By David Pendered June 23, 2025 – Social media and video content have overtaken legacy media as the go-to source for news in the United States, despite the vast majority of consumers saying they don’t trust it, according to new research by the Reuters Institute. The report’s overview observes that 54 percent of Americans said […]
Short Takes
Army honors three fallen soldiersBy David Pendered June 16 – An Army Green Beret soldier killed in the controversial 2017 Niger Ambush, and two other fallen soldiers, were honored June 12 through the naming of survey vessels by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the Savannah District. All three soldiers were from Georgia and were killed in action. […]
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Dali Disaster: Witness interviews an international squabbleBy David Pendered May 11 – Baltimore or London? The choice is bogging down the lawsuit over liability of the ship that knocked down a bridge near Baltimore. The Dali, a Singapore-flagged container ship, crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge on March 26, 2024. The allision with the bridge that was part of the […]
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Catching up with Sofia Talvik, singer-songwriterBy David Pendered May 5 – Sofia Talvik is the Swedish singer-songwriter I selected for a series of stories on how an artist was navigating the Covid pandemic. I caught up with her at her recent show on the Florida Panhandle. Time has enriched her voice and her lyrics. Talvik’s guitar skills remain top notch, […]
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Pew surveys show: Press freedom important, AI poses threatsBy David Pendered May 11 – Most Americans continue to say freedom of the press is highly important and half of Americans think artificial intelligence will have a negative effect on the news they consume, new surveys show. These findings are among those revealed in the past two weeks in surveys conducted by the Pew […]
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Enslaved shipbuilders highly valued in antebellum Eastern NCBy David Pendered Fort Macon State Park, NC – March 3 – An 1857 court ruling speaks to the value some slaveholders placed on enslaved people who were able to build the vessels needed deliver the region’s corn and wheat from farm to market in antebellum Eastern North Carolina. The ruling was cited in a […]
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Okefenokee selected over B’ham church bombings for World Heritage ListBy David Pendered Jan. 13 – The Okefenokee Swamp was chosen over the site of the fatal bombing at Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church and 17 other sites for nomination to the United Nation’s World Heritage List. Advocates of the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge helped sway the site-selection committee, which is overseen by the US […]
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Birmingham seeks to revive civil rights districtBy David Pendered Dec. 9 – Birmingham is soon to start retooling 2.5 miles of roads and sidewalks in its Civil Rights District in hopes of sparking economic renewal. Plenty of redevelopment opportunities exist in the neighborhood surrounding the 16th Street Baptist Church, where four girls died in a terrorist bombing in 1963, and the […]
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Counting US: Race, ethnicity rules taking effectBy David Pendered Nov. 18 – On Tuesday, as the Census enacts the category of “Middle Eastern or North African” and other changes, the agency is to update the public on the status of the project that aims to modernize reporting practices. The purpose of the new practices is to increase accuracy in representing the […]
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Key Bridge crash: Trial date setBy David Pendered Nov. 11 – Two important deadlines were set Nov. 7 in the federal lawsuit involving the collapse of the Key Bridge in Baltimore, after it was struck by a container ship. A federal judge in Maryland has set June 1, 2026 for the bench trial to begin, following a Feb. 27, 2026 […]
