The nation in brief

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“You have the thanks of a grateful nation and your shining deeds will live now and forever.”

President Barack Obama, addressing Korean War veterans on the 60th anniversary of that war’s end Article, 1A

Obama links racial tension to economy

GALESBURG, Ill. - President Barack Obama said in an interview that he was worried that years of widening income inequality and the lingering effects of the financial crisis had frayed the country’s social fabric and undermined Americans’ belief in opportunity.

Upward mobility, Obama said in a 40-minute interview with The New York Times, “was part and parcel of who we were as Americans.”

“And that’s what’s been eroding over the last 20, 30 years, well before the financial crisis,” he added.

A few days after the acquittal in the Trayvon Martin case prompted him to speak about being a black man in America, Obama said the country’s struggle over race would not be eased until the political process in Washington began addressing the fear of many people that financial stability is unattainable.

“Racial tensions won’t get better; they may get worse, because people will feel as if they’ve got to compete with some other group to get scraps from a shrinking pot,” Obama said.

“If the economy is growing, everybody feels invested. Everybody feels as if we’re rolling in the same direction.”

Obama, who this fall will choose a new chairman of the Federal Reserve to share economic stewardship, expressed confidence that the trends could be reversed with the right policies.

Swarm of 30,000 bees attacks couple

PANTEGO, Texas - A swarm of about 30,000 bees attacked a North Texas couple as they exercised their miniature horses, stinging the animals so many times they died.

Kristen Beauregard, 44, was stung about 200 times, and her boyfriend about 50 times, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported Saturday.

But the horses, Chip and Trump, were so covered in bees they shimmered. Neither could be saved.

“They were chasing us down, they were following us,” Beauregard said of the incident Wednesday evening. “We swept up piles and piles of them … it was like a bad movie.”

The bees are being tested to see whether they are Africanized or “killer” bees. It is unclear what prompted them to leave the hive.

Beauregard was exercising Trump, a Shetland pony, when he started to jump and kick, she said. That is when a cloud of bees started stinging them all over. Trying to escape, she jumped in the pool and the horse followed.

She eventually escaped to the house. Bees chased her, crashing into the windows of the house.

Beauregard’s boyfriend called 911 and firefighters arrived with special gear and a foam substance used to clear the bees.

Doctor to face trial in wife’s poisoning

PITTSBURGH - A University of Pittsburgh medical researcher accused of fatally poisoning his neurologist wife with cyanide will agree to be transported back to Pennsylvania to face charges, his attorney said.

Dr. Robert Ferrante intends to waive extradition at a hearing Monday in West Virginia, where he was taken into custody Thursday, said attorney William Difenderfer.

Difenderfer said his client wasn’t trying to flee charges in the death of 41-year-old neurologist Autumn Marie Klein when he left Florida and began driving north.

He said he had called his client and told him to return to Pittsburgh to surrender, and his client was “on his way to turn himself in.”

Klein, chief of women’s neurology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, died April 20 after falling ill at home three days earlier. Blood tests revealed a lethal level of cyanide but only after Klein had died and been cremated at her husband’s insistence, police said.

Fort Hood suspect: U.S., Islam at war

FORT HOOD, Texas - The Army psychiatrist charged in the 2009 Fort Hood mass shooting said in a statement to Fox News that the U.S. government is at war with Islam. It’s the first statement Maj. Nidal Hasan has put out to the U.S. media.

In the past, he has spoken via telephone with Al-Jazeera, the transcript of which is evidence in his forthcoming trial.

“My complicity was on behalf of a government that openly acknowledges that it would hate for the law of Almighty Allah to be the supreme law of the land,” Hasan said in the lengthy statement released to Fox News on Saturday. He then said in reference to a war on Islam: “I participated in it.”

Hasan, 42, is charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder in the November 2009 attack at the Texas Army post. His trial is scheduled to start Aug. 6. He faces the death penalty if convicted.

Fox News reported that Hasan didn’t directly address the shooting in his statement, which it said is more than six pages long.

Front Section, Pages 6 on 07/28/2013

Upcoming Events