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the inexpensive wooden casket of Lee Harvey Oswald to a grave on a slight rise dotted with dying grass.
• With no mourners around to serve as pallbearers, it was a task that fell to me and a few other reporters covering the funeral of John F. Kennedy's assassin. Fifty years later, I remain a reluctant and minor footnote in American history.
• It was a story that began with a tip: Oswald would be buried at Rose Hill Cemetery in Fort Worth, where he had spent part of his childhood, just one day after nightclub owner Jack Ruby shot and killed him during a jail transfer on Nov. 24, 1963, itself just two days after Kennedy's death.
• As the Fort Worth correspondent for The Associated Press, I drew the assignment.
• I arrived to discover dozens of police and federal agents, writers and photographers, but no mourners waiting to bid Oswald goodbye or good riddance. A police escort delivered Oswald's casket in the early afternoon. Much later, officers arrived with his family: mother Marguerite, brother Robert, widow Marina and her two daughters, June Lee, 2, and infant Rachel.
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• Either they're geniuses ... or about to look foolish. For your delectation and debate, some of the sharpest soccer minds at The Associated Press -- a crack team of reporters who have covered 28 World Cups between them -- peered into their crystal balls and took an educated stab at predicting who will shine or flop among the 32 teams next June in Brazil.
• We also got second opinions from Raymond Domenech, who coached 1998 world champion France at the 2006 and 2010 World Cups, and from a global panel of 14 non-AP journalists who vote in the weekly Associated Press soccer poll. Their thoughts about our predictions are also published here.
• Of course, the Dec. 6 draw could blow some predictions off course. But if history proves our fortune-tellers right, then don't forget: you read it here first!
• If not, well, hmmm. Better luck next time?
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