Urban News

(SAN FRANCISCO) -- Health experts are calling for additional funding to probe the reason for an excessively high rate of breast cancer in a San Francisco suburb. According to all-news radio station KCBS, women in Marin County (the area north of downtown San Francisco, just across the Golden Gate Bridge) have an incidence of breast cancer that is the highest per capita in the country.

A Bay Area Congresswoman reports that U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson is aware of the numbers and agrees that something should be done.

Rep. Lynn Woolsey tells the station that Thompson's wife is a survivor of breast cancer.

Additionally, health officials in Marin County have sought an increase in funding that will allow them to have a full-time epidemiologist on staff to deal with the high rate of cancer and to better track the problem.

(ST. LOUIS) -- Plans for the new Cardinals baseball stadium in St. Louis call for it be built "within" the old park while games continue there. That's right. During the 2005 baseball season, games will take place in the current stadium while much of the outfield bleachers area is dismantled in order to build a section of the new facility.

The man who heads up the construction tells the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the first 85 percent of the new building will be a snap. It's when the part is built that is now within the fringe of the old building that things will start getting "interesting."

An exit ramp onto an adjacent freeway will have to come down first. Now, it nearly touches the older ballpark.

During the transition from the old to new facilities there are plans for work to proceed on a 24/7 schedule.

The real rush will be to finish the new building in time to host that year's All-Star game.

During the transition, some 4,000 outfield bleacher seats will be torn out. It should make the outfield configuration look very interesting for half a season.

(MEMPHIS) -- A suburban Memphis mailroom had to be evacuated when workers found a suspicious envelope over the weekend. The Memphis Commercial Appeal says that at least 50 employees of the Union Planters Bank in Cordova were taken to hospital emergency rooms for observation.

Bank officials tell the publication that what was first noted was simply a strange odor. Employees later said that it smelled "like gasoline" and was coming from several mail-storage bins.

Fire officials were contacted and the entire third floor of the bank's office complex was evacuated.

As a further precaution, more than 100 workers from that floor underwent decontamination procedures. The bins of mail were wrapped and shipped to a government research lab. The investigation continues.

(BOSTON) -- Sports fans and lovers of true journalism are mourning the death of longtime Boston Globe reporter Will McDonough. The paper says that McDonough has to be considered one of the greatest sports reporters of all time.

Not only is print media mourning the loss, sports reporters in all media mentioned the death over the weekend, noting that McDonough was first of all a reporter ... sports just happened to be his beat.

Fellow Globe columnist Bob Ryan, in an extensive tribute to his friend, noted that many of the major stars of sports were willing to tell the writer things they would not share with anyone else.

"The bigger they were, the more they felt compelled to spill their guts to Will McDonough," Ryan writes. "The rest of us have never figured out his formula." A funeral mass for McDonough is set for mid-week in his Boston neighborhood.