Senate votes to open Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling News
Senate votes to open Alaska wildlife refuge to oil drilling

[JURIST] The US Senate voted 51-49 [Senate roll call] Wednesday afternoon to allow oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge [official website]. The Senate defeated an amendment [amendment summary] that would have removed the refuge drilling provision from next year's budget. The provision will be included in the budget when Congress goes to vote on it later this year. President Bush has said that tapping the reserve's oil is critical to the nation's energy security and will reduce US reliance on oil imports. Environmentalists say that pipelines and drilling platforms will harm the refuge's wildlife. 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.