Links to the News

San Francisco Chronicle, April 30, 2007 Newseum Image

April 30, 2007: An excerpt from a story in the San Francisco Chronicle:

THE MAZE MELTDOWN 

HIGHWAY BUCKLES: Tanker overturns on I-880 connector, igniting thousands of gallons of gas -- key overpass collapses

By PATRICK HOGE, DEMIAN BULWA, PETER FIMRITE

Isaac Rodriguez rushed into the night from the Oakland sewage treatment plant where he works and found a blinding light -- a curtain of fire engulfing the elevated freeway ramps nearby.

A tanker truck carrying 8,600 gallons of gasoline had overturned at 3:41 a.m. and burst into flames on the 50-foot-high ramp connecting westbound Interstate 80 to southbound Interstate 880. Within minutes, the ramp above it -- connecting eastbound I-80 to eastbound I-580 -- collapsed in the 3,000-degree cauldron.

"It was massive," said Rodriguez, a 53-year-old sanitation supervisor at the East Bay Municipal Utility District wastewater treatment plant. "It looked like a big slab of plastic because it was melted."

But it was no big slab of plastic. The overpass was a critical component of one of the Bay Area's busiest highway interchanges, the MacArthur Maze. The network of connector ramps merges the East Bay's three major highways: Interstates 80, 580 and 880.
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The State, April 27, 2007 Newseum Image

April 27, 2007: An excerpt from a story in the Columbia, South Carolina newspaper, The State:

Democrats spar in S.C.

By AARON GOULD SHEININ

ORANGEBURG -- The front-runners for the Democratic presidential nomination mostly played it safe during Thursday's first-in-the-nation presidential debate, allowing a couple of second-tier candidates -- Delaware Sen. Joe Biden and New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson -- to shine.

The war in Iraq and gun control dominated the debate, held at S.C. State University.

Thursday night was the first time the eight candidates had appeared together on stage. It is the kickoff to a weekend of events that has South Carolina in the center of the presidential campaign universe.
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Nepszabadsag, April 26, 2007 Newseum Image

April 26, 2007:
The Budapest, Hungary newspaper, Nepszabadsag, reports on the funeral for former Russian president Boris Yeltsin.




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OC Post, April 25, 2007 Newseum Image

April 25, 2007: An excerpt from a story in the Santa Ana, California newspaper, the OC Post:

Potentially habitable planet found

By SETH BORENSTEIN
(Associated Press)

WASHINGTON -- For the first time astronomers have discovered a planet outside our solar system that is potentially habitable, with Earth-like temperatures, a find researchers described Tuesday as a big step in the search for "life in the universe."

The planet is just the right size, might have water in liquid form, and in galactic terms is relatively nearby at 120 trillion miles away. But the star it closely orbits, known as a "red dwarf," is much smaller, dimmer and cooler than our sun.

There's still a lot that is unknown about the new planet, which could be deemed inhospitable to life once more is known about it. And it's worth noting that scientists' requirements for habitability count Mars in that category: a size relatively similar to Earth's with temperatures that would permit liquid water. However, this is the first outside our solar system that meets those standards.

"It's a significant step on the way to finding possible life in the universe," said University of Geneva astronomer Michel Mayor, one of 11 European scientists on the team that found the planet. "It's a nice discovery. We still have a lot of questions."
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The New York Times, April 24, 2007 Newseum Image

April 24, 2007: Excerpts from two stories in The New York Times:

David Halberstam, 73, Reporter and Author, Dies

By CLYDE HABERMAN  

David Halberstam, a Pulizer Prize-winning journalist and tireless author of books on topics as varied as America’s military failings in Vietnam, the deaths of firefighters at the World Trade Center and the high-pressure world of professional basketball, was killed yesterday in a car crash south of San Francisco. He was 73, and lived in Manhattan.

Mr. Halberstam was a passenger in a car making a turn in Menlo Park, Calif., when it was hit broadside by another car and knocked into a third vehicle, said the San Mateo County coroner. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

The man who was driving Mr. Halberstam, a journalism student at the University of California at Berkeley, was injured, as were the drivers of the other two vehicles. None of those injuries were called serious.

