Pages of history: From The News Journal archives, week of Jan. 23 – The News Journal

"Pages of history" features excerpts from The News Journal archives including the Wilmington Morning News, The Morning News, the Every Evening and the Evening Journal.

President denies havingaffair with intern

President Clinton, firmly denying all accusations, sought Thursday to calm the firestorm over allegations he had an affair with a White House intern and then urged her to lie about it.

His friend Vernon Jordan acknowledged trying to find the young woman a job and taking her to see a lawyer when she came under scrutiny.

The former intern, Monica Lewinsky, meanwhile, received an indefinite reprieve in having to decide whether to stand by her earlier assertion in an affidavit that she did not have an affair with Clinton, take the Fifth Amendment or change her story.

A federal judge in Little Rock, Arkansas postponed a deposition scheduled for today for Lewinsky, 24, to testify in Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton. Lewinsky remained secluded, telling CBS News by phone that she had no comment.

With Yasser Arafat at his side in a surreal moment of White House diplomacy, Clinton made his firmest denial yet to Lewinskys claims in taped conversations with a friend, Linda Tripp, that Lewinsky had an affair with Clinton and that he and Jordan asked her to deny it to Jones attorneys….

Unabomber will get life in prison

In a deal that averted the spectacle of the government pushing to execute a mentally ill man, Theodore Kaczynski pleaded guilty to being the Unabomber on Thursday in return for a sentence of life in prison without parole.

Kaczynski sat unflinching as a prosecutor recited in detail the horror of his 17-year reign of terror bombs that killed three men and injured 29, including one who had his arm blown off….

The 55-year old mathematics professor-turned-hermit entered the last-minute plea on the day a jury was to be sworn in an opening statements were to begin. The agreement avoids the possibility of his execution. Had Kaczynski been convicted, he could have faced death by injection….

CATCH UP ON HISTORY: News Journal archives, week of Dec. 5

Cost of electricity likely to jump 40 percent

Delmarva Power customers could see their electric bills jump more than 40 percent this year after price caps are lifted in May, the companys president said Tuesday.

Last year, Delmarva President Gary Stockbridge warned consumer groups and businesses that when price caps end in the final phase of deregulation, electricity rates could rise between 30 and 40 percent. Tuesday, Stockbridge said recent changes in the market for wholesale electricity made him increase his estimate…

Delmarva officials say the potential increase is the result of rate caps that have been in place since 1999 amid steadily rising prices for the major fuels that are burned to generate electricity: coal, natural gas and oil. The company has had only modest price adjustments since the rate caps went into place, while the cost of generating electricity has skyrocketed….

Strawbridges sets sell-off as store prepares to close

These days are full of bittersweet thoughts for employees like 17-year sales associate Joyce Miller and thousands of Delaware shoppers. By fall, the Strawbridge & Clothier department store name that stoodin Delaware for 56 years will be gone, swallowed up in a corporate merger with Federated Department Stores Inc.

At Strawbridges Concord Mall and Dover Mall stores, the merger will mean a name change to Macys, one of Federateds flagships.

At Christiana Mall, which already has a Macys, it means more of an end. Starting Sunday, all Strawbridges merchandise will be liquidated in a weeks-long sale….

MORE BUSINESS DEPARTURES: Lewes restaurant closing ends 'crab bomb,' Glasgow cafe and Peruvian eatery call it quits

Space shuttle Challenger explodes

A catastrophic explosion blew apart the space shuttle Challenger shortly after liftoff Tuesday, sending schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe and six NASA astronauts to a fiery death in the sky eight miles out from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

We mourn seven heroes, said President Ronald Reagan.

The accident defied quick explanation, though a slow-motion replay seemed to show an initial explosion in one of two peel-away rocket boosters igniting the shuttles huge external fuel tank. The tank burst into a fireball that destroyed Challenger high above the Atlantic while crew families and NASA officials watched in despair from the Cape….

In Delaware, though few students actually saw the heart-stopping explosion when it happened, the event will likely leave a permanent mark on their lives. The tragedy was particularly wrenching because of the drumbeat of publicity that had been given to McAuliffe and her scheduled lessons from space. Students in Delaware and around the country were planning to attend classes she was to begin teaching from space on Friday….

Reach reporter Ben Mace at rmace@gannett.com.

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Pages of history: From The News Journal archives, week of Jan. 23 - The News Journal