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Bill Straub

Olympic gymnast Jordyn Wieber predicts the San Francisco 49ers will win Super Bowl XLVII in the Scripps Celebrity Super Bowl Poll.

Big names pick big game winner

Last updated Saturday, February 2, 2013 - 11:29pm

WASHINGTON — The Super Bowl is an overhyped, commercialized waste of a Sunday evening that serves only as an ode to violence, greed, testosterone and cheating to get ahead, glorifying the absolute worst aspects of contemporary America.

Oh, how we love it!

And so do the celebrities who walk among us.

More than 115 big names from entertainment, news, sports and politics have predicted the winner of the big game and its final score — we don’t make it easy — in the 2013 Scripps Celebrity Super Bowl Poll. The pick: San Francisco, baby.

Features, TV Read more Comments

Crumbling infrastructure ranks U.S. behind Barbados

Bill Straub Evansville Courier

Last updated Thursday, September 22, 2011 - 2:55pm

WASHINGTON -- There's nothing wrong with America's infrastructure that trillions of dollars can't cure.

Any number of recent studies has cited the nation's crumbling roads, deteriorating bridges, inefficient airports and leaky dams as a reason for public concern and a deterioration of America's standing on the international stage.

Bridges, Federal Government, Infrastructure, Roads, National Read more Comments

Is current jobless state the nation's new reality?

Bill Straub Evansville Courier

Last updated Wednesday, September 7, 2011 - 3:52pm

WASHINGTON -- The United States' jobs crisis is sending officials into a frenzy seeking answers and leading others to conclude that the present employment picture is actually the nation's new reality.

As Bruce Springsteen sings in "My Hometown," "Those jobs are gone, boys, and they ain't coming back."

Jobs, and the dismal unemployment rate of 9.1 percent, will be the focus of a major address President Barack Obama is scheduled to give Thursday.

Business, Economy, Jobs, Unemployment Read more Comments

Bronze in cemeteries luring new-age 'grave robbers'

Bill Straub, Scripps Howard News Service

Last updated Thursday, April 7, 2011 - 11:57am

WASHINGTON -- A spate of cemetery heists is now unfolding across the country, as crooks make off with bronze headstones, pry bronze plaques off the graves of veterans, yank up decorative bronze urns and even steal half-ton bronze sculptures and heavy bronze doors from crypts. The astronomical price of copper these days, of which bronze is an alloy, is behind the thefts.

Crime, Cemetery, Grave robbers, National Read more Comments

Nation's first spelling bee champion dies at 97

Bill Straub, Scripps Howard News Service

Last updated Wednesday, March 23, 2011 - 12:46pm

WASHINGTON -- Most people hope for a life that's a bed of roses. But for Frank Neuhauser, the nation's first champion speller who died March 11 at age 97, the roses turned out to be gladiolus -- g-l-a-d-i-o-l-u-s.

The correct spelling of that word, meaning a flowering plant of the iris family, catapulted the 11-year-old Neuhauser to victory in what is recognized as the first national spelling bee in 1925.

That competition was sponsored by The Courier-Journal newspaper of Louisville, Ky., which coincidentally was young Neuhauser's hometown. The E.W. Scripps Co. now hosts what has come to be titled the Scripps National Spelling Bee. This year's contest, the 84th annual, takes place June 1 and 2.

Obituary, National Read more Comments