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: AP
April 15, 2007
JERUSALEM -- Two Israeli institutions are battling for custody of an unclaimed collection of artwork plundered by the Nazis -- a dispute over who best represents the victims of the Holocaust and their descendants.
The Israel Museum, repository of such national treasures as the Dead Sea Scrolls, has control of the collection and is fighting to keep it. It is up against a company headed by a Holocaust survivor that is legally entrusted with locating the property of victims...
Source: International Herald Tribune
April 15, 2007
CRAONNE, France -- Barbara Hendricks sang a requiem at Verdun. Prince Charles spoke at the Somme. And last week Queen Elizabeth paid homage at Vimy, another of the great battle sites of World War I.
But ceremonies will be decidedly less elaborate Monday as France observes one of its most tortured and enigmatic anniversaries: the start nine decades ago of the battle of Chemin des Dames, which led to the largest mutiny in modern military history.
The battle, fought on a b
Source: Observer
April 15, 2007
PARIS -- It is a battle of superlatives. A battle of art and politics, pitting one of Europe's richest families against one of America's wealthiest dynasties. A battle for the chance to use the world's most famous architects to turn the most prestigious site in the most beautiful city of Europe into one of the continent's most high-profile museums of contemporary art.
And it is a battle that, unless there is a late last-minute hitch, the French luxury goods magnate Francois Pinault,
Source: Washington Post
April 8, 2007
Four centuries later, Jamestown is still looking for a little respect.
True, breathtaking reproductions of the tall-masted ships will set sail to mark its 400th birthday, and Virginia is hosting a multimillion-dollar bash next month with pageantry, celebrities and fireworks to honor the first permanent English colony in the New World.
Even Queen Elizabeth II is coming to the Old Dominion to acknowledge her countrymen's role in giving birth to a prosperous new nation.
Source: Yonhap News (Seoul)
April 15, 2007
South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun expressed disappointment Sunday over Japan's"no-action, talk-only" apologies for its past wrongdoing, including sexual enslavement of South Korean women during World War II."While Japan has issued statements of regret and apologies for its past wrongdoing at various occasions, we are led to question their sincerity when they are marred by acts that contradict their expression of repentance," Roh wrote in Global Asia, an English-language maga
Source: Telegraph
April 16, 2007
Campaigners want to honour a remarkable but often forgotten black Briton by erecting a statue in his honour on the white cliffs of Dover.
Walter Tull was the first black officer in the Army to lead white troops into battle. He died a hero on the Western Front.
He was also the first black professional footballer to play in the outfield in England.
"His achievements are tremendous -- from orphan to footballer to soldier. In doing so, he broke through the
Source: Telegraph
April 16, 2006
Up to a million hours of broadcasting history could be made available on the internet as part of a plan to open the BBC's archive to licence fee payers.
Lost gems of radio and television, some of which have never been repeated, include an interview with Martin Luther King filmed shortly before he was assassinated, and a 1956 episode of the nature series Zoo Quest in which a young David Attenborough captures the komodo dragon on film for the first time.
The episode has n
Source: New York Times
April 16, 2007
Imagine the boxing gloves Muhammad Ali wore when he knocked out Sonny Liston just steps away from a first edition of Phillis Wheatley’s 1773 book of poetry, the first published by an African-American, around the corner from the cell door behind which the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”
That is the dream of an elite group of scholars and artists, including the novelist Toni Morrison and the Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., who have been enlist
Source: Reuters
April 15, 2007
POINTE AUX SABLES, Mauritius -- In the nearly 40 years since she was turned her out of her home on the Chagos Islands, 81-year-old Rita Isou has concluded: "The British can do anything they want with the law."
Now a grandmother, she is one of a shrinking group of Indian Ocean islanders still fighting in the courts to relive the memories of plentiful fish and mangoes in the home she was forced out of to defend British and American military interests.
In the 196
Source: Reuters
April 15, 2007
JERUSALEM -- The Vatican said its envoy to Israel would attend a state Holocaust memorial on Sunday after threatening to stay away in protest at a display implying the wartime Pope Pius XII was indifferent to the deaths of Jews.
Archbishop Antonio Franco had asked the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, which hosts the ceremony, to remove the controversial photo caption. The museum's chairman Avner Shalev told the envoy in a letter he would be open to reviewing the matter...
