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This page features brief excerpts of news 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.
Highlights
Breaking News
This page features brief excerpts of news 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. Because most of our readers read the NYT we usually do not include the paper's stories in HIGHLIGHTS.
Name of source: CNN
SOURCE: CNN (5-4-09)
"I know it's a bad feeling, 'cause I had it," said Braswell, 100, who now lives in Cobb County in Georgia. "It makes you have headaches, you be out of your head, you don't know nothing."
Margaret Duchez, 94, did not have the flu, but remembers that in 1918 her grandmother locked the door so that she couldn't go outside during the pandemic. In her community near Cleveland, Ohio, people were afraid to go to church, walk in the street or let children play outside, she said. An entire family died around the corner from her.
"People were dying so fast in our parish, which was old St. Patrick's, they could not bury them fast enough," Duchez said.
A study in Nature last year showed survivors of the 1918 pandemic still have some immunity to that virus in the form of B cells, which are immune cells that produce antibodies.
Name of source: NYT
SOURCE: NYT (5-1-09)
None of the justices have held elective office. All but one attended law school at Harvard or Yale. And the only three justices in American history who never worked in private practice are on the current court....
The current court is the first to be made up entirely of former federal appeals court judges. And only a few of those appeals courts at that: seven of the justices served on what might be called the court of appeals for the Acela circuit, in Boston, Philadelphia and Washington. (The exceptions are Justices John Paul Stevens, who served in Chicago, and Anthony M. Kennedy, who served in California.)
SOURCE: NYT (5-2-09)
The popular mood has a huge impact on the economy, so it’s worth noting what many people seem to forget: Depression scares come and go. And by one authoritative measure, the current outbreak of concern has been surprisingly mild....
SOURCE: NYT (5-2-09)
Now Mr. Obama is preparing to select his first Supreme Court nominee to replace retiring Justice David H. Souter. In interviews, former colleagues and students say they have a fairly strong sense of the kind of justice he will favor: not a larger-than-life liberal to counter the conservative pyrotechnics of Justice Antonin Scalia, but a careful pragmatist with a limited view of the role of courts.
“His nominee will not create the proverbial shock and awe,” said Charles J. Ogletree, a Harvard professor who has known the president since his days as a student.
SOURCE: NYT (4-30-09)
Call it the Democratic version of Reaganomics, the supply-side theory that replaced Republicans’ longtime belief in balanced budgets. As popularized by President Ronald Reagan, the theory holds that cutting income taxes encourages people to work harder and to produce more goods, sparking economic growth and increased tax revenues.
With Congress’s approval on Wednesday of a $3.5 trillion budget blueprint embracing Mr. Obama’s spending initiatives for education, health care and energy, the president extolled the potential benefits of these “new investments.” In his nationally televised news conference that night, he said the budget would start laying “a new foundation for growth, a foundation that will strengthen our economy and help us compete in the 21st century.”
SOURCE: NYT (5-2-09)
Time long ago eroded the sun-dried bricks that shaped ancient Babylon, the city of Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar, where Daniel read the writing on the wall and Alexander the Great died.
Colonial archaeologists packed off its treasures to Europe a century ago. Saddam Hussein rebuilt the site in his own megalomaniacal image. American and Polish troops turned it into a military camp, digging trenches and filling barricades with soil peppered with fragments of a biblical-era civilization.
SOURCE: NYT (5-2-09)
On the surface it seemed a classic instance of what the historian Daniel Boorstin once described as a “pseudo-event,” an exercise in public relations masquerading as news. “The celebration is held, photographs are taken, the occasion is widely reported,” Mr. Boorstin wrote of such staged episodes.
The Obama administration itself took an equally jaundiced view at first. Robert Gibbs, Mr. Obama’s press secretary, promised that the 100th day, which fell on Wednesday, would be “not a ton different than the 99th.” David Axelrod, a senior adviser to the president, called the milestone a “Hallmark holiday.”
But in the end the administration seized the moment, arranging a town-hall meeting for the president in a Missouri high school gym and then a prime-time news conference in Washington.
