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
Jan 22, 2009
WASHINGTON — Government watchdogs are cheering President Barack Obama's move to change how open records laws are interpreted as a sign of greater disclosure of agency information than during the Bush administration.
Obama's instruction to federal agencies Wednesday to be more responsive to requests made under the Freedom of Information Act is not the first time a president has pushed for wider release of information. The Carter and Clinton administrations had similar policies that c
Source: BBC
Jan 21, 2009
You would think, on meeting him, that Sameh Zakout has a contented life - a career in music, occasional trips abroad, the very embodiment of an Israeli Arab who has made the most of his opportunities.
Sameh's grandparents once lived in the Palestinian village of Isdud, just south of Tel Aviv.
But in 1948, they fled their home as refugees during the war that brought about Israel's creation.
Isdud was left in ruins and today its agricultural land is cultiv
Source: Time
Jan 21, 2009
City Bank of New York was founded in 1812 by a group of merchants hoping to fill the void left by the demise of the first Bank of the United States, the sort-of central bank whose charter Congress had allowed to expire the year before. City nearly went under in the Panic of 1837 but was bailed out by the country's richest man, fur magnate John Jacob Astor. Astor's associate Moses Taylor built City into a bulwark of sound finance--big capital reserves, stingy lending standards--that bankrolled th
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 21, 2009
BUENOS AIRES -- The Nazi doctor Josef Mengele is responsible for the astonishing number of twins in a small Brazilian town, an Argentine historian has claimed.
The steely hearted "Angel of Death", whose mission was to create a master race fit for the Third Reich, was the resident medic at Auschwitz from May 1943 until his flight in the face of the Red Army advance in January 1945.
His task was to carry out experiments to discover by what method of genetic qui
Source: BBC
Jan 21, 2009
A fresh attempt is to be made to reform a 308-year-old law which bars the monarch from marrying a Catholic.
Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris will present a bill to parliament in a bid to change the Act of Settlement.
He also wants to end the discrimination against female heirs to the throne, but his bill does not alter the requirement for the monarch to be a Protestant.
There have already been several bids to reform the law on the grounds it is outdated and discriminatory.
The 1701 Act of Set
Source: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/
Jan 21, 2009
In March 4, 1861, as President Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office, a woman now known as Grandma Foy stood in the crowd in Washington, D.C., wearing a black Chinese silk shawl, according to the McKain family story. More than 21/2 years later, on Nov. 19, 1863, she wore the shawl as she listened to Lincoln give his short but famous Gettysburg Address.
On Tuesday, Jan. 20, as President Obama took the oath of office, Bellingham [Washington] resident Debe McKain attended an inaugura
Source: David Leonhardt in the NYT
Jan 21, 2009
The recession of the early 1980s doesn’t have a catchy name, and almost half of Americans are too young to have any real memory of it. But it was terrible — qualitatively different from the mild recessions of 1990-91 and 2001.
The first big blow to the economy was the 1979 revolution in Iran, which sent oil prices skyrocketing. The bigger blow was a series of sharp interest-rate increases by the Federal Reserve, meant to snap inflation. Home sales plummeted. At their worst, they wer
Source: WaPo
Jan 21, 2009
[HNN: In its special inaugural edition the WaPo tells the story of the Caldwell family, tracing this local family's history through slavery and freedom. ]
As the great and sometimes heartbreaking flow of events swept around
the contours of this city, the Caldwells set themselves into the
portrait album of America. Figures pressed between the pages of
history.
One black American family: A mother and a father. Four daughters and a
son. Forebears who reach back to slavery, and gr
Source: NYT
Jan 21, 2009
Barack Obama’s Inaugural Address on Tuesday was a stark repudiation of the era of George W. Bush and the ideological certainties that surrounded it, wrapped in his pledge to drive the United States into “a new age” by reclaiming the values of an older one.
It was a delicate task, with Mr. Bush and Dick Cheney sitting feet from him as Mr. Obama, only minutes into his term as president, described the false turns and the roads not taken.
To read his words literally, Mr. Obama blamed
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 21, 2009
A dissident Vietnamese novelist has published an explosive novel with lurid claims about Ho Chi Minh's private life.
