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: Aftenposten (Oslo, Norway)
April 19, 2007
Newsreel films from occupied Norway will be released on the Internet this month.
Most of the films were made on assignment from the National Socialist authorities for propaganda purposes. [Nazi puppet president Vidkun] Quisling's role in the German occupation is toned down in the series, and he appears far less often than other members of the occupation government.
Film historian Tore Helseth believes that one possible reason for this is that Quisling was so unpopular t
Source: UTV (Belfast, Northern Ireland)
April 18, 2007
The politician son of firebrand unionist Ian Paisley is to visit a military exhibition at a Dublin museum named after former IRA leader Michael Collins, it has been revealed.
It is the latest in a series of remarkable meetings signalling an apparently new-found neighbourliness between the hard-line Democratic Unionist Party and the Irish Republic...
Irish Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern will guide the junior minister-designate in the restored Stormont power-shar
Source: AP
April 18, 2007
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -— Salvage crews are determining how to raise a Russian submarine and museum that partially sank during a storm earlier this week.
The submarine was used to film the Harrison Ford movie “K-19: The Widowmaker,” a Cold War thriller.
But salvage experts yesterday discovered that water had flooded the back quarter of the Juliett 484 submarine...
The ship sits in only a few feet of water, so there’s no danger it will completely submerge...
Source: Live Science
April 19, 2007
Metals found in lake mud in the central Peruvian Andes have revealed the first evidence for pre-Colonial metalsmithing there.
These findings illustrate a way that archaeologists can recreate the past even when looters have destroyed the valuable artifacts that would ordinarily be relied upon to reveal historical secrets. For instance, the new research hints at a tax imposed on local villages by ancient Inca rulers to force a switch from production of copper to silver.
P
Source: Reuters
April 19, 2007
NEW YORK -- A portrait of a young girl that some believe is the only known painting of English novelist Jane Austen failed to sell at auction on Thursday.
Christie's said no one offered the owner's minimum price for the painting that had been expected to fetch between $400,000 and $800,000...
The portrait by English society artist Ozias Humphry was put up for sale by Henry Rice, a distant relative of the writer of classics such as Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice
Source: New York Times
April 18, 2007
A group of Japanese researchers on Tuesday publicly challenged Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s denials that Japan’s military coerced women into sexual slavery during World War II, citing reports compiled by Allied investigators immediately after the war.
The reports, based partly on interrogations of Japanese prisoners, were originally submitted to the Tokyo war crimes trials, which ended in 1948, as evidence of atrocities by Japan during its wartime expansion across Asia. The reports i
Source: Tim Howard, Brisbane Times (Australia)
April 18, 2007
The art of funerary violin, although little known today, emerged during the Protestant Reformation and for almost 300 years was an integral part of European interment ceremonies. The Protestant rejection of the doctrine of human intercession left a"spiritual vacuum" into which specialist violinists stepped, their music conveying"both the tragedy of a spirit lost forever to this world and the triumphant ascension of a soul unto the eternity of the hereafter".
This golden age saw fune
Source: DPA (German Press Agency)
April 18, 2007
ATHENS -- Amid the ruins of Athens' ancient Stoa of Attalus, Greeks welcomed the homecoming on Wednesday of six priceless black-glazed ceremonial pottery pieces from the collection of [the late] British scholar Martin Robertson.
The miniature artifacts were handed over to the Ancient Agora's museum following the death of Robertson, the author of A History of Greek Art. The British scholar, who died in 2004, had acquired the items from American archaeologist Luy Talcott, the r
Source: AP
April 18, 2007
JERUSALEM -- Members of the Reform Jewish movement filed a complaint with police Wednesday against a former Israeli chief rabbi who blamed the liberal Jewish movement for the Holocaust.
The complaint accused Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu of defamation after he told an ultra-Orthodox radio station last week that the Holocaust was punishment for Reform Judaism's liberalization of the religion. Israeli media reported his remarks on Wednesday.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld con
Source: New York Times
April 19, 2007
Prof. Liviu Librescu faced many trials in his 76 years, growing up and living in Romania. There were the Nazis, who imprisoned his family when he was a child. Then there was the totalitarian regime of Nicolae Ceausescu, which forbade him from working when he refused to join the Communist Party.
