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This page features brief excerpts of news 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.
Highlights
Breaking News
This page features brief excerpts of news 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. Because most of our readers read the NYT we usually do not include the paper's stories in HIGHLIGHTS.
Name of source: FOX News
SOURCE: FOX News (4-30-10)
The bill, which passed 32-26 in the state House, had been approved by the Senate a day earlier. It now goes to Gov. Jan Brewer for her signature.
The new bill would make it illegal for a school district to teach any courses that promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, promote resentment of a particular race or class of people, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or "advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals."
The bill stipulates that courses can continue to be taught for Native American pupils in compliance with federal law and does not prohibit English as a second language classes. It also does not prohibit the teaching of the Holocaust or other cases of genocide.
Schools that fail to abide by the law would have state funds withheld....
Name of source: The Albany Project
SOURCE: The Albany Project (4-24-10)
This promises to be a bizarre political year, with GOP candidates not only running to the far right, but veering way off track. Earlier this week, Republican Senate candidate Sue Lowden of Nevada grabbed the crazy baton from Rep. Michele Bachman when she suggested that people should barter and haggle with their doctors for health care, rather than rely on insurance. But what she said is nothing compared to what the newly minted challenger to Congressman John Hall said in her candidacy's opening days.
What's below the fold will shock you.
Kristia Cavere is the Tea Party and a Republican candidate for New York's 19th Congressional District seat held by Hall. Cavere thinks that the Democrats have co-opted Republican values and claims, among other things, that:
"The Republicans are the ones who liberated Europe in World War II."
She continued by saying that the Republicans have always initiated"every" advancement of freedom in our history.
"Unfortunately, today there are many Republicans in office who are cowards and who are bad communicators," she said."We have the right ideas, the right principles, the right philosophy and history on our side."
Her comments appeared in the April 23 edition of the Record-Review, a newspaper that serves Pound Ridge and Bedford, NY. The newspaper has not printed an online version of the article....
Name of source: BBC
SOURCE: BBC (5-1-10)
The JM Barrie exhibition, which is open throughout May, celebrates the 150th anniversary of his birth.
It features rare letters, first-edition books, plays and theatre programmes.
Fan mail from children, including a marriage proposal from a six-year-old boy to Peter Pan's companion Wendy, is also on display.
Amongst the treasure trove is a rare booklet of one of his earliest short plays, Caught Napping (1883), written when Barrie was working as a journalist, and his first ever book, Better Dead, published at his own expense in 1887 at a £25 loss.
SOURCE: BBC (5-1-10)
Mr Kagame spoke at a ceremony honouring Rwandan graduates in Oklahoma City.
The widows of the then leaders of Burundi and Rwanda, whose deaths sparked the 1994 genocide, say Mr Kagame ordered their plane shot down.
Mr Kagame denies this. The lawyers who filed the lawsuit were unable to serve the legal papers during his visit.
SOURCE: BBC (5-1-10)
Some 17,000 people vanished during the bloody conflict, most - it is thought - abducted and killed by militias. But some believe a few hundred may still be alive in Syrian jails.
Shortly after the war ended, the Lebanese government passed an amnesty law protecting militia members from being prosecuted for war crimes. It also effectively snuffed out any hopes of a real debate about the bloodshed.
Indeed, it seems the war amnesia is no accident. Since I first came to Lebanon 10 years ago, I've seen traces of the conflict almost completely wiped away.
Name of source: Telegraph (UK)
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (4-30-10)
The Pontiff, 83, beset in recent months by the paedophile priest scandals that have rocked the Roman Catholic Church across the world, is likely to attract hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to Turin for a glimpse of both him and the cloth said to bear an image of Christ's body and face.
The last papal viewing of the bloodstained cloth was by Benedict's popular predecessor Pope John Paul II in 2000.
The Polish pope encouraged scientists to continue their analyses, "to reach adequate answers to the questions connected to this Shroud" while respecting the "sensitivity of the faithful."
Some two million people are expected to view one of the most revered objects in Christendom - and among the most disputed - over six weeks that began on April 10 in this northern Italian city.
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (5-1-10)
Using hundreds of inflatable tanks and artillery, deploying the latest sound technology and posing as drunken military officers in order to spread disinformation, the Ghost Army is credited with helping the Allies win the war in Europe and saving thousands of British and American lives.
Over the course of five major campaigns, the unit arranged 20 intricately-planned battlefield deceptions, from Normandy to the Rhine, in order to trick Hitler's armies into believing that Allied forces were in places they were not.
For decades the soldiers were not allowed to talk of their extraordinary war record and the existence of the unit was denied by the Pentagon.
But now, more than 65 years on, the extraordinary work of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops is being detailed in a documentary and an exhibition in the United States.
The top secret unit, which carried out its mission without firing a shot, consisted of around 1,100 make-up artists, actors, sound technicians, painters, photographers and press agents, many of them drawn from Hollywood.
Rick Beyer, 53, the documentary maker who has spent the past four years interviewing 21 surviving members of the unusual unit, explained that the original idea for the unit came after Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery deceived Rommel by building dummy tanks out of plywood during the Battle of El Alamein.
