Slain Journo Was Supposed to Leave Syria Yesterday

A heartbreaking addendum to the story of Marie Colvin, the American working for Britain's Sunday Times who was killed in Homs today. Her mother tells Newsday that Colvin was due to leave Syria yesterday but opted to stay one more day. "She had a story she felt was very important," said Rosemarie Colvin, who called her daughter "absolutely dedicated to doing what she did at the highest level. To argue with Marie, that would have just been a waste of words."

Newsday paints the picture of a remarkable woman, a Yale grad whose work has taken her to Kosovo, Chechnya, Iraq, and Sri Lanka, where she lost her eye in a grenade attack. "She had a peculiar knack for getting tyrants to talk," writes longtime friend Christopher Dickey for the Daily Beast. "Marie really was the greatest war correspondent of our generation. She took extraordinary risks and got extraordinary stories year after year, decade after bloody decade. There is no substitute for the correspondent who goes and sees for herself what is happening, and tells the world in exact, dispassionate, irrefutable detail." (More Marie Colvin stories.)