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: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 19, 2009
Barack Obama will call on Americans to replace the "anything goes" culture of recent years with a new "era of responsibility" in his inaugural address.
Aides said the President-Elect's first words as president would hark back to John F Kennedy's plea to "ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country".
Rahm Emanuel, who will be chief of staff in the new White House, said: "We need that culture of resp
Source: Guardian (UK)
Jan 19, 2009
A century after Sir Ernest Shackleton conceded "it was better to be a living donkey than a dead lion" and abandoned hopes of becoming the first explorer to reach the south pole, three descendants of the explorer and his team successfully completed his mission yesterday.
Nearly three months after setting off on the 900-mile journey, Henry Worsley, a descendant of Shackleton's skipper, Frank Wild; Henry Adams, great grandson of Shackleton's number two Jameson Boyd-Adams; and
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Jan 18, 2009
The controversy over one of the most notorious spy scandals in British history will be reignited later this year with the publication of the memoirs of Sir Anthony Blunt, the art adviser to the Queen who was exposed as a Russian agent.
Blunt's account of his role as the 'fourth man' in the Cambridge spy ring – which included Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and Kim Philby – will be revealed in July.
He died in 1983 and his memoirs were locked up in the British Library the fo
Source: Chicago Tribune
Jan 18, 2009
SIU loses archives to Mississippi State University
The University of Virginia has Thomas Jefferson, Columbia University has Alexander Hamilton. And for more than 40 years, Southern Illinois University had Ulysses S. Grant.
But that honor came to an unceremonious end last month, when the Carbondale campus was forced to relinquish the world's largest collection of Grant papers.
Following a nearly yearlong conflict with the school, the Ulysses S. Grant Associa
Source: The Media Line news agency
Jan 18, 2009
The Iraqi Interior Ministry accused security companies working with the American military forces of attempting to smuggle out unique archeological artifacts, stating its concern that Babylonian-era Torah manuscripts were smuggled to Israel, the London-based daily Al-Hayyat reported.
Iraq is searching for over 9,400 artifacts that were lost or stolen since the start of the American-led invasion in May 2003.
Among these precious artifacts are Babylonian-era Torah manuscri
Source: Philadelphia Inquirer
Jan 18, 2009
The Civil War's H.L. Hunley has been recovered, but it's giving up its secrets only grudgingly.
It could be one of the nation's oldest cold-case files: What happened to eight Confederate sailors aboard the H.L. Hunley after it became the first submarine in history to sink an enemy warship?
Their hand-cranked sub rammed a spar with black powder into the Union blockade ship Housatonic off Charleston on a chilly winter night in 1864 but never returned.
Its f
Source: Editor & Publisher
Jan 18, 2009
In a remarkable statement one day before the birthday holiday for Martin Luther King Jr. -- and two days before the inauguration of Barack Obama -- the Meridian (Miss.) Star has, in an editorial, offered an apology for its past coverage of civil rights issues.
It closed: "There was a time when this newspaper – and many others across the south -- acted with gross neglect by largely ignoring the unfairness of segregated schools, buses, restaurants, washrooms, theaters and other
Source: Independent (UK)
Jan 18, 2009
The most complete ancient Greek ship ever found – which is being painstakingly pieced back together by marine archaeology experts in Portsmouth – is shown here as it would probably have looked when it sailed around the Greek islands at the time of Homer.
Discovered in silt off the coast of Sicily, the vessel is believed to be around 2,500 years old. It arrived in boxes at the Mary Rose Centre in Portsmouth Harbour last week for what is expected to be a 10-year programme of preserva
Source: Foxnews
Jan 18, 2009
Bush bashers say they aren't going to let the inauguration of Barack Obama get in the way of their effort to have the president prosecuted on war crimes.
Activists who have spent years protesting President Bush admit their chances are slim of seeing Bush or any members of his administration face legal recourse for what they say are "crimes against humanity."
Several activists hoped to squeeze out a few parting shots against the outgoing president in the run-u
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 18, 2009
It is hardly the most flattering of associations, particularly for a prime minister, but Gordon Brown has been compared rather unfavourably to the disgraced former US president Richard Nixon by the screenwriter who immortalised them both in film.