Mr. Halberstam was killed doing what he had done his entire adult life: reporting. He was on his way to interview Y.A. Tittle, the former New York Giants quarterback, for a book about the 1958 championship game between the Giants and the Baltimore Colts, considered by many to be the greatest football game ever played.

Tall, square-jawed and graced with an imposing voice so deep that it seemed to begin at his ankles, Mr. Halberstam came into his own as a journalist in the early 1960s covering the nascent American war in South Vietnam for The New York Times.

Boris N. Yeltsin, Who Buried the U.S.S.R., Dies at 76

By MARILYN BERGER 

Boris N. Yeltsin, the burly provincial politician who became a Soviet-era reformer and later a towering figure of his time as the first freely elected leader of Russia, presiding over the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the demise of the Communist Party, died yesterday in Moscow. He was 76.

His death, at a hospital, came at 3:45 p.m., the Kremlin said, making the announcement without ceremony, a reflection of the contradictory legacy of Mr. Yeltsin’s presidency in the view of many Russians, including his successor, the current leader, President Vladimir V. Putin.

Medical officials told Russian news agencies that Mr. Yeltsin had died of heart failure after being admitted to the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow. He had suffered heart problems for years, undergoing surgery shortly after his disputed re-election as Russian president in 1996.

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Le Figaro, April 23, 2007 Newseum Image

April 23, 2007:
The Paris newspaper, Le Figaro, reports on the first round of the French presidential election.



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The Roanoke Times, April 20, 2007 Newseum Image

April 20, 2007: The Roanoke Times:

Virginia Tech Shooting Victims
By JOHN CRAMER

A Holocaust survivor. A Christian teenager.

Engineers and artists, animal lovers and bookworms.

Quiet scholars and quirky class clowns.

American natives and foreign nationals.

The victims of the massacre at Virginia Tech were a cross-section of the human condition.

They were as different as the school's two trademarks -- the gaudy maroon and orange that flash across the gridiron each autumn and the dignified Hokie limestone that has formed the bedrock of the school for more than a century.

But they were alike, too -- all going about their lives on what started as another ordinary Monday, alike in their fate to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when a gunman came along.

They were teenagers away from home for the first time, professors in the twilight of their careers.

Some were Facebook devotees who shared their lives on the Internet; others were devoted Bible readers whose inner thoughts were known best by God.

By God's grace and their own academic interests, they came from across the world and from across town to attend Virginia Tech.

Some came to spend four years getting a degree, others came to spend their entire careers.

In the end, they shared a common fate: Lives cut short on a spring morning when a cold wind filled with snowflakes and tree blossoms formed the backdrop for the deadliest shooting rampage in the nation's history.
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Newsday, April 19, 2007 Newseum Image

April 19, 2007: An excerpt from a story in Newsday:

Va. Tech stunned by images of gunman

By JOHN RILEY

Virginia Tech mass killer Seung-Hui Cho reached out from his grave to lament that "this didn't have to happen" and warned that "I will no longer run" in a bizarre multimedia package received by NBC News Wednesday that he apparently mailed in the two-hour interval between two sets of slayings that took 32 lives and his own on the college campus Monday.

"When the time came, I did it. I had to," said an angry, sneering Cho, who railed about the "debaucheries" of the rich and described the two Columbine High School killers as "martyrs."

He also compared himself to Jesus and flaunted two handguns in a variety of bad-dude poses in a package that included an 1,800-word manifesto, 28 video and audio clips, and 43 still pictures.

The words and images stunned Virginia Tech students.
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The Virginian-Pilot, April 18, 2007 Newseum Image

April 18, 2007: An excerpt from a story in The Virginian-Pilot:

Tech victims remembered at local and state vigils

By JOHN-HENRY DOUCETTE and AARON APPLEGATE 

BLACKSBURG -- Thousands of Virginia Tech students stood in the center of campus Tuesday evening holding candles in outstretched hands, bathing Drill field in a light that grew stronger as dusk turned to night.

After a half-hour vigil organized by student leaders, they had been told they were free to go home, but the mourners stood silent and still.

After about 10 minutes, the students began to chant, "Let's go Hokies!" reaching a roar that echoed across the campus.

"Hokie Nation is an attitude and a mentality and this put a face to it, several thousand actually," Kacey Morasch, a 27-year-old graduate student, said.

