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
Apr 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: Tim Howard, Brisbane Times (Australia)
Apr 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)
Apr 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
Apr 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: AP
Apr 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
Apr 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
Apr 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
Source: National Geographic News
Apr 18, 2007
CAIRO -- She may not be Helen of Troy, but the face of another ancient beauty has nearly launched a "scientific war" between Germany and Egypt.
In an escalating conflict over a famous 3,400-year-old bust of Queen Nefertiti, the head of Egypt's antiquities authority has threatened to ban exhibitions and tours of Egyptian artifacts from Germany.
Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, had requested the sculpture for a temporary
Source: Newark Star-Ledger
Apr 18, 2007
It was a balmy spring Wednesday, with a southwest breeze blowing across New York Harbor. In doors, the Great Hall on Ellis Island was bustling.
Masses of newly arrived immigrants queued up in long lines that stretched the length of the cavernous hall.
It seemed to be an ordinary day in an era of mass immigration, but officials processing the mostly European hoard had no way of knowing it would, in fact, be memorable.
One hundred years ago yesterday -- April
Source: New York Times
Apr 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: Gothamist
Apr 18, 2007
As the museum-going public excitedly awaits the opening of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's expanded southern wing, the NY Times reveals more details. About 5,300 works of Greek and Roman art now will see the light of day, with the gallery reopening tomorrow after a 15-year, $220 million redesign. During that time, an unbelievable 95 percent of the Met’s Greek and Roman collection had been collecting dust, so to speak.
The redesign comes more than 80 years after the opening of McKim
Source: Savannah Morning News
Apr 18, 2007
A Georgia state-owned railroad rented hundreds of slaves a year for nearly two decades, a California historian says.
Research by Theodore Kornweibel of San Diego State University surfaced Tuesday as a proposal for the state to apologize for slavery remains stalled...
Kornweibel's research follows other reports that the state bought -- and later sold -- about 190 slaves who worked on road and river projects.
Kornweibel, a professor emeritus in SDSU's Departm
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Apr 18, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO -- San Francisco celebrated one of its oldest traditions Wednesday morning with two small but poignant ceremonies to commemorate the 101st anniversary of the earthquake and fire that nearly destroyed the city in 1906.
As recently as last year, a dozen survivors were on hand at Lotta's Fountain at Market and Kearny streets for the early morning ceremony. This year there was only one -- Herbert Hamrol, who is 104-years-old. Hamrol said he took a day off work and got up a
Source: AFP
Apr 18, 2007
A tantalizing piece of evidence has been added to the puzzle over so-called "hobbit" hominids found in a cave in a remote Indonesian island, whose discovery has ignited one of the fiercest rows in anthropology.
Explorers of the human odyssey have been squabbling bitterly since the fossilized skeletons of tiny hominids, dubbed after the diminutive hobbits in J.R.R. Tolkien's tale, were found on the island of Flores in 2003...
If [the claims are] true, it would
Source: Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call
Apr 17, 2007
BETHLEHEM, Pa. -- Sands BethWorks officials won a gambling license in part because they pledged to preserve Bethlehem Steel's legacy alongside their $600 million casino complex in south Bethlehem.
But before the first brick is laid, hulking remnants of that legacy must come crashing down.
On April 26, demolition will begin on 10 Steel buildings to clear the way for 5,000 slot machines and a 10-story hotel and conference center -- 11 years and several failed plans after
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Apr 17, 2007
Doctors have removed a bullet from the heart of a Vietnamese soldier nearly four decades after he was shot by US troops during the Vietnam war.
Le Dinh Hung, 60, underwent surgery at a Hanoi hospital on Friday and is recovering quickly, said Dr Nguyen Sinh Hien, who spent three hours operating on the patient.
"It is the strangest case that I have ever seen," Dr Hien said. "Normally a person with a bullet in his heart would die immediately if they didn't h
Source: Der Spiegel Online
Apr 17, 2007
Baden-Württemberg governor Günther Oettinger has distanced himself from his own comments.
It took Günther Oettinger, governor of the south-western German state Baden-Württemberg, almost a week, but on Monday, he finally withdrew his comments delivered at the funeral for former Baden-Württemberg governor and ex-Nazi Hans Filbinger.
"I no longer adhere to my formulation," Oettinger said at a meeting of the Christian Democrat party leadership on Monday. "Rather, I
Source: AP
Apr 17, 2007
UNITED NATIONS -- The U.N. marked Holocaust Remembrance Day with a screening of "Steal a Pencil For Me," a documentary based on the love letters exchanged by two Holocaust survivors in concentration camps during World War II. Both survivors attended.
Academy Award-nominated director Michele Ohayon said the letters of Jack and Ina Polak, collected in a book in 2000 by the same name as the film, "put a face" on the Holocaust for her...
Source: AP
Apr 17, 2007
NEW YORK -- A 2 1/4-inch Faberge chair sold for $2.28 million at a Sotheby's auction Tuesday, easily surpassing the $1 million presale estimate.
The chair, made of gold and enamel by the Russian jeweler Carl Faberge, was included in a two-day Russian art sale that totaled $50.9 million, slightly higher than the $48.7 million presale estimate.
Sotheby's auction house said Faberge miniature furniture, such as the empire-style chair, is among the rarest of the artist's cre
Source: BBC News
Apr 17, 2007
Emails are circulating around the world, claiming the UK has banned the teaching of the Holocaust in schools.
The false suggestion is that the action has been taken by the government to avoid offending Muslim communities.
The source of the rumour may be a report that some history teachers were uncomfortable with sensitive subjects.
In fact the government has reaffirmed that in England, teaching children about the Holocaust is compulsory, and it is not banne
