NEED-TO-KNOW NEWS — For Friday Dec. 6

[Scroll down for full week’s compendia]
 

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY — IN BRIEF
 
A Voice of Baltimore compendium, local and beyond.   Your weekday morning look  (with links)  at late-breaking news, current events, and what will be talked about wherever you may go on Friday:

The 42nd annual lighting of Baltimore’s Washington Monument ush- ered in the 2013 holiday season Thursday evening at Mount Vernon.

With holiday entertainment provided by the Morgan State Choir and Baltimore School for the Arts, the 42nd lighting of the city’s Washington Monument took place Thursday night at Mount Vernon. Some 30 food and community vendors participated in the annual laser, fireworks and searchlight event.

Read More at:  WJZ-TV (Channel 13)

•  FAST-FOOD PROTESTERS
SEEK DOUBLE MINIMUM WAGE

In 100 cities Thursday, including Baltimore, thousands of fast-food workers walked off the job to demand the minimum wage be doubled from $7.25 to $15 per hour.

Read More at:  WBAL-TV (Channel 11)

•  NELSON MANDELA DEAD AT 95

South Africa’s first black president spent 27 years in jail after being sentenced to life in prison in 1964, then led his nation out of apartheid in 1990. He was elected president in 1994 and shared the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with his predecessor, South African President F.W. de Klerk.

Read More at:  New York Times

•  GANSLER ATTACKS BROWN ON HEALTH INSURANCE

The attorney general believes his leading rival for governor is responsible for the botched rollout of Maryland’s online health-insurance exchange.

Read More at:  Washington Post

•  TOWSON U. TO SELL COSTLY PRESIDENT’S HOUSE

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Shoppers crowd Macy’s, 34th St. in New York, on Black Friday.

ARE COMMERCIAL INCENTIVES TO SHOP EARLY
INFRINGING  ON  FAMILIES’  TOGETHERNESS?

Stores pull shoppers from holiday dinner table

STUFFED BIRDS  FORCED TO COMPETE
WITH EARLY-BIRD DEALS AT THE MALL
 
By David Maril
 
I don’t know about you, but the prospects have never appealed to me of navigating through jammed parking lots filled with cars and trucks of bargain-hunters. Even worse is what is taking place inside the stores, crammed with shoppers elbowing each other with more tenacity than the Ravens’ defensive line.

Early shopping estimates were that 140 million people would cram into stores between Thanksgiving Day and Sunday. The National Retail Federation predicted 33 million were planning to hit the stores on Thanksgiving Day alone.

I’d rate shopping on Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday — and whatever other absurd shopping theme the marketing geniuses invent as appealing — like swimming laps in a pool-full of sharks or being forced to sit through a four-hour Zamfir concert.

How do you explain a nation of people who grumble about getting up at  6:30 a.m. for work, forming lines outside stores at extreme hours, some even days ahead, just to get the jump on a few bargains?

What possesses so many shoppers to brave the elements and wait in line for long periods of time?

Why would anyone even want to shop at a time when the stores are mobbed?

Is this the ultimate sign of how bad our economy is, with so many forced into jumping through hoops to save on purchasing gifts?

Read more »

 
NEED-TO-KNOW NEWS — For Wednesday Nov. 27

[Scroll down for full week’s compendia.  NEED-TO-KNOW NEWS is a weekday/workday-only service.]
 

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TODAY — IN BRIEF
 
A Voice of Baltimore compendium, local and beyond. Your weekday morning look (with links) at late- breaking news, current events, and what will be talked about wherever you may go on Wednesday:

Jason Newton joins WBAL-TV as its newest anchorman in December.

•  WBAL-TV ADDS NEW NEWS ANCHOR

Native Baltimorean Jason Newton, 36, a Baltimore City College and University of Maryland graduate, will join the station in December.

Read More at:  WBAL-TV (Channel 11)

•  ATTORNEY GENERAL PICKETS SAFEWAY ON BEHALF OF UNION

Maryland AG Doug Gansler, who is running for governor, joined the picket line, he said, because Safeway and Giant are trying to use provisions of the new federal health law “to take away” health coverage from workers.

Read More at:  Baltimore Sun

•  P.G. CO. JURY AWARDS $9.5M IN MEDICAL MALPRACTICE CASE

The verdict includes $5 million for future medical expenses, $1.5 million in lost earnings and $3 million in noneconomic damages , awarded to the family of a child who developed cerebral palsy as an infant after signs of an infection were not immediately treated by emergency room personnel.

Read More at:  Maryland Daily Record

•  FCC ADVISER TO HEAD D.C. OFFICE FOR SINCLAIR

The new Sinclair Broadcast Group office will focus on policy and business matters and will be led by Rebecca Hanson as senior vice president of strategy and policy.

