The Decline and Fall of Western Civ for 21 Nov.

After reading: wash, rinse and repeat.

• KITV reports the acting director of the White House Travel Office was robbed and beaten in Waikiki early on Tuesday morning outside a nightclub, according to Honolulu police.
  
  Three men mugged Greg Pitts at about 2 a.m. while he was walking through the International Marketplace near Bobby G's Dance Club, police said.
  
  Pitts accompanied President George W. Bush on a brief visit to Hawaii. The stop came after an eight-day trip to Asia.

• Two of the three Honolulu Police Department motorcycle officers involved in a crash while escorting President George W. Bush to Hickam Air Force Base are in serious condition at The Queen's Medical Center according to The Honolulu Adviser.

• In more news from the police blotter, pressofatlanticcity.com reports four female bodies were found face down in a drainage ditch Monday afternoon in the West Atlantic City section of the township, authorities confirmed.
  
  The bodies, which have not been identified, were found lying in several inches of water shortly after 3 p.m., Atlantic County Prosecutor Jeffrey S. Blitz said. Autopsies are scheduled to begin at 8 a.m. today.
  
  

  “We're in the process of attempting to identify the bodies,” the prosecutor said in a phone interview. “We have confirmed that there are four dead bodies; we haven't confirmed whether they are homicides. There is an ongoing investigation.”

  NBC 10 notes investigators in Atlantic City say one of four women found dead in a ditch Monday night was strangled to death.

• AP reports out-of-wedlock births in the United States have climbed to an all-time high, accounting for nearly four in 10 babies born last year, government health officials said Tuesday.
  
  

  "A lot of people think of teenagers and unmarried mothers synonymously, but they are not driving this," said Stephanie Ventura of the National Center for Health Statistics, a co-author of the report.

• Not to be topped by yesterday's Racism: Alive and Well segment starring Cosmo Kramer, Boston U's The Daily Free Press reports, looking to draw attention to what they call the "worst form of bigotry confronting America today," Boston University's College Republicans are circulating an application for a "Caucasian Achievement and Recognition Scholarship" that requires applicants be at least 25 percent Caucasian.
  
  

  "Did we do this to give a scholarship to white kids? Of course not," the scholarship reads. "Did we do it to trigger a discussion on what we believe to be the morally wrong practice of basing decisions in our schools and our jobs on racial preferences rather than merit? Absolutely."

• The global HIV epidemic is growing, leaving an estimated 39.5 million people worldwide infected with the deadly virus, the United Nations said Tuesday, according to AP.
  
  

  "In a short quarter of a century AIDS has drastically changed our world," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said at a staff meeting Monday in Geneva. "AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria make up the deadliest triad the world has known."

Tags: Decline and Fall of Western Civ, Open Thread, Wire, Headlines, United States
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