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: CNN
Jan 9, 2009
President-elect Barack Obama will invoke God when he takes the oath of office January 20, despite a lawsuit filed by atheist and non-religious groups, according to an attorney for Chief Justice John Roberts, who will administer the oath.
The groups have sued in federal court to block any mention of God during the inaugural ceremonies. Roberts was among those named in the suit.
Some chief executives have embellished the oath with "so help me God." It is not con
Source: NYT
Jan 9, 2009
Over the years, several presidents have been forced to ponder the delicate (and sometimes unpleasant) question of whether to move the in-laws into the White House.
Ulysses S. Grant shared space with his father-in-law, who grumbled and squabbled with other relatives, historians say. Harry S. Truman lived with his mother-in-law, who declared that she knew “dozens of men better qualified” to preside over the Oval Office.
On Friday, the transition team of President-elect Ba
Source: AFP
Jan 9, 2009
NICKNAMED "the Beast", Barack Obama's new drive is a hulking, snazzed-up upgrade from previous presidential limousines, and will give him a better view of his inaugural parade than his predecessor.
Photos of the unfinished Cadillac leaked on the internet showed a hefty customised behemoth, reportedly tough enough to withstand a rocket-propelled grenade - and some joked, even an asteroid.
But Cadillac spokesman David Caldwell promised that the finished product
Source: TheDailyBeast.com (summary of AP story)
Jan 9, 2009
Where does Cheney plan on spending his post-vice presidency? Fishing the Snake River, he told the Associated Press. Not, apparently, sitting in the dock at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. “I don't have any reason to believe that anybody in the agency did anything illegal," he said before mounting a spirited defense of waterboarding. "It's been used with great discrimination by people who know what they're doing and has produced a lot of valuable information and intelli
Source: Independent (UK)
Jan 9, 2009
The pope's minister for peace and justice was accused yesterday of speaking like a Holocaust denier after comparing Gaza to a "big concentration camp".
Cardinal Renato Martino, a veteran Vatican diplomat with years of experience as the Pope's delegate to the United Nations, told an interviewer for L'Avvenire, the daily paper of the Italian bishops, that "nobody" in the Israel-Hamas dispute "sees the interests of the other, but only their own". He contin
Source: CNN
Jan 9, 2009
The hemorrhaging of American jobs accelerated at a record pace at the end of 2008, bringing the year's total job losses to 2.6 million or the highest level in more than six decades.
A sobering U.S. Labor Department jobs report Friday showed the economy lost 524,000 jobs in December and 1.9 million in the year's final four months, after the credit crisis began in September.
The unemployment rate rose to 7.2% last month from 6.7% in November - its highest rate since Janu
Source: Reuters
Jan 9, 2009
LONDON -– The first official sequel to the original Winnie-the-Pooh books will appear in October, its publishers said on Saturday, more than 80 years after the honey-loving bear first appeared in print.
"Return to the Hundred Acre Wood" is the follow up to A.A. Milne's "Winnie-the-Pooh" and "The House At Pooh Corner," which were famously illustrated by E.H. Shepard.
The new book, published by Egmont Publishing in Britain and Penguin imprint
Source: AP
Jan 9, 2009
Gov. Rod Blagojevich was impeached Friday by Illinois lawmakers furious that he turned state government into a "freak show," setting the stage for an unprecedented trial in the state Senate that could get him thrown out of office.
The 114-1 vote in the Illinois House came exactly a month after Blagojevich's arrest on charges that included trying to sell President-elect Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat. The debate took less than 90 minutes, and not a single legislator rose
Source: BBC
Jan 9, 2009
A muddy river bank in the flat, watery landscape of southern Essex may seem an unlikely place to find one of the most important ships in scientific history.
But a combination of painstaking detective work and archaeology have convinced maritime historian Dr Robert Prescott that the banks of the River Roach near the village of Paglesham are the last resting place of HMS Beagle.
The historic ship will be forever associated with Charles Darwin who served as its naturalis
Source: Gettysburgtimes
Jan 9, 2009
The oldest building at the 6,000-acre Gettysburg Battlefield is getting a facelift following years of deterioration.
Gettysburg National Military Park crews began disassembling the historic Patterson House this week in preparation to restore the 146-year-old log home.
Historians believe that the building served as the headquarters of Union cavalry General Alfred Pleasonton during the latter stages of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863.
