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: Mid-Hudson News Network
Apr 15, 2007
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. -- Westchester’s concept of having a museum at Sing Sing will get national attention in the new week when more than 5,000 public and private sector planners gather in Philadelphia for the convention of the American Planning Association.
The Sing Sing idea...will be the focus of a panel discussion that will include...officials from Philadelphia, who will talk about the positive economic effects realized by the city after a museum was created at the Eastern State Pe
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Apr 15, 2007
ATLANTA -- It was the kind of case that a big city gumshoe with better things to do wouldn't look twice at.
The deceased wasn't talking. There were no leads to speak of. No body. No witnesses. Nothing but a mammoth hunk of granite with the name "BALL" stamped on it, some old dates and a sentimental message worn away by Father Time...
Police found the grave marker Oct. 30 in Norcross [Georgia], ditched on the side of the road like an empty box of smokes.
Source: Observer
Apr 15, 2007
MADRID -- As Spain prepares to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the first mass terror bombing of a civilian population, the German and Italian attack on Guernica during the Spanish civil war, an extraordinary battle is taking place through the country's obituary columns.
It began with the decision last year by the family of Commander Virgilio Leret Ruiz, General Franco's first victim, to commemorate his death. It is a process that has brought back the language and the painful mem
Source: Observer
Apr 15, 2007
People living near a pagan statue that draws thousands of tourists every year to Northern Ireland's lakelands are threatening a campaign of civil disobedience amid concerns it could be moved to Belfast.
The Janus, which has stood in the Caldragh graveyard on Boa Island in Co Fermanagh since it was put up by the Celts more than 2,000 years ago, inspired the Nobel prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney to write the poem, 'January God'. Locals hold the 2ft tall figure, depicting a man on one
Source: Independent
Apr 15, 2007
It was the reality contest that pitted crumbling palaces and decaying bathhouses against dilapidated factories and abandoned mines.
BBC2's Restoration was an unlikely TV hit: a prime-time show focusing on architecture and conservation, which regularly drew massive audiences, and raised millions of pounds to rescue historic buildings at risk of demolition or collapse. But now, after just three series, the programme is to be axed, presenter Griff Rhys Jones said...
Initia
Source: Xinhua
Apr 15, 2007
Tens of thousands of Turks, waving national flags and chanting slogans, rallied in the capital Ankara on Saturday to voice their determinations to protect the secular republic...
Carrying a two-km-long Turkish flag, the participants shouted " Turkey is secular and will remain secular forever."
The rally came amid widespread concerns that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan will run for president in May.
The country's secularists fear that if Erdog
Source: Times (of London)
Apr 14, 2007
SYDNEY -- Laura Schneider, a New York teacher, is on her way to Alice Springs, the dust-dry town in the centre of Australia, pictured tranquil and agreeably English by the British writer Nevil Shute in his 1950 novel of love in the Outback. It is a tale and a setting that Ms Schneider finds so uplifting that she reads from A Town Like Alice five times year.
She is far from alone in her long admiration of Shute, who died 47 years ago. She will be joined in Alice Springs next w
Source: AP
Apr 14, 2007
JERUSALEM -- Felix Muller, 20, was born long after the Holocaust ended, but that doesn't diminish his sense of obligation to the victims.
"As a German, it's part of my history whether I want it or not," Muller said.
Last summer, he and two dozen other German volunteers arrived in Israel for a year of service through a group called Ot Hakapara, Hebrew for "Sign of Atonement," working at libraries, nursing homes and community centers around the country
Source: Times (of London)
Apr 14, 2007
How are Europeans to deal with the Iranians? And vice versa? Europeans have been considering this question since the beginning of written Western history 24 centuries ago. The conference of the Classical Association in Birmingham discovered surprising answers yesterday.
The crude neocon view is that Europeans are civilised and Persians barbarians. And that all that is needed to bring peace and civilisation to the Middle East is democracy. A series of papers on Herodotus argued that
Source: Times (of London)
Apr 14, 2007
PARIS -- Early one Monday morning this month Raymond Lansoy awoke to discover workers armed with pneumatic drills outside À La Pomponette restaurant in Montmartre.
“They were digging up the cobblestones and covering the road with asphalt,” he said in a tone of outrage.
