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: New York Times
April 23, 2007
Boris N. Yeltsin, the burly provincial politician who became the first freely elected leader of Russia and a towering figure of his time when he presided over the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the demise of the Communist Party, has died at the age of 76, the Russian government said today.
A Kremlin spokesman confirmed Mr. Yeltsin’s death but gave no details about the circumstances or cause. The Interfax news agency quoted an unidentified medical source as saying the former pre
Source: All Headline News
April 21, 2007
THE HAGUE -- Germany has signed the papers that will allow the unsealing of an archive of Nazi concentration camp documents for scholarship. The archive of 30 million to 50 million pages is managed by the International Tracing Service, part of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The documents must be ratified by 11 nations to take effect. So far, in addition to Germany, the nations agreeing to the move include the United States, Israel, Poland, the Netherlands and Britain.
Source: Houston Chronicle
April 20, 2007
Glaucus and Scylla, a 1841 oil on wood by J.M.W. Turner that the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth returned to the heirs of British collectors John and Anna Jaffé last summer, is back at the Kimbell —- which paid $5.7 million for it at auction.
The painting had been in the Kimbell's collection for 40 years until Alain Monteagle, a Jaffé descendant, proved it had been unlawfully seized by France's pro-Nazi Vichy government in 1943.
The gold and russet Turner shows a lovestruck s
Source: Telegraph
April 23, 2007
BERLIN -- A building in Berlin that was once a headquarters of the Hitler Youth is to re-open as a British-owned members' club for the rich and famous.
The imposing eight-storey former department store near the German capital's trendy eastern districts has been unloved and crumbling for decades.
But now it has been snapped up by the owners of Soho House, London's fashionable media hang-out, and will be transformed into an exclusive club with a swimming pool, cinema and
Source: Los Angeles Times
April 23, 2007
MALYY GORODOK, Russia —- The painting exudes the sweet softness of idyllic village life: A mother, towel wrapped around her head, braids her daughter's hair while a young woman draws a red comb through her own tresses. A girl in a dark dress carries a samovar for tea, a little girl drinks from a white cup, and a cat makes its presence known.
Yuri Kugach, 90, still remembers the inspiration for one of his most famous paintings. He was visiting the home of a fisherman when he saw the
Source: Reuters
April 20, 2007
HANOI -- Internationally renowned Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh on Friday led larger-than-expected crowds in a ceremony intended to heal wounds of the Vietnam war that ended 32 years ago this month.
In a sermon near Hanoi, Nhat Hanh advised thousands of monks and lay people to pray equally for those who fought and died on both sides, the communist north and the U.S.-backed south.
"We know that you fought courageously for our nation," said Nhat Hanh, a resident of F
Source: WPDE-TV (Myrtle Beach-Florence, S.C.)
April 21, 2007
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Members from the largest neo-Nazi group in the United States, the National Socialist Movement, the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nation gathered in on the steps of the Capitol in Columbia on Saturday to cover issues of race and their stance on illegal immigration.
They were met in opposition by the Coalition Against Bigotry, a group promoting peace.
The Nazi group sported uniforms branded with swastikas and repeatedly yelled praises to Adolf Hitler as the
Source: Novinite/Sofia News Agency
April 21, 2007
A completely intact Thracian chariot was unearthed by the Bulgarian archaeologist Vesselin Ignatov on Friday, Darik News reported.
The chariot was found near a burial barrow close to the central Bulgarian town of Nova Zagora. Ignatov and his team have already dated the finding to 2 century BC. The chariot has two wheels with its roof made of heavy bronze in the form of eagle heads and a folding iron chair, where the driver sat. The chariot was aimed to be pulled by three horses.
Source: EITB24 (Basque News & Information Channel)
April 22, 2007
This year is the 70th anniversary of the bombing of the Basque town of Gernika [or Gernika-Lumo] in the Basque Country. On 26 April, 1937 Gernika was targeted for aerial bombing during the Spanish Civil War. In response to the atrocity artist Pablo Picasso painted his famous work by the same name, Guernica. But controversy now surrounds where this work should be kept.
The National Museum of Art Reina Sofia in the Spanish capital Madrid contains many of the world's most influential p
Source: Houston Chronicle
April 20, 2007
The attack on Mexican troops at the Battle of San Jacinto came at just the right time and place 171 years ago today, leading to a "Texian" victory that secured independence from Mexico.
