With Multnomah County facing a $36.5 million budget gap, every office is taking considerable losses – even public safety. The gap has been patched, at the expense of cost of living freezes, increasing both car rental taxes and the amount U.S. Marshalls pay to rent jail beds from the county, and reducing department programs across the board by $28.5 million. . . .

A jury convicted a Lebanese-born Swede on Tuesday of plotting to help al-Qaida recruit by trying to set up a weapons-training post in Oregon and distributing terrorist training manuals over the Internet.
The verdict against Oussama Kassir capped a three-week trial that featured the testimony of U.S.-born Muslim convert James Ujaama, a former Seattle resident who said he tried to create the training camp in Bly, Ore., in 1999. . . .

Maggie and John Anderson of Chicago vowed four months ago that for one year, they would try to patronize only Black-owned businesses. The "Empowerment Experiment'' is the reason John had to suffer for hours with a stomach ache and Maggie no longer gets that brand-name lather when she washes her hair. A grocery trip is a 14-mile odyssey. . . .

Despite an economy represented by high unemployment rates, a home foreclosure crisis and low consumer confidence, African American buying power is projected to reach $1.2 trillion in 2013, according to a report conducted by the University of Georgia's Selig Center for Economic Growth. The report "The Multicultural Economy" published in late 2008, estimates that African American consumers' share of the nation's total buying power will increase from $913 billion, resulting in a contribution of almost nine cents out of every dollar that is spent nationwide.

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One of Black America's most prolific speakers and intellectuals told Paul Quinn College graduates in Dallas, Texas, that they may have to work harder – not less -- to represent their community, even with a Black man as president. 

New Mexico State Motor Transportation Division officers are being accused of targeting African-Americans for inspections, searches and detention at the Lordsburg port of entry.
The lawsuit filed April 20 in federal court in Las Cruces by the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico stems from an Aug. 15, 2008 incident involving an Altadena, Calif., truck driver.
The lawsuit alleges MTD officer Ben Strain cited Curtis Blackwell for carrying alcohol in a commercial vehicle, even though the containers were unopened. . . .

MUSINA, South Africa (AP) -- It's easy to miss the two girls. They are so small they seem to disappear amid the dozen Zimbabwean boys crowded around them along the trash-choked drain. Sofia Chimhangwa, a 14-year-old in a denim skirt, lies on the concrete under a filthy blanket. Her 15-year-old friend sits next to her, braiding a legless Barbie's hair. Sofia says she survives because the other girl's 19-year-old boyfriend helps feed them both when the coins they beg don't stretch far enough. . . .

President Barack Obama spoke at the United States' foremost Roman Catholic University on Sunday, where deep divisions over abortion and stem-cell research have rammed to the forefront in a country fighting two wars and battling a withering economic recession.
A storm broke out immediately after Notre Dame invited Obama to address commencement exercises and he accepted. It still rages, as anti-abortion activists partially disrupted the new president's appearance at the ceremony . . .

Virginia Fields, president of the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS, was giving a speech in Rocky Mount, N.C. last week before a group of social service providers when she made a surprising revelation about the AIDS epidemic.
"One of the things I talked about were the numbers for heterosexual Black women," Fields recounted. "When people heard that, they were very surprised. It's something that they did not know, it's something they had not focused on.". . .