Peter Morgan, who wrote the film Frost/Nixon and also penned Brown's character in The Deal, noticed shared personality traits between the two men. He says: "They are people who are hard to like, people who have complicated emotional i
Source: Washington Post
Jan 18, 2009
By David Maraniss
Barack Obama saw his future home for the first time a quarter-century ago. He was a year out of Columbia, working in Harlem as a community organizer, when he rode to Washington with a scrum of college undergraduates protesting proposed cuts in student aid.
After a long day on Capitol Hill, they walked west along the Mall, then circled around to Pennsylvania Avenue and paused in front of the White House. Beyond the fence, past the northwest gate, lived
Source: AFP
Jan 18, 2009
WASHINGTON -— Moments after Barack Obama delivers his first address as the new US president on Tuesday, a slight, bespectacled woman will take his place at the podium and read the world a poem.
For a spellbinding pause in time, Elizabeth Alexander, 46, will step out of the shadows of the rarified world of contemporary poetry and before millions in Washington and abroad deliver a poem she is composing for the occasion.
It will only be the fourth time in US history that a
Source: Los Angeles Times
Jan 18, 2009
For years, Robert Searcy tried to forget serving as a Tuskegee Airman during World War II. Sometimes, he thought of his service in the segregated military as two years, 10 months and 27 days lost...
He never bothered to join national airmen's groups, skipped their award ceremonies and movie premieres and stuffed his military honors away in a dog-eared envelope.
Then last month, President-elect Barack Obama invited the more than 300 surviving airmen to his inauguration.
Source: New York Daily News
Jan 18, 2009
Inauguration revelers are unlikely to storm the White House as President Obama looks on this Tuesday. The vice president will surely not show up drunk. And hopefully, Obama won't catch pneumonia and die.
Consider these inaugural low-lites from our nation's history.
1841 - In a driving sleet storm, a coatless William Henry Harrison delivered the longest inaugural address ever - 8,444 words, spanning one hour and 45 minutes. A month later, he died of pneumonia, setting an
Source: New York Post
Jan 18, 2009
All that's required by the Constitution for the president-elect to lose the "-elect" is the swearing of a 35-word oath of loyalty. Over the centuries, however, the ceremony has become encrusted with tradition and precedent. "Today's inaugurations are about 50 times as elaborate as they used to be," says Paul F. Boller Jr., emeritus professor of history at Texas Christian University and author of the book "Presidential Inaugurations." "The Founding Fathers wante
Source: CNN
Jan 18, 2009
As George W. Bush spends his final days in office, a national poll suggests that two-thirds of Americans see his presidency as a failure.
Sixty-eight percent of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released Sunday said that Bush's eight years in the White House were a failure, with 44 percent saying this was because of his personal shortcomings and 22 percent blaming the failure on circumstances beyond his control.
Thirty-one percent said they consider
Source: WaPo
Jan 18, 2009
ABOARD THE INAUGURAL TRAIN, Jan. 17 -- On the final leg of a two-year road trip, Barack Obama rode into Washington on Saturday in an antique caboose with the contented look of a man convinced he was arriving at his rightful destination.
A slow-rolling special Amtrak train carrying the president-elect, his family and his closest friends and advisers departed Philadelphia at noon and pulled into Union Station 6 1/2 hours later. It was part of the journey that will take him to the Whit
Source: Deutsche Welle
Jan 17, 2009
In a new project known as "Zeitungszeugen," copies of German newspapers from the 1930s and 1940s are published in a weekly series aimed at schools and the general public.
The first issue of reprints begins with the day that Adolf Hitler was elected German chancellor on Jan. 30, 1933. "Reichskanzler Hitler," reads the headline.
Intended for educational purposes, the facsimiles are annotated by German historians and juxtaposed with texts published by
Source: IHT
Jan 17, 2009
When John Beyrle, the new American ambassador to Moscow, appeared on a Russian radio show shortly after Russia's five-day war with Georgia, the questions he got were predictably in-your-face. Is Washington planning to rearm Georgia? Is it true that the United States is sneaking weapons into Georgia disguised as humanitarian aid?
And then: Is it true that your father was a Soviet soldier?
The answer, which Beyrle delivered on the air in flawless Russian, has to be one of
Source: Newsweek
Jan 17, 2009
Barack Obama's ascension to the presidency won't end racism, but it does mean race is no longer the dominant issue in American politics. Instead, over the coming decades, class will likely constitute the major dividing line in our society—and the greatest threat to America's historic aspirations. This is a fundamental shift from the last century. Writing in the early 1900s, W.E.B. DuBois observed, "The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line." Developments in the e
