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: National Parks Traveler Online
November 20, 2008
The National Park Service, working directly with the Presidential Inauguration Committee, is making elaborate preparations to host what may very well be the biggest crowd ever to gather in Washington, D.C.
On January 20 as many as four million people are expected to descend on the National Mall & Memorial Parks to witness Barack Obama's inauguration as the 44th President of the United States. Hordes of spectators will cram the National Mall to witness the swearing-in ceremony th
Source: BBC
November 23, 2008
A former RAF serviceman is hoping to set up a museum in the officers' mess of one the UK's oldest RAF bases.
RAF Sealand in Flintshire, shut in 2006, bringing to end an association with air force planes which stretched back to the World War I.
Now Carl Mann, who worked there until his retirement, is gathering support for a permanent museum on the site.
He said: "It has a long, important history that will simply be forgotten if we can't get a museum bui
Source: Sky News
November 23, 2008
It is believed to be more than 3,600 years old and experts say it is one of the most "enigmatic artefacts" in existence.
The Mitchell-Hedges Crystal Skull, better known as The Skull of Doom, is made from a block of clear quartz with a detachable jaw and is the size of a small head.
It has gone on show in Edinburgh as part of the Histories and Mysteries conference at the Hub in the city.
English adventurer Frederick Albert Mitchell-Hedges, describe
Source: Deutsche Welle
November 23, 2008
The windows are either broken or boarded up, the roof is leaking and the plaster is crumbling from the walls. But the monumental steel and concrete structure planned as a Nazi-era holiday complex has survived otherwise unscathed.
The gigantic building in the Baltic Sea resort of Prora on the island of Ruegen was part of Hitler's so-called "Strength Through Joy" program to keep Germans fit and healthy.
Never used by vacationers
It was to house 20,0
Source: AP
November 22, 2008
Americans reflected Saturday on the presidency of John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated 45 years ago, as once again a young, inspiring president is headed to the White House.
President-elect Barack Obama has often been compared for his lofty ideals and charisma to the late JFK, who was shot dead in Dallas, Texas in 1963.
But Obama's appeal and his historic election as the first African-American US president have many people worried about potential threats to his life.
Source: NYT
November 22, 2008
The thaw in the resentful relationship between the most powerful woman in the Democratic Party and her younger male rival began at the party’s convention this summer, when Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton gave such a passionate speech supporting Senator Barack Obama that his top aides leapt out of their chairs backstage to give her a standing ovation as she swept past....
Few are predicting that this new relationship born of mutual respect and self-interest will grow into a tight bond betwe
Source: Deutsche Welle
November 22, 2008
Hitler first outlined his Nazi euthanasia campaign, which would later be called Operation T4, in his book "Mein Kampf." Believed to have claimed 70,000 victims between January 1940 and August 1941 alone, the idea behind Operation T4 was disseminated through Nazi propaganda films depicting the mentally or terminally ill as "useless mouths to feed."
Financed by the German lottery, the university in Berlin and the state of Brandenburg's memorial trust, which is loca
Source: AP
November 20, 2008
No matter how careful he is, sooner or later President-elect Barack Obama is likely to make a bum nomination or two.
"It's unavoidable," says Paul Light, a New York University professor and expert on presidential transitions.
It may happen because a nominee has lied about his or her background to Obama's team, or because something that was dismissed as minor turns out to be a big deal.
Whatever the reason, "These things are likely to pop up a
Source: AP
November 21, 2008
With Iraqi Christians a threatened and dwindling minority, U. S. forces are safeguarding a 1,400- year-old monastery -- Iraq's most ancient -- for a time when peace, reconciliation and archeological detective work can occur.
St. Elijah's Monastery, with its main fortress-like structure looming atop a barren hillside, sits inside a sprawling U. S. military base. Its bloody history makes clear why the monastery needs protection. In 2003, it was damaged during the U. S.-led invasion of
Source: Brown Daily Herald (RI)
November 20, 2008
The shiny metal "torpedo" seemed out of place in the daylight of the Main Green. So too did the men and women gathered around it wearing ivy wreaths and carrying spice "offerings."
A standard-bearer marched to the beat of a snare drum as four young men carried the artifact on two support beams, as if carrying a ritual sacrifice to an altar.
