GERMANY CELEBRATES FALL OF BERLIN WALL

GERMANY CELEBRATE FALL OF BERLIN WALL

BERLIN – With prayers, music and pomp, Germany on Monday remembered the 20th anniversary of the day the Berlin Wall fell, sending East Germans flooding west and setting in motion events that soon led to the country's reunification.
Chancellor Angela Merkel — reunited Germany's first leader to grow up in the communist east — started the day with President Horst Koehler and other leaders at a prayer service at a former East Berlin church that was a rallying point for opposition activists in 1989.
"We remember the tears of joy, the faces of delight, the liberation," Lutheran Bishop Wolfgang Huber told the congregation at the Gethsemane Church.
East Germany's fortified border crumbled on the evening of Nov. 9, 1989, after 28 years holding in the country's citizens — a pivotal moment in the collapse of communism in Europe that followed a confused announcement by a senior official.
At the end of a plodding news conference, Politburo spokesman Guenter Schabowski offhandedly said East Germany was lifting restrictions on travel across its border with West Germany.
Pressed on when the regulation would take effect, he looked down at his notes and stammered: "As far as I know, this enters into force ... this is immediately, without delay."
Schakowsky has said he didn't know that the change wasn't supposed to be announced until the following morning.
East Berliners streamed toward border crossings. Facing huge crowds and lacking instructions, border guards opened the gates — and the wall was on its way into history.
Merkel said she was among the East Germans who, hearing Schakowsky’s words, thought "something might happen on the evening of Nov. 9." Like many others, she made her way across.
"We were speechless and happy," the 55-year-old recalled in an interview with ARD television.
Music from Bon Jovi and Beethoven was to recall the joy of the border's opening, which led to German reunification less than a year later and the swift demolition of most of the wall — which snaked around West Berlin, a capitalist enclave deep inside East Germany, for 96 miles (155 kilometers).
Memorials also were planned to the 136 people killed trying to cross the border. Candles were lit and 1,000 towering plastic foam dominoes placed along the wall's route to be tipped over.
Also expected in Berlin for the ceremonies were the leaders of all 27 European Union countries and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev.
By the Brandenburg Gate, the symbol of Germany's division and then of its reunification, which for nearly three decades stood just behind the wall in no man's land, Dieter Mohnka, 74, and his wife Helga, 71, originally from East Berlin, shared a bowl of French fries, and recalled the night the wall was opened.
"We were shocked when we heard that announced, simply astounded," said Helga. "The next morning we went straight to visit my aunt in the West."
Dieter, who taught high school at the time, said he had long been fascinated with West Germany.
"I was born in East Germany, I went to school in East Germany. I was supposed to teach the kids about the wonderfulness of the East, when I was secretly watching TV from the West," he said.
Later Monday, music and fireworks will hark back to the night of Nov. 9, 1989, when people danced atop the Berlin Wall in front of the gate. On that cold night, years of separation and anxiety melted into the unbelievable reality of freedom.
East Germans came in droves, many driving their sputtering Trabant cars. Hundreds of thousands crossed over the following days, as West Berlin stores stayed open late and banks gave out 100 western marks in "welcome money," then worth about $50, to each East German visitor.
By Nov. 12, more than 3 million of East Germany's 16.6 million people had visited the west, while tourists chiseled off chunks of the war to keep as souvenirs.
"That was the day of all days," said Walter Momper, the mayor of West Berlin at the time, who attended a candle lightening ceremony at the wall memorial at Bernauer Strasse.
"I'm happy again every time I remember that we all got to this unification in such a peaceful way," he said.
Hundreds of visitors from around the world lit candles and put them in sand boxes in front of the Bernauer Strasse wall memorial, next to one of the few remaining stretches of the Berlin Wall.
Earlier, a brass orchestra played and many school children placed red and yellow roses at the memorial.
Annika Fischer, a school teacher, showed her class of 10-year-old students a mark on the pavement, where the wall once stood.
"This is where the wall was, and we are now walking from the west into the east," she said, crossing the brick line. "I could not do that 20 years ago." sourch: http://www.yahoonews.com/ by : KIRSTEN GRIESHABER

VIDEO SHOWS VIGOROUS JACKSON BEFORE DEATH

VIDEO SHOWS VIGOROUSE JACKSON BEFORE DEATH

LOS ANGELES (AFP) – A video released Thursday showed Michael Jackson vigorously practicing a song-and-dance routine days before his death, supporting accounts he had been in good health.In footage obtained by AFP, the pop legend performed at the Staples Center in Los Angeles on June 23, two days before he died, as he prepared for a 50-date set in London starting in July.Jackson, while thin, is seen dancing with energy in a tightly choreographed sequence with a group of performers. Jackson sings on a headset and at one point pushes back his jacket to reveal his red shirt underneath.In the footage, Jackson switches sharply in styles in a medley of some of his hits. The video starts with Jackson dancing wildly in front of a rock 'n' roll guitarist before a pause for dramatic effect.

