“Islamic militants attempted to storm the U.S. Embassy in Damascus on Tuesday,” but were unable to breach the embassy’s high walls. Four guards, all Syrian, were killed.
New study “closes the loop” showing that human-induced global warming is “making hurricanes globally more violent and violent hurricanes more common.”
“A black man living in a high-crime American city can expect to live 21 fewer years than a woman of Asian descent in the United States,” according to a comprehensive new study of life expectancy in the U.S. “The man’s life expectancy, in fact, is closer to that of people living in West Africa than it is to the average white American.”
The FBI is investigating allegations that Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D-IL) awarded a woman a job in return for a personal check her husband wrote to one of Blagojevich’s children. Blagojevich claims the $1,500 check was a “gift for his daughter’s 7th birthday.”
For decades in Iraq, marriages between Sunnis and Shiites were considered “as ordinary as the daily call to prayer” and “the glue that held a fragile multi-ethnic society together.” But post-war sectarian violence is now leaving “no hope in this country anymore for Sunnis and Shiites to fall in love.”
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, responding to an Iranian offer to suspend its uranium enrichment efforts for two months, suggested the U.S. might suspend its pursuit of U.N. sanctions against Iran if there is verified suspension. The New York Times reports Rice’s statements as an “ever-so-softening of America’s stance.”
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reported that dropping out of high school has its costs around the globe, but nowhere is it steeper than in the U.S. “Adults who don’t finish high school in the U.S. earn 65 percent of what people who have high school degrees make.”
School students who sat with President Bush on the morning of 9/11 recounted their impressions after watching Andrew Card whisper to him that “America is under attack.” “His face just started to turn red,” said Tyler Radkey, now 13 and in seventh grade. “I thought, personally, he had to go to the bathroom.” “He looked like he was going to cry,” said Natalia Jones-Pinkney, now 12.
And finally: House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) led a congressional rendition of the national anthem at a 9/11 commemoration yesterday. We won’t comment on his performance, other than to say that it would have been better if he knew the words to the song.
What did we miss? Let us know in the comments section.
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