Source: Guardian
April 15, 2007
Development Secretary Hilary Benn will risk the wrath of Tony Blair's closest international ally by warning that US rhetoric has given terrorists a "shared identity".
Mr Benn is to say openly that President George Bush's phrase "War on Terror" strengthens small disaffected groups with widely differing aims by making them feel part of something "bigger".
He will confirm that British ministers and civil servants have decided to stop using the
Source: Times (of London)
April 14, 2007
How are Europeans to deal with the Iranians? And vice versa? Europeans have been considering this question since the beginning of written Western history 24 centuries ago. The conference of the Classical Association in Birmingham discovered surprising answers yesterday.
The crude neocon view is that Europeans are civilised and Persians barbarians. And that all that is needed to bring peace and civilisation to the Middle East is democracy. A series of papers on Herodotus argued that
Source: Telegraph
April 13, 2007
A notoriously "secret" country property and its remarkable collection of furniture are to be sold for about £20 million, three years after a failed attempt to save them for the nation.
Little-known Dumfries House will go on the market tomorrow with 1,900 acres of land at offers of more than £6.8 million, while its Rococo furniture is expected to fetch more than £12 million at auction this summer.
The contents of the 18th century stately home, which has never b
Source: Times (of London)
April 14, 2007
SYDNEY -- Laura Schneider, a New York teacher, is on her way to Alice Springs, the dust-dry town in the centre of Australia, pictured tranquil and agreeably English by the British writer Nevil Shute in his 1950 novel of love in the Outback. It is a tale and a setting that Ms Schneider finds so uplifting that she reads from A Town Like Alice five times year.
She is far from alone in her long admiration of Shute, who died 47 years ago. She will be joined in Alice Springs next w
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
April 15, 2007
ATLANTA -- It was the kind of case that a big city gumshoe with better things to do wouldn't look twice at.
The deceased wasn't talking. There were no leads to speak of. No body. No witnesses. Nothing but a mammoth hunk of granite with the name "BALL" stamped on it, some old dates and a sentimental message worn away by Father Time...
Police found the grave marker Oct. 30 in Norcross [Georgia], ditched on the side of the road like an empty box of smokes.
Source: Mid-Hudson News Network
April 15, 2007
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. -- Westchester’s concept of having a museum at Sing Sing will get national attention in the new week when more than 5,000 public and private sector planners gather in Philadelphia for the convention of the American Planning Association.
The Sing Sing idea...will be the focus of a panel discussion that will include...officials from Philadelphia, who will talk about the positive economic effects realized by the city after a museum was created at the Eastern State Pe
Source: Times (of London)
April 15, 2007
NEW YORK -- A ghost from the Cold War has returned to haunt the CIA. A book to be published this month by a veteran American spy is raising startling new questions about Yuri Nosenko, the Russian defector who played a key part in the inquiry into the assassination of President John F Kennedy.
Conspiracy theorists have long been obsessed with Nosenko’s supposed role as the KGB officer who handled the Moscow file of Lee Harvey Oswald, JFK’s assassin, who had lived for three years in t
Source: Independent
April 15, 2007
Ed. note: The looting and destruction of some of the world's most precious archaeological sites, first reported by [The Independent], have continued unabated despite a British pledge to protect them from armed gangs stealing to order for antiquities dealers.
Looters using mechanical diggers and protected by their own private armies are destroying Iraq's ancient archeological sites -- shattering priceless artefacts from the dawn of civilisation -- despite a pledge by Britain t
Source: Independent
April 15, 2007
When Marks & Spencer recruited singer Bryan Ferry to be the face of its menswear collection, it believed his reputation as rock's "king of cool" would help them to boost sales.
But customers and management of the retailer, founded by Russian-Jewish refugees, will be alarmed to learn that the elegant singer has admitted he draws inspiration from the aesthetics of Nazi Germany.
Ferry, the lead singer of Roxy Music, has caused outrage at home and abroad for r
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
April 12, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO -- The historic sailing schooner C.A. Thayer was rechristened this morning at the San Francisco Maritime National Park [Hyde Street Pier], marking the completion of a $14 million, three-year rebuilding job on the 112-year-old vessel.
The Thayer is one of only two survivors of a fleet of hundreds of sailing vessels that carried lumber along the West Coast in the heyday of coastal shipping. Ships like the Thayer helped build San Francisco, Oakland and other California ci
