Advertisement

Urban News

By DENNIS DAILY, United Press International
Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter

(PHILADELPHIA) -- The latest city to see a major sports stadium named in a bidding war is Philadelphia. The Philadelphia Eagles NFL team will soon play in Lincoln Financial Field. The company that bought naming rights has its headquarters in the downtown sector of the City of Brotherly Love. The naming will cost the financial services company about $140 million.

The Philadelphia Inquirer says that the team will get just under $6.7 million a year for the next 21 years. In return Lincoln will see its name in lights for the next two decades on the new sports venue, set to open in about a year.

Advertisement

The new stadium is in South Philly, near the current Veterans Stadium.


(MEMPHIS) -- Police in Memphis report that the medical examiner of Shelby County was attacked by an unknown assailant over the weekend in what can only be described as a bizarre incident. The Commercial Appeal says that Dr. O.C. Smith was attacked and wrestled to the ground. The unknown attacker than wrapped him in barbed wire and strapped a bomb to his body ... then left.

Advertisement

Smith was found and untangled. He suffered only burns from an acid-like substance that the assailant threw into his face before leaving him in a stairwell.

Bomb experts say the device that had been used in the incident was similar to devices left in another stairwell near Smith's office in March.

Smith was rescued by security guards on regular patrol. He had sat in the stairwell for some time, awaiting rescue ... hoping the bomb would not go off.


(SAN JOSE, Calif.) -- What better a symbol of the downward crash of the so-called dot-com industry in California's Silicon Valley than a great big slide ... red, symbolizing red ink; downward, for obvious reasons. Well, according to feature writer Steve Johnson, writing in the weekend editions of the San Jose Mercury newspaper, a two-story, tubular, adult-sized red slide now sits idle in the once-teeming offices of the now-defunct dot-com company AtHome. The slide is, according to the paper, a mute tribute to the "frivolous exuberance" of the dot-coms in their glory days.

Built at a cost of $15,000, the "toy" once carried employees down from an upper level in the company's headquarters. Now its shiny red twists and turns are a metaphor for the twists and turns, then sudden fall of much of the industry in the area.

Advertisement

At the height of the boom there wasn't enough office space in the San Jose area to meet local needs. Now hundreds of thousands of square feet sit idle.

Also among those suffering from the demise of the dot-coms, the San Jose Symphony orchestra. Once propped up by the generous contributions of local electronics firms, in recent months it's been fighting for its life.


(CHICAGO) -- In a city still wincing from the hundreds of heat-related deaths recorded several summers ago, Chicagoans are now coping with the death of a two-year-old boy, left alone in a hot car. This time the victim is not an anonymous senior citizen in a city tenement. The dead boy is the son of a former Cook Country sheriff's deputy and the godchild of a city alderman.

The Sun-Times reports that Charlie Lewis died when left in a car in 90-degree temperatures.

To add to the sadness, even though the boy was only two, he was already being described by those who met him as showing the signs of a "natural-born leader." His body was taken from the car by a neighbor who had to break a window to retrieve the child. The boy's mother claims that she fell asleep, forgetting that she had locked the boy in the car.

Advertisement

The publication says that more than 30 children die in locked, hot cars each year in this country.


Latest Headlines