Popular chess author and GM Andrew Soltis won the "Chess Journalist of the Year award this year at the U.S. Open in Fort Lauderdale.
Respected postal chess organizer Helen Warren and GM Robert Byrne tied for the new "Lifetime Achievement award." Thanks to fellow Movable Type blogger About Chess for the news.
Haaretz - Israel News reports on a plan that sounds just a tad too ambitious:
The president of Russia's Kalmykia region plans to build an international chess city in Dubai with investments of around $2.6 billion, a joint statement said yesterday.Kalmykia's President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov and chief executive of Dubai Projects, Sulaiman al-Fahim, said the city would include 32 buildings shaped like chess pieces and cover an estimated area of 64,000 square meters.
"Dubai will play host to over 60 million amateur and professional chess followers from around the globe annually.
The archives of NPR's Tavis Smiley Show feature Orrin Hudson's Life Lessons in Chess, with "teacher, mentor and motivational speaker Orrin Hudson about how life is like a game a chess and what young African Americans can learn from it."