During the vigil, two buglers on opposite sides of Drill field did a call-and-response version of Taps in a moving tribute to the 32 victims of Monday's shootings.

Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and several university officials attended the event.

"I want America and the world to see this outpouring on the Virginia Tech Drill field this evening," Zenobia Hikes, vice president for student affairs at Tech, told the students. "This is love. We will move on from this but it will take the strength of each other to do it."
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The Charlotte Observer, April 18, 2007 Newseum Image

April 18, 2007: An excerpt from a column in The Charlotte Observer:

Strength, spirit summoned, but sorrow still too heavy to lift long

By TOMMY TOMLINSON

BLACKSBURG, Va. -- They cheered at the end of the service like it was a basketball game, like they could holler away the sorrow.

It even worked for a minute or two.

But then the service ended, and the students at Virginia Tech walked back out into the world. And that's when Derek O'Dell broke down.

On Monday he told his story again and again. How he was sitting in German class in Norris Hall when a man with a gun walked in and opened fire. Cho Seung-Hui killed 32, then himself. Derek was shot in the right arm. You might have seen him on the news Monday night, his arm in a sling, calm and strong.

But now it was Tuesday afternoon, just after the memorial in Cassell Coliseum, and as Derek came out of the men's room he could not hold back the tears.
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Collegiate Times, April 17, 2007 Image from newspaper's Web site

April 17, 2007: An excerpt from a story in Virginia Tech's newspaper, the Collegiate Times:  

Our Sorrow, Our Resolve

Surreal.

For an event that has touched so many lives and will define the year 2007 for generations, there are only a handful of individuals who were able to directly influence yesterday's tragedy.

For most students, whether isolated off campus or huddled in their residence halls, responding to worried parents and concerned friends came in futile sound bites.

As numbers continued to rise, totals became more and more unbelievable to everyone around the country: The whole situation was especially exasperating to all those here at Virginia Tech.
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The Roanoke Times, April 17, 2007 Newseum Image

April 17, 2007: An excerpt from a story in The Roanoke Times:

Panic, chaos grip campus
Police are searching for a link between two shooting incidents at Tech that left 33 dead.

By DONNA ALVIS-BANKS 

Time stopped in Blacksburg Monday.

For two Virginia Tech students, it stopped shortly before 7:15 a.m. in the West Ambler Johnston dormitory, one of the largest halls on campus with 895 residents. The unidentified students -- one male and one female -- were shot and killed by an unidentified gunman.

As events of the day unfolded, time stood still for students and professors, for school administrators and school janitors, for police officers and rescue personnel, for parents far from Blacksburg and for ordinary residents close to home.

In disbelief and horror, people around the nation learned of the worst mass shooting in U.S. history as the national media spread the news and descended on the small college town.



(WE HAVE COMPILED A SEPARATE SECTION WITH MANY MORE PAGE ONE EXAMPLES ABOUT THE VIRGINIA TECH SHOOTING.)


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Los Angeles Times, April 16, 2007 Newseum Image

April 16, 2007: An excerpt from a story in the Los Angeles Times:

Spirited win for Dodgers
With every player wearing No. 42, they look a lot like Robinson, stealing five bases in a 9-3 victory over Padres.

By STEVE HENSON 

That No. 42 for the Dodgers, he was all over the field.

Seemingly channeling the spirit of Jackie Robinson on the 60th anniversary of his breaking baseball's color barrier, the Dodgers defeated the San Diego Padres, 9-3, Sunday with every player on the home team wearing his number.

The Dodgers stole five bases -- their highest total in eight years -- collected 13 hits and received a strong performance from four pitchers in winning two of three in an early series against a division rival expected to remain abreast of the Dodgers into September.

"Our guys should remember it for the rest of their careers," said center fielder Juan Pierre, one of three African American players on the Dodgers. "Standing in the outfield and seeing all the infielders with No. 42 on their backs, it was a special moment."
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The Telegraph, April 15, 2007 Newseum Image

April 15, 2007: An excerpt from a story in the Macon, Georgia newspaper, The Telegraph:

No media circus greeted Robinson

By JIM BECKER
(The Associated Press)

On a chilly, gray, early spring day, a black man in a sparkling white baseball uniform walked, alone, from the dugout onto the green grass of Brooklyn's Ebbets Field.

