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: BBC
May 5, 2006
On the 25th anniversary of the death of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, the BBC News Website examines the events which resulted in 10 men starving themselves to death.
The seeds of the 1981 hunger strike by republicans at the Maze prison were sown five years previously when the British government decided newly convicted prisoners would be treated as ordinary criminals.
Source: Star Bulletin
May 5, 2006
The remains of Princess Fatafehi, the daughter of a royal dynasty that ruled Tonga more than 600 years ago, will return home today after 85 years at the Bishop Museum.
Along with the princess, the remains of about 20 other individuals from Tongan burial sites will be escorted home by a delegation of high Tongan officials and Maile Drake, the museum's cultural collections manager, who is also Tongan.
"This is a great and right thing to do," said Drake. "In
Source: People's Daily Online
May 4, 2006
Archaeologists have discovered an unprecedented large group of 900-year-old tombs in Horinger County in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
The tombs, dating back to the Liao Dynasty (916-1125), were excavated in the ancient city of Tuchengzi, said Li Qiang, head of the archeology team.
He said it was the largest group of Liao tombs ever discovered at the southern foot of the Yinshan Mountains running west-east through Inner Mongolia.
Source: NYT
May 8, 2006
Two authors who unsuccessfully sued the British publisher of "The Da Vinci Code" have been ordered to pay 85 percent of the publisher's legal bill, estimated at just over $2.4 million, the BBC reported. Although the first installment, $651,000, was due on Friday, the authors, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, applied for more time, and Justice Peter Smith, who heard the case in High Court in London, adjourned the matter to this week. They also face a bill from their own lawyers.
Source: NYT
May 8, 2006
Denouncing "The Da Vinci Code," a Roman Catholic cardinal who was considered a contender for pope last year made an apparent reference to violent Muslim protests to cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad, Reuters reported. Suggesting legal action against the best-selling Dan Brown novel and the forthcoming movie, Cardinal Francis Arinze, a Nigerian, demanded "that we should be respected, our religious beliefs respected, and our founder Jesus Christ respected." Without elabor
Source: NYT
May 8, 2006
President Bush had dinner last month on the Stanford University campus at the home of George P. Shultz, who was President Ronald Reagan's secretary of state, and the topic of conversation was not, as might be expected, the war in Iraq. Instead, guests said, Mr. Bush spent the evening focused on how he could create a public policy center with his presidential library after he leaves office in 2009.
The dozen or so guests at the dinner included directors and fellows of the Hoover Inst
Source: NYT
May 8, 2006
Drexel A. Sprecher, a lawyer who researched, plotted strategy and argued cases at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals, including presenting the case that convicted the head of the Hitler Youth movement, died on March 18 in Washington. He was 92 and a resident of Chevy Chase, Md.
Belle Zeck, another Nuremberg prosecutor, died the same day as Mr. Sprecher. Benjamin B. Ferencz, who was also a Nuremberg prosecutor and roomed with Mr. Sprecher, said only about a half dozen of thei
Source: Xinhua (China)
May 8, 2006
Turkey has recalled its ambassadors in France and Canada for consultations regarding the Armenian genocide discussions in the two countries, Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Namik Tan said on Monday.Tan told reporters that Turkey's Ambassador to France Osman Koruturk and Ambassador to Canada Aydemir Erman have been called back to Ankara for a short time to have consultations on recent "baseless" Armenian genocide allegations in these two countries.
Source: AP
May 7, 2006
JAMESTOWN, Va. -- Plymouth tends to hog the attention, with its buckle-shoed Pilgrims and the story of the first Thanksgiving.
But in 1607, 13 years before the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts, three ships deposited a group of explorers on a swampy peninsula on Virginia's James River that became America's first permanent English settlement and the birthplace of the United States.
A new replica of one of those ships will embark May 22 on a tour of six East Coast ports to d
Source: Wa Po
May 7, 2006
The Greatest Generation is tired. In their day, with hearts clanging in their skinny, young chests, they flew bomb runs, manned the machine guns on 7,000 cargo ships or survived 124 days in a foxhole on an Italian beach surrounded on three sides by German troops.
