The NBA’s Top Gossips
How Three Nobodies Built Basketball’s
Most Powerful News Site — From Spain
By RUSSELL ADAMSMarch 21, 2008;
Madrid
General managers, agents, sportswriters and knowledgeable fans of the National Basketball Association log on every morning to Hoopshype.com for the latest in news and gossip.
CLICK The NBA’s Top Gossips – WSJ.com FOR FULL STORY
Categories: GENERAL
114-year-old South Dallas woman dies nine days after birthday celebration
08:28 PM CDT on Saturday, March 22, 2008
By SHERRY JACOBSON / The Dallas Morning News
sjacobson@dallasnews.comArbella Perkins Ewings blew out all 114 candles on her birthday cake on March 13 and quietly took part in the celebration that comes with being the third-oldest person in the world.
There was a proclamation from Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert, speeches by friends and family, TV cameras and a roomful of well-wishers.
Ms. Ewings died Saturday at Grace Presbyterian Village.
COURTNEY PERRY/DMN
Ms. Ewings died Saturday at Grace Presbyterian Village.But the people who knew the South Dallas woman as “Aunt Bell” could see that her heart wasn’t in the celebration. Her words often did not match the festive occasion, although she was alert and greeting most people by name – even neighbors she had not seen in a long time.
Throughout the party, she warned her guests that she wasn’t going to last much longer.
click here 114-year-old South Dallas woman dies nine days after birthday celebration | WFAA.com | News: Local News.for full article
Categories: NEWS · TRANSITIONS
Author Struggles to Stay Removed from Slave Trade
Listen Now [8 min 58 sec] add to playlist
Day to Day, March 11, 2008 · With $50 and a plane ticket to Haiti, one can buy a slave. This was just one of the difficult lessons writer Benjamin Skinner learned while researching his book, A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery.
Click NPR for full article
Categories: GENERAL
Mending a Heart, Finding a Calling
By JOSH WEIL
Published: March 23, 2008IN 1963, when Jaime Debbah was 28 years old, he left his fiancée, his family and the close-knit Jewish community around Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn — his entire world — to go to East Africa. He took with him a bruised heart and an anxious mind, but a few weeks later, he returned, carrying a bagful of colorful beads and the makings of a new life.
Josh Weil
Jaime Debbah and his brother run J&S Imports.The fruits of Mr. Debbah’s journey have grown: In a cavernous warehouse just north of Union Square, hundreds of African masks crowd pegboard walls, armies of wooden and iron statues fill the shelves, and tiger shell bracelets rattle as customers brush by.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL ARTICLE – New York Times.
In Search of Roach Bait and Other Bargains
By JAMES ANGELOSAT 8:30 on a recent Friday morning, nine women and one man who frequent a local community center climbed gingerly into two maroon vans parked near Ogden Avenue in Highbridge in the Bronx. A driver in a silver S.U.V. honked at them for blocking the street.
“Hey, don’t mess with us seniors!” yelled Barbara Carey, a boisterous 61-year-old wearing a bright blue sweatsuit, as she glared at the driver. Her gray-haired companions giggled.
The members of this group, who ranged in age from 61 to 85, had gathered on this morning for an hourlong trip to a Wal-Mart Supercenter in the town of Monroe, an hour north of New York, followed by an afternoon stop at the Palisades Center, a sprawling mall in West Nyack.
The expeditions, which began in 2005 and are held every three months, are intended to help older residents cope with the ever-rising prices of groceries and household items. For these individuals, most of whom live alone on a fixed income in what is one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods (the median household income is estimated at $24,334), the trips also represent a welcome social opportunity.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL ARTICLE New York Times.
Categories: SHOPPING
In Parts of Pa., Racial Divide Colors Election
By Krissah Williams
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 23, 2008; A01HARRISBURG, Pa. — At American Legion Post 733, the day begins around 10 a.m., when the first men trickle in, turn on ESPN, order a whiskey or a gin and tonic, and start talking about sports. Most were born and raised here, and are retired from the nearly shuttered Bethlehem Steel mill nearby or work the night shift at local warehouses.
Ten minutes down the road, at American Legion Post 420, the ritual is the same, except it starts late in the afternoon, after quitting time. The men have similar drinks, similar jobs and a love for the same football team — the Pittsburgh Steelers.
But when it comes to race and politics, these are two separate worlds. Post 733 is almost all black, its members energized by the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.); Post 420 is almost all white, its members debating whether to vote for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) or Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in next month’s Pennsylvania primary. They all agree with Obama on this: The chasm he talked about in his speech on race in America is real.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL ARTICLE In Parts of Pa., Racial Divide Colors Election.
Categories: NEWS
The Way We Live Now
Mixed Messenger
By PEGGY ORENSTEINA few weeks ago, while stuck at the Chicago airport with my 4-year-old daughter, I struck up a conversation with a woman sitting in the gate area. After a time, she looked at my girl — who resembles my Japanese-American husband — commented on her height and asked, “Do you know if her birth parents were tall?”
Most Americans watching Barack Obama’s campaign, even those who don’t support him, appreciate the historic significance of an African-American president. But for parents like me, Obama, as the first biracial candidate, symbolizes something else too: the future of race in this country, the paradigm and paradox of its simultaneous intransigence and disappearance.