Yet buoyant displays of this kind serve a civic function. Many of the re-examinations of the most celebrated of 100-day periods, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s in 1933, have noted that Americans felt better because they liked Roosevelt himself, even if they couldn’t be sure his policies would actually work.
The same appears to be true of Mr. Obama. His strong approval ratings seem to reflect hope in him at a time when the economic news continues to be bad.
SOURCE: NYT (5-2-09)
Mr. Kemp was secretary of housing and urban development under the first President George Bush and the Republican vice-presidential nominee in 1996. But his greatest legacy may stem from his years as a congressman from Buffalo, especially 1978, when his argument for sharp tax cuts to promote economic growth became party policy, one that has endured to this day.
Mr. Kemp, having embraced a supply-side economic theory, told the House that year that the nation suffered under a “tax code that rewards consumption, leisure, debt and borrowing, and punishes savings, investment, work and production.”
Ronald Reagan adopted the issue as a central one in his 1980 presidential campaign, and in 1981 he won passage of a 23 percent cut over three years. The legislation was known as Kemp-Roth, named for Mr. Kemp and William V. Roth Jr., the Delaware Republican and his Senate co-sponsor.
SOURCE: NYT (5-1-09)
Ms. Duffy, 53, is known for using a deceptively simple style to produce accessible, often mischievous poems dealing with the darkest turmoil and the lightest minutiae of everyday life...
Announcing the decision, the culture secretary, Andy Burnham, called Ms. Duffy “a towering figure in English literature today and a superb poet” who has “achieved something that only the true greats of literature manage — to be regarded as both popular and profound.”
Name of source: BBC
SOURCE: BBC (5-4-09)
Mr Taylor's defence team argued that there was not enough evidence for the trial to proceed.
The decision by the Special Court for Sierra Leone at The Hague means that Mr Taylor, who has pleaded not guilty, must now present his defence.
Tens of thousands of people died in Sierra Leone's decade-long civil war.
SOURCE: BBC (5-3-09)
Alfie Morris was 13 years old when he went to take shelter in Bethnal Green Tube station, east London, on 3 March 1943 from an impending air-raid.
Maude Chumbley grabbed his hair and saved him from the crush as hundreds of people climbed down the stairs.
A total of 173 people, including many children, were killed in the crush.
Mrs Chumbley also survived the incident, but died more than 50 years ago.
SOURCE: BBC (5-3-09)
The scenario, proposed by scientists, is undergoing further examination to verify radiocarbon dates and to rule out other causes of the upheaval.
Sedimentary deposits from more than 20 cores in New York and New Jersey indicate that some sort of violent force swept the Northeast coastal region in 300BC.
The origin of such a tsunami is also under debate. An undersea landslide is the most likely source, but one research group has proposed that an asteroid impact provided the trigger.
SOURCE: BBC (5-2-09)
The operation follows a landmark ruling by the country's Supreme Court that the Raposa Serra do Sol reservation should be solely for indigenous people.
The non-indigenous rice farmers and farm workers say they are victims of "legalised robbery".
But the authorities say they will be properly compensated.
SOURCE: BBC (5-1-09)
A stay of deportation was granted earlier in April after federal agents briefly removed him from his home.
His family said he was too ill to be moved but the government has filed video showing him walking unassisted.
Mr Demjanjuk denies charges of being a guard at the Sobibor death camp in World War II.
Name of source: AP
SOURCE: AP (5-2-09)
SOURCE: AP (5-2-09)
But Google failed to judge how its offering would be received, as it has often done in Japan. The company is now facing inquiries from the Justice Ministry and angry accusations of prejudice because its maps detailed the locations of former low-caste communities.
The maps date back to the country's feudal era, when shoguns ruled and a strict caste system was in place. At the bottom of the hierarchy were a class called the "burakumin," ethnically identical to other Japanese but forced to live in isolation because they did jobs associated with death, such as working with leather, butchering animals and digging graves.
Name of source: AP (& White House press release)
SOURCE: AP (& White House press release) (5-3-09)
"This one might explode," he yells. "Everyone take cover."