The work was part of a €3 million (£2 million) development designed to turn Montmartre into the sort of green, car-free zone that councillors thought would appeal to tourists and to the wealthy young prof
Source: AP
Apr 14, 2007
PARIS —- Wars and weather have left few scars on Paris' Arc de Triomphe. Commissioned by Napoleon to celebrate his victories, the 15-story tower of bone-white stone stands as an eternal monument to French glory, a time when Europe trembled before this nation's might.
The national mood now, as France enters the final week before Sunday's presidential election, is far less exultant. To Roland Perrossier, whose great-great grandfather fought for Napoleon, the arch has become a symbol o
Source: New Zealand Herald (Auckland)
Apr 14, 2007
Captain Cook's landing site at Botany Bay is to Australians as Plymouth Rock is to Americans, according to some.
Historians say a plan to build a desalination plant close to where Captain Cook first landed in Botany Bay is an act of cultural vandalism.
Campaigners say the plan is the latest in a long line of ventures with which New South Wales has "wiped its bum" on the historic location -- Australia's birthplace -- where the Union flag was first hoisted in A
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
Apr 14, 2007
The East German secret police the Stasi ruled East Germany with a Big Brother like omnipresence until the Berlin Wall was knocked down in 1989.
That era of covert surveillance, spying and intrigue has been brought to life with the screening...of "The Lives of Others", the movie that won Best Foreign Film at this year's Academy Awards.
But a visit to Leipzig, now a blossoming city in the heart of the former East Germany, also allows visitors to experience just
Source: Times (of London)
Apr 14, 2007
Passenger lists from the Titanic can be seen online for the first time from today to mark the 95th anniversary of the disaster this weekend.
Documents recording the details of all who sailed on the ill-fated maiden voyage were previously kept under tight security at the National Archives, and could be viewed only under supervision.
But amateur historians and descendants of the 1,500 passengers and crew who died when the ship sank on April 15, 1912, can now read the hand
Source: Times (of London)
Apr 14, 2007
To howls of indignation from literary purists, a leading publishing house is slimming down some of the world’s greatest novels.
Tolstoy, Dickens and Thackeray would not have agreed with the view that 40 per cent of Anna Karenina, David Copperfield and Vanity Fair are mere “padding”, but Orion Books believes that modern readers will welcome the shorter versions.
The first six Compact Editions, billed as great reads “in half the time”, will go on sale
Source: Telegraph
Apr 14, 2007
The Duke of Devonshire's ownership of Ireland's most prolific salmon river is to be challenged by an angler in a landmark court case that evokes the historic tensions between the English aristocracy and the Irish.
Michael O'Shea will cite the 1215 Magna Carta signed by King John to argue that he has the right to fish the Blackwater as he attempts to overturn a poaching conviction.
His case will question the Devonshires' entitlement to the river, which is on the border o
Source: This Is Lancashire
Apr 13, 2007
Visitors to an East Lancashire battle re-enactment have been banned from wearing Nazi uniforms after a storm of protest from Jewish groups.
The 1940s Wartime Weekend has become one of the biggest events of its type in the country and attracts thousands of visitors each May.
But last year the Jewish community was left angered when visitors turned up dressed as Nazi officers.
Directors of the East Lancs Railway (ELR), which runs the event, have banned the uni
Source: Telegraph
Apr 13, 2007
A notoriously "secret" country property and its remarkable collection of furniture are to be sold for about £20 million, three years after a failed attempt to save them for the nation.
Little-known Dumfries House will go on the market tomorrow with 1,900 acres of land at offers of more than £6.8 million, while its Rococo furniture is expected to fetch more than £12 million at auction this summer.
The contents of the 18th century stately home, which has never b
Source: The Hindu (Chennai, India)
Apr 13, 2007
BAKU, Azerbaijan -- India and Azerbaijan are brainstorming ways to rediscover their centuries-old commercial and cultural bonds.
"For several reasons, we, in India, have not been conscious enough about our geography. The Silk Route linked us to the people in Central Asia and the Caspian Sea. We need to know that in order to build our future," Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh said here.
Mr. Ramesh is in Baku to sign an agreement on forming an India-
Source: Jerusalem Post
Apr 13, 2007
Pensioners' rights group Ken Lazaken called Thursday for a boycott of official Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremonies to protest the government's failure to sufficiently help the more than 70,000 Holocaust survivors who live in poverty in Israel.
"People should not participate in ceremonies to remember the dead, when really we should be remembering and helping those who are still living," Nathan Lavon, director of Ken Lazaken, said in an interview with The Jerusalem Post.
