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
April 25, 2009
Dick Cheney became a one-of-a-kind vice president for two reasons: he cared deeply about governance, and not a bit about his future political standing.
Those same factors, for better or worse, have turned him into a one-of-a-kind former vice president. In a sharp break with long-standing practice, Mr. Cheney has emerged as the highest-profile critic of the new administration....
His role appears all the more striking because it defies normal tidal rhythms of presidenti
Source: Newsweek
April 25, 2009
Erich Honecker could not have guessed he was presiding at his last real May Day. It was May 1, 1989, and the aging overlord of the German Democratic Republic stood atop a reviewing stand in East Berlin before a sea of marching soldiers and flag-waving communist youth. The sun shone, and a soft breeze ruffled his fluffy, grandfatherly white hair. Regimes across the East bloc were holding their annual salute to Marxism and military might. But a blow was coming that would finally smash that empire.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 25, 2009
George W.Bush is less than 100 days into his retirement, but his plans for a personal think tank on a Texas university campus are already mired in controversy.
The George W.Bush Foundation, which is responsible for setting up the library as well as his policy institute, is looking for an executive director who has the support of the Bush family and also the necessary academic credentials.
Last week he invited former aides to a brainstorming dinner and a day-long discus
Source: BBC
April 26, 2009
Rwanda has suspended BBC broadcasts in the local language Kinyarwanda because of what it says is bias in BBC reports concerning the 1994 genocide.
A statement announcing the temporary ban singled out a programme it said amounted to blatant denial of genocide against the Tutsi and moderate Hutu.
The editor of the BBC programme denied that there had been any bias.
He said that the programme had offered to include a government spokesman in the programme, bu
Source: BBC
April 24, 2009
Artefacts from a 17th Century ship wreck found off the Dorset coast are set to go on display.
Students and experts from Bournemouth University have worked for two years on the wreck site, in an area off Poole Harbour known as The Swash Channel.
The ship, which lies about 23ft (7m) down, is thought to date from the 1620s but its country of origin is unknown.
Source: National Security Archive
April 23, 2009
Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy sought to lift the ban on U.S. citizens traveling to Cuba in December 1963, according to declassified records re-posted today by the National Security Archive. In a December 12, 1963, memorandum to Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Kennedy urged a quick decision "to withdraw the existing regulation prohibiting such trips."
Kennedy's memo, written less than a month after his brother's assassination in Dallas, argues that the travel ban imposed
Source: Times (UK)
April 26, 2009
THE hunt for a nest of female suicide bombers in Chechnya led an elite group of Russian special forces commandos to a small village deep in the countryside. There they surrounded a modest house just before dawn to be sure of catching their quarry unawares.
When the order came to storm the single-storey property, dozens of heavily armed men in masks and camouflage uniforms - unmarked to conceal their identity - had no difficulty in overwhelming the three women inside. Their captives
Source: Independent (UK)
April 26, 2009
A new witness is expected this week to undermine thoroughly the case against the only person to be convicted of the Lockerbie bombing. New testimony will call into question evidence linking the Libyan Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi to the bomb that blew up Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988, his lawyers claim.
Megrahi, who has terminal cancer, is serving 27 years in Greenock prison for the bombing.
Appeal hearings are due to begin on Tuesday, and Megrahi's lawyers insisted this wee
Source: BBC
April 24, 2009
The alleged abuses by US personnel are said to relate to President George W Bush's time in office.
The photos are being made public in response to a Freedom of Information lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) five years ago.
The court order had been contested by the Bush administration.
The US defence department said the Pentagon had agreed to release a "substantial" number of previously unseen photographs by May 28.
Source: Deutsche Welle
April 25, 2009
The 100-kilogram bomb was discovered by construction workers just 10 centimeters below the sandy surface of a museum forecourt.
A spokesman for Berlin police said a 300-metre radius including Chancellor Angela Merkel's flat was evacuated as part of a precautionary measure around the museum which is part of Berlin's Museum Island complex of buildings that was heavily damaged during WWII.
