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Dick White
In the movie "Patton," one common foot soldier comments to another as the general is escorted past: "There he goes. Old Blood 'n' Guts."
"Yeah," replies the other soldier. "Our blood, his guts."
Much like those long-suffering troops, we world-weary New England sports fans have bled -- and are still bleeding -- emotional buckets over the Curse of the Bambino, the loss of Roger Clemens and the abandonment of Bill Parcells.
But tonight, the temporary tourniquet is set, an entire nation will be watching and the ravenous will sit poised licking their chops over the prospect of freshly grilled Tuna.
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Bishop Sean P. O'Malley delivered this homily in remembrance of Mother Teresa last Sunday at St. Lawrence Church in New Bedford.
Pope John XXIII was one of our modern saints. I loved his sense of humor. Once, when he was Archbishop of Venice, heavy rains flooded the Plaza in front of the Cathedral of St. Mark. John ducked into a pub near his Cathedral. The bartender asked: "Dry throat, your Eminence?" "No, wet feet," he replied. Before he died, he mused and said: "God knew from all eternity that I was destined to be Pope. He also knew that I would live to be 80. Having all eternity, plus 80 years, you would think that God could have made me better looking." In the saints, even in their homeliness, the beauty of God shines through. It shines through and attracts us, fascinates us, and instills in us a desire to draw close to that mysterious beauty. The world was fascinated by the glamour and beauty of Princess Diana.
Today, we are drawn here by a mysterious beauty which we perceived in a tiny lady who lived her life for others.
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By Anne Saita, Standard-Times staff writer
PLYMOUTH -- Who knew that the day's most important lessons would boil down to this: Follow the leader, work as a team and, above all else, avoid the peanut butter.
For a group of Wareham Middle School seventh-graders at Cedarville's Camp Clark, the last part would prove the toughest to stick.
LAKEVILLE -- When Life Care Centers of America Inc. opens a new facility here in 18 months, it will bring with it the baggage of an accidental death at its West Bridgewater facility and a recent $650,000 settlement over a claim of negligence at its Raynham location.
But according to government investigators, the Cleveland, Tenn.-based company -- which operates more than 200 "private housing and health care facilities for seniors" across the country, including 13 in Massachusetts -- is well-run and safe.
NEW BEDFORD -- The three political veterans vying for mayor this year are no strangers to the public eye.
Each has served in some capacity for many years and, in that time, has complied a record. Hiring more police officers, pushing for a senior citizen tax break and helping local companies make their production process friendlier to the environment are three check marks on long lists of successes and failures.
With seven weeks to go before the Nov. 4 election, voters will focus on how the candidates stand -- and what they have done -- on the issues of most concern.
By Donna Bryson, Associated Press writer
CALCUTTA, India -- In the end, the strains of military music faded and the flowers were quick to wilt in Calcutta's tropical heat. The only lasting tribute to Mother Teresa can be her work, which her followers pledged to continue as they buried her Saturday.
Thousands lined the streets in 90-degree temperatures and intermittent heavy rain to watch the Roman Catholic nun, her body in an open white casket resting on a gun carriage, make her final journey through the city where she began her worldwide mission to the poor.
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Up in walrus country, unhappy Eskimo hunters say the frozen sea is breaking up early these days. An ocean away, in the balmy mid-Pacific, islanders report the tides are suddenly stealing away chunks of precious land.
Things are going wrong out at the edge of the world, and people there blame global warming. But back in the world's capitals, where 1997 is the year for action on climate change, things are going slowly.
By Sarah Lyall and Robin Pogrebin, The New York Times
LONDON -- The paparazzi who made their living from the endless pursuit of Diana, Princess of Wales, called it "being looned" -- the moment when Diana would lose her cool and flail wildly at the photographers she often accused of making her life a misery.
To Mark Saunders and Glenn Harvey, among the hardest of the hard-core Diana paparazzi, such incidents, which took place with increasing regularity and vehemence in the last years of her life, were sure signs that "The Loon," as they not-so-affectionately called Diana, was at best fragile and at worst unstable.
