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: Jewish Telegraphic Agency
April 11, 2007
BUENOS AIRES -- An Argentine researcher and journalist said he feels "a strong sense of relief" after a three-year battle in Italian courts ended with a Nazi war criminal's lawsuit against him being thrown out. Goni was referring to a Milan court's decision last month to reject a claim by convicted Nazi war criminal Erich Priebke, who had sued Goni and his Italian publisher for 50,000 euros -- more than $67,000 -- for libel. The court not only tossed out Priebke's claim as unfounded bu
Source: AP
April 12, 2007
VIENNA -- Austria's famous chocolate cake -- the "Original Sacher-Torte" -- celebrated its 175th birthday Thursday with a rooftop party and a serenade by opera star Montserrat Caballe.
The bash was organized by Vienna's Hotel Sacher, which produces the cake -- distinguished by its chocolate seal and sold in a wooden box complete with golden corners -- from its own secret recipe.
Source: ReligionAndSpirituality.com
April 12, 2007
According to Japanese Cardinal Stephen Fumio Hamao, a number of samurai warriors are among 188 mostly lay Japanese martyrs expected to be beatified in November. The samurai, despite their fierce reputation and fighting skills, chose the path of non-violence.
Cardinal Hamao...says he expects Pope Benedict XVI to soon approve beatification of the martyrs and that the ceremony will be held in Japan. Hamao, 77, played a central role at a meeting of 20 cardinals and archbishops at the Co
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
April 12, 2007
One of Silicon Valley's most hallowed landmarks has been abandoned since the fall, leaving many of the region's historians concerned that a crucial piece of technology history is being lost.
The site in question, at 391 San Antonio Road in Mountain View, was once the home of Shockley Labs, Silicon Valley's first semiconductor company and arguably the site of the multibillion-dollar industry's birth.
The site is now the home of a boarded-up fruit stand awaiting renovatio
Source: UPI
April 12, 2007
NEW YORK -- Chicago may be hog butcher to the world in Carl Sandburg's eyes but New York's Meatpacking District is a historic landmark in the eyes of the state.
The district -- one-time home to the slaughter and meatpacking industries now dotted with some of the city's trendy and tony restaurants and night spots -- was added to New York state's list of historic places, the New York Post reported Thursday.
Source: AP
April 12, 2007
BUIRLINGHAME, Calif. -- An award-winning memoir about growing up poor and black in apartheid-era South Africa was banned from an intermediate school after a parent complained about a two-paragraph scene of men paying hungry boys for sex.
Superintendent Sonny Da Marto ordered an 8th grade teacher to stop using"Kaffir Boy" [by Mark Mathabane, published in 1986] in her English classes even though a literature review committee composed of parents, teachers, a librarian, a student and a school
Source: Reuters
April 12, 2007
The Vatican ambassador to Israel threatened on Thursday to boycott a Holocaust memorial ceremony next week over a museum's portrayal of Pope Pius XII's conduct during the Nazis' killing of Jews in World War Two.Archbishop Antonio Franco said he had written to the director of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum asking for the revision of a caption suggesting the wartime Pope had been apathetic to the Jews' plight.
The caption, quoted in the Israeli press, says Pope P
Source: AP
April 12, 2007
The North Carolina House formally apologized Wednesday "for the injustice, cruelty and brutality of slavery," becoming the latest state to offer its regret.The House passed the apology resolution 117-0, along with a resolution that previously passed in the Senate apologizing for the state's Jim Crow laws and other legalized segregation.
Both resolutions recount a long history of discrimination against North Carolina's black population start
Source: BBC News
April 11, 2007
Fans of The Doors have asked Florida to pardon frontman Jim Morrison nearly 40 years after he was convicted of indecent exposure in the state.
Morrison was charged after a concert in Miami's Coconut Grove in 1969 where he allegedly exposed himself and simulated a sex act.
Now two fans have sent a letter seeking a pardon for the Florida native so he can be remembered for his music.
Governor Charlie Crist said he was "certainly willing to review" th
Source: AP
April 11, 2007
PANMUNJOM -- U.S. envoys entered South Korea from North Korea in a rare border-crossing Wednesday after securing the remains of six American soldiers from the Korean War and pushing for action on the North's nuclear disarmament.
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and Anthony Principi, former U.S. veterans affairs secretary, were greeted at the frontier between North and South by U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Alexander Vershbow and U.S. military officials...