While bomb experts worked on the device, a rail line carrying express and suburban
Source: Times (UK)
April 23, 2009
Tony Blair has said he does not regret leading Britain to war in Iraq when he was Prime Minister and has called on the world to take on and defeat Islamic extremists. He believes that, without intervention, the problem will continue to grow in countries such as Afghanistan.
He called for a battle to be waged against militant Islam similar to that fought against revolutionary communism.
In an address last night to a forum on religion and politics in Chicago, Mr Blair s
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 26, 2009
The country's spy chiefs were also warned that harsh techniques were likely to produce "unreliable information". But under pressure from the White House, the CIA brushed the concerns aside and approved a controversial interrogation programme for suspected al-Qaeda prisoners that included simulated drowning by waterboarding.
The military document described forms of extreme questioning as torture 13 times in two pages, just a month before government lawyers said the techniqu
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 25, 2009
Tanned, relaxed and now embarked on the lucrative lecture circuit, Mr Bush is busy raising money - or "replenishing the ol' coffers", as he put it shortly before leaving office - while waiting for building of his presidential library complex at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas to begin.
The George W.Bush Foundation, which is responsible for setting up the library as well as his policy institute, is looking for an executive director who has the support of the B
Source: Telegraph (UK)
April 25, 2009
Bob Ainsworth, the armed forces minister, risked incurring the wrath of veterans of previous conflicts by making comparisons with the war in Europe against the Nazis and the fighting taking place in Helmand today.
"Unless you came all the way up with the Eighth Army from El Alamein and through Italy, you didn't do much more than lads (in Afghanistan) are having to do now", the minister said.
His comments came after it emerged that the Royal Marines' 45 Comma
Source: Deutsche Welle
April 24, 2009
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier presented the award to the 72-year-old at a ceremony attended by 200 guests at the Zoological Research Museum Alexander Koenig in Bonn. It is the first time that the prize, which includes a cash award of 10,000 euros, has been awarded.
"Vaclav Havel is a big name in the European democracy movement," said Steinmeier. "The peaceful developments in Central and Eastern Europe would be unimaginable without his work," Ste
Source: BBC
April 23, 2009
As national security adviser, Ms Rice consented to the harsh interrogation of al-Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah, the Senate Intelligence Committee found.
Memos released last week show that he and another key detainee were subjected to waterboarding 266 times.
Former Vice-President Dick Cheney has said the techniques produced results.
The latest details were revealed in a timeline of the CIA's interrogation programme produced by the US Senate Intelligence Com
Source: AP
April 24, 2009
North and South, black and white, history buffs like the Doyles and educators - some 2,000 people in all - are expected to attend the daylong gathering at the University of Richmond, where the leading Civil War historians won't exactly rewrite history. But they do promise new scrutiny of a war whose causes have long since been reduced to bumper sticker slogans.
Conference organizers said overwhelming public interest in the conference underscores a national hunger to better grasp the
Source: NYT
April 24, 2009
When it comes to the whole 100 Days hoopla, President Obama and his team were against it before they were for it.
To hear the White House tell it, Mr. Obama never much cared for the idea of marking his 100th day in office, next Wednesday. A trumped-up journalistic convention, senior aides called it. (O.K., they have a point.)
“Not a ton different than the 99th,” declared Mr. Obama’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs. “A Hallmark holiday,” said a senior adviser, David Axelro
Source: United Press International
April 23, 2009
An Iraqi Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities spokesman says 30 rare Christian archaeological artifacts have been found in Tekrit.
Ministry spokesman Abdulzahra al-Talaqani said the artifacts were located by municipal workers laying down pipes in the city, which had a large Christian population until the late 12th century, the Iraqi newspaper Azzaman reported Thursday.
Saood al-Azzawi, the city's Antiquities Department representative, said among the discovered items are
Source: BBC
April 23, 2009
The authorities in Germany have begun excavating a site they believe contains one of the last undiscovered mass graves of Jews killed by the Nazis.
The work on the site of the former Nazi labour camp of Lieberose, near Jamlitz in Brandenburg state, follows a decade-long battle with the former landowner.
More than 750 sick Jewish men and women are believed to have been killed there by the Waffen SS on 2 February 1945.
The remains of 589 victims shot the n