WASHINGTON -- On one side of the ledger are assassination plots, LSD experiments, botched invasions, overlooked moles. On the other are America's victory in the Cold War, the world's first spy satellites, the detection of Soviet missiles in Cuba.
As the Central Intelligence Agency approaches its 50th birthday Thursday, former CIA and KGB chiefs, undercover spies and some of the CIA's many critics portray the spy agency as both a credit and an embarrassment to the nation.
RAMALLAH, West Bank -- The Palestinian high school students wanted Madeleine Albright to understand their suffering: what it's like to grow up with Israeli soldiers raiding their homes, to live with frequent Israeli military closures that turn a three-minute trip to school into a 90-minute odyssey through hills and back streets.
But they say Albright's first visit to the Middle East as U.S. secretary of state only left them with the feeling the United States is indifferent to their plight.
By Chris Hedges, N.Y. Times News service
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Escorted by NATO troops in armored vehicles, buses lurched and rolled out of Sarajevo early yesterday morning. They were taking Bosnian Muslims for a few emotional moments to villages in which they lived before the war, where they cast ballots and were then hustled hastily away.
In yesterday's municipal elections, seen as a vital part of the Dayton peace accord, people across Bosnia voted in their prewar towns, many returning for the first time to places they were expelled from in the bitter conflict among Muslims, Serbs and Croats.
LAWRENCE -- The folks at Malden Mills Industries have a lot to celebrate today.
Nearly two years after a fire laid it low, the textile manufacturer is dedicating a new plant built on the ruins of a burned-out building.
Like the new building, the company appears to have emerged from fire stronger than its former self: Sales and profits both are expected to reach all-time highs next year. All but a few dozen of the 1,400 employees whose jobs were displaced have returned, with more hires under way.
WORCESTER -- Jeffrey Hemenway came from African and American Indian heritage. But still he fought during colonial days for a fledgling country that considered his ancestors inferior.
In a tribute to Hemenway's devotion to his country, nearly 100 people gathered yesterday to mark his grave and recall the sacrifices he made.
CAMBRIDGE -- A judge calls him "a psychological enigma."
His lawyer says he's an easygoing and harmless -- if slightly simple -- giant of a boy.
Prosecutors say he's a warped kid who was sexually obsessed with his best friend's mother, spied on her, stalked her, stabbed her 97 times and then carved patterns into her bloody chest as she died on a staircase.
BOSTON -- Paul Revere probably didn't advertise too many products in his day, but city officials are hoping he and other local legends might help out some modern entrepreneurs.
The city is campaigning to get businesses to use the Boston name to sell everything from beer to savings plans.
"The name of Boston is a marketable name," Mayor Thomas M. Menino told a Boston newspaper. "It connotes stability, history."
By John Estrella, Standard-Times staff writer
LAKEVILLE -- Bill King is cruising into his future, taking a buyout package from Commonwealth Electric Co. and starting a business dedicated to his passion: cruises.
The idea came to him more than a year ago. Reading a cruise magazine's classified advertisement, Mr. King decided the business was for him.
After all, he has taken 11 cruises -- the latest this spring, when he played cruise director himself and packed two cruises into one, taking a seven-day cruise immediately followed by a four-day cruise.
After years of decline, railroads are on a roll in Vermont and elsewhere By Anne Wallace Allen, Associated Press writer
MONTPELIER, Vt. -- Just two years ago, Vermont's only passenger rail service was on its way out, the victim of nationwide budget cuts at Amtrak.
Rail enthusiasts marked the train's demise with sad testimonials on its last run to Montreal. Some predicted an era of rail travel was coming to an end.
But the fortunes of rail have shifted, in Vermont and elsewhere.
Editor's note: This, the first in an occasional series of articles on the risks and rewards of putting your money to work around the globe, is an introduction to investing overseas, a growing form of money management for Americans.
NEW YORK -- The Hang Seng, Nikkei, Straits Times, CAC-40, Footsie and DAX.
American investors are increasingly monitoring these global indexes of stock markets -- in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore, Paris, London and Frankfurt, Germany -- as closely as New York's Dow Jones industrial average.
The lure: seeking a good return on their money as well as adding variety to their investment portfolios.
