In April, 62% of the public approved of Barack Obama's performance as president and 26% disapproved. In August, just four months later, 52% approved of Obama's job performance while 37% disapproved.

Obama's approval rating has declined across nearly all major demographic and political groups: It has fallen 11 points among women and nine points among men; by 12 points among Republicans, 10 points among Democrats and nine points among independents.

The World Wildlife Fund and an ad agency have admitted that a press campaign comparing the loss of life in the New York 9/11 attacks and the Asian tsunami "should never have been made".

The Brazilian press ad, created by local advertising agency DDB Brasil, is called "Tsunami" and uses images of dozens of planes about to crash into New York City skyscrapers to illustrate the scale of the lives lost in the 2004 Asian tsunami.

WWF's ad, which also shows the World Trade Center towers destroyed in the terrorist attacks of 2001, was created and approved at the end of last year and appeared briefly in the Brazilian press.

Within months of J.F.K.’s death, the president’s widow asked William Manchester to write the authorized account of the assassination. He felt he couldn’t refuse her. Two years later, nearly broken by the task, Manchester found himself fighting a bitter, headline-making battle with Jackie and Bobby Kennedy over the finished book. The author chronicles the toll Manchester’s 1967 best-seller, The Death of a President, exacted—physically, emotionally, and financially—before it all but disappeared.

Of all the books written about the Kennedy assassination—by some counts more than 2,000—the one book commissioned by the Kennedys themselves and meant to stand the test of time has virtually disappeared. The fight over Manchester’s book—published on April 7, 1967, by Harper & Row after more than a year of bitter, relentless, headline-making controversy over the manuscript—nearly destroyed its author and pitted him against two of the most popular and charismatic people in the nation: the slain president’s beautiful grieving widow, Jacqueline Kennedy, and his brother Robert F. Kennedy. And the struggle would bring to both Jackie and Bobby a public-relations nightmare...

... Beset by writers clamoring for interviews, Jacqueline decided to designate one to produce the official story of the assassination. In part, she wanted to stop Jim Bishop, a syndicated columnist living in Florida, who was already preparing a book. He was the author of The Day Lincoln Was Shot and a just-finished book, A Day in the Life of President Kennedy, but according to Arthur Schlesinger Jr., the Pulitzer Prize–winning historian and special assistant to Kennedy, the First Lady considered Bishop a “hack” who asked too many personal questions. She preferred that no book be written, but as that was impossible, she went in search of an author.

William Manchester was not her first choice. Theodore H. White, a family favorite (The Making of the President 1960), and Walter Lord (A Night to Remember) turned her down. Then Pierre Salinger, the Kennedys’ press secretary, suggested Manchester, a onetime foreign correspondent for the Baltimore Sun and the author of novels and nonfiction books on H.L. Mencken, the Rockefellers, and President Kennedy.

Most important, he had worshipped John F. Kennedy. His 1962 Portrait of a President was so respectful it was described as “adoring.” Kennedy, not surprisingly, liked Portrait, and Jacqueline had read Manchester’s profile of the president that had appeared in Holiday magazine in 1962. His prose had an emotionally rich, poetic quality that impressed her...

... Manchester, an ex-Marine, was square-jawed, dark-haired, solidly built. When he first met the president he was 39, Kennedy 44. Both men had been born in Massachusetts, but Manchester’s ancestors, who had settled in Attleboro, had arrived long before the Kennedys. The two men may have bonded over their similar W.W. II experiences. (Both had received Purple Hearts, Manchester fighting on Okinawa, J.F.K. commanding PT 109 in the South Pacific’s Solomon Islands.) Manchester later wrote that the president “was brighter than I was, braver, better-read, handsomer, wittier, and more incisive. The only thing I could do better was write.”

In 1964, Manchester was living in a white 18th-century frame house on High Street in Middletown, Connecticut, with his wife, Judy, and their three children. He was working part-time as a managing editor for American Education Publications and, on a Wesleyan fellowship, was writing a history of the Krupp manufacturing family. On February 5, he was sitting in his office on the second floor of Wesleyan’s Olin Library when he received an early-morning telephone call from Salinger. He initially thought it was his friend Jerry—J.D. Salinger, author of The Catcher in the Rye—so he was caught off guard when Kennedy’s press secretary made the offer for him to write the authorized account of the assassination. At first reluctant to take on such a burden, Manchester turned to his secretary and asked, “How can I say no to Mrs. Kennedy?”