It was April 15, 1947, and Jackie Robinson was about to break the shameful color line in major league baseball, a feat that would have a lasting impact on sports and society.

There was a feel of history in the air overlaid, perhaps oddly, by a sense of somewhat calculated nonchalance.

I was standing by the batting cage along with a handful of other sports reporters when Robinson strode onto the field with that slightly pigeon-toed walk of the natural athlete.

About 10,000 of a crowd that would swell to almost 26,000 at the tidy old park, many of them black, had gathered well before game time. They made no special sound when Robinson appeared. No cameras flashed. Television was in its infancy, and there were no TV cameras on hand.

....Robinson had agreed with Rickey to hold his fiery temper and natural competitiveness in check, to endure the racial taunts from fans and opposing players. When the wraps came off and he was free to argue with the umpires and return with interest the foul bench jockeying, Robinson told me: "I can hardly wait for an umpire to throw me out of a game." In other words, to treat him like everybody else.

But there was, there is, no way to treat Jackie Robinson like everybody else. His victory was his victory. Alone. His defeat would have been our defeat. All of us. He did not lose.
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The Herald-Sun, April 14, 2007 Newseum Image

April 14, 2007: An excerpt from a story in the Durham, North Carolina newspaper, The Herald-Sun:

CHARGES STAND AGAINST NIFONG

By WILLIAM F. WEST

RALEIGH -- On Friday, Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong suffered his second major setback of the week, this one at the hands of the N.C. State Bar.

Nifong watched in silence as the State Bar rejected his attorneys' motion to dismiss part of an ethics complaint against him resulting from alleged misconduct in his failed sexual assault prosecution of former Duke lacrosse players David Evans, Collin Finnerty and Reade Seligmann.

The three men were declared innocent by Attorney General Roy Cooper on Wednesday.

Nifong's attorney, Dudley Witt, failed to persuade the State Bar that Nifong didn't commit pre-trial wrongdoing when Nifong withheld exculpatory DNA results.
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Newsday, April 13, 2007 Newseum Image

April 13, 2007: An excerpt from a story in Newsday:

CBS fires Don Imus

By VERNE GAY

Decisively ending a torturous week for two of the least likely protagonists imaginable -- a nearly all-black female basketball team from New Jersey and a legendary shock jock from New Mexico -- CBS yesterday finally pulled the plug on "Imus in the Morning" and its embattled host.

The news for Don Imus reportedly came in a single late-afternoon call from CBS chief executive Les Moonves before Imus headed to a 2 1/2-hour meeting at the governor's mansion in New Jersey with the Scarlet Knights of Rutgers.

An official statement followed, which bluntly noted that a show that made some $2.5 million in profit for CBS -- a figure that paled in significance to the political and media clout it has wielded in New York and Washington for more than 20 years -- "will cease broadcasting ... on a permanent basis."

That capped a day of heightened drama, in which Imus lashed out on his radio show early yesterday at his attackers, while the Rutgers team later appeared on "Oprah," and civil rights leaders including Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton met privately with Moonves.

Following that, Moonves said in a statement, "In our meetings with concerned groups, there has been much discussion of the effect language like this has on our young people, particularly young women of color trying to make their way in this society." He then noted, "that consideration has weighed most heavily on our minds."
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The Indianapolis Star, April 12, 2007 Newseum Image

April 12, 2007: An excerpt from a story in The Indianapolis Star:

American voice, Hoosier icon dies

By CHRISTOPHER LLOYD 

Kurt Vonnegut, the Indianapolis-born literary giant behind seminal 20th-century novels "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "Breakfast of Champions," died Wednesday evening at age 84.

Vonnegut, who often marveled that he had lived so long despite his lifelong smoking habit, had suffered brain injuries after a fall at his Manhattan home weeks ago, said his wife, photographer Jill Krementz.

"He's the closest thing we've had to Voltaire," Tom Wolfe, whose first book had a blurb from Vonnegut, told Bloomberg News Service. "It's a sad day for the literary world."

Vonnegut had been scheduled to speak in Indianapolis on April 27 as part of the ongoing "Year of Vonnegut" celebration honoring his life and work. Vonnegut's son Mark planned to give the 2007 McFadden Memorial Lecture written by his father.

