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WASHINGTON - A damaged Torah, a centuries-old Bible and other rare documents important to Iraq's few remaining Jews were rescued from a flooded cellar in Baghdad, only to remain in limbo here. Their restoration, like so much else these days, awaits the emergence of a new Iraq. Historians at the National Archives, which preserves such priceless artifacts as the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, are examining the treasure trove of materials found in the basement of the headquarters for Saddam Hussein's secret police. The materials are in moderate to poor condition - they remained wet for several weeks after being...

How an Original Velvet Underground Acetate Wound Up in Portland (And Could Be the Most Expensive Record in the World!) Yard sales are like junior high dances. You show up full of anticipation, bump into a lot of people, and then leave disappointed. But in both cases, an ineffable sense of possibility spawns return, over and over. Maybe this time I'll slow dance with Tiffany Pfeiffer. Maybe this time I'll find a first edition of Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49. Maybe my life will change within the hour. And so earlier this year, with flickering expectation, Warren Hill...

 London March 28, 1999 UNITED STATES Albright's father 'took war loot to America'by Matthew Campbell, Washington A WEALTHY Austrian family is threatening legal action against Madeleine Albright, the American secretary of state, in an acrimonious row over a priceless collection of paintings and antiques that has its roots in the chaotic aftermath of the second world war. In a hitherto unpublicised dispute, descendants of Karl Nebrich, an Austrian industrialist, claim that Albright's father, Josef Korbel, a former Czech foreign ministry official who was Jewish, stole millions of dollars' worth of art and furniture from them, then fled with it...

Antiques Dealer Wants Bill of Rights Back Connecticut Antiques Dealer Will Fight to Reclaim Copy of Bill of Rights RALEIGH, N.C. March 29 — A Connecticut antiques dealer will fight to recover a document seized from him that North Carolina claims is its long-lost copy of the Bill of Rights, his attorney said Friday. Hugh Stevens, attorney for Wayne Pratt, also disputed federal and state authorities' contention that the document is the one stolen from the North Carolina statehouse during the Civil War. "Whatever the document is, and wherever it has been, its authenticity and ownership have yet to be...

....my front tire is sitting on the chalk line, and my eyes are riveted on the face of the flag man. He rolls up the flag, turns to look at us, and at once my world, my existence, is only this man. I'm electric in my total absorption of the flag man and there is nothing else -- the motorcycle and I are fused, an explosive device awaiting its trigger. I'm unconscious to all my senses except sight. Eye contact, sudden release....I regain consciousness about 50 feet from the starting line, now completely focused on the bike's performance...For the full...

PHILADELPHIA (AP) _ An antiques dealer was sentenced to a year in a halfway house Thursday and ordered to repay $830,000 for staging phony appraisals on the PBS series ``Antiques Roadshow'' and defrauding Civil War collectors. Russell Pritchard III, 39, pleaded guilty to making the bogus TV appraisals. He also admitted defrauding artifact owners by giving them low appraisals on items, then reselling them at much higher prices and pocketing the profit. According to prosecutors, Pritchard made between $800,000 and $1.5 million on the fraudulent transactions. He could have gotten up to 135 years in prison and more than $5.2...