“You can’t,” she replied.

He resigned his post at Wesleyan the same day...

Beijing--The director of the Terracotta Army Museum (officially titled the Xi’An Terracotta Warriors and Horses Museum) and other officials at the institution denied local media reports that a major discovery of 100 new terracotta warriors has been made.

China’s state news agency Xinhua, and the AFP, reported that archaeologists have found 100 figures in the “number three” excavation pit at the museum’s site in Shaanxi Province, where work started one month ago.

Director of the museum, Chao Wei, told The Art Newspaper that “it is impossible, the pit is only 200 sq. m, if you were here and saw the site you would see it was not possible to have 100 figures in the pit. Potentially there are maybe ten figures, but work has only just begun”.

Liu, the museum’s vice director, told us: “We are not allowed to discuss this too much with outside sources—I think there has been a discovery, but there is no way there are so many figures.”

Political columnist Pat Buchanan is coming under fire for a column arguing that Adolf Hitler didn’t want to launch a European war, and that World War II could have been avoided if Poland had agreed to hand over the city of Gdansk to Germany.

He even appears to have implied that the Holocaust wouldn’t have happened if the Allied powers hadn’t guaranteed Poland’s security.

In his column published Monday by Creators Syndicate, Buchanan wrote:

The German-Polish war [sic] had come out of a quarrel over a town the size of Ocean City, Md., in summer. Danzig, 95 percent German, had been severed from Germany at Versailles in violation of Woodrow Wilson’s principle of self-determination. Even British leaders thought Danzig should be returned.

Why did Warsaw not negotiate with Berlin, which was hinting at an offer of compensatory territory in Slovakia? Because the Poles had a war guarantee from Britain that, should Germany attack, Britain and her empire would come to Poland’s rescue. … Was Danzig worth a war? Unlike the 7 million Hong Kongese whom the British surrendered to Beijing, who didn’t want to go, the Danzigers were clamoring to return to Germany.

(Note: The city of Danzig, now known as Gdansk, is not a “town the size of Ocean City, Md.” It is one of Poland’s largest cities, and has historically played a major role in trade on the Baltic and North seas.)

Buchanan followed his assertion that Poland could have prevented the war with an argument that Hitler was not interested in a broad war to conquer the world.

But if Hitler was out to conquer the world … why did he spend three years building that hugely expensive Siegfried Line to protect Germany from France? Why did he start the war with no surface fleet, no troop transports and only 29 oceangoing submarines? How do you conquer the world with a navy that can’t get out of the Baltic Sea? … Why did he offer the British peace, twice, after Poland fell, and again after France fell?

The answer, Buchanan argued, is that “Hitler wanted to end the war in 1940, almost two years before the trains began to roll to the camps.” That implication — that the Holocaust would not have happened had the Allies not insisted on fighting a war over the invasion of Poland — may be the most controversial assertion in Buchanan’s article...

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While Coney Island's future remains murky, a group of local commercial divers are bringing a piece of its glorious past back to the surface.

The divers discovered a massive brass bell that was rung in bygone days at the old Dreamland Park whenever passengers left or arrived by steamboat at its once-bustling amusement pier.

They plan to tow the 500-pound bell -- which sank to the ocean floor with the rest of the grand iron pier during the great 1911 Dreamland fire -- to shore tomorrow and eventually put it on display in Coney Island for a new generation of amusement seekers.

BEERSHEBA, Israel (Reuters) – Researchers in Israel say they have developed a computer program that can decipher previously unreadable ancient texts and possibly lead the way to a Google-like search engine for historical documents.

The program uses a pattern recognition algorithm similar to those law enforcement agencies have adopted to identify and compare fingerprints.

But in this case, the program identifies letters, words and even handwriting styles, saving historians and liturgists hours of sitting and studying each manuscript.

By recognizing such patterns, the computer can recreate with high accuracy portions of texts that faded over time or even those written over by later scribes, said Itay Bar-Yosef, one of the researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

Contrary to assertions made by David Brooks, President Obama has had the second greatest rate of decline in approval, reports Charles Franklin.

"Clinton did worse, falling at a monthly rate of 2.3 points. If you look back to the first figure, you see that Clinton fell faster and further, but then rebounded a bit at the end of the summer, making his net change a little smaller (-14) but his overall rate of decline a bit steeper. Obama's chart shows two phases, an initial shallow decline with a bit of a rebound and a more recent decline at a higher rate. Linear fits don't distinguish between these details. But it is pretty clear that based on the linear trend, Clinton fell faster than Obama, contra-Brooks."

