Author: Reporter

Margaret A. Muir: Discovery of 1893 shipwreck brings insights into maritime life on Lake Michigan

Marine archaeologists discovered the wreckage of a Great Lakes schooner that sank in Lake Michigan in the late 1800s. The Wisconsin Underwater Archaeology Association announced in July that its searchers found the Margaret A. Muir in 50 feet of water off Algoma, Wisconsin, on May 12. The Muir was a 130-foot, three-masted schooner that was built in 1872. The ship was en route from Bay City, Michigan, to South Chicago, Illinois, with a cargo of bulk salt. The was designed for the rigors of Great Lakes navigation, playing a crucial role in transporting goods across these vast inland waters....

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A transfer of power: Moments in history when 9 vice presidents unexpectedly became president

Of the 49 vice presidents in U.S. history, nearly 1 in 5 have risen to the presidency due to death or resignation. The first was John Tyler, who became president after William Henry Harrison died one month into his term. The most recent was Gerald Ford, who took office upon Richard Nixon’s resignation. Now in 2024, the spotlight is growing on the two parties’ vice-presidential picks — Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, and Republican Sen. JD Vance of Ohio — due to the advanced ages of the two presidential candidates as well as an attempt to shoot GOP...

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Shots fired: America’s history of political violence goes back to the nation’s founding in 1776

Before the July 13 attempted shooting of former president and convicted felon Donald Trump, there have been multiple instances of political violence targeting U.S. presidents, former presidents, and major party presidential candidates. A look at some of the assassinations and attempted assassinations that have occurred since the nation’s founding in 1776: ABRAHAM LINCOLN, the 16th president Lincoln was the first president to be assassinated, shot by John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865, as he and his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, attended a special performance of the comedy “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theatre in Washington. Lincoln was taken...

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How a small local newspaper met the moment when a big international story happened on its doorstep

When gunshots echoed at the Trump rally where she was working, Butler Eagle reporter Irina Bucur dropped to the ground just like everyone else. She was terrified. She hardly froze, though. Bucur tried to text her assignment editor, through spotty cell service, to tell him what was going on. She took mental notes of what the people in front and behind her were saying. She used her phone to take video of the scene. All before she felt safe standing up again. When the world’s biggest story came to the small western Pennsylvania hamlet of Butler on July 13,...

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Modern life meltdown: How technology pushes humanity down a dimly lit path of digital land mines

“Move fast and break things,” a high-tech mantra popularized 20 years ago by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, was supposed to be a rallying cry for game-changing innovation. It now seems more like an elegy for a society perched on a digital foundation too fragile to withstand a defective software program that was supposed to help protect computers, not crash them. The worldwide technology meltdown caused by a flawed update installed earlier this month on computers running on Microsoft’s dominant Windows software by cybersecurity specialist CrowdStrike was so serious that some affected businesses such as Delta Air Lines were still...

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Discussions of the Trump shooting follow predictable path in breaking-news coverage of the media world

There are not a lot of facts. There are, however, an avalanche of conclusions. So it goes in many corners of the news media and among its frequent commentators in the aftermath of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. Authorities have not established why a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man attempted to assassinate the former president — and, now that the gunman is dead, may never know. That has not stopped media figures and politicians from robust speculation. President Joe Biden, Democrats and left-leaning media have all been blamed, with no proof. Then there is the ever-popular, amorphous, definition-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder target —...

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