With increased global trade, buoyant overseas economies and rapid growth in some foreign firms, investors are finding ample reasons to put money in the stocks and bonds of non-U.S. companies.
NEW YORK -- The often frustrating task of correcting an inaccurate credit report will soon be a bit easier, thanks to changes in the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
The changes, effective Oct. 1, won't transform the process into a walk in the park. But they will give consumers more ammunition in forcing the credit reporting companies, and the creditors who report to them, to get their information right.
By Rachel Beck, Associated Press writer
PARAMUS, N.J. -- Larry Flax and Rick Rosenfield didn't want to open just another pizza shop.
When these two defense attorneys exchanged their legal pads for pizza cutters in 1985, their goal was to give a new spin to traditional pizza and then serve it in a quick, yet pleasant dining environment.
Twelve years later, their California Pizza Kitchen chain is now in 80 U.S. cities and plans are in place for international expansion and new, smaller, fast-service outlets.
By Dale Hopper, Associated Press writer
FRIENDSVILLE, Md. -- Jay Norfleet and Julie Webb's first business venture was to pool the $25 they had to buy bagels and cream cheese to sell at a Grateful Dead concert.
Next they sold jewelry. Then tie-dyed T-shirts.
"We were inspired to not work for someone else," Webb said.
Now, the two 26-year-olds are someone else's boss -- employing a fellow river guide to help keep up with demand for Grateful Heads, the durable, colorful helmets they make for kayakers and other white-water adventurers.
By Frazier Moore, Associated Press television writer
Don't take this wrong, but you seem kind of sick.
Sick of working so hard to pay for things you don't even want. Sick of feeling like the more you buy, the less you have. In short, sick of chasing the greased pig that masquerades as the American Dream.
You say you're willing to pay more for a T-shirt emblazoned with a fashion-forward logo? You say you treat yourself to a shopping trip when you're feeling blue?
Well, you're showing symptoms of affluenza, the epidemic that lends its name to a documentary airing Monday at 9 p.m. on PBS. You can't afford to miss it.
By Robert Lovinger, Standard-Times staff writer
The Great Depression greeted them as they entered the building. Four years later, when they left, it was still hanging around outside.
The New Bedford High School Class of 1937 will gather next Sunday at the Century House in Acushnet for its 60th reunion.
The class may be the only one in the school's history not to publish a yearbook; few students could afford one. They didn't graduate in caps and gowns, and few had the money to buy school rings. Many who might have gone to college couldn't.
It is 10 o'clock on a warm August Sunday morning in New Bedford. The air is unusually dry for what are the typically humid "dog days" of late August. The 8-year-old brushes his straight dark brown hair from his eyes and shifts his weight while waiting for the trolley. The nervous energy that keeps boys thin forces him to jiggle from foot to foot and, every 10 seconds, run from the wall of the Merchants National Bank and anxiously look up Purchase Street. If this is one of his lucky days he'll ride on one of the open air trolleys to Fort Phoenix.
CHICAGO -- Dr. David Terman spent years seeing the world before someone explained it to him.
Terman and his wife had hiked in the Rocky Mountains and traveled across Europe on their own before they went to Egypt with the University of Chicago. They replaced their own guidebooks with a long reading list, history books and a guide who specialized in Egyptology.
Terman is one of a growing number of travelers who are opting for vacations that stretch their minds, immerse them in another culture and help them grasp the significance of the sights they see.
Not long ago, the world rediscovered a fountain of youth. Alpha hydroxy acids -- derived from sugar cane, fruit and milk acids, the stuff of Cleopatra's beauty regimen -- seem to persuade skin to shed dead cells faster. This meant younger-looking skin and fewer noticeable wrinkles. Heavy hitters in dermatology agree: They actually deliver.
For about seven years, alpha hydroxy acids -- or AHAs, as they're known -- have reigned supreme, becoming almost as ubiquitous in facial products as fluoride in toothpaste. But there's a whole untapped alphabet out there, people, so it's time for -- ding ding! -- round two. Enter beta hydroxy acids.
By Bob Hanna, Standard-Times staff writer
TAUNTON -- Chalk up one for the run-and-shoot offense.
