In a white-clapboard town hall, built circa 1832, voters gathered to conduct their community's business and to call for the impeachment of US President George W. Bush.
"In the US presently there are only a few places where citizens can act in this fashion and have a say in our nation," said select board member Dan DeWalt, who drafted the impeachment article that was placed on the warning -- or official agenda -- for the annual town meeting, a proud tradition in some northeastern US states.
"It absolutely affects us locally," Dewalt said on Tuesday. "It's our sons and daughters, our mothers and fathers, who are dying" in the war in Iraq.
The article, approved 121-29 in balloting by paper, calls on Vermont's lone member of the US House of Representatives, independent Representative Bernie Sanders, to file articles of impeachment against the president, alleging that Bush misled the US into the Iraq war and engaged in illegal domestic spying.
Other cities across the US have taken up resolutions calling for Bush's impeachment, notably San Francisco.
But the sentiment has rarely spread to rural America -- unless you're talking about Vermont, which is known for bucking politics as usual.
At least three other southern Vermont towns, which were spurred by publicity about Newfane's resolution, endorsed similar resolutions during Tuesday's meetings: Dummerston, Marlboro and Putney.
In Newfane, the impeachment item came at the end of a roughly four-hour meeting on Tuesday morning that was devoted mostly to the local affairs of the town of 1,600.
Among the other items discussed was whether the town should fix some of the 100-year-old sidewalks in the village.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not