On a regular basis, NewsBusters has warned readers of the infiltration into traditional media outlets content written by left-wing bloggers. On Sunday, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd was accused of plagiarizing a piece posted a few days prior by Josh Marshall of the liberal website Talking Points Memo. Dowd has now admitted her mistake.
Children as young as seven are being recruited by councils to act as ‘citizen snoopers’, the Daily Mail can reveal. The ‘environment volunteers’ will report on litter louts, noisy neighbours – and even families putting their rubbish out on the wrong day. There are currently almost 9,000 people signed up to the schemes. More are likely to be recruited in the coming months. Controversially, some councils are running ‘junior’ schemes which are recruiting children.
Swine flu spreading rapidly in Japan.
APAN’S number of confirmed swine flu cases soared to 93 at the weekend, officials say, as senior health officials gathered in Geneva for talks on containing the spread of the virus. Most of the infections were reported among high school and college students in and around the western cities of Kobe and Osaka, where authorities have ordered more than 1000 schools and kindergartens to stay shut today. “I don’t know specifics about the cases but judging from confirmed cases the infection is likely to be spreading to hundreds of people,” Japanese virologist Masato Tashiro told public broadcaster NHK said.
A group of American Muslims, led by two prominent scholars, is moving closer to fulfilling a vision of founding the first four-year accredited Islamic college in the United States, what some are calling a “Muslim Georgetown.” Advisers to the project have scheduled a June vote to decide whether the proposed Zaytuna College can open in the fall of next year, a major step toward developing the faith in America.
Gov. Charlie Crist says he wants more diversity. Others say he’s ignoring the Florida Constitution. But Crist’s push to appoint a black judge to a Daytona Beach-based appeals court — despite no black applicants making a short list of nominees for the job — has created a standoff that is going to the Florida Supreme Court. Crist has refused for months to appoint a judge to the 5th District Court of Appeal, after a constitutionally required nominating panel sent him a list that did not include any black candidates.
One thing was certain at the start of the Roll Call Project at the Riverside National Cemetery. There would be more than enough volunteers there for the week it will take to read the names of every one of the 148,000 veterans buried there. More than 500 men, women and teenagers signed up to be one of those to recite the names 24 hours a day, every day from Saturday, Armed Forces Day, to May 25, Memorial Day. When the project was announced, volunteer coordinator Danielle Segura said she was flooded with telephone calls and e-mails.
I have spent the weekend playing around with the new search engine project WolframAlpha. After months of preview hype, the new “computational knowledge engine” had a rolling launch on Friday, accompanied by a couple of hiccups mostly to do with dealing with the amount of traffic heading its way, and the service launches officially to the public tomorrow. Is it any good and will it fulfill the breathless talk of it being a Google Killer? The answers are emphatically yes and no.
A prison psychologist lost her job last month after shooting her lover, a convicted felon recently released from the minimum-security facility where she worked. Kristel K. Rider shot Lamount K. Friend once in the chest on April 21 in front of his grandparents’ home near Clayton. He survived, though the .38-caliber bullet from her Smith & Wesson revolver barely missed his heart. And the two apparently have reconciled. The incident report filed by the Johnston County Sheriff’s Office described their relationship as “BG,” an abbreviation a department spokesman said stands for “boyfriend and girlfriend.” No charges have been filed in the case.
Duke University Press will publish Ann Dunham’s graduate school dissertation in December, 14 years after her death. Dunham, who is the mother of President Barack Obama, completed the work in 1992 for her doctorate in anthropology at the University of Hawaii, after doing 14 years of thesis research, Duke University Press Publicist Laura Sell said.
A North Kingstown police officer was shot at multiple times with his own service weapon while on duty Sunday afternoon and is being treated at Rhode Island Hospital. Police said the officer was grappling with a suspect on Wasp Road shortly after 1 p.m. when the suspect got the officer’s .40 caliber revolver and shot him. Police said the officer, who was wearing a protective vest, was hit at least once.
Most of us hear stories of Airmen saving lives in combat, but an Airman who saves the lives of more than 300 passengers is definitely a story worth hearing. A fuel leak on a civilian aircraft caught the attention of Staff Sgt. Bartek Bachleda, 909th Air Refueling Squadron boom operator, during a flight from Chicago to Narita airport, Japan. After alerting the pilots and aircrew, the ranking pilot made the decision to divert the flight to San Francisco. “I noticed the leak on the left side of the aircraft right behind the wing earlier during take-off,” said Sergeant Bachleda.
A man whose pickup plunged off the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway this morning was helped to safety by another motorist who climbed down a rescue ladder and into the lake to aid him, authorities said. The pickup driver was not seriously injured. Causeway workers were in position to pull the pickup out of the lake at 11:40 a.m. The southbound bridge will be closed while the vehicle is lifted from the water.
n Ohio man who argued with his grown son over a messy bedroom says he overreacted when he called 911. Andrew Mizsak called authorities Thursday after his 28-year-old son _ who’s a school board member in the Cleveland suburb of Bedford _ threw a plate of food across the kitchen table and made a fist at him when told to clean his room.
A Texas mother of twins got the shock of her life when doctors revealed that her 11-month-old boys do not have the same father. Mia Washington decided to get some expert advice when she and her partner noticed that twins Justin and Jordan had different facial features. Paternity tests then revealed what had happened — two eggs had been fertilized by two different sperm and there was a 99.99% chance the twins had different dads.
Quote of the day.
Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zone. . . . Barack Obama will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual — uninvolved, uninformed.
-Michelle Obama on the campaign trail 2008