Jackson then shifts to a snippet of "Billie Jean," one of his greatest hits, before singing, "They Don't Care About Us," one of his most controversial tracks in which he brought in a hip-hop influence.The set ends with a sample of a car horn. The stage then fades to black as an outside voice instructs, "Hold for applause."Associates of Jackson have described the 50-year-old pop star as being in good form, including at another rehearsal just hours before his death.

Jackson collapsed and died on June 25 at his rented Los Angeles mansion. Speculation has focused on whether Jackson was taking painkillers or other medication.
Jackson's voice coach Dorian Holley said Jackson was in an upbeat mood in the days before his death, joking around with his wardrobe and makeup staff.

"My friends call and ask, 'Was Michael sick? Was he weak? Was he ill?' It's the absolute opposite of that," Holley told CNN."He was very energetic, he was happy. He was even more playful than he normally was at rehearsal," he said.
Holley said Jackson, 50, did not show his age.

"I'm sure that he was in pain after some rehearsals. But I got to tell you something -- the guys and girls dancing with him were all in their 20s," he said.
"When Michael was on stage with them, there was only one person that you could watch and that was Michael Jackson," he said.A similar account came from Kevin Mazur, who was attending the rehearsal sessions as a photographer.

"He was like an expectant father pacing up and down the stage," Mazur told Britain's Sun tabloid."He was just so focused. Between songs, he burst into laughter and joked around with his dancers and the director. I have never seen him so happy," Mazur said.
Jackson had planned a series of concerts at London's O2 Arena starting on July 13, part of a comeback for the King of Pop whose personal and financial life had sharply deteriorated in the past decade.

Concert promoters AEG Live, who released the video, are offering full ticket refunds for the concerts. British media reports said about 50 million pounds (59 million euros, 83 million dollars) has been spent on 750,000 tickets. sourch : www.yahoo.com/news (thu, jul 2, 2009).

ANCIENT - SYRIAC BIBLE FOUND IN CYPRUS

"ANCIENT" SYRIAC BIBLE FOUND IN CYPRUS

NICOSIA (Reuters Life!) – Authorities in northern Cyprus believe they have found an ancient version of the Bible written in Syriac, a dialect of the native language of Jesus.
The manuscript was found in a police raid on suspected antiquity smugglers. Turkish Cypriot police testified in a court hearing they believe the manuscript could be about 2,000 years old.
The manuscript carries excerpts of the Bible written in gold lettering on vellum and loosely strung together, photos provided to Reuters showed. One page carries a drawing of a tree, and another eight lines of Syriac script.

Experts were however divided over the provenance of the manuscript, and whether it was an original, which would render it priceless, or a fake.
Experts said the use of gold lettering on the manuscript was likely to date it later than 2,000 years.

"I'd suspect that it is most likely to be less than 1,000 years old," leading expert Peter Williams, Warden of Tyndale House, University of Cambridge told Reuters.
Turkish Cypriot authorities seized the relic last week and nine individuals are in custody pending further investigations. More individuals are being sought in connection with the find, they said.
Further investigations turned up a prayer statue and a stone carving of Jesus believed to be from a church in the Turkish held north, as well as dynamite.
The police have charged the detainees with smuggling antiquities, illegal excavations and the possession of explosives.

Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic - the native language of Jesus - once spoken across much of the Middle East and Central Asia. It is used wherever there are Syrian Christians and still survives in the Syrian Orthodox Church in India.
Aramaic is still used in religious rituals of Maronite Christians in Cyprus.
"One very likely source (of the manuscript) could be the Tur-Abdin area of Turkey, where there is still a Syriac speaking community," Charlotte Roueche, Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies at King's College London told Reuters.
Stories regarding the antiquity of manuscripts is commonplace. One case would be the Yonan Codex, carbon dated to the 12th century which people tried to pass off as earlier.
After further scrutiny of photographs of the book, manuscripts specialist at the University of Cambridge library and Fellow of Wolfson College JF Coakley suggested that the book could have been written a good deal later.

