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: NYT
Mar 12, 2006
The sudden death of the news media tycoon Robert Maxwell by drowning almost 15 years ago was as dramatic and mysterious as his life. Those who believe that it was not an accident — that perhaps he jumped, rather than fell, from his yacht into the Atlantic in November 1991 — have generally based their theory on the troubles overwhelming his vast business empire, which collapsed soon after he died. But business was not the only thing potentially troubling Mr. Maxwell in the la
Source: NYT
Mar 12, 2006
John Profumo, whose highflying political career in Britain ended in a cold war scandal of sex and espionage that gave way to a lifetime of atonement, died about midnight on Thursday. He was 91.For a land that has since become renowned for ministerial misbehavior, Mr. Profumo's imbroglio in 1963 set a standard, and became known in newspaper headlines as the Scandal of the Century.
It helped bring down the Conservative government to which Mr. Profumo belonge
Source: NYT
Mar 12, 2006
As American warplanes streaked overhead two weeks after the invasion began, Lt. Gen. Raad Majid al-Hamdani drove to Baghdad for a crucial meeting with Iraqi leaders. He pleaded for reinforcements to stiffen the capital's defenses and permission to blow up the Euphrates River bridge south of the city to block the American advance.
But Saddam Hussein and his small circle of aides had their own ideas of how to fight the war. Convinced that the main danger to his government came from w
Source: NYT
Mar 12, 2006
To the last, a solitary death yesterday in a United Nations cell near an international court he derided, Slobodan Milosevic clung to the notion that all the Balkan destruction he ignited and presided over was no more than a response to aggression against his long-suffering Serbian people. My aim is to present the truth, and that takes time," the former Serbian president told the tribunal in The Hague, a prelude to painstaking circumlocutions that sought over more than f
Source: NYT
Mar 12, 2006
A court's decision this week to put a confessed cannibal's privacy above the public's right to view a movie about him may have been right or wrong. What it certainly reflected in this country, whose Nazi past is always quietly present, is one of Germany's most conspicuous features: an intense and abiding desire for the moral high ground, to do the right thing.Germany is a place where, a couple of years ago, a big city police chief was cashiered because he threate
Source: AP
Mar 11, 2006
The Eastern Panhandle's explosive growth is threatening a Civil War battlefield and a group dedicated to preserving the site is seeking $1 million to help fend off development. The Shepherdstown Battlefield Preservation Association asked the Jefferson County Commission for the money, saying the battlefield is among the nation's 10 most at-risk Civil War battle sites.
About 300 acres, or half of the site, remains in relatively pristine condition and can be
Source: BBC News
Mar 11, 2006
A 2000-year-old carving of a so-called "northern god", adopted by the Romans for protection and good luck, has been uncovered in Northumberland. The image is thought to be that of Cocidius. The 40cm high figure, holding a shield in one hand and spear or sword in the other, was discovered near Chesters Fort on Hadrian's Wall.
Experts say the find is exciting as it helps shed light on how people used local idols for protection.
Source: Wa Po
Mar 11, 2006
BOSTON, March 11 -- They were talking about a guerrilla war in Asia. Or, fairly often, more than one.
"You cannot win against an insurgency that springs from the population," said Jack Valenti, former special assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson. "There's never been an insurgency that doesn't prevail against a mighty power.""How much reform can you do," former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger wondered later, "sim
Source: Boston Globe
Mar 11, 2006
--Former Nixon adviser Alexander Haig said Saturday military leaders in Iraq are repeating a mistake made in Vietnam by not applying the full force of the military to win the war."Every asset of the nation must be applied to the conflict to bring about a quick and successful outcome, or don't do it," Haig said. "We're in the midst of another struggle where it appears to me we haven't learned very much."
The comments by Haig, Nixon's chi
Source: BBC
Mar 11, 2006
A mental health charity has defended a statue it commissioned of Sir Winston Churchill in a straitjacket. `The statue has been criticised as "absurd and pathetic" by his grandson, Tory MP Nicholas Soames.
Charity Rethink commissioned the 9ft high sculpture, unveiled in Norwich, to highlight the stigma of mental health.
