Free Republic

Ken Shepherd's picture In a 41-paragraph front-pager today, the Washington Post's William Wan looks at how the "New pope will be challenged by strained ties with China." "A reset is possible as both sides introduce new leadership," added a subheadline. The website version had a wildly different headline, "For China's Catholics, new pope brings hope." Throughout his article, Wan used language that suggested that the Vatican and the Communist Chinese dictatorship were on the same moral plane (emphases mine): BEIJING — Of the long list of problems the next pope will inherit once the white smoke rises in Rome, few...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Press freedom advocates normally direct their wrath toward countries where harassment or abuse of journalists is the norm. Lately they have come up with a new target: the United States. On Wednesday, a delegation from the Inter-American Press Association, a Western Hemisphere watchdog group, was making a pilgrimage to Washington to show solidarity with Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter who has been jailed since July 6. An evening meeting with Miller was planned at the Alexandria (Va.) Detention Center, where she was being held for refusing to testify to a grand jury investigating the leak...

China Executes Party Official in Mine Disaster That Killed 81 Feb 20, 2004 The Associated Press BEIJING (AP) - A former Communist Party official was executed Friday for trying to cover up a tin mine accident that killed 81 people in 2001, the government announced. Wan Ruizhong, a former county party secretary in the southern region of Guangxi, was convicted of taking bribes from mine managers to conceal the July 17, 2001, accident. Other officials convicted in the disaster have been sentenced to up to 20 years in prison. The government says miners at the Lajiapo mine drowned when blasting...