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: Times (UK)
November 5, 2008
She had dinner with Bobby Kennedy. Nat King Cole came to her parties. Martin Luther King sent her a telegram when her husband died and she has photographs of herself with his late wife Coretta on her sideboard.
In the early hours of yesterday morning, at the age of 106, she beat her personal best - Barack Obama singled out Ann Nixon Cooper for praise in his acceptance speech to hundreds of thousands of ecstatic supporters in Chicago.
The President-elect spoke of his adm
Source: CNN
November 5, 2008
The Rev. Martin Luther King is looking down on the United States, smiling, Otis Sutton said Wednesday.
"That's what he wanted. He'd been preaching that all along," Sutton, 78, said of the nation electing its first African-American president.
Sutton, who has worked on and off at the historic Busy Bee Cafe in Atlanta, Georgia, since it opened in 1947, was baptized by the civil rights icon's father, King Sr. He remembers playing pick-up football games in a
Source: Newsweek
November 5, 2008
The good news for President-elect Barack Obama: following George W. Bush is only slightly harder than following Jane Fonda at a Veterans of Foreign Wars rally. The bad news: compared with governing, campaigning is easy.
As much as Obama may want to turn the page and make good on his change mantra during the first hundred days, he might take a moment to read about the Hoover-Roosevelt transition of 1932-33. Or peruse tales of the clumsy Clinton start after the 1992 election. The peri
Source: St. Louis Today
November 4, 2008
With an outdated kitchen and living space that measures only about 900 square feet, the modest house at 4420 Ohio Street isn't your typical $400,000 listing. It's what lies beneath the home that excites lovers of St. Louis history, or, in this case, prehistory.
The house sits on Sugar Loaf Mound, the city's last remaining link with the native people who lived here centuries before 1764, when Auguste Chouteau and a band of Creoles landed at the river's edge.
There once
Source: Reuters
November 5, 2008
The Vatican returned a small fragment of the Parthenon Marbles to Greece on Wednesday on a one-year loan, fuelling calls for the British Museum to hand back its own priceless sculptures from the ancient temple.
The loan of the fragment, one of three in the Vatican Museum's vast collection of antiquities, follows a request for its return by Greece's late Orthodox Archbishop Christopoulos at a meeting with Pope Benedict in 2006.
In recent years Greece has stepped up its
Source: Deutsche Welle
November 5, 2008
Nearly 70 years after the Nazis' infamous 1938 pogrom against the Jews, German lawmakers reaffirmed Germany's commitment to combating anti-Semitism. But the debate revealed deep party rifts.
Condemning anti-Semitism is something nearly all German politicians agree on, regardless of party ties. And on Tuesday, Nov. 4 -- five days prior to the anniversary of the Night of Broken Glass pogrom -- members from all parliamentary fractions signed a declaration emphasizing Germany's commitme
Source: BBC
November 5, 2008
What should be done with objects from antiquity, when their provenance is uncertain?
From the debate over the British Museum's Elgin Marbles, to the conviction of art dealer Giacomo Medici in 2004 for selling millions of pounds worth of stolen Italian antiquities on the international market, curators face a minefield when acquiring new objects.
Now, the director of the Art Institute in Chicago, James Cuno, has argued that we should not waste time debating what to do wit
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 5, 2008
The grave, which also held 50 tortoise shells, a leopard pelvis and a human foot, is thought to be one of earliest burial sites of a shaman on archeological record and is the first of its kind found in the Middle East, said Leore Grosman, the archeologist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who led the excavation.
She said that the precise way the shaman, who was about 45 at the time of her death, was buried and the type of objects buried with her suggests her high standing in th
Source: NYT
November 4, 2008
No president since before Barack Obama was born has ascended to the Oval Office confronted by the accumulation of seismic challenges awaiting him. Historians grasping for parallels point to Abraham Lincoln taking office as the nation was collapsing into Civil War, or Franklin D. Roosevelt arriving in Washington in the throes of the Great Depression.
The task facing Mr. Obama does not rise to those levels, but that these are the comparisons most often cited sobers even Democrats rejo
Source: Telegraph (UK)
November 5, 2008
The previously unseen photographs were taken by a high ranking Nazi officer who attended the ceremony at Compiegne in Northern France.
Hitler is shown at the peak of his confidence. In one of the photos Goering is seen shaking Hitler's hand. In others he can be seen inspecting a group of high ranking German officers.
