8A NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
FRIDAY, MAY 4, 2007
》THE QUEEN IS IN
British monarch visits Virginia
ASSOCIATED PRESS
RICHMOND, Va. — The last time Queen Elizabeth II helped Virginia mark the anniversary of its Colonial founding, it was an all-white affair in a still-segregated state. Thursday's visit was starkly different.
Susan Walsh/ASSOCIATED PRESS
The British monarch, in her first visit to the former Confederate capital, will salute American Indians, a venerated civil rights lawyer and dozens whose lives were scarred by last month's massacre at Virginia Tech.
Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said the message could not be more timely or appropriate.
Queen Elizabeth II and Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine walk around the newly renovated Virginia State Capitol in Richmond, Va., Thursday. The queen's visit is part of Virginia's celebration of the 400th anniversary of Jamestown, America's first permanent English settlement.
"This is a moment that brings Virginia together. That will be very apparent on Capitol Square today, with folks from all over Virginia coming together for this remarkable moment and coming in the aftermath of a hard time," Kaine said Thursday at a news conference.
The plane carrying the 81-year-old queen landed by mid-afternoon, and 20 minutes later she emerged with her husband, Prince Phillip.
Hundreds of people stood in lines for hours in a cool drizzle, some since dawn, to enter the grounds of the freshly refurbished 219-year-old Capitol.
The queen's visit is part of
Virginia's celebration of the 400th anniversary of jamestown, Americas first permanent English settlement.
"How often do you get to see the reigning monarch, much less in your own town?" said Keith Gary, the first spectator through the gates when they opened more than four hours before the queen and Prince Philip's arrival.
The queen's speech to Virginia's General Assembly was to be the first address by Britain's crown to the lawmaking body it chartered in 1619 at Jamestown as the Colonial House of Burgesses.
Inside the Capitol, she was scheduled to meet briefly with construction workers whose $105 million, two-year renovation was completed Monday, with high school student body leaders and with 100-year-old Oliver W. Hill.
Hill, whose birthday was Tuesday, is a civil rights attorney whose litigation helped bring about the 1954 Supreme Court decision outlawing racial segregation in public schools.
When the queen visited Jamestown for its 350th anniversary in 1957, such a meeting was impossible because the state was defying federal desegregation orders.
Before she departs for Williamsburg, the queen will meet privately with some of those wounded in the Virginia Tech shooting
and the families of some of the 32 slain.
"The queen has expressed her desire to have some interaction with
the virginia Tech community so she can extend her support to it, which I really, really appreciate." Kaine said.
》 SHOWTIME
Bette Midler replaces Celine Dion in Las Vegas
BY RYAN NAKASHIMA ASSOCIATED PRESS
LAS VEGAS — Bette Midler will replace Celine Dion as the headliner at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, officials announced Thursday, answering the lingering question of who would be chosen to step into some big shoes and the 4,100-seat Colosseum, which Dion virtually
sold out for what will be a nearly five-year run by December.
Dion's show, "A New Day," has grossed more than $500 million since it began in March 2003, producers said. The Grammy award-winning singer announced in January that she would end her run at the end of the year in the $95 million theater.
Milder said the venue was intimi-dating but exciting.
"I'm looking forward to it, but also I'm terrified because it's huge," she told The Associated Press by telephone. "That's giving me the vapors.
"At the same time, they also give you a lot of toys to play with. They give you the lifts and you can fly people in, you can fly them out. There's all this wing space and hydraulics and stuff, and the dressing rooms are staggering. It should be an opera house somewhere in the Black Forest."
Midler, 61, said she agreed to a two-year contract to work 100 shows a year, performing five nights a week for 20 weeks beginning Feb. 20.
The schedule is less grueling than Dion's, who performed 160 shows per year.
EVENING NEWS
BY DAVID BAUDER ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK — One-third of Americans say they have a negative view of Katie Couric, her personal popularity lagging behind rivals Charles Gibson and Brian Williams just as her evening news program trails in the ratings.
The Gallup Poll survey released Thursday found that 51 percent of Americans said they had a positive view of Couric, who jumped from NBC's "Today" show to CBS last fall.
The poll found Gibson and Williams essentially running neck-
and-neck in terms of popularity, ABC's Gibson was viewed positively by 62 percent of TV viewers and NBC's Williams by 59 percent, but that is within the sampling's margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
That also mirrors the competition between the anchors in the television ratings. Gibson began the evening job last spring, and trailed Williams consistently for the rest of 2006. But in the past three months ABC's "World News" has logged the most viewers during eight weeks, while NBC's "Nightly News" won four weeks.
Seth Wenig/ASSOCIATED PRESS
News anchor Katie Couric presents an award at the annual Jackie Robinson Foundation awards dinner in New York on March 5.