"The Syriac writing seems to be in the East Syriac script with vowel points, and you do not find such manuscripts before about the 15th century.
"On the basis of the one photo...if I'm not mistaken some words at least seem to be in modern Syriac, a language that was not written down until the mid-19th century," he told Reuters.
(Editing by Michele Kambas and Paul Casciato). http://www.yahoo.com/

OBAMA INAUGURATION COMING TOGETHER

OBAMA INAUGURATION COMING TOGETHER

Inauguration Day has dawned for President-elect Barack Obama, with hundreds of thousands of onlookers filling the National Mall for the noon swearing-in of the 44th president.
Obama and wife Michelle stopped for a church service and then coffee at the White House with outgoing President George W. Bush before traveling to the Capitol for the oath of office.
Barack Hussein Obama, born of a mother from Kansas and father from Kenya who had their only son in Hawaii, is unique in American history. The first African-American president of a nation once riven by slavery and racially segregated by law for decades afterward, he will take the oath of office on Abraham Lincoln's Bible before an audience spanning the two-mile length of the National Mall, from the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial.
At 47, Obama will not be the nation's youngest chief executive - Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, John Fitzgerald Kennedy and William Jefferson Clinton were younger at their inaugurations. But Obama has united young and old with his call for "a new declaration of independence'' from divisiveness.
Obama, who campaigned for the presidency with a sweeping promise of "change we can believe in,'' enters office at one of the most challenging junctures in modern American history: In the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and with the nation at war on two fronts.
The new president will ask the Congress to approve, within his first month in office, a nearly $1-trillion economic stimulus that promises more than 3 million new jobs in the next few years. At the same time, it will compound an annual national debt which already surpasses $1 trillion before he enters office.
"He is going to be counting on the American people to come together," retired Army Gen. Colin Powell, who served as secretary of state for the Republican President Bush and supported Obama's election, said in an appearance today on NBC News. "We all have to do something to help the country move forward under the leadership of this new president."
The Obamas this morning left the government guest house across the street from the White House where they have stayed for several days for a service at St. John's Church, the Episcopal sanctuary one block north of the White House where Bush has worshipped during his two terms in office.
Bush was hosting the Obamas for coffee in the Blue Room of the White House before the couple headed to the Capitol for the noon swearing-in-ceremony and Obama's inaugural address. Afterward, Obama, Vice President-elect Joe Biden and others would dine on seafood stew, pheasant and duck in Statuary Hall of the Capitol before joining the inaugural parade that will travel along Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House.
Obama will enter office with a pledge for an "orderly'' and "responsible'' withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq after nearly six years of war that has claimed more than 4,000 American lives. At the same time, he has agreed to an escalation of U.S. military force in Afghanistan, which he and his advisors consider "the real front in the war against terrorism.''
A Harvard-bred attorney and former constitutional law professor and community organizer from Chicago who served less than one term in the Senate, the former Illinois state lawmaker will assume office as the culmination of a dream which he himself has billed as "audacious:'' A candidate with a "funny name'' who was unknown to much of the nation just five years ago.
"Today is about victory,'' House Majority Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina said today. "This is a victory for democracy, for all Americans who see their hopes and dreams in Barack Obama, who now feel that they have a voice, and a person with the vision to sail this ship through the rough waters all of us are experiencing.''
Obama shed his anonymity with the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in the summer of 2004.
"I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible,'' Obama said at the Democratic convention in Boston.
"Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy,'' Obama said then. "Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago: "'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'''
The upstart Democrat who captured the imagination of many of his party's leaders even as he was just beginning his own stint in the Senate remained a long-shot for the nation's highest office when he announced his candidacy in front of the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill., on Feb. 10, 2007.
"I recognize there is a certain presumptuousness - a certain audacity - to this announcement,'' Obama told a crowd filling the square on a frigid winter day. "I know I haven't spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I've been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change. ''
He entered a contest for the Democratic Party's nomination, one of many in a crowded field of candidates. At the time, much of the party's conventional wisdom pointed toward the nomination of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, a former first lady.