The author's writing was distinctive for its combination of the satirical and the fantastical, and leavened by a black humor that looked disdainfully upon humankind's capacity for destruction.

"I will say anything to be funny, often in the most horrible situations," Vonnegut, whose watery, heavy-lidded eyes and unruly hair made him seem to be in existential pain, once told a gathering of psychiatrists.

Other notable novels include "Cat's Cradle," "The Sirens of Titan" and "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater."
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The Star Ledger, April 11, 2007 Newseum Image

April 11, 2007: An excerpt from a story in the Newark, New Jersey newspaper, The Star Ledger:

RUTGERS SQUAD SPEAKS OUT

By BRIDGET WENTWORTH and MARY JO PATTERSON

Ten young women whose lives were disrupted when a man they did not know maligned them on his national talk radio show last week stepped out of the shadows yesterday to announce they will meet privately with Don Imus, the show's host.

"I believe we can speak up for women, not just African-American women, but all women," said Essence Carson, a member of the Rutgers University women's basketball team which Imus referred to collectively as "nappy-headed hos" during his "Imus in the Morning" show a week ago today. "We have a lot to say."

For days, the women had stood silently on the sidelines, as the storm surrounding Imus' casual, ugly slur raged. Yesterday it was their turn to talk.

Carson, her teammates and head coach C. Vivian Stringer appeared at a news conference at the Rutgers Athletic Center in Piscataway. Imus made his remarks on WFAN 660-AM the morning after the Scarlet Knights lost to Tennessee in the championship game of the women's NCAA tournament.
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AM New York, April 10, 2007 Newseum Image

April 10, 2007: An excerpt from an updated story in AM New York:

Imus Calls His Suspension 'Appropriate'

By DAVID BAUDER
(The Associated Press)

NEW YORK -- Radio host Don Imus, suspended for two weeks for calling the Rutgers female basketball players "nappy-headed hos," called the punishment appropriate Tuesday but stressed, "I am not a racist."

"What I did was make a stupid, idiotic mistake in a comedy context," Imus said on his show Tuesday morning, the final week before his suspension starts.

Asked if he could clean up his act as he promised on Monday, he said, "Well, perhaps I can't" but added "I have a history of keeping my word."

The radio host also tried to shift some of the focus from his own comments to the degrading of black women by black men. He also said his staff had been trying to set up a meeting with the Rutgers players so he could apologize, but he said he didn't expect forgiveness.

Of the suspension by MSNBC and CBS Radio, Imus said: "I think it's appropriate, and I am going to try to serve it with some dignity."

Members of the Rutgers women's basketball team and coach C. Vivian Stringer planned to speak publicly about it later Tuesday.
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Jam-e-Jam, April 9, 2007 Newseum Image

April 9, 2007:

Page One news from the Tehran, Iran newspaper, Jam-e-Jam.

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The Augusta Chronicle, April 6, 2007 Newseum Image

April 6, 2007: An excerpt from a story in The Augusta  Chronicle:

Englishman, rookie lead after tough day

By DAVID WESTIN

What would it be like to have a dry Masters Tournament for a change?

It's a likely scenario this week, one that will involve the color green, which stands for even-and over-par scores on Augusta National Golf Club's leaderboards.

Of the 96 starters in Thursday's first round, 82 shot over-par rounds, and only Justin Rose and Masters rookie Brett Wetterich, with 3-under-par 69s, broke 70.

On a day with final-round-like firm greens and an unfavorable northwestern breeze, Rose was the lone player to plot his way around the course without a bogey. Wetterich had two bogeys, but led the field with five birdies at the 7,445-yard course.

Two players -- David Howell and David Toms -- shot 70.

Augusta resident Vaughn Taylor heads the group at 71, which includes Tim Clark, Zach Johnson, Rich Beem and J.J. Henry, another Masters rookie.

Four-time champion Tiger Woods was 1-under for his round through 16 holes, but bogeyed his final two holes for 73.

Defending champion Phil Mickelson opened with 76, which matched his highest score in 54 previous rounds in the Masters.
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The Daily Telegraph, April 5, 2007 Newseum Image

April 5, 2007: An excerpt from a story in London's newspaper, The Daily Telegraph:

Hostages safely back on British soil

By THOMAS HARDING, GEORGE JONES and DAVID BLAIR 

The 15 Royal Navy personnel captured by Iran last month have arrived back in Britain.

