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
Nov 10, 2008
On the day that President-elect Barack Obama visited the White House, a new national poll illustrates the daunting challenges he faces when it becomes his home next year.
Only 16 percent of those questioned in a new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Monday say things are going well in the country today. That's an all-time low. Eighty-three percent say things are going badly, which is an all-time high....
The all-time low on the public's mood may have some
Source: Bloomberg News
Nov 10, 2008
- Barack Obama, elected president as an agent of change, is building his new team with old hands from the Clinton administration.
His first appointment, chief of staff, went to Rahm Emanuel, an Illinois representative and veteran of the last Democratic White House. Leading Obama's transition team is John Podesta, who was President Bill Clinton's chief of staff.
Obama's most dramatic step would be to name New York Senator Hillary Clinton, his defeated rival for the Democ
Source: WaPo
Nov 10, 2008
The long-awaited U.S. Capitol Visitor Center, $621 million and six years in the making, was unveiled this morning in all its marble, sandstone and historic splendor.
The complex, which officials stressed was built for present and future generations, was opened for a series of press tours and will not open to the public until Dec. 2, when a gala open house will be held.
The three-level center, built completely underground adjacent to the east front of the Capitol, includ
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 10, 2008
Mrs Merkel is said to be furious with the choice of Tuesday's venue by Mr Sarkozy, with Verdun the site of arguably the most controversial battles in military history, with the Germans in particular portrayed as acting like industrialised killers.
British officials have meanwhile been left wondering why an exclusively Franco-German battlefield was chosen, rather than an equally evocative site like the Somme.
Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall are due to be amo
Source: BBC
Nov 10, 2008
The money is part of the $1.5bn Libya paid into a US bank account in October.
Under a deal reached with the US in August, Libya agreed to compensate the victims but did not accept responsibility for the attacks.
The US has agreed to pay $300m in compensation to families of victims of retaliatory US air strikes in Libya.
The agreement between the US and Libya was seen as part of Tripoli's attempts to improve its diplomatic relations following decades of i
Source: BBC
Nov 10, 2008
A University of Southampton expert examined Wilson's changing use of language while at the dispatch box.
The findings point to a possible decline in his mental function during his final months in office.
Researcher Dr Peter Garrard suggests this may have contributed to Wilson's decision to resign in April 1976.
The motives behind Wilson's resignation, which came as a surprise to most people, have long been a source of controversy.
Dr Garrar
Source: BBC
Nov 10, 2008
Gen Wladyslaw Sikorski will be exhumed as part of a inquiry to decide whether his death in a plane crash in Gibraltar in 1943 was an accident or murder.
A British investigation ruled that it was an accident, but some historians in Poland believe Gen Sikorski died as a result of foul play.
Poland's president and prime minister are backing the current inquiry.
The general's body will be exhumed in two weeks from the crypt of Krakow Cathedral, where it lies
Source: Times (UK)
Nov 10, 2008
He is the most pilloried military leader in British history, caricatured as a butcher and a bungler who sent hundreds of thousands of men over the top to their deaths.
Now a major new biography pins a further damning indictment on Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig: late into the final year of the First World War, it argues, he was agitating for a compromise peace that would have left Germany as the real winner of the war.
According to Dr J. P. Harris, a senior lecturer i
Source: BBC
Nov 9, 2008
The full extent of a hillfort likened to an Iron Age "Millennium Stadium" has been uncovered by investigators.
Gaer Fawr hillfort at Guilsfield, near Welshpool, Powys, is effectively hidden by woodland, making it impossible to appreciate the scale of it.
Detailed survey by the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales produced a computer model of the site which dates from around 800BC.
The fort features in the BBC Wales pro
Source: USA Today
Nov 9, 2008
Apocalypto fans might be forgiven for thinking the fabled collapse of the ancient Maya, the retreat of a civilization from pyramids and ceremonial centers across Central America from 800 to 1000 A.D., involved all sorts of cataclysmic events, war, famine and devastation. Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed detailed how environmental disasters might be to blame, a popular scholarly explanation for the Maya collapse.