Like former battlefields all over the world, the southern Japan island of Okinawa - home to more than one million people and the site of some of the Second World War's most savage fighting - is a tinderbox of unexploded bombs, thousands and thousands of tonnes of them, rusted and often half buried.
Name of source: Telegraph (UK)
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (5-4-09)
Tomorrow archaeologists will begin the formal recovery of the bodies on behalf of the Australian and British governments, supervised by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC).
The painstaking operation in Pheasant Wood, which lies near the village of Fromelles around seven miles south of the French-Belgian border, is expected to last until the end of September.
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (5-3-09)
The comments, made by Nigel Inkster, who was deputy director of MI6 at the time, make clear there were reservations over the war at a very senior level within the Secret Intelligence Service.
MI6 was blamed for the failure of intelligence that took Britain to war after helping produce a dossier in which Tony Blair claimed that Iraq was ready to use weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes.
The dossier, said to have been "sexed up" by Downing Street, also mentioned controversial intelligence that Saddam Hussain was seeking uranium from Niger.
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (5-2-09)
The book, "Refugees and Rescue," claims that Roosevelt developed plans in 1938 for the United States to fill its immigration quota with 27,000 Jews from Germany and Austria and to send others to British-held Palestine and friendly nations in Africa and Latin America.
The claim that Roosevelt actively sought ways to help Jews escape Europe before the war began in 1939 challenges the widely accepted view that he ignored warnings of Adolf Hitler's plan to exterminate them.
The American government's refusal to allow the SS St Louis, a German ship carrying more than 900 Jewish refugees, to dock at a US port in 1939 is often cited as evidence of the president's lack of interest in the fate of the Jews.
The book is based primarily on diaries of James G. McDonald, the League of Nations' top official concerned with refugees from Nazi Germany in the mid-1930s.
Related Links
David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies:"New Evidence" on FDR/Holocaust? Not New, Not Evidence
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (5-2-09)
The people, who have lived as hunter-gatherers for thousands of years, are the direct relations of early modern humans who migrated from the continent to spread their DNA throughout the world.
A study by the University of Pennsylvania has found all populations descended from just 14 ancient African populations.
Researchers discovered the genetic DNA of The San people was more diverse than any other group, suggesting they have survived longer than any other group.
Nearly three-fourths of African-Americans can trace their ancestry to West Africa, according to the analysis published in the online edition of the journal Science.
It is the largest study of African genetics ever undertaken. Over 10 years, Sarah Tishkoff, a geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania and an international team of researchers trekked across Africa collecting samples to compare the genes of various peoples.
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (5-3-09)
Clumps of brown hair still cling to the three foot tall body, hinting at the coarse coat that would have once covered the infant. Even her eylasahes are intact.
These extraordinary images show why scientists are so excited by the discovery of Lyuba – the most complete body of a woolly mammoth ever found
Discovered at the side of a river by reindeer herders on the Yamal Peninsula in northwest Siberia, the bone month old female is helping scientists to unravel how the extinct ice age giants once lived.
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (5-2-09)
Lachhiman Gurung won the VC after he single-handedly repelled a Japanese attack for four hours in World War Two despite suffering horrific injuries.
Now aged 91, he needs constant care from his granddaughter, Amrita, but she faces deportation after being refused leave to remain in the UK.
Last year Amrita was granted a visitor visa so she and her grandfather could attend the 25th Victoria Cross and George Cross Association Reunion at the invite of the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall.
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (5-1-09)
The 25-page book, called A Scary Thing Happened, was approved by the Bush administration.
Makers said it was prepared by a crisis response team to help children "cope with disasters".
However, it has since been removed from the website of the Federal Emergency Management Agency after apparently being vetoed by Barack Obama's administration.
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (5-1-09)
They spoke out after a final memorial parade in Basra in which the names of each of the 179 servicemen and women killed during the conflict were read out before control of southern Iraq was handed over to an American commander.
David Cameron, the Tory leader, called for an immediate inquiry similar to that carried out by Lord Franks following the Falklands War in 1982.
