In Brief

Denver schools chief likely to fill Senate seat

DENVER: Gov. Bill Ritter Jr. is expected to name Denver public schools Superintendent Michael Bennet to fill a Senate vacancy that will be created by the promotion of Sen. Ken Salazar to interior secretary in President-elect Barack Obama's administration, sources told the Associated Press. One source close to the governor who is in a position to know and another source in the Democratic Party said Bennet is Ritter's choice. Both spoke on condition of anonymity. Ritter scheduled a news conference for 2 p.m today to introduce his pick. Bennet had been mentioned as a possible choice for Obama's education secretary, but Obama chose 44-year-old Arne Duncan, chief executive officer of Chicago public schools, for the post. Salazar will stay in his seat until he's confirmed as interior secretary, which could take several weeks.

Wal-Mart plans store near Va. battlefield

LOCUST GROVE, Va. : Wal-Mart wants to build a Supercenter within a cannonshot of where Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant first fought, a proposal that has preservationists rallying to protect the key Civil War site. A who's who of 253 scholars and historians including filmmaker Ken Burns and Pulitzer Prize-winner David McCullough sent a letter last month to H. Lee Scott, president and CEO of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., urging the company to build somewhere farther from the Wilderness Battlefield. Wal-Mart and its supporters point out that the 138,000-square-foot store would be behind a bank and a small strip mall, a full mile from the entrance to the site of the 1864 clash that hastened the war's end. Local leaders also want the $500,000 in tax revenue they estimate the big-box store will generate for rural Orange County, a gradually growing area about 60 miles southwest of Washington.