With junior quarterback Bob Liljedahl pulling the trigger and senior wideout Jon Garro catching the bullets, the Old Rochester Regional Bulldogs used the run-and-shoot offense for two fourth-quarter touchdowns to overtake Coyle-Cassidy, 19-14, yesterday.
Liljedahl, making his first varsity start, threw three touchdown passes, with Garro catching two of them, including the game-winner with 1:46 left.
By Buddy Thomas, Standard-Times Senior Sports Editor
TAUNTON -- The seven-year itch ended one year early yesterday when visiting Greater New Bedford Regional Voc-Tech scratched out a 16-6 football victory over Bristol-Plymouth.
The win snapped a string of six consecutive opening-day losses for the Bears.
Quarterback Shaun DeGrace ran for one touchdown and threw for another, and an aggressive defense turned a blocked punt into a third-quarter safety as Voc-Tech rallied from a 6-0 deficit to hand Len Sylvia a victory in his first game as head coach.
The Tuna Bowl.
The Tuna Returns.
The Jihad Against The Jets.
These are just a few of the names people have been calling tonight's game between the New England Patriots (2-0) and the New York Jets (1-1).
It seems like only yesterday -- actually, it was last February -- that the anticipation for this game broke out like a rash in a classroom full of first-graders.
NEW BEDFORD -- Problem: three little league teams and only two dugouts available for the City Championship final series.
Problem solved.
The New Bedford Police Union confirmed its dugout reservation by eliminating Greater New Bedford champion Ma's Donuts, 6-1, before a large crowd last night at Dias Field. The win not only completed a two-game, round-robin sweep by the South End champions, but also booked Whaling City champion 6th Bristol Club (1-1) into the other dugout across the diamond.
By Howard Ulman, Associated Press writer
NEWTON -- West Virginia's Amos Zereoue, the nation's No. 2 rusher, couldn't get started. Boston College's Mike Cloud, who wasn't expected to play much, couldn't be stopped.
Cloud rushed for 211 yards, including touchdowns of 11 and 66 yards, as the Eagles overcame a 17-3 halftime deficit for a 31-24 win yesterday.
FOXBORO -- Twenty reporters scribble feverishly in notebooks. Five minicam operators keep rolling. Three newspaper cameramen angle for shots.
All of them focus on one familiar voice -- not a face, a voice -- coming from a tiny black speakerphone in a small room at Patriots headquarters.
The voice of Bill Parcells.
Steve Urbon
That picture we ran on the front page yesterday -- the one where Bill Weld was shaking hands with Jesse Helms -- reminded me of a scene in the movie "Mars Attacks." (Oh, come on, just go with this.)
In the movie, which I make absolutely no apology for renting, the president of the United States (Jack Nicholson) has finally come face-to-face with the grinning, google-eyed Martians, who up to this point have been vaporizing the human leadership with great glee and resourcefulness. The Prez thinks he's made peace with these guys with a handshake, but all of a sudden the Martian's hand snaps right off his arm, turns into a snake with a spiked tail, impales President Nicholson in the back, and sends up a victory flagpole right through his belly. (It was funny, OK?)
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Well, so much for that. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee had a meeting Friday, called by members over the objections of Chairman Jesse Helms, and Sen. Helms used all 30 minutes of it to prove once again that he is an arrogant obstructionist in the finest Senate traditions. And William Weld is still nowhere in his quest to become ambassador to Mexico. Sen. Helms did exactly as he promised, and used his powers as chairman to prevent our former governor from even being discussed. Instead, Sen. Helms used the whole time to mock Mr. Weld and dare him to incite ideological war within the Republican Party, something that Sen. Helms and his ilk contend should not be done because the battles are over and they have won.
Votes.
In politics, it's every candidate's goal to garner as many of them as possible.
That said, there is some debate when it comes to who should be casting them. It surfaced earlier this summer as acting Gov. Paul Cellucci aired a proposal that would prohibit inmates in Massachusetts jails from voting.
By Robert Lovinger, Standard-Times staff writer
Later this year, director Steven Spielberg will lay bare a stirring piece of little-known American history with his "Amistad," the true story of Africans who rebelled aboard a slave ship and were put on trial for their act.
