h’Poor Richard’ brings riches to small Pa. city

h’Poor Richard’ brings riches to small Pa. city

NEW YORK — When members of the local historical society in Berwick, Pa., found a dusty, long-ignored copy of Benjamin Franklin’s 18th-century “Poor Richard” almanac on their shelves a few months ago, they decided to find out whether it could be real.

On Tuesday, the answer came at Sotheby’s auction house, where an anonymous bidder paid $556,500 for the 1733 edition, the second-highest price ever for a book printed in America.

That was big news in Berwick, an old manufacturing city of 10,000 residents about 95 miles northwest of Philadelphia, where Franklin, using the pseudonym Richard Saunders, printed thousands of copies of his almanac between 1733 and 1760.

Abortion clinic to close

WICHITA, Kan. — George Tiller’s slaying has accomplished what anti-abortion activists had tried to do for decades: The doors to his Kansas clinic will shut forever.

The announcement Tuesday from Tiller’s family was a tainted victory for the nation’s anti-abortion movement. For years, it had focused on Tiller, making him the target of protests, legislation and legal attacks. His death reignited a public debate over some abortion opponents’ tactics and left many wondering how it will transform the abortion battleground.

Actors ratify SAG contract

LOS ANGELES — Members of the Screen Actors Guild have voted to ratify a two-year contract covering movies and prime-time TV shows made by the major Hollywood studios.

The vote, with 78 percent in favor of the deal, follows a bitter dispute that saw guild members fighting among themselves and left them further behind than where they started.

The contract immediately raises the minimum pay for union members. But it does not improve compensation for Internet content beyond what other unions have already accepted.

Helms still polarizes

RALEIGH, N.C. — Twenty-six North Carolina legislators sat out a vote Tuesday on a resolution honoring the late U.S. Sen Jesse Helms, showing that the Republican remains a polarizing figure a year after his death.

The state Legislature approves dozens of honorary resolutions each two-year session, and the body’s bill drafting director, Gerry Cohen, said he could remember none of the others being avoided by so many lawmakers in his three-decade career.

Most of the holdouts were black Democrats such as Sen. Floyd McKissick. Helms opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act as a commentator and voted against its reauthorization once in the Senate.

Envoy answers N. Korea

NEW YORK — President Barack Obama’s special envoy on North Korea says the U.S. has no intention to invade the communist country or change its regime by force.

Stephen Bosworth told the Korea Society on Tuesday night that this has been repeatedly made clear to North Korea. The envoy says North Korea’s claim to be responding to a threat or hostile policy by the U.S. is “simply groundless.”

North Korea said Tuesday it would use nuclear weapons in a “merciless offensive” if provoked — its latest rhetoric apparently aimed at deterring any international punishment for its recent atomic-test blast.

Blagojevich to take stage

CHICAGO — Ousted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a laughingstock since his arrest and impeachment, is getting in on the jokes with Chicago’s famed The Second City.

Blagojevich spokesman Glenn Selig said Tuesday that the former governor will participate in Saturday’s performance of “Rod Blagojevich Superstar.”

The show is a takeoff on the rock opera “Jesus Christ Superstar” and follows Blagojevich’s rise and fall.

Associated Press