Can Alabama Spark a Democratic Revival in the South?

Late on a recent Monday afternoon, Artur Davis, the Alabama congressman, stood before a racially diverse crowd of casually dressed men and women in the vast main hall of Rainbow City’s community center. The talk centered on how to bring jobs to Alabama’s economically depressed northeastern corner, bolstering parental responsibility, making college more affordable, and, simply, hope

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The Dead Polo Ponies and Their Mysterious Millionaire Owner

Polo fans say few things are as inspiring as watching eight majestic thoroughbred horses maneuver over a 300-yard-long field. But as anyone who was at the U.S. Open polo tournament in Wellington, Fla., last Sunday has attested, few things are as shocking as seeing those same horses stagger and drop dead.

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Ebertfest: Roger Ebert’s Very Own Film Festival

For nearly 45 years, Roger Ebert has remained one of world’s most influential film critics. Beginning his career as a 15-year-old sports writer with the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette, he joined the staff of the Chicago Sun-Times in 1966 and was named the paper’s film critic within six months. His byline has appeared in the paper ever since

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Ten Years After Columbine, It’s Easier to Bear Arms

Monday April 20 marks 10 years since Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold permanently etched the words Columbine High School into this nation’s collective memory. What happened that day in 1999 also seemed to wake America up to the reality that it had become a nation of gun owners — and too often a nation of shooters. The carnage in Littleton, Colorado — 12 classmates and a teacher before the killers offed themselves — and the ease with which the teenagers acquired their weapons seemed to usher in a new era of, well if not gun control, then at least gun awareness.

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With anti-addiction pill, ‘no urge, no craving’

A no-frills bar called Goober’s, just north of Providence, Rhode Island, is probably the last place you’d expect to find a debate over cutting-edge addiction therapy. But this is where Walter Kent, a retired mechanic, spends his Fridays. He helps in the kitchen and hangs out in the bar, catching up with old friends

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Virginia Tech reopens site of mass shooting

Kristina Heeger was wounded in her French class nearly two years ago when a gunman killed 30 of her classmates and instructors at Virginia Tech’s Norris Hall. Still coping with memories of the massacre, she returned to the historic stone building Friday as the university reopened the wing of the academic building where the deadliest mass shooting in recent U.S. history occurred

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Nazi suspect’s deportation appeal rejected

A federal immigration board rejected an emergency appeal Friday for a stay of deportation filed by the lawyer for Nazi war crimes suspect John Demjanjuk. The decision by the Department of Justice’s Board of Immigration Appeals in Falls Church, Virginia, clears the way for Demjanjuk’s deportation to Germany, where he is being sought for his alleged involvement during World War II in killings at Sobibor, a Nazi death camp in Poland.

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