USA
Another round of economic stimulus isn't needed after the $152 billion package earlier this year, US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press." He also said he had no desire to stay at the post beyond January, when a new administration takes office.
Democrats reached a compromise on a healthcare goal aimed at guaranteeing care for all as a party plank. The decision, which moved the party closer to the position of presidential candidate Barack Obama's defeated rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, heads off a potentially divisive debate.
After long denying an extramarital affair, John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator and Democratic presidential candidate, admitted during an ABC News interview late last week to a secret relationship with filmmaker Rielle Hunter. On Saturday, Hunter's attorney released a statement saying she wouldn't participate in DNA testing to establish the paternity of her 5-month-old daughter.
The iconic Wall Arch, a popular tourist sight in Utah's Arches National Park, collapsed last week, park officials said. No one has reported seeing the fall of the park's 12th largest of an estimated 2,000 sandstone arches. It's assumed that gravity and erosion brought down the 71-foot span, the first to collapse since nearby Landscape Arch fell in 1991.
The crash of an unlicensed bus near the Texas-Oklahoma border has resulted in at least 17 deaths, according to the latest official figures. The bus skidded off a highway Friday after a tire blew out while transporting Vietnamese Roman Catholics from Houston to a religious festival in Missouri.
New York shut down vehicle traffic Saturday on seven miles of Manhattan roads in order to let cyclists, pedestrians, and in-line skaters have free rein on stretches of Park and Lexington avenues, among other thoroughfares. The Summer Streets event, which emulates similar initiatives in other cities around the world, will continue for two more Saturdays and possibly beyond if the experiment succeeds.
One of the few remaining "witness trees" at the Gettysburg National Military Park in Pennsylvania was severely damaged by a recent storm, park officials said. They will assess what to do with the remains of the "silent witness" to the famous Civil War battle. The huge honey locust stands 150 feet from where President Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address.
