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In an act of compelling cinematic cruelty, Richard Widmark pushed an old lady in the wheelchair down a flight of stairs in the 1947 noir classic Kiss of Death. And he got a kick out of it, to judge by the trademark cackling laugh.

Widmark was 93 when he died at his home this week. He bubbled right under first rank leading man/star status but he had tremendous acting range whether he was playing hero or heavy. His performance in Madigan set the stage for a raft of tough loner detectives who came in his wake.

As Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama battle each other through a protracted primary season, could there be another player just waiting for his party to call?

The notion that Al Gore could emerge as a compromise candidate if the Democrats are deadlocked in Denver has been floated occasionally - and now by Time magazine's Joe Klein.

Obama will probably do well enough (in the Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Indiana primaries) to secure the nomination. But what if he tanks? What if he can't buy a white working-class vote? What if he loses all three states badly and continues to lose after that? I'd guess that the Democratic Party would still give him the nomination rather than turn to Clinton. But no one would be very happy—and a year that should have been an easy Democratic victory, given the state of the economy and the unpopularity of the incumbent, might slip away.

About half the ballots in the general election will be cast before Election Day, officials predict.

Response has been enthusiastic to an option to become permanent mail voters, reports Myung Oak Kim.

Since March 17, Jefferson County election officials have received more than 55,000 applications from registered voters who want to only vote by mail - an option that became available last year through a new law.

With the new applicants, nearly half of Jefferson County's 250,000 active voters will cast ballots by mail this year, said the county's deputy of elections, Josh Liss.

The applications arrived in response to a letter the county sent two weeks ago to more than 200,000 voters about the new mail voting alternative. Many other county clerks are gearing up to do similar outreach campaigns.

A 38-square mile iceberg has fallen from an Antarctic ice shelf, adding more fodder to the global-warming debate.

Bill Scanlon reports:

Satellite images from the University of Colorado's National Snow and Ice Data Center reveal a 38-square-mile iceberg fell from the Wilkins Ice Shelf, a Connecticut-sized plate of floating ice on Antarctica's southwest peninsula.

The fall of the iceberg triggers a runaway disintegration of 220 square miles of the shelf's interior.