Staff Blog
What We’ve Found: Australia burning, Western PA cross-burning, recession smoothing racial tension, Obama’s controversial bow, groups ask for more job-creation and 319 more PA state employees laid off
Julia Harte with your morning fix.
Australian officials invented and issued a new fire alert, "catastrophe" level, to urge residents of South Australia to immediately evacuate their houses and avoid the deaths of people who linger when fires hit, trying to protect their property.
A 6-foot-high cross was burned outside the home of a white Western Pennsylvania family, after their black foster son's high school football team lost a game.
The recession was smoothing historically tense relations between the white and black populations of an Atlanta, Ga., suburb, as job losses and economic hardship indiscriminately sent residents to welfare offices and food stamp lines.
President Obama's bow to Japan's Emperor Akihito over the weekend was provoking outraged online commentary, mainly from conservatives, who thought it looked like Obama was groveling to the foreign leader.
Several groups, including the N.A.A.C.P. and A.F.L.-C.I.O., were preparing to join together and call on Obama to create more jobs, specifically by spending more on schools and roads and financially relieving state and local governments to prevent more layoffs.
319 more employees in Pennsylvania state agencies will be laid off, announced Governor Rendell yesterday, bringing the total number of state government layoffs this year to 769.
