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: BBC
Jan 21, 2009
Britain is out of step with governments around the world who have compensated nuclear test veterans who fell ill, the High Court has heard.
Benjamin Browne QC, representing 1,000 ex-servicemen, said science has made a link between health and their role in the 1950s tests in the South Pacific.
At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, Britain carried out a series of nuclear weapons tests in mainland Australia, the Montebello islands off the west Australian coast and
Source: IHT
Jan 21, 2009
In his Inaugural Address, President Barack Obama quoted not Abraham Lincoln or the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whom he has often referenced in his speeches, but George Washington, speaking to his bedraggled troops during the darkest days of the Revolutionary War, when, as Obama put it, "The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood."
The "father of our nation," the new president said, "ordered these words be read to the people: 'Let it be to
Source: Telegraph(UK)
Jan 21, 2009
Barack Obama has applied to have military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay suspended as he got straight down to work after his historic inauguration.
Hours after attending a series of inaugural balls, the new President headed for the Oval Office where he issued a request to halt proceedings in 21 pending cases including one relating to the 9/11 attacks.
Mr Obama was expected to launch straight into tackling his top military and economic challenges, in the hope of getting hi
Source: WaPo
Jan 21, 2009
The presidential oath of office is required of a new president before he can execute his powers, and the Constitution is clear that its 35 words must be spoken exactly.
Which is what makes the oath President Obama took yesterday so interesting. It might be that the more than 1 million spectators didn't actually witness Obama being sworn in.
Because of a noticeable gaffe by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., Obama transposed the words. He should have said he will "f
Source: AP
Jan 21, 2009
Waving cardboard red, white and blue "W"s, thousands welcomed George W. Bush and his wife on Tuesday to their post-presidential home in Texas.
"The presidency was a joyous experience, but as great as it was, nothing compares with Texas at sunset," Bush said to cheers from the crowd of about 25,000 as former first lady Laura Bush stood at his side. "Tonight I have the privilege of saying six words that I have been waiting to say for a while — it is good to be
Source: AP
Jan 21, 2009
The official Chinese translation of President Barack Obama's inauguration speech was missing his references to communism and dissent, while a live broadcast on state television Wednesday quickly cut away to the anchor when the topic was mentioned.
The comments by the newly installed U.S. president veered into politically sensitive territory for China's ruling Communist Party, which maintains a tight grip over the Internet and the entirely state-run media. Beijing tolerates little di
Source: Independent (UK)
Jan 21, 2009
British passengers on the Titanic died in disproportionate numbers because they queued politely for lifeboats while Americans elbowed their way on, an Australian researcher believes.
David Savage, a behavioural economist at the Queensland University of Technology, studied four 20th-century maritime disasters to determine how people react in life and death situations. He concluded that, on the whole, behaviour is influenced by altruism and social norms, rather than a "survival o
Source: University of Liverpool
Jan 20, 2009
Previously unpublished medieval records of the English government of Aquitaine are to be made available online by historians at the University of Liverpool.
The Gascon Rolls are the single most important source of information about the ancient administration located in the south-western France. The documents relate to the period between the mid-13th and the mid-15th centuries when Aquitaine existed as an English duchy and tensions over its control culminated in the outbreak of the H
Source: CNN
Jan 20, 2009
Ann Nixon Cooper craned her neck and leaned her head forward. On the television set across the room, Barack Obama moved forward and put his hand on the Bible.
At 107 years old, Cooper said she always believed she might live to see a black man sworn in as president of the United States.
Ann Nixon Cooper celebrated her 107th birthday last week. The "107" charm necklace she had on for this day was given to her by Andrew Young, the former U.S. ambassador to the U.
Source: The Argus
Jan 20, 2009
When staff at Wakehurst Place dredged a pond to encourage more wildlife to the site, they only expected to find leaves and silt.
But instead they discovered wartime relics dropped by soldiers based at the site ahead of the D-Day landings.
The historic finds at the gardens in Ardingly, near Haywards Heath, were discovered when work was carried out on the pond.
They are believed to have been thrown or dropped into the water by British and Canadian soldiers
Source: Politico.com
Jan 20, 2009
The new White House website debuted Tuesday with several surprisingly candid biographies of the nation’s presidents and first ladies.
The site puts a journalistic spin on previous presidents, assessing their weaknesses and strengths and wavering between critical and kind.
Consider a few.
Why Jimmy Carter was a one-term president: “Jimmy Carter aspired to make Government 'competent and compassionate,' responsive to the American people and their expectations. His a
Source: AP
Jan 20, 2009
A copy of the Magna Carta is the centerpiece of a new exhibition at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley.
The exhibition runs Jan. 22 to June 20 and will include scenes from life in England in 1215, the year the Magna Carta was recorded.
Source: NYT
Jan 20, 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. Ob
Source: WaPo
Jan 20, 2009
Barack Obama takes office today with a realistic prospect of joining the ranks of history's most powerful presidents.
The more familiar observation, that he confronts daunting trials, enhances that prospect. Emergencies have always brought commensurate new authority for the presidents who faced them, not only because the public demanded action but also because rival branches of government went along.
Obama arrives with a rare convergence of additional strengths, some of
Source: Spiegel Online
Jan 20, 2009
The city of Berlin has long been trying to decide what to do with the monumental Tempelhof airport, built in the heart of the city by the Nazis. Some of the most recent proposals include a 1,000 meter mountain and a gigantic red-light district.
"The mother of all airports" is how star architect Sir Norman Foster once described Berlin's Tempelhof airport. Visitors to the site might agree. Built by the Nazis as the entry point to Hitler's never realized Third Reich capital G
Source: History Today
Jan 20, 2009
In 1925, the American anthropologist Alfred Louis Kroeber (1876-1960) discovered a series of ‘trophy heads’ at six different sites in the region on the southern coast of Peru at the heart of the Nazca civilization, which flourished from approximately the first to the eighth centuries AD. The lips of the heads were sewn together with cactus spines and all the heads featured a hole in the centre of the forehead through which a carrying rope was inserted. Their meaning has remained a myth, however,
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 20, 2009
Heavy rains have damaged part of Peru's famous Nazca lines, depositing desert clay and sand on top of three fingers of a geoglyph shaped like a pair of hands.
Culture Institute said that water from the unusually heavy rains washed off the nearby Pan-American highway had pushed sand and clay onto part of the site on Sunday.
The institute plans to clear the material and restore the glyph, Ms Olaechea said.
Fully visible only from the sky, they are one of P
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 20, 2009
Englishmen aboard the Titanic were less likely to survive than their American counterparts because of their good manners, a new study suggests.
They may have insisted that lifeboat places were given to "women and children first" and queued for a place while others made saving their own lives the priority, it is believed.
English people were seven per cent less likely to survive the 1912 disaster than others on board, according to the study. By contrast, Ameri
Source: CNN
Jan 19, 2009
Scientists hailed Tuesday a 47-million-year-old fossil of an ancient "small cat"-sized primate as a possible common ancestor of monkeys, primates and humans.
Scientists say the fossil, dubbed "Ida," is a transitional species, living around the time the primate lineage split into two groups: A line that would eventually produce humans, primates and monkeys, and another that would give rise to lemurs and other primates.
The fossil was formally named Da
Source: UPI
Jan 19, 2009
Every new president of the United States wants his inaugural to be a "renewal of hope," but true "renewal of hope" inaugurals aren't that common: President-elect Barack Obama's will be the first in 28 years since Ronald Reagan took office in 1981.
That is because true "renewal of hope" inaugurals can only occur when they succeed outgoing failed presidencies, and there have been six of them in the past century. Barack Obama's will be the first "rene