"These models suggest that as ecosystem
Source: AP
Nov 9, 2008
Legend says the afterlife for ancient Mayas was a terrifying obstacle course in which the dead had to traverse rivers of blood, and chambers full of sharp knives, bats and jaguars.
Now a Mexican archaeologist using long-forgotten testimony from the Spanish Inquisition says a series of caves he has explored may be the place where the Maya actually tried to depict this highway through hell.
The network of underground chambers, roads and temples beneath farmland and jungl
Source: BBC
Nov 9, 2008
Prince Charles may have only recently bought his first home in Wales, but its royal connections go back centuries, an historian has discovered.
The original owner of Llwynywermod in Carmarthenshire was related to the second wife of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn.
Mark Baker, of Prestatyn, Denbighshire, unravelled the history of what was once one of Wales' finest homes.
A Royal Home in Wales - Llwynywermod is being published to coincide with Prince Charles's 60th b
Source: AP
Nov 9, 2008
Chancellor Angela Merkel is calling on Germans to stand together against racism and anti-Semitism as the nation marks the 70th anniversary of the Nazi pogrom known as "Kristallnacht" or "Night of Broken Glass."
Merkel has stressed that it is not enough to remember the events of November 9, 1938 through memorials and ceremonies but "we must always think how it was that it could come to this singular event, the Holocaust."
The chancellor is t
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
Nov 9, 2008
A complete set of the original construction plans for the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz have been found in a Berlin flat, according to Germany's Bild newspaper.
It printed three architect's drawings on yellowing paper from the batch of 28 pages of blueprints it obtained.
One has an 11.66 metre by 11.20 metre room marked "Gaskammer" (gas chamber) that was part of a "delousing facility".
No one from the federal government's archives was imm
Source: Times (UK)
Nov 9, 2008
The story of an Anglo-Chinese couple who met at Oxford University and survived purges and imprisonment to become eminent translators of the classics has become a surprise hit among Chinese readers.
It is also the tale of a lifelong love between Gladys Tayler, the first graduate in Chinese from Oxford, and Yang Xianyi, whose wealthy family sent him to study there in the 1930s. The two returned to China and stayed on as admirers of the revolution after most foreigners left in 1949, t
Source: NYT
Nov 8, 2008
Within days of his inauguration, as Barack Obama and his family begin to feel at home in the White House, Malia and Sasha will perhaps be scampering about the mansion’s staircases, bedrooms and formal public rooms.
As appealing as the prospect of that scene is, it is also a poignant reminder of how long it took for African-Americans to feel they had an equal place in that home.
In a pre-election conference call, Mr. Obama referred to the powerful symbolism of his daught
Source: NYT
Nov 8, 2008
Where will 2008 fit into this collective conceit? Our autumn of disintegrating stock markets, disappearing credit and depressing unemployment numbers can not reasonably be compared to 1929 and its aftermath. Not really. Not yet. But as traders exude panic and worried Americans read their 401(k) statements and wonder when this equities elevator reaches the basement and how much their new president will be able to do about it, popular evocations of that distant year grow louder and more insistent.
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 8, 2008
Now, new files released from Broadmoor high security hospital will provide tantalising new evidence that could finally help to solve Britain's most notorious unsolved murder case.
Among the patients whose files are to be disclosed, as the psychiatric hospital opens its archives to public view for the first time, is Thomas Hayne Cutbush, who was identified at the time as a leading suspect in the killing and mutilation of at least 11 women in the East End of London between 1888 and 18
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 8, 2008
Sarah Palin's attacks on Barack Obama's patriotism provoked a spike in death threats against the future president, Secret Service agents revealed during the final weeks of the campaign.
The Republican vice presidential candidate attracted criticism for accusing Mr Obama of "palling around with terrorists", citing his association with the sixties radical William Ayers.
The attacks provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling &quo
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Nov 8, 2008
Now, for the first time since the soldiers moved out, archaeologists have excavated an extensive network of the tunnels, near the Belgian town of Ypres.
The survey of the dugout, named Vampire, has shed fascinating new light on the experiences of the tens of thousands of soldiers who lived in similar subterranean workings, from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier, with dozens of poignant items of everyday life recovered.
After unearthing the entrance to the original sha