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (5-1-09)
Until now, palaeontologists widely believed the creatures were wiped out 65 million years ago when an asteroid collided with Earth.
But now experts say a "pocket" of dinosaurs survived and roamed a remote area of what is now New Mexico and Colorado.
Carbon dating of newly-discovered bones in the San Juan Basin proves that these lived for another half-a-million years.
The discovery, published this week in the journal Palaeontologia Electronica, has been hailed as one of the most important breakthroughs in palaeontology this century.
SOURCE: Telegraph (UK) (5-1-09)
Its cover shows a childlike drawing of one of the Twin Towers in flames, with a hijacked plane looming close to the second tower.
The image is repeated three times on page 12, where readers can colour in the flames.
The book also features a scene reminiscent of the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.
Makers said it was prepared by a crisis response team to help children "cope with disasters".
However, it has since been removed from the website of the Federal Emergency Management Agency after apparently being vetoed by Barack Obama's administration.
Name of source: Daily Mail (UK)
SOURCE: Daily Mail (UK) (5-4-09)
And despite her increasingly frailty, Margaret Thatcher was determined to celebrate the occasion this weekend.
The 83-year-old Baroness's famously steely gaze was very much in evidence as she attended a dinner in Glasgow to honour her achievements.
It is one of a series of events which have been laid on to mark the anniversary of her election and the wave of change it brought with it.
SOURCE: Daily Mail (UK) (5-4-09)
The man or woman - it is still not possible to determine the sex - lived 35,000 years ago in the Carpathian Mountains that today are part of Romania.
Their face was rebuilt in clay based on an incomplete skull and jawbone discovered in a cave where bears hibernated.
Forensic artist Richard Neave made the model based on his measurements of the pieces of bone and his knowledge of how facial tissues sit on the skull.
It was created for TV show The Incredible Human Journey about the origins of the human race and evolution, which will be screened on BBC next Sunday.
Name of source: Spiegel Online
SOURCE: Spiegel Online (5-4-09)
Specialists of the regional criminal police force in the south-western state of Baden-Württemberg have examined documents found by journalists in an old briefcase in Cairo and don't believe that the papers constitute "evidence of the death" of Heim, SPIEGEL has learned.
New information from the police's own sources in Germany and abroad as well as inconsistencies in the claims that he died in Egypt have led German police to continue "investigating in all directions," a police source told SPIEGEL.
SOURCE: Spiegel Online (5-1-09)
During World War II this was the site of the German extermination camp Sobibor, where 170,000 Jews, more than 34,000 of them Dutch, were systematically murdered. It is a difficult place to reach, deep in the forests of Poland's eastern border area, and easy to forget. But that is going to change.
The Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia and Israel recently agreed on a major 'renovation' aimed at opening up the former camp to the outside world and pulling it out of the shadow of the well-known Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in southern Poland.
Name of source: LAT
SOURCE: LAT (4-28-09)
Specter said then- Vermont Sen. Jim Jeffords' decision to become an independent was disruptive to the functioning of Congress. He proposed a rule forbidding party switches that had the effect of vaulting the minority to majority status in the middle of a congressional session.
"If somebody wants to change parties, they can do that," Specter said at the time. "But that kind of instability is not good for governance of the country and the Senate."
Name of source: AFP
SOURCE: AFP (5-3-09)
Between 1948 and 1951 nearly all of Iraq's 2,500-year-old Jewish community fled amid a region-wide outbreak of nationalist violence, but today Iraq's Muslims and Christians still visit its most important holy sites.
In the little town of Kifl, south of Baghdad, the shrine of Ezekiel -- the prophet who followed the Jews into Babylonian exile in the 6th century BC -- has long been a part of Iraq's millennia-old religious mosaic.