Thursday night at the New Bedford Whaling Museum, Professor W. Jeffrey Bolster will mine the same, largely untapped vein with his lecture-slide show on African-Americans in the maritime trades before Emancipation.
By Joanna McQuillan Weeks, Assistant features editor
Manhattan may have its Soho, but New Bedford can boast of Eaco.
Soho is a district south of Houston Street that teems with art; the area east of County Street in New Bedford may someday be a microcosm of it. Already, Gallery X, the Bierstadt Gallery and the New Bedford Art Museum fall within the area. The long-vacant Star Store is targeted to be home to UMass art students in the not-too-distant future.
MONHEGAN, Maine -- The Monhegan Museum needed more space. Housed in the former lighthouse keeper's residence, perched on a treeless, wind-swept hill overlooking the village, the museum had little room to display its growing art collection. The question was how to expand but respect the historic nature of the property.
The museum president, Edward Deci, found his answer in the reproduction of an Edward Hopper painting.
By Douglas J. Rowe, Associated Press writer
NEW YORK -- Michael Douglas sees his latest movie as "a Scrooge parable" in which he plays a self-involved, coldhearted, bah-humbug type, a man who lacks spirituality and love.
Yep, once again it's "no more Mr. Nice Guy" for the actor who won an Academy Award for personifying 1980s greed in "Wall Street," battled his wife to the death in "The War of the Roses," and endangered his family by cheating on his spouse with a psycho in "Fatal Attraction."
Editor's note: In the final three months of his life, Sir Georg Solti gave only two in-depth interviews as he prepared for what would have been his 85th birthday celebration. One was with The Associated Press on June 2.
LONDON -- Fresh from his daily massage, Sir Georg Solti was in the basement office of his large house, trying to define his contribution to music. Did he really think there was a specific Solti sound?
"I don't know," he said, then considered his reply a moment longer. "I aim for a specific Mozart sound, a Wagner sound, a Verdi sound. A specific Solti sound? No."
There are many yardsticks of manliness, ranging from the ability to drink enough beer to fill a water butt to a capacity for bearing pain without flinching. For me, it has long been the ability to use a scythe. This is partly bound up with an absurd private glamorization of a Hardyesque rural world, and partly based upon my own acquaintance with scythes.
Americans are rediscovering the beauty of perennials. Bursting back onto the scene with gusto are day lilies, a diverse group of perennial flowers unsurpassed for versatility in the landscape.
Anyone who associates the day lily exclusively with yellow or orange star-shape blooms might wonder what all the excitement is about. The news is that this old-fashioned flower has a great new look. Blossoms now come in all colors of the rainbow, pink, purple, red, peach, apricot and all shades in between, including dramatic color combinations. Petals may be ruffled, twirled or flecked with eye-catching glitter called "diamond dust."
"I wouldn't live in an environment that wasn't interesting," says Los Angeles artist David Bailey. "Why should my fish?"
The tropical-fish collector found pet-store aquariums boxy and boring. So five years ago, he spent $20,000, and about 2,000 hours, to create a 110-gallon fish tank in the passenger compartment of a white Volkswagen Beetle. He took off the hood and upholstered the interior in mauve leather, so he could sit and watch his extensive collection of tropical fish drift by. Eventually he sold the "acarium" to a Japanese businessman for $40,000.
Cary Cimino didn't see any reason to wait to get married to set up his dream home.
A private investor who has spent 15 years working on Wall Street, Cimino recently bought a 2,100-square-foot condominium in a high-rise on Manhattan's Upper East Side -- then spent upwards of $700,000 (not including art work) to spruce it up. "No one wants to live like they did in college," says the 36-year-old Cimino. "We are finding ourselves in our 30s and 40s, single, with the means to live well."
By Ingrid Sundstrom, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune
I have seen the light -- or rather the dark. I have become a believer in that which has been gospel for many gardeners since the beginning of cultivation. It is the gospel of mulch.
Applied deeply throughout your cultivated areas -- on vegetable, annual and perennial beds and around trees and shrubs -- by the most (or least) attentive gardener, a summer organic mulch becomes a true blessing to both garden and gardener.
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