LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY
“If you’ve been around here long enough, you know there’s going to be some give on both sides.”
Dick Durbin of Illinois,
the second-ranking Senate Democrat Article, 1AGays statewide get
licenses to wed
SEATTLE - Hundreds of same-sex couples across Washington state started picking up marriage licenses Thursday as a voter-approved law legalizing gay marriage took effect.
King County, the state’s largest, opened the doors to its auditor’s office in Seattle just after midnight to start distributing licenses.
But hundreds of people had lined up hours earlier, snaking around the building on a chilly December night. The county said it issued 489 marriage licenses Thursday, mostly to same-sex couples, breaking a previous daily record of 212. On average, King County issues 75 to 100 marriage licenses a day.
Gov. Chris Gregoire and Secretary of State Sam Reed certified the election results of Referendum 74 on Wednesday afternoon, and the law took effect at 12:01 a.m. Thursday.
Presidential race tops $2 billion
WASHINGTON - The 2012 presidential election broke the $2 billion milestone in its final weeks, becoming the most expensive in American political history, according to final federal finance reports released Thursday.
The final campaign finance tallies filed with the Federal Election Commission included nearly $86 million in fundraising for the losing presidential candidate, Republican Mitt Romney, in the election’s last weeks. That final burst brought the Romney campaign’s total for the election to above $1 billion. Final fundraising and spending totals for President Barack Obama’s victorious drivealso topped $1 billion.
The final thrust of fundraising included a late surge of $33 million in donations to pro-Romney political committees from a single billionaire, Las Vegas casino owner Sheldon Adelson.
Bodies most likely those of Iowa girls
EVANSDALE, Iowa - Investigators are confident that human remains found by hunters are those of two young Iowa cousins who vanished while riding their bikes in July, authorities said Thursday.
Autopsies by the state medical examiner’s office were still under way, but the remains are believed to be those of Lyric Cook and Elizabeth Collins, who were 10 and 8 when they did not come back from riding their bikes July 13, Black Hawk County sheriff’s Capt. Rick Abben said.
Hunters found the bodies Wednesday in a rural wildlife area in northeastern Iowa, about 25 miles from Evansdale, the city of 4,700 where the girls were last seen.
Front Section, Pages 4 on 12/07/2012