Now, it takes all that a citizen soldier such as Eugene Lafferty has to climb the stairs at the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. One by one, the 81-year-old widower labors up the steps with his c
Source: AP
May 7, 2006
Lillian Gertrud Asplund, the last American survivor of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, has died, a funeral home said Sunday. She was 99.
Asplund, who was just 5 years old, lost her father and three brothers _ including a fraternal twin _ when the "practically unsinkable" ship went down in the North Atlantic after hitting an iceberg.
Source: Baltimore Sun
May 7, 2006
The current controversy over hordes of Hispanics coming over the border singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" in Spanish is only the latest rise of a tide that ebbs and flows in the United States at regular intervals.
The debate over whether those who come from "out there" to "in here" are to be welcomed or repelled illustrates a paradox at the heart of this national enterprise - at once America is a country of immigrants and a country threatened by immigr
Source: NYT
May 7, 2006
For the Gypsies of Eastern Europe, like Agnes Krappai, life never seems to improve. She lives in an impoverished section of this Hungarian town, in a house with no running water. Her neighbor washes a rug in the street, coaxing water out of a hand-pumped well. "It's a constant crisis, if there is such a thing," Ms. Krappai says.
But now, some leaders of the Gypsies, or Roma, are looking to a new model to try to achieve equality: the civil rights struggle of black Americans
Source: NYT
May 7, 2006
When Porter J. Goss resigned on Friday as director of the C.I.A., he found himself in good company. In one way or another, the job of C.I.A. chief has confounded nearly every man who has held it.
With few exceptions, each of the 19 directors of central intelligence has resigned in frustration, given his walking papers by the president or been pressured out of the agency's headquarters seven miles up the Potomac from the White House.
"Here is one of the most peculia
Source: NYT
May 7, 2006
Booker T. Washington died of high blood pressure, a review of his medical records has determined, lifting a cloud over his death left by one of his doctors more than 90 years ago.
The doctor wrote in 1915 that Washington had died of "racial characteristics," an often dismissive term that included high blood pressure, but also syphilis.Washington's records were obtained with the permission of his descendants for a University of Maryland med
Source: History Today
May 4, 2006
Friends and family of Cruz Hernandez, believed to be the oldest person in the world, gathered together yesterday to celebrate her 128th birthday. The festivities were attended by more than 200 people some of whom came dressed as figures from Salvadoran mythology. According to the National Birth Registry in El Salvador, Hernandez was born on May 3rd 1878. However, although officials sent her documents and records to the Guinness World Records organisation last year, they are still waiting to hear
Source: Wa Po
May 5, 2006
Under intense pressure from Republican leaders, a key member of the House Appropriations Committee abandoned his two-year effort to block federal funds for a memorial to the passengers and crew of United Airlines Flight 93, agreeing to a $5 million request to purchase land for the monument near Shanksville, Pa.
Rep. Charles H. Taylor (R-N.C.), chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds the Interior Department, added the money yesterday to a $25.9 billion spending b
Source: Inside Higher Ed
May 5, 2006
It was not a public performance — a few dozen students and faculty were the only ones to witness the final presentation of three theater majors at Cornish College of the Arts, in Seattle. But that hasn’t stopped the nature of the performance from becoming the center of a campuswide controversy that has prompted calls from some students for immediate administrative action.
The presentation, which took place March 31, was part of a theater course in which students are asked to perform
Source: NYT
May 4, 2006
Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi acknowledges that Clyde
Kennard suffered a grievous wrong at the hands of state
officials more than 45 years ago. But he says he will not
grant a posthumous pardon to Mr. Kennard, a black man who was
falsely imprisoned after trying to desegregate a Mississippi
college.
Mr. Kennard moved home to Hattiesburg, Miss., after seven
years in the Army in Germany and Korea and three years as an
undergraduate at the University of Chicago. He wanted to
finish
Source: NYT
May 5, 2006
The man once called King Tiger, a description fitting for one of the most militant of radical Latino leaders of the 1960's, now walks with a cane. Almost forgotten by new generations of Latinos clamoring for immigrant rights, the man, Reies López Tijerina, faces his own immigration dilemma. Hobbled by diabetes and years of self-exile in Mexico, Mr. Tijerina, born 79 years ago to a family of cotton pickers in South Texas, spends his days at a community center here