On Wednesday,
Source: NPR
April 11, 2007
A Bangladeshi man who used to sell televisions at a Circuit City store in Los Angeles is fighting deportation back to his home country. Mohiuddin Ahmed faces execution for his role in a 1975 coup that led to the assassination of Bangladesh's first president.
Ahmed was convicted [in absentia] of helping assassinate Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who led Bangladesh to independence from Pakistan nearly 40 years ago. [He was sentenced to hang.]...
"I had nothing to do with kil
Source: Independent
April 12, 2007
The threat is growing to the cradle of evolution. Crucial talks take place today over the increasingly precarious future of the Galapagos Islands, whose unique wildlife inspired Charles Darwin's revolutionary theory.
High-ranking United Nations officials will be meet ministers from the government of Ecuador, which owns the volcanic islands 600 miles off its Pacific coast, to discuss how to protect them from the increasing threats posed by immigration, mass tourism, development, over
Source: AP
April 12, 2007
NEW YORK -- Kurt Vonnegut, the satirical novelist who captured the absurdity of war and questioned the advances of science in darkly humorous works such as Slaughterhouse-Five and Cat's Cradle, died Wednesday. He was 84...
His mother had succeeded in killing herself just before he left for Germany during World War II, where he was quickly taken prisoner during the Battle of the Bulge. He was being held in Dresden when Allied bombs created a firestorm that killed an est
Source: New York Times
April 12, 2007
Less than four months after Philadelphians thwarted its bid to buy "The Gross Clinic," an 1875 masterpiece by Thomas Eakins, an Arkansas museum founded by the Wal-Mart heiress Alice L. Walton has quietly purchased another much-loved Eakins painting from the Philadelphia medical school that sold the first.
The canvas, the 1874 “Portrait of Professor Benjamin H. Rand,” is destined for the new Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, now under construction in Bentonville, Ark.
Source: Washington Post
April 12, 2007
Members of a Senate oversight committee yesterday recommended a shakeup of the Smithsonian Institution, starting with its governing board, whose members were depicted as out of touch with the management of the 160-year-old museum complex.
Calling the Smithsonian "an endangered institution," Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) questioned whether the Board of Regents, which includes Vice President Cheney and Chief Justice John Roberts, is able to oversee the management of the s
Source: AP
April 11, 2007
NEW YORK -- PBS promised Wednesday to amend Ken Burns' upcoming documentary series on World War II to include stories about Latino veterans after activists complained he ignored their contributions to the American effort.
Burns has also agreed to hire a Latino producer to help create the additional content, PBS said.
The 14-hour documentary, "The War," is scheduled to premiere in September. PBS hopes it becomes as popular as Burns' "The Civil War" wa
Source: Independent
April 12, 2007
MOSCOW -- The Kremlin has vetoed a move to launch a fresh investigation into the death of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, despite aviation specialists' belief that they have unravelled one of the 20th century's greatest enigmas.
The rebuff comes as Russians celebrate Cosmonauts' Day today, the anniversary of Gagarin's historic flight around the Earth on 12 April 1961. That foray, which lasted just 68 minutes, was a milestone in the space race between the Soviet Union and the U
Source: Telegraph
April 12, 2007
VIENNA -- A previously unknown work by Vincent Van Gogh is believed to have been discovered in the cellar of a museum in Croatia.
The unnamed oil on canvas painting, showing five women and a little girl from Scheweningen in the Netherlands in a forest, is signed Vincent in one corner.
It was found by experts looking through the uncatalogued collection that has been stored at the Mimara Museum in the Croatian capital Zagreb for the past two decades.
Museum s
Source: Guardian
April 12, 2007
TEHRAN -- With its enduring relics of a glorious imperial past, spectacular glittering mosques and breathtaking landscapes, Iran lays claim to some of the finest cultural jewels in the Middle East.
But a potentially catastrophic collapse in the country's tourist trade is threatening to leave this dazzling array of attractions largely unseen by foreign eyes, as international tensions with the west deter a growing number of overseas visitors. The problem has been exacerbated by the re
Source: This Is London/Evening Standard
April 11, 2007
William Wordsworth was inspired to write Daffodils by the glorious flowers on the shores of Ullswater in the Lake District.
But verse-lovers should put their fingers in the ears now - for the poem has been 'updated' for the 21st century by being turned into a cringe-making rap song.
Set to a driving beat, the rap encourages the listener to 'Check It' and the daffodils are no longer 'tossing their heads in sprightly dance' but 'tossing up their heads like a pogo dance'.
The rap
