The city where Martin Luther King Jr took his last breath remains haunted by urban blight, blues and soul
Christopher Duntsch’s surgical outcomes were so outlandishly poor that Texas prosecuted him for harming patients. Why did it take so long for the systems that are supposed to police problem doctors to stop him from operating?
Republican presidential candidate John McCain and Democrat Hillary Clinton sought to shore up support among black voters on Friday in the city where civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jnr was slain 40 years ago. Democrat Barack Obama honoured King’s legacy with a speech in Indiana, while his rivals attended activities in Memphis.
Forty years after Martin Luther King Jr was shot to death, the civil rights leader is still roiling American politics. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican candidate John McCain have both come to Memphis to mark King’s April 4 1968, death and try to shore up support among black voters.
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/ 28 January 2008
Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton jockeyed for position on Sunday in a bruising United States presidential race after Obama scored a landslide win in a South Carolina primary tinged with the issue of race. ”I think [the result] speaks extraordinarily well, not just for folks in the South, but all across the country,” said Obama.
Elvis Presley fans from around the world gathered outside his Memphis home on Wednesday to mark the 30th anniversary of his death in an event meant both to honour the singer’s legacy and cash in on it. Tens of thousands of fans were expected to file past Presley’s grave site at his Graceland estate.
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/ 13 December 2006
The world’s oldest living person, 116-year-old Elizabeth ”Lizzy” Bolden, died on December 11 at the Mid-South Health and Rehabilitation Centre in Memphis, Tennessee, according to her grandson. ”She was always very family-oriented,” said James Bolden, who came from the Philippines last week to visit his grandmother.
With a massive golden cross in her outstretched hand and a tear on her cheek, Lady Liberation looms nine storeys over the birthplace of rock’n’roll. She bears a remarkable resemblance to New York’s Statue of Liberty, but this Memphis, Tennessee, replica has a very different message.
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/ 9 November 2005
With a handful of albums and awards, Blind Mississippi Morris Cummings, a harmonica-wailing fixture in Memphis since the 1980s, is cut from the same downtrodden, wayward cloth as many bluesmen who came before. ”This morning before sunrise, them old blues came a calling/I lay alone in my bed/That sad and lonely, empty feeling makes you wish you were dead,” Cummings sings in Morning Before Sunrise.
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/ 31 October 2005
Victims of El Salvador’s bloody civil war are prepared to tell a federal jury about the torture they endured and deaths they witnessed more than two decades ago. Nicolas Carranza, a former Salvadoran army colonel who has lived a quiet life in Memphis since 1985, was set to go on trial on Monday in a US District Court.
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/ 17 February 2005
Top seed Andy Roddick eased into the quarterfinals of the ATP side of the men’s and women’s tennis tournaments playing in Memphis on Wednesday with a straight-set victory over France’s Arnaud Clement. Roddick, seeking his 17th career ATP title and his second in as many weeks, cruised past Clement 6-3, 6-3 in a second-round clash.
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/ 28 January 2005
The naked jogger has met his fate: a year in jail and a 000 (R5 950) fine for running around the neighbourhood without his shorts. Officers said they saw Patterson jogging bare from the waist down and ordered him to stop. When he kept running, officers used a stun gun to pause the pursuit of the pantless perpetrator.
Want to spend a few days holed up in Elvis Presley’s old digs — sleeping in his bedroom, eating in his kitchen? No, Graceland isn’t taking in boarders. But there might be a room available at the public housing apartment where Presley spent his teenage years.