New York City

5,200 submit designs for WTC memorial

In record-breaking numbers, more than 5,200 individuals and groups from around the globe submitted proposals for a memorial to those who died in the World Trade Center attack, officials announced Thursday.

The competition to design the memorial yielded extraordinary results: Proposals were received from 62 countries and every state except Alaska.

The memorial is to include references to the Feb. 26, 1993, bombing of the trade center as well as the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The 5,200 submissions are a record in a design competition for a memorial, officials for the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. said. The previous record was 1,421 submissions for the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C.

Snowmobiles to remain in two national parks

The House voted Thursday against halting the use of snowmobiles in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, upholding by the narrowest of margins a Bush administration plan to limit the number and emissions of the vehicles.

The decision to continue letting snowmobiles into two of the National Park Service’s crown jewels was a victory for the area’s winter sports interests. The 210-210 roll call in the Republican-run House — with a majority required for a provision to prevail — was a defeat for environmentalists, who say the tracked vehicles spew too much pollution and noise, threatening wildlife.

The vote was among several triumphs for business and the White House as the House neared approval of a bill providing $19.6 billion for the Interior Department and other federal land and cultural programs next year.

West Virginia

Gunman wounds one at school board meeting

A county worker walked into a school board meeting Thursday night, doused several people with gasoline and began shooting at random, authorities said. One woman was hit by gunfire.

Police said several people wrestled Richard Bright to the floor before officers arrived and took him into custody. The incident happened shortly after 7 p.m. at a meeting of the Kanawha County School Board.

The injured woman was taken to a hospital. Charleston Police Detective James Rollins said her wounds were not life-threatening.

Bright, 58, was charged with malicious wounding and wanton endangerment. He told Magistrate Kim Aaron he had been on sick leave from his job as a maintenance worker with the county schools. He was ordered held on $250,000 bail.

Washington, D.C.

Nixon papers reveal Vietnam War concern

Henry Kissinger and other top Nixon administration officials worried about how they would explain to a skeptical American public their plan to expand the Vietnam War to Cambodia and Laos, according to newly declassified documents.

A task force that answered to national security adviser Kissinger met several times before the United States and its South Vietnamese allies targeted North Vietnamese supply routes in 1970 in Cambodia and Laos a year later to discuss how to sell the policy to Congress and the American people.

The minutes of the Washington Special Actions Group are contained in some of the 180,000 pages of newly declassified Nixon administration National Security Council documents released Thursday by the National Archives.