Name of source: Linda Greenhouse in the NYT
SOURCE: Linda Greenhouse in the NYT (5-2-09)
Just a few decades ago, this would hardly have been a singular accomplishment. Even the most distinguished Supreme Court justices often disappeared from public view, speaking only through their opinions — the full texts of which were all but inaccessible to ordinary citizens without access to a law library. But in this media-saturated age, the justices are everywhere. If they are not on book tours, they are opining on the authorship of Shakespeare’s plays, or mingling with their peers in Europe, or on C-Span addressing high school students, or at least delivering named lectures at law schools.
None of this held any appeal for David Souter, who after returning home from his Rhodes scholarship at Magdalen College, Oxford, crossed the Atlantic only once again, for a reunion there. Who needed Paris if you had Boston, he would remark to friends. When the court is in recess, he gets in his Volkswagen and heads to Weare, N.H., to the small farmhouse that was home to his parents and grandparents.
This pattern gave rise to a widespread view of Justice Souter as a misfit or a loner, not quite in touch with modern life. But to focus on his eccentricities — his daily lunch of yogurt and an apple, core and all; the absence of a computer in his personal office — is to miss the essence of a man who in fact is perfectly suited to his job, just not to its trappings.
Name of source: UPenn.edu
SOURCE: UPenn.edu (4-28-09)
Early Sunday morning, April 19, they traveled to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, for yet another medical procedure, and the chance for researchers to find out more about these 2000-plus year old mummies—this time, through state-of-the-art CT scanning. They were joined by Hapi-Men’s loyal (mummified) pet, affectionately known as Hapi-Puppy. All three mummies were successfully CT scanned, and returned to the Penn Museum before 9 a.m.—and before the hospital’s living human patients’ CT scan appointments began.
They will be followed, eventually, by most of the Egyptian mummies in the Museum’s collection, including the seven additional mummies on display in the Museum’s most popular exhibition, The Egyptian Mummy: Secrets and Science. What scholars learn about the collection from this procedure will eventually inform a new exhibition or segment of the current exhibition.
Name of source: Military.com
SOURCE: Military.com (4-30-09)
There are Civil War-era campsites located on mainside and in the Officer Candidate School area, said John Haynes, an archaeologist here. “These sites have been identified as historically significant.”
Although there are locations on the base that are not historical landmarks, the whole installation is safeguarded by the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979.
“Collecting artifacts and digging for them is prohibited on all portions of the base,” said Haynes.
Name of source: http://www.archaeology.org
SOURCE: http://www.archaeology.org (5-1-09)
Africans, however, have more genetic variation than anyone else on Earth. “Given the fact that modern humans arose in Africa, they have had time to accumulate dramatic changes,” said Sarah Tishkoff of the University of Pennsylvania.
A CT scan revealed a mummified puppy inside a bundle at the feet of an Egyptian human mummy. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology have dubbed them “Hapi-Puppy” and “Hapi-Men,” respectively.
Name of source: Newsbusters (conservative media watchdog)
SOURCE: Newsbusters (conservative media watchdog) (5-1-09)
As NewsBusters previously reported, Stewart during Tuesday's interview with Foundation for the Defense of Democracies' Clifford May said that Truman should have done an offshore warning of the atomic bomb in 1945 before dropping it on Hiroshima, and that not doing so was criminal.
Apparently, Stewart has rethought his position, and said the following on Thursday's"Daily Show"...:
Name of source: Times (of London)
SOURCE: Times (of London) (5-2-09)
Thirty years on from Margaret Thatcher becoming Prime Minister, it is being suggested that we have come to the end of the Thatcher era. Don't believe it. Iron does not rust that easily.
There have been reversals of the direction that she set, with the partial nationalisation of banks and the increase in the higher rate of tax to 50 per cent...
The real story is not that the Thatcher era is over but that it continues unabated. Nineteen years after she left office, no successor government has deliberately undone or reversed any of the main changes she brought about. Nor have they come up with anything better. The “Thatcher settlement” remains largely intact.
The best test of this is to imagine where Britain would be had her successors reverted to the political trajectory charted by both parties until 1979...
