Pix Bare Obama's Cocky College Days

Paparazzi competition heats up for snaps of future first family

(NEWSER) - Hordes of photographers are gearing up to make their fortunes with photos of the glamorous new first family, Elizabeth Wolff writes in New York magazine.The transition team is trying to carefully manage images of the Obamas, but they're up against patient and wily paparazzi trying to sneak shots of the family that photo agencies are ranking right up there with the Pitt-Jolies for celebrity status. More»

Vanity Fair excerpts new biography

(NEWSER) - President Obama must be just thrilled his old girlfriends kept their letters. Vanity Fair today publishes an excerpt of Barack Obama: The Story, a biography written by Washington Post reporter David Mariniss. The excerpt focuses on the 20-something Obama's relationships with Alex McNear and, later, Genevieve Cook, when he studied at Occidental College and then Columbia, notes CBS News . Some snippets:

• Obama letter to McNear: "Remember how I said there's a certain kind of conservatism which I respect more than bourgeois liberalism—(TS) Eliot is of this type. Of course, the dichotomy he maintains is reactionary, but it’s due to a deep fatalism, not ignorance.” ( Daily Intel has some fun with this one.)
• Another from Obama to McNear: "Caught without a class, a structure, or tradition to support me, in a sense the choice to take a different path is made for me. The only way to assuage my feelings of isolation are to absorb all the traditions [and] classes; make them mine, me theirs."

Historic Henry Peter Bosse images show river in 1880s

(NEWSER) - Few have heard of Henry Peter Bosse, but his 19th-century photographs have earned a home in a federal vault—and a single album is worth $4.5 million. Sotheby's recently appraised the album, which illustrates the changing Mississippi River in the 1880s, and its value had quadrupled over 20 years. But the album's history isn't so illustrious: It spent more than 50 years on a dredge vessel where it appears to have been barely noticed, the Star Tribune reports. More»

Lindsay Lohan's driver becomes subject of assault probe

(NEWSER) - A car in which Lindsay Lohan was a passenger struck and injured a paparazzo early this morning outside a Los Angeles nightclub, then quickly left the scene, police say. The BMW "sped away at a high rate of speed and hit a paparazzi photographer causing an injury to his hand, his wrist," an LAPD rep tells KTLA . The driver, an unidentified woman, is now involved in a criminal investigation of assault with a deadly weapon, TMZ reports. More»

(NEWSER) - One of the most famous war photos of all time was a fake, according to Spanish newspaper El Periodico. The paper says its investigation into Robert Capa's Spanish Civil War "falling soldier" photo—which appears to show a shot militiaman at the moment of death—concluded that the photo was actually taken 30 miles away from any fighting and therefore must have been staged, Artdaily reports. More»