Yet, starting with an upset in the opening party caucuses of Iowa in January 2008, where the Obama campaign team displayed an organizational prowess backed by formidable fundraising, the candidate turned the tables on not only the party's front-runner but also the rest of the pack. In the end, with a long-fought battle for delegates needed for nomination, Obama outran Clinton in June.
"Four years ago,'' Obama told some 80,000 people filling a football stadium in Denver on Aug. 28 for the acceptance of his party's nomination, "I stood before you and told you my story, of the brief union between a young man from Kenya and a young woman from Kansas who weren't well-off or well-known, but shared a belief that in America their son could achieve whatever he put his mind to...
"We meet at one of those defining moments, a moment when our nation is at war, our economy is in turmoil, and the American promise has been threatened once more,'' he said. "Tonight, more Americans are out of work and more are working harder for less. More of you have lost your homes and even more are watching your home values plummet. More of you have cars you can't afford to drive, credit cards, bills you can't afford to pay, and tuition that's beyond your reach.
"These challenges are not all of government's making,'' the Democratic nominee said. "But the failure to respond is a direct result of a broken politics in Washington and the failed policies of George W. Bush.''
In Republican Sen. John McCain, the GOP's early-settled presidential nominee, Obama faced a much older, more seasoned senator with a military hero's story to boot. McCain, who had spent nearly 25 years in Congress from Arizona, also had served more than two decades in the Navy - including five and a half as a prisoner of war in Vietnam after his bomber was shot down over Hanoi. The Naval Academy graduate also had sought his party's presidential nomination before, in 2000, losing to George W. Bush, and this time had returned to fight the campaign of his life.
At first, the war in Iraq stood as a defining difference between the Democrats and Republicans. McCain had entered the contest as an unbowed supporter of the American military mission in Iraq - particularly the "surge'' of forces which President Bush ordered. Obama, who had spoken out against the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 before he was a senator, campaigned with a pledge to bring troops home within 16 months after election.
Yet, as the campaign progress, the protracted war, unpopular among most Americans, was eclipsed by economic calamity.
And by the fall of 2008, amid signs of deepening trouble among the nation's financial institutions, the economy consumed the campaign. McCain, who had allowed early on that economic issues were not his strong suit, also had maintained, along with Bush, that "the fundamentals of the economy are strong.''
As the election neared, polls found that Americans found Obama better-suited than McCain to confront the economic crisis. And by Election Day on Nov. 4, Obama had not only waged the best-financed campaign in American history, raising close to $1 billion for the effort, but also amassed support in enough states - including states that had long voted Republican, such as Virginia and Indiana - to win an Electoral College landslide.
"It's been a long time coming,,'' Obama told tens of thousands filling Chicago's Grant Park on election, night, "but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America....
"The road ahead will be long,'' the president-elect said that night. "Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America -- I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you -- we as a people will get there.
"There will be setbacks and false starts,'' he said. "There are many who won't agree with every decision or policy I make as president, and we know that government can't solve every problem. But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face. I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. And above all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it's been done in America for 221 years -- block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.''
Today, outside the Capitol, Obama will deliver a historic inaugural address to 240,000 attending the ceremony with tickets obtained from their congressional offices and provide by the Presidential Inaugural Committee. Then inside, Obama will join congressional leaders for lunch in Statuary Hall.
With wine from California, home state of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, they will feast on seafood stew, pheasant and duck served with sour cherry chutney and molasses sweet potatoes, apple cinnamon sponge cake and sweet cream glace.
Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden will accept flags flown over the Capitol during the ceremony, crystal bowls inscribed with their names and the date of inauguration and crystal vases etched with a depiction of a Capitol erected with slave labor. Sourch : The Swamp Tribunes Washington Bureau

OBAMA TO NOMINATE CLINTON SECRETARY OF STATE

OBAMA TO NOMINATE CLINTON SECRETARY OF STATE

Democratic officials say President-elect Barack Obama will nominate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to be his secretary of state on Monday.
Obama plans to announce the New York senator as part of his national security team at a press conference in Chicago, the officials said Saturday. They requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly for the transition team.
To clear the way for his wife's nomination, former President Bill Clinton has agreed to disclose the names of every contributor to his foundation. He'll also refuse contributions from foreign governments to the Clinton Global Initiative, his annual charitable conference, and will cease holding C-G-I meetings overseas. www.yahoo.com