Source: Timesonline (UK)
Jan 9, 2009
Baltasar Garzón, a crusading champion of human rights, has claimed that Franco and 34 henchmen were guilty of the systematic killing or disappearance of at least 114,000 people during and after the civil war.
Among the victims were children of Republicans who were adopted by Franco sympathisers to prevent them coming under the influence of Marxism. Others, whose families fled abroad, were lured back to Spain under false pretences. “Child refugees were also kidnapped in France by th
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 9, 2009
Museums should be allowed to keep art looted by the Nazis according to Sir Norman Rosenthal, the former exhibitions secretary of the Royal Academy.
Despite being the child of Jewish refugees, Sir Norman said he thought "history is history" and descendants "distanced by two or more generations" from the works' original owners did not have an "inalienable right" to reclaim their forbearers' property.
In April 2000 a Spoliation Advisory Panel
Source: NYT
Jan 9, 2009
With the recession in full swing, the nation’s employers shed 524,000 jobs in December, the government reported Friday, and a rapidly deteriorating economy promised more big losses in the months ahead. December’s job losses brought the total for 2008 to 2.6 million, spanning a recession that started 12 months ago.
The unemployment rate jumped to 7.2 percent in December from 6.8 percent in November and 5 percent last April, when the recession was four months old and just beginning to
Source: BBC
Jan 9, 2009
Rwandan official Rose Kabuye has told the BBC she must return to France for her trial and prove her innocence.
The charges are in connection with the killing of former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana that triggered the 1994 genocide.
"Either I had to die with this charge on my head or face justice and prove myself innocent," she said.
She is one of nine senior Rwandan officials wanted over the shooting down of Habyarimana's plane.
Source: Times (UK)
Jan 9, 2009
Vladimir (Vova) Rubinstein was a pivotal figure in the BBC Monitoring Service, the organisation that, by listening to foreign radio broadcasts around the world, is a fundamental supplier of news to the Government and the media.
Nicknamed the “ears of Britain”, the Monitoring Service was set up in the dark days of the Second World War and refined during the Cold War. It was manned by an extraordinary collection of diverse and eccentric people, many of them intellectuals with origins
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 9, 2009
According to papers filed this week in Brooklyn federal court, a witnesses says John Favara was shot to death on orders of the outraged Gambino crime family chief and his body was dissolved in a barrel of acid. Authorities said a cooperating witness identified Charles Carneglia, a 62-year-old former mobster, as the perpetrator in the 1980 incident.
The court documents said Carneglia told another informant that acid was "the best method to use to avoid detection."
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Jan 9, 2009
The ongoing debate over Japan's version of historical events in its school textbooks focuses on the 1945 Battle of Okinawa in which the military were believed to have coerced civilians into mass suicides faced with certain defeat.
The government controversially decided two years ago to delete or rewrite references to the mass suicides in its national curriculum history textbooks resulting in a string of protests across Japan.
However, although education officials agreed
Source: http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk
Jan 9, 2009
AS DAWN broke more than 90 years ago over the North Sea a U-boat captain
gleefully ordered the destruction of the Scarborough fishing fleet.
Long after his daring attack in 1916 which sent a dozen trawlers to the
bottom of the North Sea, Karl Von Georg recalled:"What a massacre of
ships that was!"We steered back and forth firing at full speed with the bow gun. One
after another the ships hit at the water line, listed and plunged, until
all had vanished from the surface of the sea,
Source: NYT
Jan 8, 2009
They are warm, they have food and rest rooms, and they are full of highlights of American history. And now, for the early birds to the National Mall, they will be open a bit longer on Inauguration Day because of an agreement between the Presidential Inaugural Committee and the Smithsonian Institution.
The National Museum of American History and the Castle, the first Smithsonian building and home to the Smithsonian Information Center, will open at 8 a.m. on Jan. 20, two hours earlier
Source: International Herald Tribune
Jan 8, 2009
Bosnia's war crimes prosecutor indicted eight Bosnian Serbs on Thursday suspected of taking part in a massacre of more than 200 Muslims and Croats early in the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
The mass killing in central Bosnia occurred on Aug. 21, 1992, as part of an early wave of ethnic cleansing as rebel Bosnian Serb forces clashed with Bosnian Croats and Muslims during the break-up of the former Yugoslavia.
"Damir Ivankovic, Zoran Babic, Gordan Djuric, Milorad Radakovic, M
