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CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- Hamlet's father runs a club -- not a kingdom -- and the "sweet prince" drunkenly raps a version of his "To be or not to be" soliloquy in an urban teenage take on the Shakespearean play. Brainstorming ideas for a project promoting nonviolence, the students chose a work in which almost all the main characters are dead by the time the curtain falls. But in their version, Hamlet openly discusses his troubles with his mother and friends, and his murderous uncle ends up in jail instead of dead at Hamlet's hands in a second, "rewind" ending.

Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat died after a poison was injected into his ear, according to statements made by senior PA official Ahmad Abdul Rahman that appeared yesterday in the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper. Abdul Rahman, who serves as an advisor to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, granted an interview to the paper on the occasion of the one-year anniversary of Arafat's death.

SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Hamlet has become a Muslim prince at the Ottoman court in an adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy which its Bosnian director says reflects the world after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. In possibly the biggest theater co-production the war-torn Balkans region has seen in some 20 years, Haris Pasovic is seeking to put "Hamlet" into a 21st Century setting. "One of the most important issues of the 21st century is the world's increased understanding of the Muslim issue following the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York," Pasovic, himself a Bosnian Muslim, told Reuters...

Remember Adlai Stevenson, III, and his failed run for Governor of Illinois in 1982? Of course you don’t; nobody does. But here’s the relevant story from that. A fair number of people, including the Republican who eventually won, questioned whether Adlai was “a wimp.” So he called a press conference to deny that he was a wimp. Helloooo. If you have to call a press conference to deny that you’re a wimp, it pretty well establishes that you are. Hold that thought and fast forward to last week. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is in a war to the death with the...

"Playing Hamlet" John Kerry political cartoon.  May 24, 2004...To be, or not to be the nominee? Sen. John Kerry has a money problem. Once he accepts the Dem presidential nomination, he locks into the $75 million from the FEC and his unlimited fundraising comes to a complete halt -- five weeks before his opponent’s, President Bush. That means Bush has five more weeks than Kerry to raise unlimited campaign dollars. How did this happen? Democrat Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe, wanting the selection process for the Democrats to be over early, scheduled the Democrats’ Convention in Boston from July 26...

<p>In a perfect world, we would pause here to ponder the implications of the photos sent this week by the Hubble Space Telescope from the Ultra Deep Field of the universe--real photos of light that began its journey 13 billion years ago, when the universe was so young and full of possibility. But we inhabit an imperfect world, and so a consensus would hold it more in our short-term interest to examine another mysterious complexity, the matter of John Kerry's flip-flops, a subject that might also be called the Ultra Deep Field.</p>

Attacking” President Bush November 27, 2003 “Some are attacking the president for attacking the terrorists,” says a new Republican TV ad for President Bush. In its verbal sloppiness, this message is fully worthy of the president himself. Of course nobody is “attacking” him in the same sense that he is “attacking the terrorists,” with real bullets and bombs. Various people are criticizing him, some with measured language, some with verbal abuse, but all of them are well within the limits of the “freedom” and “democracy” he says he wants to promote around the world. So why does he allow and...

Sleepy hamlet wakes up to historical find TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ WEDNESDAY, JULY 23, 2003 01:43:56 AM ] MANDVI: The year is 300 C. A boat sails into the port of Nani Rayan with wine in Roman amphoras. On its way back, it would take home textiles, ornaments and pottery. Over 2,300 years later, pieces, probably from those amphoras surfaced as workers dug the ground to create the Narmada canal through the sleepy hamlet of Nani Rayan, situated on the banks of the Rukmavati, 4 km from the river’s confluence with the Arabian Sea. The digging has unearthed a treasure trove...