They are being auctioned in Ludlow, Shrops.
Richard Westwood-Brookes, Historical Documents Expert from Mullock's Auctioneers, said: "The
Source: Daily Mail (UK)
November 4, 2008
They rode 'into the jaws of Death, into the mouth of Hell', wrote Tennyson in his poem commemorating the suicidal Charge of the Light Brigade.
Now a remarkable account from one of the soldiers involved in the carnage has surfaced to provide a graphic insight into one of the most glorious failures in British military history.
Private James Olley, who was just 16 at the time of the Crimean War charge, described how he fought on despite being shot in the eye and having h
Source: BBC
October 30, 2008
A few dozen miles south of Berlin, Germany, in the province of Brandenburg, a narrow tree-lined road weaves across scenic meadows and lake-side villages.
Near the town of Kummersdorf, a complex of old brown buildings resembling military barracks stands at the intersection of a seemingly abandoned railway line.
Right across from it, a barricaded road made of rough concrete blocks cuts through the thick pine forest.
As it curves into the wilderness, strange r
Source: National Geographic News
November 3, 2008
What may be the oldest known Hebrew text, found on a hilltop above the valley where David is said to have battled Goliath, could lend historical support to some Bible stories, archaeologists say.
The 3,000-year-old pottery shard with five lines of text was found during excavations of the Elah Fortress, the oldest known biblical-period fortress, which dates to the tenth century B.C.
It is the most important archaeological discovery in Israel since the Dead Sea Scrolls, a
Source: International Herald Tribune
November 3, 2008
An article of faith among conservative critics of American universities has been that liberal professors politically indoctrinate their students. This conviction not only fueled the culture wars but has also led state lawmakers to consider requiring colleges to submit reports to the government detailing their progress in ensuring "intellectual diversity," prompted universities to establish faculty positions devoted to conservatism and spurred the creation of a network of volunteer watc
Source: International Herald Tribune
November 4, 2008
It ought to be a seminal moment: As a new president takes office in Washington, the Czech Republic assumes the rotating presidency of the European Union, the first former Soviet bloc country to lead the group of 470 million citizens, and during one of the worst economic conflagrations in a century.
But instead of welcoming the opportunity for this country of 10 million to shepherd the world's biggest trading bloc, the fiery Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, has evoked the Munich Agree
Source: NYT
November 4, 2008
Barack Hussein Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States on Tuesday, sweeping away the last racial barrier in American politics with ease as the country chose him as its first black chief executive.
Mr. Obama’s election amounted to a national catharsis — a repudiation of a historically unpopular Republican president and his economic and foreign policies, and an embrace of Mr. Obama’s call for a change in the direction and the tone of the country. But it was just as m
Source: Spiegel Online
November 3, 2008
After a high court in Italy ruled that Germany is liable for damages stemming from a 1944 massacre in the village of Civitella perpetrated by Nazi soldiers, Berlin has asked the International Court of Justice to look into the case.
Berlin worries the verdict could set off an avalanche of World War II-related court cases against the German government. On Oct. 22, Italy's highest appellate court, the Cassation, ruled that Germany must pay €1 million in compensation to the descendents
Source: NPR
November 3, 2008
Madelyn Payne Dunham, the maternal grandmother of Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, died Monday at the age of 86 after a battle with cancer, his campaign announced Monday. The Illinois senator has called his grandmother one of the "cornerstones" of his life.
In a statement released with his sister Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama called his grandmother "a woman of extraordinary accomplishment, strength, and humility. She was the person who encouraged and allowed us
Source: AP
November 4, 2008
A Florida school board voted late Monday night to keep the name of a Confederate general and early Ku Klux Klan leader at a majority black high school, despite opposition from a black board member who said the school's namesake was a "terrorist and racist."
After hearing about three hours of public comments, Duval County School Board members voted 5-2 to the retain the name of Nathan Bedford Forrest High School. The board's two black members cast the only votes to change t
Source: Times (UK)
November 4, 2008
Henry Pierrepoint measured out death in feet and inches. He started a dynasty of hangmen who together executed more than 800 people. His diaries, which came to light yesterday, reveal the undemonstrative efficiency that made his son, Albert, the most prolific of all British executioners.
Pierrepoint senior’s executions, 105 in all, are recorded in an unemotional log by name, age, height and drop. His only remarks describe prisoners’ necks in chillingly stark terms – “long”, “weak”,