But it was a trial in a most unlikely place that proved to be deadly. On Monday, Professor Librescu faced danger when a student armed with pistols and the determination to kill approached the
Source: Washington Post
April 19, 2007
Lawrence M. Small, the former secretary of the Smithsonian, rarely used his Northwest Washington mansion for institution-related entertaining in the past four years, despite receiving a housing allowance totaling $1.1 million since 2000 to make his residence available for official functions, institution records released yesterday show.
Small used his property for Smithsonian events only four times in the past four years and had not used it since 2005.
Source: Washington Post
April 19, 2007
A PBS official said yesterday that filmmaker Ken Burns will not re-cut his documentary on World War II -- a statement that disappointed and angered minority-group activists who on Tuesday said they believed Burns and PBS had committed to reediting the film to address their concerns about its content.
Programming chief John Wilson, seeking to clarify PBS's earlier statements, said yesterday that Burns's 14 1/2 -hour documentary, "The War," is complete. That statement, howev
Source: Times (of London)
April 19, 2007
The British Museum has intimated that the Elgin Marbles could be lent to Athens.
Neil MacGregor, its director, said that, like any object in its collection, a loan would be possible if the Greek Government acknowledged the museum’s ownership of the sculptures.
The Greek authorities hailed his comments as unprecedented. One source told The Times: “This is the first time they’ve ever said they’d let them out of the museum. We’ve said we’re not disputing the ownership.”
Source: BBC News
April 19, 2007
Rwanda has asked the International Court of Justice to quash French arrest warrants issued against nine associates of President Paul Kagame.
The government cannot function properly, as officials like the army chief-of-staff are unable to travel abroad, says Rwanda's justice minister.
The warrants were issued in November after a French judge implicated Mr Kagame in his predecessor's killing.
Former President Juvenal Habyarimana's death sparked the 1994 genoc
Source: Times (of London)
April 19, 2007
Forget St. George, the saint of slaying dragons, the Crusades and the England football supporter. It is time for the patron saint of England to be “rebranded” as a persecuted representative of Britain’s ethnic minorities, a black dissenter who rebelled against the abuse of power.
Ekklesia, the influential theological think-tank, today calls for St. George, who appeared to the Crusader army at Antioch in the 11th century and was adopted as the patron saint of soldiers, to be given a
Source: Telegraph
April 19, 2007
WARSAW -- The former military leader of Poland, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, has been charged with "communist crimes" for declaring martial law in an attempt to crush the Solidarity movement in 1981.
The charges against the 83-year-old ex-soldier, who was Polish president for most of the 1980s, came after the Institute of National Remembrance, the office charged with investigating Poland's communist past, passed documents to a Warsaw court. Eight other former high-ranking
Source: Independent
April 19, 2007
BRUSSELS -- Holocaust denial will be punishable by jail terms across the EU -- but only if it incites violence or hatred against specific groups -- under measures due to be agreed today.
After six years of negotiation, the agreement is likely to be sealed, despite pressure from Baltic states for the crimes committed by Stalin to be brought into the scope of the law...
Consensus over the deal has been achieved by whittling away at the impact of the legislation, leaving a
Source: AP
April 18, 2007
WASHINGTON -- A senator sees it as a fair trade: A Korean battle flag captured in the 19th century for the USS Pueblo, taken in 1968.
Republican Sen. Wayne Allard reintroduced a resolution Wednesday demanding that North Korea return the Pueblo, and he sent a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice suggesting she look into his proposed exchange.
"Since the USS Pueblo bears the name of the town of Pueblo, Colorado, many in our state want to see the vessel retur
Source: AP
April 18, 2007
BUENOS AIRES -- Argentina will not send former junta leader Jorge Videla to Germany to face charges in the abduction and murder of a German woman during the South American nation's Dirty War.
A criminal law court on Tuesday rejected Germany's extradition request for Videla, wanted in the March 1977 kidnapping and killing of activist Elisabeth Kaesemann. The court ruled crimes committed in Argentina are first subject to its judiciary.
In the past, denying extradition eff
Source: AHA Blog
April 18, 2007
Huzzah! The Gettysburg Foundation, a non-profit group dedicated to the preservation of America’s most-hallowed battlefield, is awash in cash. Two months ago, the organization announced that its “Campaign to Preserve Gettysburg” has raised more than $93 million dollars, prompting it to boost its overall fundraising goal to an eye-popping $125 million. The money will help pay for a new museum and state-of-the-art visitor center (opening in 2008) and restore portions of the battlefield to their ori
