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I scored 87% Dixie

LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas: Posing for pictures on the steps of a school where nine black youth were met with jeers and threats nearly 50 years ago, a group of African students embarked Friday on a tour through the American South that will take them to the landmarks in the civil rights struggle. "We wanted them to tour the South so they can see what this all means and think about what they've learned so far," Idlet said. Selaelo Modiba, a student in South Africa, said learning about the country's civil rights history has opened her eyes that the United States...

Long ago, having had to write more book reviews than I wanted, I decided that I would rather have pile surgery by an ocelot than write another. Then I got an advance copy of Deer Hunting with Jesus, by Joe Bageant, and realized that I had to come out of retirement. It’s, you know, like noblesse oblige. Here goes. Bageant is a redneck, and his book is about rednecks, who are a huge, sprawling class of people found everywhere but mostly invisible. They aren’t what people think they are. (Though, given that a strange mixture of folk read this column,...

It was May 29 and I was coming through Houston on the way back from the Galapagos—kind of long-way-around routing, but what the hey. I’d gotten up at three a.m. in Quito to take the flight out so I was running on coffee and hope. My flight, Continental 2099, left at 2:20. I was ready to get back to Guadalajara. Swarm aboard the Embraer, fasten seat belt, haul out book. Normally the stews go through the usual about overhead bins, seatbelts, and the rest. They have to do it, everybody has heard it a thousand times, but the crew is...

Defiant, chin up, looking the world in the eye, Sarah Churchwell insisted in the Mail this week that she is perfectly happy to be childless, thank you very much - even if she is nearly 37 and in every biological sense running out of time. You may believe her if you will. Personally, I think she doth protest too much and that a barren future will hurt her more than she knows; certainly her evident adoration of her "dazzling" two-year-old niece suggests that she is, after all, what she calls "mother material". But what really caught the eye is that...

<p>After more than two years of disheartening online dating, Charlotte Kullen resolved to spend less time pursuing men and more time pursuing her hobbies. She plunged into tennis, running, sailing, horseback riding, fitness boot camp and scuba diving classes, assuming that somewhere between the sit-ups and the strapping on of fins she might meet some eligible prospects.</p>

A magazine recently asked the burning question: Are you rich yet? Finally, this was something the presidential candidates agree on: Both Democrats and Republicans can shout "Yes!" It's been a long time since Presidents were born in log cabins, but this year's crop of richies takes the cake — and the champagne. To get a sense of how rich is rich, consider that Democratic Sen. Barack Obama, worth more than $1 million, is the pauper in the top-tier club. Republican Mitt Romney tops the fortune fortunate with a stash estimated at $250 million. At least 10 are millionaires and, according...

Senator Shelby’s statement: “Although a bill has not yet been released, I have serious concerns about early reports of the legislation, including the status of illegal immigrants already in this country. Make no mistake about it -- I will continue to oppose any proposal that rewards those who have broken the law to enter this country.” --------- U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) made the following comments today regarding comprehensive immigration reform legislation in the Senate: "I will not vote for, and will actively oppose, immigration legislation that does not meet the expectations of the American people on important issues such...

LONDON - Another foreign company is setting up shop in the Land of Liberty. ThyssenKrupp, the German steel and engineering leviathan, announced on Friday that it would establish a $4.1 billion steel mill in Alabama. The company had whittled its choice down from 20 states, and its board had decided on Friday morning to build the 2,700-employee steel processing plant in Alabama's Northern Mobile and Southern Washington counties. It's expected to be one of the largest private industrial development projects in the U.S. ThyssenKrupp had also increased its planned investment from $2.9 billion because it wanted to produce more steel...

One of the more delicate areas I dealt with while running a dating service for more than two decades was the issue of race, and more specifically racial stereotyping by prospective members. Stereotyping in itself is a volatile issue, and at some point during intake interviews, I often repeated the phrase “While there is some truth to all stereotypes, there are certainly many exceptions to every single one.” However, when one is dealing with a sample of more than 20,000 single, divorced, and widowed men and women, I feel confident and comfortable making certain statements in a column titled The...

With almost one in two marriages now ending in divorce, there are more and more mothers and daughters — like Fergie and Princess Beatrice — who find they are dating at the same time. But can a woman keep her daughter’s respect while she is seeing other men? Fifty-year-old Janine Wilkinson is a marketing executive who lives in a detached four-bedroom house near Leicester, with her daughter Beth, 20, who is studying retail buying at De Montfort University. DIANA APPLEYARD spoke to them about their sometimes shocking experiences in the course of a month’s dating diary. THE MOTHER’S STORY There...