Rethink said the image of Churchill - who suffered bouts of depression - was designed to "portray a more positive i
Source: Chicago Tribune
Mar 10, 2006
With photographers snapping away, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared last summer that decades of American foreign policy toward the oil-rich Middle East had been a failure.For 60 years, she told a Cairo audience, the U.S. "pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region," achieving neither. It was a candid confession, one that remains emblematic of a Bush administration foreign policy that supporters contend is now placing the long-term benef
Source: Nina Totenberg on NPR
Mar 10, 2006
She told an audience at Georgetown University that Republican proposals, and their sometimes uncivil tone, pose a danger to the independence of the judiciary, and the freedoms of all Americans.In an unusually forceful and forthright speech, O'Connor said that attacks on the judiciary by some Republican leaders pose a direct threat to our constitutional freedoms. O'Connor began by conceding that courts do have the power to make presidents or the Congress or governors, a
Source: Israel National News
Mar 10, 2006
At the initiative of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a state-run Iranian university held a Holocaust-denial conference this week. The conference, reported by Iran's official IRIB radio, was held at Isfahan University. It was entitled Holocaust: myth or reality, and was attended by students and faculty. According to the report, it was organized by Khamenei's Isfahan office.
Alireza Soltanshahi, a representative of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinej
Source: Times (UK)
Mar 10, 2006
Dan Brown's mistake over the Crusades could prove a weapon in his defence against plagiarism.DAN BROWN got a date wrong in The Da Vinci Code. The error may well prove to his advantage.
According to him the Priory of Sion, alleged keeper of the secret of Christ’s wife and children, was founded in Jerusalem during the Second Crusade in the reign of Baldwin II. But according to the authors of The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail, who are suing Brown for stealing thei
Source: JFK Library
Mar 10, 2006
Due to the overwhelming public response, the conference is now closed as we have reached capacity.
On March 10 and 11, 2006, the National Archives and the nation’s Presidential Libraries are hosting an unprecedented two-day conference examining the history of the Vietnam War and the American presidency. The conference is being held at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.
Source: NYT
Mar 10, 2006
SANTIAGO, Chile, March 9 — Not long after seizing power in 1973, Gen. Augusto Pinochet built an Altar of the Fatherland and had the remains of Bernardo O'Higgins, the hero of Chilean independence, moved there. Chilean democrats have been struggling ever since to wrest O'Higgins from the military and restore his legacy to the entire nation, and on Thursday they finally succeeded.In an emotional one-hour ceremony at a downtown square just off a boulevard named for
Source: History Today
Mar 10, 2006
The Public Sector Research Exploitation fund (PSRE) has awarded the Imperial War Museum a grant of just under £1million to digitise its collections over the next three years. The south London museum’s film and video archive, in particular, will benefit from the award. The collection includes documentary films such as the 1916 The Battle of the Somme (which is to be on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register), and Oscar-winning Second World War films Desert Victory and The True
Source: Press Release -- David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
Mar 10, 2006
In response to a petition by more than eighty leading journalists and journalism professors, the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) has publicly expressed regret at the failure of U.S. newspaper publishers to aid Jewish refugee journalists fleeing Nazi Germany. The NAA has also pledged to highlight the issue at its forthcoming national convention and board of directors meeting.The petition was organized by The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies and former Ne
Source: Yahoo News
Mar 10, 2006
Nearly 500 years after the death of Christopher Columbus, a team of genetic researchers are using DNA to solve two nagging mysteries: Where was the explorer really born? And where the devil are his bones? Debate about origins and final resting place of Columbus has raged for over a century, with historians questioning the traditional theory that he hails from Genoa, Italy. Some say he was a Spanish Jew, a Greek, a Basque or Portuguese.
Even the location of his r
Source: The Irish Times
Mar 10, 2006
Poland's Catholic Church made its first formal apology yesterday for the collaboration of many priests with the feared communist secret police. The country's bishops made the apology after the archive housing the security service files claimed that one Polish priest in 10 had passed information to intelligence agents during Poland's five decades as a Soviet satellite.Under communism, "a system that crushed consciences, some men of the church also breached the trust plac