First Read: "A few things to remember about all the analysis folks will see on polls in the coming days: There are more BAD polls now than ever before; it confuses the issue and lets some folks cherry-pick what they want. The VERY erratic robo-polling firms have added to the confusion like never before."

WARSAW, Poland (CNS) -- A German cardinal said his country will not achieve full reconciliation with neighboring Poland until both nations recognize the grievances of millions of civilians who lost everything in deportations during and after World War II.

"We should remember the present generation doesn't carry the blame for these events, but bears responsibility for them," said Berlin Cardinal Georg Sterzinsky.

"The challenge of approaching others without prejudice and working for a united Europe will not be met until Poles expelled from their prewar eastern territories are understood in Germany, as are the reasons why Germans were expelled from lands now belonging to Poland. This is causing many unnecessary misunderstandings and conflicts," he told the Polish Catholic news agency KAI Aug. 30.

The same day, Polish and German bishops celebrated a Mass in Berlin to commemorate the Sept. 1, 1939, German attack on Poland that began World War II. Church leaders from both countries called for mutual forgiveness and reconciliation at the Mass at St. Hedwig Cathedral.

A letter written by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) in 1971 reveals that he then opposed abortion and supported giving rights to the unborn.

“While the deep concern of a woman bearing an unwanted child merits consideration and sympathy, it is my personal feeling that the legalization of abortion on demand is not in accordance with the value which our civilization places on human life,” Kennedy wrote on Aug. 3, 1971 in response to a letter sent to him by Thomas E. Dennelly, who asked the senator about his stand on abortion.

“Wanted or unwanted, I believe that human life, even at its earliest stages, has certain rights which much be recognized--the right to be born, the right to love, the right to grow old,” wrote Kennedy.

The letter, written two years before the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion, was given to the Catholic League by Dennelly, a New York resident and a member of the league, a Catholic civil rights organization.

There was no doubt that Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts had died if anyone listened to NPR in the days after his death late on Aug. 25 from brain cancer. Between Aug. 26 and 30, NPR ran 53 stories.

Before Kennedy even died, NPR had 7 in-depth stories already prepared, according to David Sweeney, NPR's managing editor. "From shortly after he was diagnosed with brain cancer, we worked up a list of stories both for the air and online," said Sweeney. "We also worked to produce a couple of obits that would reflect his life, in all its aspects."

Media saturation on the Kennedy story was not unique to NPR. A report released Tuesday by the Project on Excellence in Journalism noted that Kennedy's death was the No.1 story last week. "Indeed, his passing generated more coverage than that of any other political or celebrity since the PEJ News Coverage Index began in January 2007," said the report.

On Wednesday, Aug. 26, Morning Edition ran 6 stories on Kennedy -- covering 34 minutes. To put that in perspective, Morning Edition produces 1 hour and 14-minutes of editorial content each day after newscasts, breaks and funders are taken out.

Tell Me More devoted 19 minutes to Kennedy. Talk of the Nation devoted 48 minutes to an NPR special on remembering Kennedy. By late that afternoon, half the stories (45 minutes) on All Things Considered related to Kennedy's passing. Total programming time across two hours of ATC, excluding newscasts, breaks, funders, is approximately 1 hour and 20 minutes...

... Some listeners were unhappy with what they perceive as hagiography while downplaying the darker chapters in Kennedy's life.

"In your story on Ted Kennedy your reports vacillate between naming the young woman in the Chappaquiddick accident and just calling her a 'young campaign aid.'" She had a name and her name should always be used," wrote Laurel Barton, of Seattle. "It was Mary Jo Kopechne. It is disrespectful and degrading to refer to her as just a 'young campaign aid.'"

Michael Whitaker of Beaufort, SC added, "I work at a chemical plant in Savannah and mention of Ted Kennedy's passing brought up nothing but negative comments, particularly about his murder of Mary Jo Kopechne and how he was able to cover it up. I'd like to hear more from her family."

More complete coverage of Kennedy's foibles appeared on Talk of the Nation on Aug. 26. The now-famous island was mentioned 10 times in a 48-minute segment that more fully explored what happened at Chappaquiddick

The CIA said in court papers late Monday that it intends to withhold hundreds of pages of documents related to the Bush administration's torture and detention policies on grounds that disclosing the information will threaten national security.