According to Duong Thu Huong, 61, whose works are banned but widely admired in her native country, the man the Vietnamese worship as "Uncle Ho" kept a mistress 40 years his junior who was murdered by Communist Party bosses.
"His companions were terrified it would damage his saint-like image," the author claims.
She also cl
Source: Foxnews
Jan 21, 2009
President Obama's executive order will still allow former presidents to have certain documents kept private, but they no longer may compel the National Archives to do so.
The executive order also makes clear that neither former vice presidents nor relatives of former presidents who have died have authority to keep records private.
Obama's action on Wednesday -- his first full day in office -- overturned an earlier order issued by George W. Bush that prompted a federal
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 21, 2009
The Nazi doctor Josef Mengele is responsible for the astonishing number of twins in a small Brazilian town, an Argentine historian has claimed.
The steely hearted "Angel of Death", whose mission was to create a master race fit for the Third Reich, was the resident medic at Auschwitz from May 1943 until his flight in the face of the Red Army advance in January 1945.
His task was to carry out experiments to discover by what method of genetic quirk twins were p
Source: CNN
Jan 21, 2009
Alfred Bouey, an 84-year-old African-American, still remembers the stories from his grandfather about the scars on his body from the beatings he took as a slave in the South.
Bouey, of Oak Park, Illinois, attended Tuesday's inauguration of President Obama. Words can't express his excitement and happiness about witnessing history.
A World War II veteran, he never thought he would live to see a black president in America.
Bouey grew up in Arkansas and saw rac
Source: CNN
Jan 21, 2009
WASHINGTON -- President Obama retook his oath of office Wednesday after Chief Justice John Roberts flubbed while delivering it at Tuesday's inauguration.
Roberts administered the oath the second time as well, according to the White House.
The move was aimed at dispelling any confusion that might arise from Tuesday's take -- in which "faithfully" was said out of sequence -- and erase any question that Obama is legally the president.
"We believ
Source: Politico
Jan 21, 2009
President Barack Obama got off to a quick start in his first full day in office, mixing ceremonial duties with his first official forays into domestic and foreign policy..
Perhaps most significantly, Obama underscored that a new administration had taken over the capital with a series of executive orders aimed at creating the open government he promised on the campaign trail.
Obama said the moves were aimed at helping to “restore that faith in government without which we
Source: AP
Jan 21, 2009
WASHINGTON –- Gone are the huge crowds for President Barack Obama's inauguration. Left behind is political junk fit for a museum.
Larry Bird and Harry Rubenstein, two curators from the National Museum of American History, collected dozens of objects, from hats and homemade signs to buttons and other paraphernalia, to tell the story of the first black president to future generations.
"You really felt that you were part of something that was bigger than yourself,&quo
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Jan 21, 2009
In a parting shot, the Bush administration's Justice Department shrugged off a San Francisco federal judge's order to make a classified document available to lawyers for an Islamic group challenging the legality of the outgoing president's secret wiretapping program.
National security officials, not judges, must decide whether private citizens - even those with security clearances - are entitled to see classified material, Justice Department lawyers said in a filing Monday night.
Source: Lee White at the website of the National Coalition for History (NCH)
Jan 21, 2009
On January 21, in one of his first official acts, President Barack Obama revoked the Bush administration’s Executive Order 13233 that severely limited access by the public to presidential records. Click here to see a copy of President Obama’s new executive order.
Source: New Scientist
Jan 21, 2009
An old glass jar inside a beaten up old safe at the bottom of a waste pit may seem an unlikely place to find a pivotal piece of 20th century history. But that's just where the first batch of weapons-grade plutonium ever made has been found - abandoned at the world's oldest nuclear processing site.
The potentially dangerous find was made at Hanford, Washington, the site of a nuclear reservation, established in 1943 to support the US's pioneering nuclear weapons program.
Source: Foxnews
Jan 21, 2009
Russia's military said Wednesday that an old Soviet-built nuclear-powered satellite has spewed fragments in orbit, but insisted they do not threaten the international space station or people on Earth.
The military's Space Forces said the decommissioned Cosmos-1818 satellite "partially fragmented" in July.
In 1978, the Soviet Cosmos-954 nuclear-powered satellite scattered radioactive debris over a lightly populated area of Northern Canada on its fiery re-entry,