The 14 men and one woman disembarked from their British Airways flight at Heathrow airport shortly after 12.20 pm, posing briefly for the waiting cameras.

Back in their regulation British uniforms they then boarded two RAF Sea Kings helicopters which were waiting to take them to Royal Marines Base Chivenor, near Barnstaple, north Devon.

Once there, they will undergo medical checks, a full de-briefing and -- finally -- be reunited with their families.

The sailors and marines had boarded the flight from Teheran at about 6am London time.

Speaking outside Downing Street Tony Blair welcomed their safe return.

He stressed again that no agreements had been made to secure the return of the captives, but said lines of communication which had opened up with Iran over the crisis should be pursued.
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The Advocate, April 5, 2007 Newseum Image

April 5, 2007: An excerpt from a story in the Baton Rouge newspaper, The Advocate:

Ex-Grambling coach Robinson dies

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 

RUSTON (AP) -- Former Grambling coach Eddie Robinson, who created a football powerhouse at the small, black college in northern Louisiana that turned out hundreds of NFL players, has died. He was 88.

The soft-spoken coach spent nearly 60 years at Grambling State University, where he set a standard for victories with 408 and nearly every season saw his top players drafted by NFL teams.

Doug Williams, a Super Bowl MVP quarterback was one of them. Williams said Robinson died shortly before midnight Tuesday. Robinson had been admitted to Lincoln General Hospital on Tuesday afternoon.

"For the Grambling family this is a very emotional time," Williams said Wednesday. "But I'm thinking about Eddie Robinson the man, not in today-time, but in the day and what he meant to me and to so many people."

Robinson's career spanned 11 presidents, several wars and the civil-rights movement. His older records are what people will remember: In 57 years, Robinson compiled a 408-165-15 record. Until John Gagliardi of St. John's, Minn., topped the victory mark four years ago, Robinson was known as the winningest coach in all of college football.
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Contra Costa Times, April 4, 2007 Newseum Image

April 4, 2007: An excerpt from a story in California's Contra Costa Times:

Journalist freed in deal with prosecutors

By JOSH RICHMAN 

Freelance videographer and blogger Josh Wolf, who spent a record-setting seven months in prison for refusing to comply with a subpoena, was freed Tuesday after cutting a deal with prosecutors.

Wolf, 24, of San Francisco, emerged from a federal prison in Dublin soon after U.S. District Judge William Alsup vacated the contempt-of-court order against him. He had been imprisoned 226 days for refusing to turn over his videotape of a protest or testify before a grand jury.

Wolf, who works full time as outreach director for Peralta Community College District's cable television station in Oakland, has posted to his Web site -- www.joshwolf.net -- all of the previously unreleased video footage he shot of a G-8 Summit protest July 8, 2005, in San Francisco's Mission District, at which a police officer was hurt and someone might have tried to set a San Francisco police car on fire.

Swearing in a new court document that he neither took part in nor could identify those responsible for the car's damage or the officer's injury, Wolf extracted a promise from prosecutors that they would not use the existing subpoena to compel his testimony before a grand jury.

At a news conference late Tuesday afternoon on the steps of San Francisco City Hall, Wolf said the deal was "a good decision" because it freed him from having to testify -- which he said was long the sticking point with prosecutors.
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News Sentinel, April 4, 2007 Newseum Image

April 4, 2007: An excerpt from a story in the Knoxville News Sentinel:

Seventh heaven: Lady Vols reclaim familiar place

By DAN FLESER

CLEVELAND -- After a night of hard-nosed, blue-collar work, Tuesday officially went down in Tennessee women's basketball history as a banner day.

In the build-up to UT's 59-46 victory over Rutgers before a crowd of 20,704 at Quicken Loans Arena, several Lady Vols struggled to explain what winning a national championship would mean. In the joyous aftermath, some still were struggling for clarity on the subject.

"I'm getting overwhelmed right now," point guard Shannon Bobbitt said. "I'm speechless."