The torpedo - in reality, a time capsule - was ceremoniously buried Wednesday morning beneath Rhode Island Ha
Source: FoxNews.com
November 21, 2008
A U.N. panel has urged the Chinese government to apologize to the victims of its 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square.
The Geneva-based Committee against Torture says China should also conduct an investigation into what happened around the Tiananmen Square protests and release any dissidents still being held.
In a 15-page report published Friday, the panel says torture and other forms of ill-treatment are still practiced by police and that othe
Source: Slate
November 21, 2008
Quite a bit. Every four years, Congress appropriates money to maintain and redecorate the 132-room executive mansion. (George W. and Laura Bush were allocated $100,000 for the president's second term.) For the living quarters, which are located on the top two floors, the first family has significant leeway. It usually falls to the president's wife to supervise paint jobs and to acquire new furniture, wall hangings, and bedding. If, however, the president's family wants to alter the appearance of
Source: http://www.wyff4.com
November 21, 2008
Bob Jones University issued a statement Thursday apologizing for the school's "failures" in policies toward race relations during its 81-year history.The Greenville, S.C., university did not admit black students until 1971. The school also maintained a prohibition on interracial dating between students until 2000. Bob Jones III, the grandson of the school's founder and namesake, announced the lifting of the interracial dating ban in an interview on CNN's Larry King program in March 20
Source: NYT
November 20, 2008
Lawmakers may yet be back next month, but for now the meager results show why lame-duck sessions often do not work. And why some historians and scholars of Congress, not to mention some of the most prominent lawmakers over history, think that calling such sessions lame is overly generous....
“Lame-duck sessions are poor excuses for sloppy, secretive legislation,” John B. Oakes wrote in an Op-Ed in The New York Times after the 1982 session. “The latest was not only unnecessary but de
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
November 21, 2008
Soviet spymasters tried to force a top British scientist to defect at during the height of the Cold War, he revealed today.
Sir Bernard Lovell, the man behind the pioneering Jodrell Bank observatory, said he had acted as a secret adviser to the British military and was prevented from leaving the Soviet Union during a landmark visit in the 1960s.
And the 95-year-old revealed in an interview that he secretly modified the design of the iconic Lovell radio telescope at the
Source: CNN
November 21, 2008
A U.S. soldier convicted of rape and murder two decades ago will be executed December 10 in the nation's first military execution since 1961, the Army said Thursday.
Pvt. Ronald Gray has been on the military's death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, since 1988. A court-martial panel sitting at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, unanimously convicted him of committing two murders and other crimes in the Fayetteville, North Carolina, area, and sentenced him to death.
Gray's exec
Source: Guardian (UK)
November 21, 2008
To the untrained eye the damage is barely visible. Yet within the handbound pages of books charting how Europeans travelled to Mesopotamia, Persia and the Mogul empire from the 16th century onwards, the damage caused by one Iranian academic to a priceless British Library collection is irreversible.
Leading scholars at the library are at a loss to explain why Farhad Hakimzadeh, a Harvard-educated businessman, publisher and intellectual, took a scalpel to the leaves of 150 books that
Source: BBC
November 21, 2008
The Europeana website was attracting more than 10 million hits an hour - more than double the number which had been anticipated.
The site includes paintings, photos, films, books, maps and manuscripts from 1,000 museums, national libraries and archives across Europe.
It is expected to reopen in December after technological improvements.
Source: AP
November 21, 2008
As Barack Obama considers whether to include former rival Hillary Clinton in his Cabinet, the president-elect is emulating his role model, Abraham Lincoln, who boldly put political adversaries in his Cabinet, hoping to forge a strong presidency through the heat of conflicting ideas.
But historians argue that Lincoln's model, described in the best-selling book "Team of Rivals," by Doris Kearns Goodwin, is a high-risk strategy for Obama, one that could alienate his allies an
Source: AP
November 21, 2008
SOFIA, Bulgaria – Archaeologists have unearthed an elaborately decorated 1,800-year-old chariot sheathed in bronze at an ancient Thracian tomb in southeastern Bulgaria, the head of the excavation said Friday. "The lavishly ornamented four-wheel chariot dates back to the end of the second century A.D.," Veselin Ignatov told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from the site, near the southeastern village of Karanovo...
The bronze-plated wooden chariot is decorated