INDIAN FORCES KILL LAST GUNMEN IN MUMBAI

INDIAN FORCES KILL LAST GUNMEN IN MUMBAI

AP – Indian police officers run to a new position around the landmark Taj Mahal hotel in Mumbai, India, Saturday, …
MUMBAI, India – A 60-hour terror rampage that killed at least 195 people across India's financial capital ended Saturday when commandos killed the last three gunmen inside a luxury hotel while it was engulfed in flames.
Authorities searched for any remaining captives hiding in their rooms and began to shift their focus to who was behind the attacks, which killed 18 foreigners including six Americans.
A previously unknown Muslim group with a name suggesting origins inside India claimed responsibility for the attack, but Indian officials said the sole surviving gunman was from Pakistan and pointed a finger of blame at their neighbor and rival.
Islamabad denied involvement and promised to help in the investigation. A team of FBI agents also was on its way to India to lend assistance.
Some 295 people also were wounded in the violence that started when heavily armed assailants attacked 10 sites across Mumbai on Wednesday night. At least 20 soldiers and police were among the dead.
Orange flames and black smoke engulfed the landmark 565-room Taj Mahal hotel after dawn Saturday as Indian forces ended the siege there in a hail of gunfire, just hours after elite commandos stormed a Jewish center and found at least eight hostages dead.
"There were three terrorists, we have killed them," said J.K. Dutt, director general of India's elite National Security Guard commando unit.
Later, adoring crowds surrounded six buses carrying weary, unshaven commandos, shaking their hands and giving them flowers. The commandos, dressed in black fatigues, said they had been ordered not to talk about the operation, but said they had not slept since the ordeal began. One sat sipping a bottle of water and holding a pink rose.
With the end of one of the most brazen terror attacks in India's history, attention turned from the military operation to questions of who was behind the attack and the heavy toll on human life.
The bodies of New York Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg and his wife, Rivkah, were found at the Jewish center. Their son, Moshe, who turned 2 on Saturday, was scooped up by an employee Thursday as she fled the building. Two Israelis and another American were also killed in the house, said Rabbi Zalman Schmotkin, a spokesman for the Chabad Lubavitch movement, which ran the center.
In Jerusalem, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said eight bodies had been discovered in the Jewish center and that officials were investigating the possibility of there being a ninth.
Among the foreigners killed in the attacks were six Americans, according to the U.S. Embassy. The dead also included Germans, Canadians, Israelis and nationals from Britain, Italy, Japan, China, Thailand, Australia and Singapore.
By Saturday morning the death toll was at 195, the deadliest attack in India since 1993 serial bombings in Mumbai killed 257 people. But officials said the toll from the three days of carnage was likely to rise as more bodies were brought out of the hotels.
"There is a limit a city can take. This is a very, very different kind of fear. It will be some time before things get back to normal," said Ayesha Dar, a 33-year-old homemaker.
Indians began cremating their dead, many of them security force members killed fighting the gunmen. In the southern city of Bangalore, black clad commandos formed an honor guard for the flag-draped coffin of Maj. Sandeep Unnikrishnan, who was killed in the fighting at the Taj Mahal hotel.
"He gave up his own life to save the others," Dutt said from Mumbai.
A group called Deccan Mujahideen, which alludes to a region in southern India traditionally ruled by Muslim kings, claimed responsibility for the attack, but Indian officials pointed the finger at neighboring Pakistan.
On Saturday, officials said they believed that just 10 gunmen had taken part in the attack. "Nine were killed and one was captured," Maharshta state Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh told reporters. "We are interrogating him."
Deshmukh's deputy, R.R. Patil, identified the gunman as a Pakistani national, Mohammad Ajmal Qasam.
The gunmen had sophisticated equipment and used "GPS, mobile and satellite phones to communicate," Patil said. "They were constantly in touch with a foreign country," he said, refusing to give further details.
On Friday, India's foreign minister, Pranab Mukherjee, told reporters that evidence indicated "some elements in Pakistan are responsible for the Mumbai terror attacks."
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani insisted his country was not involved. His government was sending an intelligence official to assist in the probe.
Deshmukh said the attackers arrived by sea.
On Saturday the Indian navy said it was investigating whether a trawler found drifting off the coast of Mumbai, with a bound corpse on board, was used in the attack.
Navy spokesman Capt. Manohar Nambiar said the trawler, named Kuber, had been found Thursday and was brought to Mumbai. Officials said they believe the boat had sailed from a port in the neighboring state of Gujarat.
Indian security officers believe many of the gunmen may have reached the city using a black and yellow rubber dinghy found near the site of the attacks.
In the U.S., President-elect Barack Obama said he was closely monitoring the situation. "These terrorists who targeted innocent civilians will not defeat India's great democracy, nor shake the will of a global coalition to defeat them," he said in a statement.
On Friday, commandos killed the last two gunmen inside the luxury Oberoi hotel, where 24 bodies had been found, authorities said.
But in the most dramatic of the counterstrikes Friday, masked Indian commandos rappelled from a helicopter to the rooftop of the Chabad Lubavitch Jewish center.
For nearly 12 hours, explosions and gunfire erupted from the five-story building as the commandos fought their way downward, while thousands of people gathered behind barricades in the streets to watch. At one point, Indian forces fired a rocket at the building.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told Israel's Channel 1 TV that some of the victims found at the center had been bound.
The attackers were well-prepared, carrying large bags of almonds to keep up their energy during a long siege. One backpack found contained 400 rounds of ammunition.
India has been shaken repeatedly by terror attacks blamed on Muslim militants in recent years, but most were bombings striking crowded places: markets, street corners, parks. Mumbai — one of the most highly populated cities in the world with some 18 million people — was hit by a series of bombings in July 2006 that killed 187 people.
The latest attacks began Wednesday at about 9:20 p.m. with shooters spraying gunfire across the Chhatrapati Shivaji railroad station. For the next two hours, there was an attack roughly every 15 minutes — the Jewish center, a tourist restaurant, one hotel, then another, and two attacks on hospitals.
___
Associated Press writers Ravi Nessman, Erika Kinetz and Anita Chang contributed to this report from Mumbai, and Foster Klug and Lara Jakes Jordan contributed from Washington. http://www.yahoo.com/