In a 33-page declaration, Wendy M. Hilton, the associate information officer of the CIA's National Clandestine Service, said the documents the agency is withholding are "primarily" those "from closed investigations conducted by the CIA's OIG [Office of Inspector General] of alleged improprieties in the treatment of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"These documents include cables, OIG interview reports of CIA officers, emails written by CIA officers, memoranda and other inter-office communications, memoranda for the record, presentations and handwritten notes," Hilton's declaration states in reference to documents the CIA has withheld related to Justice Department legal opinions authorizing torture and documents that were used to write a 2004 inspector general's report that reviewed the program.

A facsimile of an historic document from the Vatican Secret Archives in which English peers appeal to Pope Clement VII to annul Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon is to be given to the Queen tomorrow.

The 95 x 46cm (37 x 18in) parchment, which dates from 1530 and bears 81 red wax seals, is a key document of events leading to the schism between Rome and the Church in England.

Scrinium, a Venice-based publisher that promotes the historic and cultural wealth of the Vatican and reproduces treasures from its archives, said that the facsimile would be presented to Lady Roberts, the Royal Librarian since 2002. The collectors’ item normally costs €50,000 (£44,000).

The document, Causa Anglica, is the fourth treasure from the Secret Archives to be reproduced. It joins facsimiles of the papal bull announcing the first Jubilee or Holy Year in 1300, Munificentia Venetiarum, a 16th-century Venetian document on relations with the Church of Rome, and the Chinon Parchment, the record of the trial of the Knights Templar in the 14th century, in which they were exonerated of heresy. A second copy of the Henry VIII parchment is held at the National Archives at Kew, but it lacks the wax seals and is in parts illegible.

Vatican historians say that whatever the later causes of the schism, the “most immediate and determining cause” was Henry VIII’s “wish to get rid of his legitimate wife, Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, in order to marry Anne Boleyn.”

Libyan officials were secretly told that Gordon Brown wanted the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi to return home rather than have him die on British soil.

The message was conveyed by a former Foreign Office minister Bill Rammell after the Libyans had warned that Megrahi's death in a Scottish prison would have a "catastrophic" impact on relations between the two countries.

The revelation was contained in a pile of documents released yesterday by the UK and Scottish governments in an attempt to prove that no deal was struck to return Megrahi in exchange for Libyan oil. But it increased the pressure on the Prime Minister to end his two-week silence on whether he supported the release of the terminally ill prisoner. The disclosure was a new setback for Mr Brown who had hoped that the cascade of documents would put an end to the damaging controversy.

Although Egyptian-Israeli relations have been frosty in recent years, ties between the two lands were vibrant around 3,000 BCE during the Early Bronze Age - at least according to Tel Aviv University and University College London archeologists who discovered a rare, four-centimeter-long stone fragment at the point where the Jordan River exits Lake Kinneret.

The piece, part of a carved stone plaque bearing archaic Egyptian signs, was the highlight of the second season of excavations at Tel Bet Yerah (Khirbet el-Kerak). The site lies along an ancient highway that connected Egypt to the wider world of the ancient Near East.

The dig, carried out within the Beit Yerah National Park, was completed there last week by a joint team headed by TAU's Raphael Greenberg and David Wengrow from England.

Earlier discoveries, both in Egypt and at Bet Yerah, have indicated that there was direct interaction between the site - then one of the largest in the Jordan Valley - and the Egyptian royal court. The new discovery suggests that these contacts were of far greater local significance than had been suspected.

The archeologists noted that the fragment - which depicts an arm and hand grasping a scepter and an early form of the ankh sign - was the first artifact of its type ever found in an archaeological site outside Egypt. It has been attributed to the period of Egypt's First Dynasty, at around 3000 BCE.

Finds of this nature are rare even within Egypt itself, they said, and the signs are executed to a high quality, as good as those on royal cosmetic palettes and other monuments dating to the origins of Egyptian kingship.

For the more than fifty years that Democrats controlled the U.S. House of Representatives, leadership was divided between Massachusetts and Texas. When the Speaker was from Texas (or nearby Oklahoma), the Majority Leader was from the Boston area, and when the Speaker was from Boston, the Majority Leader was from Texas.

The Austin-Boston Connection analyzes the importance of the friendships (especially mentor-protégé relationships) and enmities within congressional delegations, regional affinities, and the lynchpin practice of appointing the Democratic Whip.