No problem since Bobbitt and all of her teammates had the requisite effort down pat, parlaying gritty defense and dominant rebounding into the salvation for the second-lowest scoring output by a championship team.
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Chicago Tribune, April 3, 2007 Newseum Image

April 3, 2007: An excerpt from a story in the Chicago Tribune:

Zell lands Tribune
Employees to get majority stake in debt-heavy company

By MICHAEL ONEAL 

After an epic corporate drama, Chicago's Tribune Co. will go private in a transaction that puts the 159-year-old media conglomerate in the hands of the city's most iconoclastic entrepreneur. The deal is a high-stakes bet that a pillar of the nation's old-media establishment can propel itself into the digital future.

Late Sunday, following a weekend of heated negotiations, Tribune's board accepted a revised $34-a-share proposal from Chicago real estate magnate Sam Zell to buy out the company's public shares in a complex, $8.2 billion transaction structured around an employee stock ownership plan, or ESOP.

To help finance the deal, Tribune said it would sell the Chicago Cubs and its 25 percent stake in local cable channel Comcast SportsNet Chicago after the 2007 season. It will also take on $8.4 billion in new loans, leaving the company with more than $13 billion in debt and the most encumbered balance sheet in the newspaper industry.

That will create plenty of risk at a time when the industry faces increasing pressures from the Internet. But, after battling restive shareholders for almost a year, Tribune's chief executive, Dennis FitzSimons, said getting out of the public glare will help as the company attempts to transform itself.

"Being private in the traditional media business right now is an advantage," he said.

The matchup of Tribune and Zell couldn't be more improbable. The deal will place a motorcycle riding, epithet slinging multibillionaire atop of one of the most conservative, buttoned-down companies in America.
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Los Angeles Times, April 3, 2007 Newseum Image

April 3, 2007: An excerpt from a story in the Los Angeles Times:

Zell could be biggest winner
For $315 million, the mogul gains virtual control of Tribune and a chance for big profit.

By MICHAEL A. HILTZIK 

Sam Zell's taking effective control of Tribune Co. for a relatively modest cash outlay makes him potentially the biggest winner in Monday's pending sale of the Chicago media company.

The Chicago real estate magnate would be in charge of a company valued Monday at $7.9 billion for an investment of as little as $315 million. That sum would give him an option to buy 40% of Tribune's stock that could be exercised at any time within 15 years of the completion of the deal.

But financial analysts said Zell was unlikely to exercise the option but instead would probably cash it out before its expiration. In the meantime, as chairman, Zell would be calling the shots.

Whether Tribune's employees win depends on whether the company's performance continues to deteriorate as the newspaper and TV industries struggle. All company contributions to employee pension plans would be funneled through a new employee stock ownership plan, or ESOP, beginning next year, after the deal is complete.
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The Gainesville Sun, April 3, 2007 Newseum Image

April 3, 2007: An excerpt from a story in The Gainesville Sun:

Gators claim second consecutive national title

By PAT DOOLEY

ATLANTA -- More confetti. More nets. More trophies.

More history.

The Florida basketball team made the dream come true Monday night in the Georgia Dome.

The Gators did what they set out to do back in April when the sophomores on that team announced they were coming back to win a national title.

Consider it done.

Florida beat Ohio State 84-75. The Buckeyes must be tired of seeing orange and blue. The Gators also defeated Ohio State in the BCS title game in football about three months ago.

In the last game of the college basketball season and in the last game Florida's starting five would play together, the Gators made sure their legacy would go far beyond "best team ever at UF."
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St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 2, 2007 Newseum Image

April 2, 2007: An excerpt from a story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Cards lose unceremoniously

By JOE STRAUSS 

Perhaps the Cardinals should have taken the hint when their team charter bounced from air pocket to air pocket on the flight home from Memphis on Saturday night. Drinks spilled, a flight attendant fell in an aisle and several players became queasy from the 45-minute thrill ride home.

Chris Carpenter, an uncomfortable flier, took an earlier flight Saturday afternoon and missed the ordeal that made his teammates' plane look like the scene of a food fight.

Unfortunately for Carpenter, he couldn't avoid turbulence Sunday.

The New York Mets turned the Cardinals' flag-raising commemoration of their 2006 World Series win into a 6-1 setback in Major League Baseball's season opener at Busch Stadium.

In an uncharacteristically bumpy home start for Carpenter, the Mets scored the game's first five runs, dodged a couple of potentially big innings, then rode six solid innings from future 300-game winner Tom Glavine.