Read More at:  Baltimore Business Journal

•  TOWSON RESIDENTS DEMONSTRATE, DON’T WANT FIRE STATION TO MOVE

They demonstrated at a Baltimore County Council work session Tuesday against the proposed sale of the Towson fire station property at Bosley Avenue and York Road for redevelopment as a Royal Farms gas station and convenience store.

Read More at:  Towson Times
 

Read more »

 
On this day, Nov. 25th, in 1963 the assassinated 35th President of the United States was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, ending a 3-day period of national mourning, uncertainty and upheaval.
 

John F. Kennedy’s presidential motorcade rounds turn in Dallas on Nov. 22nd 1963 en route minutes away to Dealey Plaza and the President’s rendezvous with Lee Harvey Oswald and death.

DESPITE UNFOLDING  OF  NEW PERSPECTIVES,
IMAGES FROM WEEKEND OF NOV. 22nd 1963
REMAIN PAINFUL TO WATCH EVEN IN 2013

Have optimism & hope been removed
from  the world of politics  for good?
 
By David Maril
 
As someone who lived through the John F. Kennedy assassination 50 years ago, this has been a nostalgic, intriguing and sometimes painful week of absorbing newspaper coverage, TV news documentaries, interviews with historians, pundits, poets, and eyewitnesses reminiscing and reporting on the Nov. 22, 1963 tragedy.

Here’s a notebook of some aspects that caught my attention:

 After taking in several of the TV programs using modern scientific techniques to analyze the evidence from the motorcade shooting, I am finally convinced there is nothing that we know of to prove that Lee Harvey Oswald wasn’t the lone assassin/gunman. Whether or not anyone hired or encouraged him is another question that will probably always remain.

 Even a half-century later and having seen the Zapruder film hundreds of times, it remains excruciating to watch the Dallas presidential motorcade turn the corner with thousands of spectators cheering and waving at the robust-looking President and his beautiful wife seconds before two bullets hit him and ended his life. I think I have fulfilled my lifetime quota of seeing JFK lurch forward and then snap back after the second bullet removes a piece of his skull.

 It is very striking how emotional many of the usually cynical, detached and hard-edged journalists remain when recounting their recollections of the assassination. Fifty years later they are still struggling to hold back the tears. To many, the shock and pain of seeing a vibrant figure, who epitomized hope, struck down, remains a tragedy that they will never be able to understand.

Read more »

 
This column was originally posted Saturday Nov. 16th but is now being re-published Friday Nov. 22nd at 1:30 p.m. Eastern Time to coincide with the hour President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed 50 years ago this day and date in Dallas (12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time).  Flags fly at half-staff to- day throughout the nation and moments of silence are being observed everywhere at 1:30 p.m. EST and also at 2 p.m. to commemorate the exact time he was pronounced dead (1 p.m. CST) in 1963.
 

Horse-drawn limber & caisson carry John F. Kennedy’s casket from White House en route to burial at Arlington National Cemetery, Nov. 25, 1963. Note riderless horse, “Black Jack,” named for Gen. of the Armies John J. Pershing, following behind caisson, at right.

INTEREST FUELED BY KENNEDY MYSTIQUE,
CONSPIRACY THEORIES  THAT WON’T DIE

Government refusal to release
all evidence  and  report files

NOV. 22 REMAINS AN UNFORGETTABLE DAY
 
By David Maril
 
Ask me what the date is of Christmas each year and I have to look at a calendar.

We all know Thanksgiving is on a November Thursday but the specific date varies from year to year.

The only date that sticks in my mind, other than New Years, April 15 tax day, 9-11 and a birthday or two, is Nov. 22nd.

The impact of that date, which began on a surreal Friday afternoon in 1963, will always signify to me the day optimism and positive activism began to lose the war against political cynicism and skepticism about government.

The date of Nov. 22 will always have strong significance for those of us who were old enough in 1963 to absorb the impact of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Although it’s been 50 years since JFK was shot in a Dallas motorcade, the memories remain fresh. We recall where we were and what we were doing when we heard  of the shooting.

I was walking down a hallway at Park School in Brooklandville, after a phys ed class had ended. Suddenly all the upper school students, from seventh through twelfth grade, were told to report back to the gymnasium. After we all filed in and were standing in the middle of the basketball court, a somber-looking Robert Thomason, the school’s headmaster, walked in and reported that John F. Kennedy, the President, had been shot in Dallas and had died.

The response to his announcement that the school day was ending early was silence as we shuffled out of the gym to head home for a weekend of mourning.

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