Family members say the only man convicted in the 1988 Lockerbie bombing has been taken to intensive care after his condition worsened.

Abdel Baset al-Megrahi has terminal prostate cancer and Libyan officials have said his health has swiftly deteriorated since his release from a Scottish prison less than two weeks ago.

The family members, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said they have not been allowed to visit him. There was no way to independently verify his condition.

Four men accused of trafficking in archaeological resources will forfeit more than 12,500 archaeological items as part of their federal penalties.

Three of the men were recently sentenced, and a fourth is awaiting sentencing.A fifth man, Scott Matteson, 60, of Fort Pierre, has pleaded not guilty and will be tried in January 2010. Matteson faces up to five years in prison and a $100,000 fine.

John Sheild, 77, of Monona, Wis., was fined $10,000 and ordered to forfeit his interest in a variety of items ranging from military items to bone tools.

Brian Ekrem, 28, Selby, will spend 10 months in prison and one year on supervised release. Ekrem was ordered to forfeit 204 items.

Richard D. Geffre, 29, Pierre, was sentenced to three years of probation, six months of home confinement and fined $20,000. Geffre forfeits 7,930 items including bead work, arrowheads, tools and bison skulls.

Elliot D. Hook, 52, Wessington Springs, has pleaded guilty to trafficking in resources. As part of his plea agreement, Hook will forfeit 4,369 artifacts. Hook was also ordered to forfeit his interest in 797 fossil items. His sentencing is set for January 2010.

ISLAMABAD: Taxila valley does not just boast country’s rich heritage, it has been a source of enduring pride for the people. But it has been under stress from continuous quarrying and blasting in its surroundings.

Archaeologists and environmentalists are again voicing outrage at substantial harm to this irreplaceable cultural heritage – ancient structures, archaeological sites, and priceless artifacts – from continuous quarrying.

The archaeological remains and environment of Taxila valley were seemingly safe until a large number of stone crushing plants were installed. Mining and blasting ensued, causing substantial loss to environment in which precious heritage sites have existed for the last 2,600 years.

To preserve historical and geographical settings of Taxila valley, the federal government declared it as a conservation zone. Necessary notifications were issued in 1982 under Antiquities Act-1975, prohibiting mining, quarrying, excavation, blasting and other operations of similar nature and removed 40 stone crushing plants situated within the conservation zone.

Later, the conservation zone was reduced through notifications in 1984, 1986, and 1989 to allow stone crushing machines in the dry bed of Haro River and to exclude the area of Fecto Cement Factory and Sangjani stone crushers.

There were still a large number of stone crushers in Taxila valley outside the conservation zone near Nicholson Memorial.

'Nicholson’s Memorial could be in danger. Quarrying has come to the monuments doorstep,' said an official of the archaeology department. 'Stone blocks have given way from the top because of tremors from blasting that have also put cracks in the memorial.'

Mt. Wilson Observatory is a historic architectural site that has survived more than 100 years in the rugged wilds of the San Gabriel Mountains high above L.A.

This week, however, the observatory's very existence is in jeopardy as the Station fire continues to spread due to dry, hot weather conditions.

In a post today on the Chicago Tribune's Cityscapes blog, Blair Kamin writes that the observatory was designed by D.H. Burnham & Co., the firm of the notable Chicago architect Daniel Burnham. This Friday would have been the architect's 163rd birthday.

The Times reported today that crews battling the Station fire "believe that it's only a matter of time before the blaze hits Mt. Wilson, but officials are hopeful that frantic work by hand crews and aircraft dropping flame retardant will protect the communications centers there."

At least 20 world leaders gathered Tuesday in Poland to commemorate the start of World War II 70 years ago -- a conflict in which 6 million Poles died.

Germany's pre-dawn invasion began when the battleship Schleswig-Holstein fired on the Westerplatte military base in Gdansk harbor on September 1, 1939.

The attack set off a chain of events that eventually embroiled all of the world's major powers in the war. The conflict lasted until September 2, 1945 when Germany's ally Japan signed an unconditional surrender.

Leaders from many of those nations were in Gansk on Tuesday for a wreath-laying ceremony at the Cemetery of Defenders at Westerplatte, with commemoration speeches to take place in front of the Westerplatte
memorial.

Among those attending were German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin -- leaders of the two nations that once held power over Poland.