News Briefs

Pre-Holocaust images

of Jewish life digitized

NEW YORK — A vast archive of photographs of pre-Holocaust Eastern European Jewish life is being made available to the public and researchers.

The International Center of Photography in New York and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington on Tuesday announced the joint creation of a digital database to provide access to photographer Roman Vishniac’s archive.

Vishniac was a Russian-born Jew who moved to Berlin in 1920. He documented the rise of Nazi power and its effect on Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe.

The database includes all of Vishniac’s 9,000 negatives, most of which have never before been printed or published.

The photography center and the museum are asking scholars and the public to help identify the people and places depicted in the images.

— The Associated Press

Filipino bishops vow

to fight Islamic State

MANILA, Philippines — Leaders of the Philippine Roman Catholic Church, Asia’s largest, vowed Thursday to counter extremist religions such as that espoused by Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq.

Archbishop Socrates Villegas, who heads the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, also asked the country’s bishops to collect donations for Christians who have been displaced by the militants and whose places of worship have been razed “by a godless rage with which no genuine religion can ever identify.”

Citing brutal actions by the Islamic State group, including the beheading of American journalist James Foley, Villegas said the Philippine Catholic church will “do our part … to counter the defacement of religion.”

Militants belonging to the Abu Sayyaf and another violent Muslim group in the southern Philippines have expressed support for the Islamic State group.

— The Associated Press

Evangelists lose

appeal in Arab protest

DETROIT — Police didn’t violate the First Amendment when they threatened to ticket Christian evangelists at an Arab street festival in suburban Detroit, a federal appeals court said Wednesday in a 2-1 decision that drew a pointed dissent from a judge who called it a “blueprint” to stifle speech.

Members of a group called Bible Believers were pelted with water bottles and rocks while carrying a pig’s head and telling Muslims they were “sick” and would “burn in hell” for their beliefs.

Dearborn is the center of southeastern Michigan’s Middle Eastern community, which is one of the largest in the United States. Roughly 150,000 people in the area trace their roots to the Arab world. It includes Muslims and Christians.

Wayne County authorities said they were concerned about unrest and threatened to ticket the evangelists unless they left the Dearborn fair in June 2012. They walked away but were subsequently ticketed for traveling in a van without a license plate.

“The video from the 2012 festival demonstrates that (evangelists’) speech and conduct intended to incite the crowd to turn violent. … Although robustly guarded by the First Amendment, religious conduct remains subject to regulation for the protection of society,” the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said. The ruling applies throughout the 6th Circuit — Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee.

— The Associated Press

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