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
Apr 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: Christian Science Monitor
Apr 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: AFP
Apr 22, 2007
BERLIN -- In the wake of sensational sales of art that was seized by the Nazis, German authors have published the first handbook to help Jewish families win back masterpieces that are still in the wrong hands.
The 528-page tome "Nazi Looted Art - Art Restitution Worldwide" is sold as a do-it-yourself law manual for heirs of Holocaust victims hoping to confront museums and collectors in different corners of the world in a bid to recover lost canvasses.
Co-autho
Source: Daily Star (Cairo)
Apr 22, 2007
LUXOR, Egypt -- Remains of an ancient Egyptian wall used to prevent the leakage of the Nile flood waters from spreading over the Karnak temple in Luxor were discovered on Thursday at the temple’s eastern side, culture minister Farouk Hosni announced on Sunday.
Hosni revealed that the wall was accidentally found by Egyptian excavators during an archeological inspection of the site undertaken as part of a development project aimed at removing encroachments accumulated over the years o
Source: BBC
Apr 22, 2007
Keys belonging to the post room of the Titanic have sold for a record 100,000 [pounds] at auction in Wiltshire.
Auctioneer Andrew Aldridge said the previous record for the amount paid for memorabilia from the liner was 57,000 [pounds].
Source: EITB24 (Basque News & Information Channel)
Apr 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: Times (of London)
Apr 22, 2007
A previously undiscovered cache of poems written by Bonnie Parker, half of the 20th century’s most notorious criminal couple, have shown the depth of her love for Clyde Barrow, her partner in crime.
Parker apparently wrote the nine poems while briefly imprisoned in 1932 at the age of 22, two years after meeting Barrow and being seduced into a life of robbery.
Few other poems by Parker have emerged and experts did not realise she had written so much...
The n
Source: AP
Apr 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
Apr 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: Telegraph
Apr 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
Apr 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: Telegraph
Apr 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
Source: Times (of London)
Apr 22, 2007
Speaking ill of the dead could become a lot more expensive. The [UK] government is to consider extending the laws of defamation so that even the deceased -- or at least their representatives -- can sue for libel.
Under current laws, litigants need to be alive for a court action to be pursued claiming someone has wrongly damaged their reputation. The government is now discussing proposals that could eventually mean reputations -- from newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell’s to Victorian pr
Source: Ariella Budick, Newsday
Apr 22, 2007
With the opening of the gleaming new galleries for ancient Greek and Roman art, the Metropolitan Museum has definitively established itself as a wonder of the modern world. This is the contemporary museum at its best: a place for pleasure and scholarship, where ravishing products of the past can be studied and savored.
The centerpiece of the new galleries is a soaring, glass-covered court with a fountain gurgling at its center. Torsos and heads perch on gray basalt plinths, all beau
Source: Deutsche Welle/DW-World (Bonn)
Apr 21, 2007
Felix Mendolssohn...E.T.A. Hoffmann, Marlene Dietrich, Willy Brandt, Rosa Luxemburg [Bertolt Brecht, Helmut Newton,] and Karl Liebknecht all have something in common: their graves are to be found amidst Berlin's myriad assortment of cemeteries.
Some 260 cemeteries of varying size are to be found in the German capital, of which 190 are still in use today. Extraordinary in their size and character, they sprawl across more than 1,200 hectares (3,707 acres) of land in and around Berlin.
Source: Boston Globe
Apr 21, 2007
PEABODY, Mass. --Four Revolutionary War heroes finally have proper grave markers even though their actual graves were lost to the march of progress when a portion of a cemetery was paved over for a roadway.
The four minutemen -- Samuel Cook Jr., Benjamin Deland Jr., Ebenezer Goldthwaite and George Southwick Jr. -- grabbed their muskets and marched toward Concord, only to be killed by the retreating British troops on the first day of the war, April 19, 1775. On Saturday, they were ho
Source: All Headline News
Apr 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: WPDE-TV (Myrtle Beach-Florence, S.C.)
Apr 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
Apr 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: National Post (Don Mills, Ontario)
Apr 21, 2007
When a deranged gunman began his shooting rampage at Virginia Tech's Norris Hall on Monday, most of the dozens of students in the vicinity cowered under desks or fled, according to witness accounts. But, before being fatally shot himself, 76-year-old Professor Liviu Librescu thrust himself against his classroom door and held off Cho Seunghui long enough to allow many of his students to jump to safety. The professor's heroism gives rise to some awkward questions: How could a single gunman kill 30
