UPI
Feb 14, 2007
ISTANBUL -- Turkish novelist and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk reportedly is in exile in the United States, living in fear for his life.
Istanbul columnist Fatih Altayli told The Telegraph he heard that "Pamuk recently withdrew $400,000 from his bank account and said he would leave Turkey and would not be returning to his country any time soon."
After the killing of Hrant Dink, an ethnic Armenian journalist, last month, Pamuk, 54, told others that he fears for hi
Source: AP
Feb 14, 2007
WASHINGTON -- George Washington's birthday celebration will have a golden tinge this year. Millions of new gold-colored dollar coins bearing the first president's likeness are being introduced in time for the festivities.
U.S. Mint officials are hoping they have overcome the problems that doomed the Susan B. Anthony and Sacagawea dollars. Coin experts are skeptical.
The new $1 coins, the first in a series featuring four presidents a year, were to go into circulation on
Source: AP
Feb 14, 2007
WASHINGTON -- On one side: Abe Lincoln, Davy Crockett, poet Robert Frost. On the other: Winston Churchill, Dwight Eisenhower, Martin Luther King Jr.
The House debate on the Iraq war has a ghostly quality as lawmakers tap the wisdom of long-dead men to press their case. No one knows what any of them would have thought about this war. But their thoughts about grand events of their time are coming in handy now.
In perhaps the oddest use of history, Rep. Todd Akin, R-Mo., i
Source: AP
Feb 14, 2007
VALLEY FORGE, Pa. -- A long-planned Revolutionary War museum will be built on private land after years of arguing with the U.S. government over the previous site, museum organizers said Wednesday...
The new site is within the boundaries of Valley Forge National Historical Park, the place where George Washington's troops waited out the winter in 1777.
The museum is buying about 130 acres (52 hectares) of land for $7.1 million and hopes to begin construction on the $150 m
Source: AP
Feb 14, 2007
Author Salman Rushdie started a five-year appointment with the Emory University faculty on Tuesday, one day before the 18th anniversary of the death threat that catapulted him into worldwide fame.
Rushdie says he still receives a "sort of Valentine's card" from Iran each year on February 14 letting him know the country has not forgotten the vow to kill him...
Rushdie was forced into hiding for a decade after the late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a 1989 fa
