May 12, 2007

CHICAGO — Dedra Farmer was so good at her job as a Wal-Mart department manager in Oklahoma that her bosses assigned her to train new Tire and Lube Express Division managers, all of whom were men. After she got done training them, the men went to work for $2,000 more a year than she got paid.

Search and cleanup efforts continued in Kansas after a catastrophic tornado destroyed the town of Greensburg May 4. But another storm was brewing: outrage over the inability of the state’s National Guard to respond quickly

NEW YORK — “People vs. Profits, Volume II: The United States and the World,” a collection of columns by Communist economist Victor Perlo (1912-1999), won a Notable Mention in the reference category of the 2007 Eric Hoffer Awards for short prose and independent books.

Oregon Gov. Tom Kulongoski lived on $21 worth of food for a week — the average weekly food stamp budget for his state’s residents — during Hunger Awareness Week, April 20-27. Oregon Food Bank spokesperson Jean Kemp-Ware said the governor’s initiative dramatized the plight of 425,000 Oregonians who rely on food stamps to stave off hunger each month.

When 30 Canadian steelworkers who had taken over their plant on May 3 looked out the windows, they saw hundreds of supporters cheering them on.

The latest report of a world scientific panel on global warming has called for what amounts to a social revolution, one of the report’s authors said.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has upped the ante in the national debate on comprehensive immigration reform by setting May 14 as the start of floor debate on the issue.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala.: Terrorist group targets Latinos
WASHINGTON: Impeach Cheney, say lawmakers
JUNEAU, Alaska: Oil company buys tax breaks

DETROIT — “The NAACP and labor have a marriage: health care, jobs, economic security. We cannot let this go,” said the Rev. Wendell Anthony, head of the Detroit branch of the NAACP, at a recent labor summit here.

Civil rights organizations hailed the passage of a new bipartisan hate crime bill in the House last week.