INDIANA WOMAN DIES AT 115 AS WORLD'S OLDEST PERSON

INDIANA WOMAN DIES AT 115 AS WORLD'S OLDEST PERSON

SHELBYVILLE, Ind. – Edna Parker, who became the world's oldest person more than a year ago, has died at age 115.
UCLA gerontologist Dr. Stephen Coles said Parker's great-nephew notified him that Parker died Wednesday at a nursing home in Shelbyville. She was 115 years, 220 days old, said Robert Young, a senior consultant for gerontology for Guinness World Records.
Parker was born April 20, 1893, in central Indiana's Morgan County and had been recognized by Guinness World Records as the world's oldest person since the 2007 death in Japan of Yone Minagawa, who was four months her senior.
Coles maintains a list of the world's oldest people and said Parker was the 14th oldest validated supercentenarian in history. Maria de Jesus of Portugal, who was born Sept. 10, 1893, is now the world's oldest living person, according to the Gerontology Research Group.
Parker had been a widow since her husband, Earl Parker, died in 1939 of a heart attack. She lived alone in their farmhouse until age 100, when she moved into a son's home and later to the Shelbyville nursing home.
Although she never drank alcohol or tried tobacco and led an active life, Parker didn't offer tips for living a long life. Her only advice to those who gathered to celebrate when she became the oldest person was "more education."
Parker outlived her two sons, Clifford and Earl Jr. She also had five grandchildren, 13 great-grandchildren and 13 great-great-grandchildren.
Don Parker, 60, said his grandmother had a small frame and a mild temperament. She walked a lot and kept busy even after moving into the nursing home, he said.
"She kept active," he said Thursday. "We used to go up there, and she would be pushing other patients in their wheelchairs."
Gov. Mitch Daniels celebrated with Parker on her 114th birthday.
"It was a delight to know Edna, who must have been a remarkable lady at any age," Daniels said.
Parker taught in a two-room school in Shelby County for several years after graduating from Franklin College in 1911. She wed her childhood sweetheart and neighbor in 1913.
But as was the tradition of that era, her teaching career ended with her marriage. Parker traded the schoolhouse for life as a farmer's wife, preparing meals for as many as a dozen men who worked on her husband's farm.
Parker noted with pride last year that she and her husband were one of the first owners of an automobile in their rural area.
Coincidentally, Parker lived in the same nursing home as 7-foot-7 Sandy Allen, whom Guinness recognized as the world's tallest woman until her death in August. sourch: http://www.yahoo.com/