It’s true that, over the past months, Obama has increasingly positioned himself as a black man. That’s understandable: insisting on being seen as biracial might alienate African-American leaders and voters who have questioned his authenticity. White America, too, has a vested interest in seeing him as black it’s certainly a more exciting, more romantic and more concrete prospect than the “first biracial president.” Yet, even as he proves his black cred, it may be the senator’s dual identity, and his struggles to come to terms with it, that explain his crossover appeal and that have helped him to both embrace and transcend race, winning over voters in Birmingham, Iowa, as well as Birmingham, Ala.
Categories: GENERAL
White men hold key in superdelegate math
BY CELESTE KATZ
DAILY NEWS POLITICAL CORRESPONDENTSunday, March 23rd 2008, 4:00 AM
In a presidential campaign where the smoldering tinder of race caught fire last week, the largest demographic among the remaining unpledged superdelegates is … white men.
Caucasians comprise the bulk of the superdelegates – the politicians and party honchos who will help determine the Democratic nominee – and the effect of last week’s race-related campaign issues remains to be seen.
click for more : White men hold key in superdelegate math.
Categories: GENERAL
Eliot Spitzer kept on black stockings for hooker romps, feds told
BY RICH SCHAPIRO
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERSunday, March 23rd 2008, 4:00 AM
Eliot Spitzer Sabo/NewsEliot Spitzer
A controversial political strategist sent a letter to the feds in November saying that then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer “used the services of high-priced call girls” in Florida – and kept his socks on while he did.
The missive from a lawyer for Roger Stone said his client had obtained the lowdown on Spitzer from “a social contact in an adult-themed club.”
“The governor has paid literally tens of thousands of dollars for these services,” the letter to the FBI reads, according to the Miami Herald. “It is Mr. Stone’s understanding that the governor paid not with credit cards or cash but through some prearranged transfer.
“It is also my client’s understanding from the same source that Governor Spitzer did not remove his midcalf-length black socks during the sex act,” said the letter, which was signed by Stone’s attorney Paul Rolf Jensen. “Perhaps you can use this detail to corroborate Mr. Stone’s information.”
A source close to Stone – who is a longtime Spitzer foe – told the Daily News yesterday it was unclear how many trysts Spitzer had with prostitutes in Florida or when. But in at least one encounter he reportedly asked for a call girl with the same hair color as Ashley Alexandra Dupre, the 22-year-old hooker who knocked the socks off the ex-attorney general’s career.
“Client 9 asked for a brunette,” the source said.
Stone, reached by The News late yesterday, declined to offer further details on Spitzer’s alleged Florida dalliances.
But he called the spectacular fall of the crusading former Sheriff of Wall Street “ironic.”
“In my view, Spitzer should have gone down for campaign finance law violations or he should have gone down for abuse of power in the Troopergate scandal as opposed to going down for something as stupid as sex,” Stone said.
The letter, dated Nov. 19, was sent after FBI agents asked to speak to Stone – although it’s unclear why the feds had reached out to him, the Herald reported.
A disgraced Spitzer announced his resignation March 12 after it was revealed he spent $4,300 for a couple hours with Dupre in the Mayflower Hotel in Washington.
Stone, perhaps best known as the Richard Nixon aide who recruited a mole to infiltrate George McGovern’s presidential campaign, is the same strategist accused of leaving a threatening message on Spitzer’s father’s answering machine during the Troopergate scandal.
rschapiro@nydailynews.com
With Celeste Katz
Eliot Spitzer kept on black stockings for hooker romps, feds told.
Categories: GENERAL
Legendary Cuban mambo king dies
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sunday, March 23rd 2008, 4:00 AM
MIAMI – Grammy-winning mambo pioneer Israel (Cachao) Lopez died Saturday at 89.
Known simply as Cachao, the Cuban-born bassist and composer fell ill in the past week and died surrounded by family members at Coral Gables Hospital.
Cachao left his Communist homeland and came to the U.S. in the early 1960s. He continued to perform into his late 80s, including a performance after the death of trombonist Generoso Jimenez in September.
Cuban-American actor Andy Garcia, who made a 1993 documentary about Cachao’s career, credited him with being a major influence in Cuban musical history and said his passing marked the end of an era.
“Cachao is our musical father. He is revered by all who have come in contact with him and his music,” Garcia said in a statement on Saturday. “Maestro … you have been my teacher, and you took me in like a son. So I will continue to rejoice with your music and carry our traditions wherever I go, in your honor.”
Cachao was born in Havana in 1918 to a family of musicians. A classically trained bassist, he began performing with the Havana symphony orchestra as a teenager, working under the baton of visiting guest conductors, such as Herbert von Karajan, Igor Stravinsky and Heitor Villa-Lobos, during his nearly 30-year career with the orchestra.
He and his late brother, multi-instrumentalist Orestes Lopez, created the mambo in the late 1930s. The mambo emerged from their improvisational work with the danzon, an elegant musical style that lends itself to slow dancing.
“The origins of ‘mambo’ happened in 1937,” Cachao said in a 2004 interview with The San Francisco Chronicle. “My brother and I were trying to add something new to our music and came up with a section that we called danzon mambo. It made an impact and stirred up people.”
The mambo was embraced early on, and Cuban composers and jazz musicians have tweaked it over the years. It also influenced the development of salsa music.
Categories: TRANSITIONS