If re-enacters wanted to replicate the battle today on the same ground, they'd have to wade through a reflecting pool at the base of the towering San Jacinto Monument. Officials now want to restore the landscape of the San Jacinto Battleground State Historical Park to resemble the way it wa
Source: New York Times
April 23, 2007
BAGHDAD -— Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said Sunday that he was ordering a halt to construction of a controversial wall that would block a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad from other areas, saying it reminded people of “other walls.”
The announcement, which he made in Cairo while on a state visit, appeared intended to allay mounting criticism from both Sunni Arab and Shiite parties about the project.
“I oppose the building of the wall, and its construction will stop
Source: AP
April 19, 2007
WARSAW -- The last surviving leader of the Warsaw ghetto uprising placed yellow daffodils on a granite memorial Thursday to commemorate the 64th anniversary of the start of the ill-fated, armed resistance.
Marek Edelman, shivering on a chilly spring day, walked arm-in-arm with his granddaughter from the stark monument for heroes of the uprising in downtown Warsaw to several other sites within the Nazi-era ghetto for Warsaw Jews.
On one of Edelman's stops, a group of tee
Source: Christian Science Monitor
April 23, 2007
YEREVAN, Armenia -- Gevork Melikyan, aged 94, stares off into the distance with cloudy eyes. His daughter-in-law says he has trouble remembering what happened last week, but he remembers with startling clarity the day when his family fled Turkey –- right down to the name of the dog they left behind...
Mr. Melikyan is one of the last remaining survivors of the mass killing and expulsion of ethnic Armenians from Turkey that took place between 1915 and 1917, which is widely recognized
Source: AP
April 22, 2007
TALLINN, Estonia -- The life-size statue of a Red Army soldier stands at a crossroads in this Baltic capital, fist clenched and head bowed, marking the spot where Soviet war dead are buried.
But the statue is engulfed in bitter debate over the Soviet army's place in European history, which could come to a head this week if the Estonian government goes ahead with plans to dig up the tomb and move the statue to a park outside Tallinn.
Russians are appalled, and the Kremli
Source: AP
April 22, 2007
PHNOM PENH -- The first history book written by a Cambodian author about the Khmer Rouge will soon be available in the country, in a step toward educating Cambodian youths about the murderous regime, a leading genocide researcher said Sunday.
Khamboly Dy's A History of Democratic Kampuchea" will be released on April 25, said Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, an independent group documenting the Khmer Rouge crimes. Cambodia was named Democratic Kampu
Source: Toronto Star
April 21, 2007
The leader of an aboriginal blockade that paralyzed rail traffic between Toronto and Montreal for more than 30 hours promised this morning there will be more “economic disruptions” like the protest ended ahead of schedule...
Those targets are the railway, provincial highways and the town of Deseronto, Brant said as he puffed on cigarettes at the gravel quarry that is the heart of the dispute...
Condominiums are planned using gravel from the quarry for an area known as t
Source: Telegraph
April 22, 2007
It spends less on new acquisitions than almost any other major museum in the world and is currently £2 million in the red. Yet the British Museum has been able to find tens of thousands of pounds to send its 23-strong team of trustees and top managers on a series of foreign trips.
The museum, home to the Elgin marbles and the Rosetta Stone, has dispensed with the tradition of holding its annual meeting of trustees at its London headquarters and has instead begun holding them oversea
Source: Washington Post
April 22, 2007
At the end of the peaceful neighborhood street, past the tidy prewar cottages and just beyond the snack bar offering ice cream on a cool spring day, looms what's left of the Nazi concentration camp.
It's 10:07 a.m. and birds are trilling in the treetops, the voices of happy schoolchildren echo from a nearby playground at recess. But that's outside the gates of the Sachsenhausen camp. Inside, except for the sound of the rushing wind, it's as quiet as a tomb...
Source: AP
April 21, 2007
NEW YORK -- Mass public shootings have become such a part of American life in recent decades that the most dramatic of them can be evoked from the nation's collective memory in a word or two: Luby's. Jonesboro. Columbine.
And now, Virginia Tech.
Since Aug. 1, 1966, when Charles Whitman climbed a 27-story tower on the University of Texas campus and started picking people off, at least 100 Americans have gone on shooting sprees.
And all through those years, t
Source: Telegraph
April 22, 2007
In her lifetime, the novelist Dame Muriel Spark's own story was one of intrigue, punctuated with family estrangements, a bitter divorce and enigmatic relationships. In death, it seems, she has left another untold story.
A long-awaited biography of the distinguished author [by Martin Stannard of the University of Leicester] will not be published for at least another two years, it can be revealed, and may never appear at all.
Dame Muriel, probably best known for The Prim