Name of source: Media Matters (liberal media watchdog group)
SOURCE: Media Matters (liberal media watchdog group) (4-29-09)
Related Links
Response of Judith Klinghoffer
In recent days, several media figures and outlets have falsely claimed that President Obama's approval rating at this point in his presidency, according to Gallup, is lower than that of most or all recent presidents. The falsehood is based on an apples-to-oranges comparison between an April 20-21 Gallup poll question that asked respondents to"rate the job Barack Obama has been doing as president so far -- excellent, good, just okay, poor, or terrible," and the historical results of the traditional Gallup approval rating poll question that simply asked whether respondents"approve" or"disapprove" of the president's performance. Based on its traditional presidential approval poll question, Gallup itself recently reported that Obama's average approval rating for the first quarter of his first year in office is the highest of any president since 1969 other than Jimmy Carter, and Obama's most recent weekly average approval rating is higher than the April approval ratings of every first-term president since 1969 other than Ronald Reagan.
The falsehood appears to have originated in an April 24 entry by Judith Apter Klinghoffer on George Mason University's History News Network blog, titled,"OBAMA'S POLL NUMBERS TRAIL THOSE OF W.; GALLUP COVERS IT UP." Klinghoffer asserted:"Gallup reports that 56% of the public believes that Obama is doing an excellent/good job. Gallup reported 62% approved of George W. Bush's job performance after the first 100 days." Klinghoffer then purported to compare Obama's approval rating to"the numbers for other presidents," writing:
Here are the numbers for other presidents:
April approval ratings in first year in office
Bush now 62%
Clinton, 1993 55
Bush, 1989 58
Reagan, 1981 67
Carter, 1977 63
Nixon, 1969 61
Sampling error: +/-3% pts
Newsday columnist and Fox News analyst Jim Pinkerton echoed Klinghoffer's assertion during the April 25 edition of Fox News Watch, stating:"Judith Klinghoffer, writing for the History News Network, made the point that Obama actually ranked seventh of the last nine presidents in Gallup poll opinion ratings. So seventh out of nine isn't so good." Pinkerton's remarks were also touted by the Media Research Center's NewsBusters blog. The Washington Times then repeated the assertion in an April 28 editorial:
According to Gallup's April survey, Americans have a lower approval of Mr. Obama at this point than all but one president since Gallup began tracking this in 1969. The only new president less popular was Bill Clinton, who got off to a notoriously bad start after trying to force homosexuals on the military and a federal raid in Waco, Texas, that killed 86. Mr. Obama's current approval rating of 56 percent is only one tick higher than the 55-percent approval Mr. Clinton had during those crises.
[...]
[F]ive presidents rated higher than Mr. Obama after 100 days in office. Ronald Reagan topped the charts in April 1981 with 67 percent approval. Following the Gipper, in order of popularity, were: Jimmy Carter with 63 percent in 1977; George W. Bush with 62 percent in 2001; Richard Nixon with 61 percent in 1969; and George H.W. Bush with 58 percent in 1989.
Additionally, during the April 28 edition of Fox News' Hannity, Republican strategist Kate Obenshain alleged,"there's a reason why Barack Obama is lower in any of the public opinion polls than any president at this point in his administration, than Bill Clinton. According to the Gallup poll, he is the least popular of anyone. And it's because people are worried about this massive expansion of government." TownHall.com columnist Janice Shaw Crouse also repeated a variation of the claim in her April 28 column, writing:"According to the Gallup Poll, this president is the second least popular president in 40 years. Even Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon had higher approval ratings at this point in their presidencies."
In fact, contrary to claims that Obama's Gallup approval rating is lower than that of most recent presidents, Obama ranks among the presidents with the highest approval rating at this point in their respective presidencies, when comparing the results of the Gallup poll question that asked whether respondents"approve" or"disapprove" of the president's performance.
Gallup published just such a comparison on April 17, and reported that Obama's average approval rating of 63 percent during the first quarter of his first year as president was"the highest since Jimmy Carter's 69% in 1977." The Gallup write-up included the following chart:
Gallup also recently reported that Obama's most recent weekly approval rating of 65 percent -- averaging Gallup's daily poll results from April 20-26 -- is higher than the April approval ratings (poll dates unspecified) of all presidents since 1969 other than Reagan. According to Gallup, Obama's previous weekly averages were 62 percent approval from March 30-April 5, 61 percent approval from April 6-12, and 62 percent approval from April 13-19. From Gallup:
Barack Obama's Most Recent Weekly Approval Rating Average 65% (Apr 20-26, 2009)
[...]