Suddenly, single women are all the rage. News stories abound about the growing number of happily unattached women of all ages. And publishers can't get books about single women out fast enough. Here are three of the best: • "Single Mom Seeking: Playdates, Blind Dates and Other Dispatches From The Dating World," by Rachel Sarah (Seal, $14.95). Sarah, 34, mother of 6-year-old Mae, writes about her own dating experiences as a single mom in a charming and funny way. You get the sense she's less "expert" and more "one of us," trying to figure out how in the world to...

CBS4) MIAMI Ladies, if you’re in the mood for love, there is a sea of singles waiting for you through this new dating service. And the men featured in it might have one very enticing quality in common—they’re wealthy. Wealthymen.com is a website that boasts of men making six figure incomes and more. People running the site can verify a man’s picture, income and his profession. Roughly 170 thousand women are clamoring to meet some of the 70,000 single men available on the site. It looks like the men have the ball in their court. According to Clinton Cox, vice-president...

The saying goes "politics makes strange bedfellows." When it comes to dating, that saying is not necessarily true. At least for Democrats. With this year's election just days away, this is a good time to examine the results of two surveys that we conducted at the Boston-based dating service that I ran for 23 years. During the 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns my staff and I asked several hundred of our members (actually 329 singles in 2000 and exactly 400 in 2004) two questions: first, whom they were going to vote for; and second, how important was it for them...

WASHINGTON - African-American voters could decide whether Democrats or Republicans win control of the House of Representatives or the Senate on Nov. 7, and Democrats are working overtime to ensure that they turn out to vote. But that may be harder this year than it traditionally has been, for several reasons. African-Americans are less loyal to the Democratic Party than in previous decades. Many are disillusioned with voting after feeling shut out in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004. And the Republican Party is working aggressively to attract more African-American voters. So Democrats are pulling out the stops in...

WASHINGTON -- A federal appeals court said Friday that the military may not turn an American citizen over to Iraqi officials to face the death penalty until the Supreme Court can hear his case. The Supreme Court's decision in the case will help decide what rights American citizens have when detained by U.S. military forces overseas. Mohammad Munaf was convicted and sentenced to death by an Iraqi judge this month on charges he helped in the 2005 kidnapping of three Romanian journalists in Baghdad. Munaf, who was born in Iraq and became an American citizen in 2000, asked a U.S....

Jury Awards Cal. Man $18M for Harassment LOS ANGELES (AP) - A jury has ordered The Vons Companies Inc. to pay more than $18 million in damages to a former employee who claimed the supermarket chain fired him after he filed a report accusing a female supervisor of sexual harassment. The Simi Valley jury awarded more than $16 million in punitive damages to James Stevens on Friday, two days after ordering Vons to pay the one-time inventory clerk $1.7 million for economic loss and emotional distress, said attorney Gloria Allred, who represented Stevens. Stevens, a Ventura County resident who worked...

Police issued a warning today for all area business owners of foreign descent after another west Mobile home was robbed at gunpoint and its occupants held hostage and forced to lie on the floor. Three men forced their way into a home of a foreign born Mobile business owner in the 1000 block of Regal Drive around 8 p.m. Thursday, according to Mobile police. The men ransacked the house and took an undisclosed amount of cash and other property, police spokesman Officer John Young said in a news release. No one was injured in Thursday's invasion, and the men fled...

Here we are, months ahead of a national election, and already the political jockeying for positions has begun. Previous office-holders trying to make comebacks, and first timers hoping to get an early jump on the field are in the news. What to do? What to do? I began my political life as a Democrat. I was in the service during the Kennedy administration. At the time, it was difficult not to like a young, vigorous president with a good-looking family living a story book existence. He was smart, too. Then the impossible happened. Somebody killed my guy. His replacement was...

If Marilyn Monroe were alive today and auditioned for "American Idol," Simon Cowell would probably tell her, "You need to drop a few pounds, hon, or you’re not going to Hollywood." Yet the amount of fan mail that lovesick women send HBO star James Gandolfini (aka Tony Soprano) increases every season in direct proportion to his ever-expanding girth. Does this represent a double standard in our society? You bet it does! I can think of no other double standard that affects so many people when it comes to dating and relationships than the "battle of the bulge." What is the...