New Hampshire governor signs civil unions bill News
New Hampshire governor signs civil unions bill

[JURIST] New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch [official profile] signed a bill [HB 437 text; press release] Thursday allowing same-sex couples to enter into civil unions with the "same rights, responsibilities, and obligations as married couples" beginning in January 2008. Lynch hailed the bill as a continuation of "New Hampshire's longstanding tradition of rejecting discrimination… [which] dates back to the Abolitionist movement."

The legislation passed the New Hampshire House of Representatives and Senate [JURIST reports] in April. Currently, Massachusetts is the only state that has legalized same-sex marriages [JURIST report], but California, Connecticut, Maine, Vermont and Washington now permit civil unions or domestic partnerships. Oregon will allow same-sex couples to enter into contractual domestic partnerships [JURIST report] in January 2008. AP has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

UN General Assembly approves Palestine partition plan

The UN General Assembly approved UN Resolution Resolution 181 (II) on November 29, 1947, recommending that the British Mandate for Palestine be split into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and an international zone for Jerusalem. The vote in the assembly was 33 for to 13 against, with 10 abstentions. The resolution sparked a war between Palestinian Arabs and Jews in 1947 and a wider war after Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon invaded the new State of Israel in 1948. Read Resolution 181 (II).

UN divided Palestine between Arabs and Jews

On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab territories, leading to the establishment of a Jewish state the following year. Read UN General Assembly Resolution 181.

Defense Secretary Robert McNamara resigns during Vietnam Conflict

On November 29, 1967, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara announced that he was resigning from his office to accept an appointment as head of the World Bank. The announcement came as the Vietnam Conflict was becoming increasingly unpopular in the United States and abroad.