Other Elected Presidents in April of First Term:
George W. Bush 61% (April 2001)
Bill Clinton 55% (April 1993)
George H.W. Bush 58% (April 1989)
Ronald Reagan 67% (April 1981)
Jimmy Carter 64% (April 1977)
Richard Nixon 62% (April 1969)
John Kennedy 81% (April 1961)
Dwight Eisenhower 74% (April 1953)
In an April 24 entry on MSNBC's blog First Read, NBC's Harry Enten similarly reported that Obama ranks"near the top" when considering"Gallup polls taken within five days of [the] 100-day mark." Enten wrote:"Obama's 65% approval rating in the most recent daily Gallup poll ... is 7-10 points higher than the approvals of the last three presidents. Since Nixon, in fact, only Reagan's 68% is higher than Obama's current approval." His report was accompanied by the following chart:
Based on Gallup polls taken within five days of 100-day mark. Some ratings are averages of two polls taken in that period.
Charts presenting the Gallup approval ratings for every president from Harry Truman to George W. Bush are available here.
From the April 25 edition of Fox News' Fox News Watch:
JON SCOTT (host): Day one, Barack Obama sworn in as our 44th president back in January; now, just days away from the 100-day mark. All right, Jim, how are the media going to observe this 100th day?
PINKERTON: Well, I mean, as President Obama has the benefit, he's the first black president to -- anything. And so it's always kind of exciting -- even people who don't like him are still sort of intrigued by him and his family and so on. But every now and then you have to apply some sort of metrics to get some grip on where we are. And Judith Klinghoffer, writing for the History News Network, made the point that Obama actually ranked seventh of the last nine presidents in Gallup poll opinion ratings. So seventh out of nine isn't so good.
From the April 28 edition of Fox News' Hannity:
OBENSHAIN: But this dishonesty or this little glimpse that we're seeing, there's a reason why Barack Obama is lower in any of the public opinion polls than any president at this point in his administration --
DONNIE FOWLER (Democratic strategist): That's Joe Biden, not Barack Obama.
OBENSHAIN: -- than Bill Clinton. According to the Gallup poll, he is the least popular of anyone. And it's because people are worried about --
MARK FUHRMAN (Fox News contributor): No, no, it isn't, Kate.
OBENSHAIN: -- this massive expansion of government.
FUHRMAN: They see the window.
HANNITY: All right. Here's --
FUHRMAN: They're starting to peer through the window.
FOWLER: Let the liberal have a chance.
FUHRMAN: They're seeing who he really is.
OBENSHAIN: I think that's part of it, but it's also about the initiatives.
Name of source: Bloomberg News
SOURCE: Bloomberg News (4-30-09)
The pieces have been returned to Egypt, the Cairo-based Culture Ministry said in a statement today, citing the country’s chief archaeologist Zahi Hawass. The Myers Museum is part of Eton College, in Windsor, west of London. No one at the museum was immediately available for comment.
The items included 12 bronze coins, four scarabs, 94 beaded necklaces, 99 fragments of pottery with colored drawings and 109 funerary figures, the statement said.
Name of source: The Times (UK)
SOURCE: The Times (UK) (5-2-09)
The three cardboard boxes contain 126 rolls of 35mm film with about 4,300 images of the Spanish Civil War, most never seen before.
They were saved from wartime Europe and appeared in Mexico City half a century later among the effects of a former Mexican diplomat, before finding their way to New York.
The photos were taken by Capa, his lover and professional partner Gerda Taro, and David “Chim” Seymour, co-founder with Capa of the photo agency Magnum. They include images of the American writer Ernest Hemingway by Capa, the French author André Malraux by Taro and the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca by Seymour.
