Day: July 30, 2009

Hope and jobs are in short supply in Ohio eight months after President Barack Obama won the recession-battered state in the 2008 election with promises of a better future.

"People were looking for a savior to get us out of this mess and that’s why they voted for Obama," said Jeff Fravor, 55, a retired train conductor on his way to breakfast on the outskirts of Toledo.

"I’ve nothing against Obama personally, but he’s new to the job and ‘hope’ won’t fix this mess."

The need for President Barack Obama to conduct "beer diplomacy" between a respected black scholar and the white policeman who arrested him demonstrates that race relations have yet to fade into the background of U.S. society.

The American struggle with race flashed back into the national debate when Obama — the country’s first black president — inserted himself into the angry give-and-take between the policeman and the professor.

Hundreds of tractor-trailer and bus companies ordered to shut down because of federal safety violations ranging from suspended licenses to possible drug use have stayed on the road by using different names, investigators say.

Antiterrorism officials are increasingly concerned about American-bred extremists who travel abroad for terror training and then return home, sometimes quietly recruiting followers over the years.

Federal authorities have issued a bulletin to law enforcement agencies around the country on the heels of the arrest Monday in North Carolina of a man whose devotion to the cause of violent jihad allegedly began 20 years ago.