USA
Voters in Newark, N.J., overwhelmingly elected City Councilman Cory Booker the city's first new mayor in two decades. The result represents a shift in black leadership, since the losing candidate was endorsed by outgoing Mayor Sharpe James. All three men are African-Americans and Democrats. Booker is a Yale Law School graduate. Meanwhile, in Nebraska, Gov. Dave Heineman (R) held off challenger Tom Osborne, a three-term congressman and former University of Nebraska football coach, in the state's GOP gubernatorial primary.
Senate Democrats and Republicans reached a tentative agreement to toughen sanctions for employers who hire illegal immigrants. Employers who don't check workers' Social Security numbers and immigration status would be subject to fines of $200 to $6,000 per violation, with penalties rising to $20,000 per illegal hire once an electronic system of checks is instituted. The lawmakers are seeking to hammer out an immi- gration reform bill before Memorial Day.
Celia May Baldwin, the interim head of Gallaudet University's board of trustees, said "numerous aggressive threats" prompted her resignation at the nation's only liberal arts college for the deaf. The board of the Washington school has been at the center of a controversy swirling around the selection of Provost Jane Fernandes to become its new president. She lost a confidence vote of the faculty.
Boston police commissioner Kathleen O'Toole, one of the highest-ranking women in US law enforcement, resigned to accept a job as chief inspector of the Republic of Ireland's struggling national police force.
A June 2 test explosion in the Nevada desert will be postponed for at least three weeks as a federal court considers the potential impacts at a Nuclear Security Administration site north of Las Vegas. Concerned citizens have filed suit to block the 700-ton nonnuclear blast designed to knock out underground targets.
Whirlpool Corp., America's largest appliancemaker even before its recent $1.8 billion aquisition of Maytag Corp., said it will cut 4,500 jobs (5.6 percent of its workforce) in fusing operations. Washer and dryer plants in Newton, Iowa; Herrin, Ill.; and Searcy, Ark., will close, and corporate offices will be consolidated at Whirlpool's headquarters in Benton Harbor, Mich.