Name of source: IHT
SOURCE: IHT (5-3-09)
Now with the support of some officials in Baghdad, the local government has reopened the excavated ruins of Babylon’s ancient core, shuttered ever since the American invasion in 2003. It has done so despite warnings by archaeologists that the reopening threatens to damage further what remains of one of the world’s first great cities before the site can be adequately protected.
The fight over ancient Babylon is about more than the competing interests of preservation and tourism. It reflects problems that hinder Iraq’s new government, including an uncertain division between local and federal authority and political rivalries that consume government ministries.
Name of source: Times (UK)
SOURCE: Times (UK) (5-2-09)
Instead, a genetic study of Africa suggests that the origin of humanity lies in a sandy, inhospitable region near the coastal border of Namibia and Angola.
The area is populated by the Bushmen, or San people, who may be the closest thing to a biblical Adam and Eve. ...
Scientists suggest that the clicking sounds characteristic of the San’s language may be a remnant of original human speech.
The conclusion emerges from the largest study of African genetics yet, conducted by an international team led by Sarah Tishkoff, of the University of Pennsylvania.
SOURCE: Times (UK) (5-2-09)
The 7/7 families had been told to expect the report, into security lapses which left Mohammed Sidique Khan free to carry out the attacks, “within days” of the end of the trial of three men accused of helping him.
That trial finished this week but no date has been set for publishing the report, which was completed by the Intelligence & Security Committee (ISC) in July last year and sent to the Prime Minister.
Name of source: Pittsburgh Post Gazette
SOURCE: Pittsburgh Post Gazette (5-3-09)
Pittsburgh's Historic Review Commission is expected to vote Wednesday on whether to recommend historic status for the Old Stone Inn, a West End landmark at 434 Greentree Road. If the inn is as old as growing evidence indicates, it may be older than the nation, even older than Pittsburgh.
No historic nomination in recent memory has led to such depths of discovery. Researchers have become giddy as they've uncovered the inn's story, which includes at least a peripheral role in the Whiskey Rebellion.
The inn's cornerstone date of 1756 has always been puzzling to historians, who thought it apocryphal.
Art Merrell, a West End resident who last year tried to interest investors in buying and restoring the building to be a tourist attraction, said it resembles buildings found in French-speaking Quebec. He contends early French settlers could have built it.
Name of source: Los Angeles Times
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times (5-3-09)
According to the online edition of the newspaper Haaretz, Michael B. Oren’s selection by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman will be submitted to the Cabinet for approval at its meeting today. Oren would replace Sallai Meridor.
Oren is a senior fellow at Shalem Center, a conservative Jerusalem think tank. He is the author of several bestsellers, including "Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East," which won the L.A. Times Book Prize for history in 2003. His writings have appeared in The Times' Opinion and Book Review sections.
Name of source: Independent (UK)
SOURCE: Independent (UK) (5-1-09)
Dudley was one of Tudor England's most powerful – and most glamorous – courtiers. He and Elizabeth had known each other since childhood. They had both been imprisoned in the Tower of London by Elizabeth's sister and predecessor, Queen Mary, who saw them as potential rivals for the throne. They had similar interests. What's more, they were deeply in love.
But Dudley's wife had died in an apparent accident at their home some years earlier and his political and religious enemies had accused him of deliberately killing her in order to try to marry Elizabeth. This potentially scandalous situation was among the considerations which had prevented the Queen from marrying him.
Name of source: Deutsche Welle
SOURCE: Deutsche Welle (4-30-09)
Although the foundation has only been officially in existence for a week, the international response to the request for funds has been positive.
Jacek Kastenlaniec, the managing director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau foundation, told Deutsche Welle that Germany has already pledged a million Euros for the foundation, and plans to contribute much more next year.
Name of source: Sky News
SOURCE: Sky News (5-2-09)
Andrew Bullock, of auctioneers Keys, said it was thought Harrison had copied the signatures of his fellow band members - Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and John Lennon.
"We've sent it to a handwriting expert and it's just about 100% certain that they were done by George," he said.
