Washington: Interior Department designates 26 trails

MORE:www.interior.gov

The Interior Department designated 26 new national recreation trails in 16 states on Friday.

Interior Secretary Gale Norton praised the national trail system as an example of cooperative efforts between the government and local communities and private groups in developing recreational outlets.

These “partnerships build trails and trails build healthy Americans,” said Norton. The recreational trails program provides technical assistance through the National Park Service and the Agriculture Department’s Forest Service.

Florida: Storms delay launch of space shuttle

With thunderstorms expected through the weekend, NASA has put off the launch of space shuttle Endeavour on a space station mission until Monday.

Managers made the decision Friday after storms forced the second delay in as many days. The bad weather is expected to continue into next week.

The postponement adds another four days, at least, to what already is a six-month stay at the international space station for Americans Daniel Bursch and Carl Walz and their Russian commander, Yuri Onufrienko.

By the time they return to Earth aboard Endeavour, the astronauts will have set a new U.S. space endurance record. The shuttle will drop off a fresh station crew as well as thousands of pounds of supplies, including a new wrist joint for the space station’s robot arm.

New York: Historian resigns from Pulitzer board

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who has faced accusations of plagiarism over a 1987 book, has resigned from the Pulitzer Prize board, Columbia University announced Friday.

In a letter to board Chairman John Carroll, Goodwin said, “after the controversy earlier this year surrounding my book, ‘The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys,’ and the need now to concentrate on my Lincoln manuscript, I will not be able to give the board the kind of attention it deserves.”

Goodwin, who joined the board in 1999, won a Pulitzer for her 1995 book “No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II.”

In January, as journalists probed the biographies and works of several high-profile historians, she acknowledged that “The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys” contained sections of text taken without attribution from another author.

Washington: Study: Blacks buckle up less often than whites

Blacks are less likely to buckle up than whites, and the largest auto insurance company and a black medical school are teaming up to figure out why.

State Farm Insurance announced Friday that it would give Meharry Medical College $10 million in the next five years to study attitudes about seat belts and child safety seats among blacks and create a plan to increase use.

Meharry President John Maupin said it was unclear why blacks didn’t buckle up as often as whites.

“We know the statistics,” he said. “It is now time to come together and find the real reasons behind and the solutions to the crisis.”

Sixty-nine percent of blacks wore seat belts in 2000, compared with 74 percent of whites, according to the latest figures from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The usage rate also was 69 percent among other minorities, but the study will focus only on blacks.