US poverty rate on track for record rise

US poverty rate on track for record rise

WASHINGTON

The number of people in the U.S. who are in poverty is on track for a record increase on President Barack Obama’s watch, with the ranks of working-age poor approaching 1960s levels that led to the national war on poverty.

Census figures for 2009 — the recession-ravaged first year of the Democrat’s presidency — are to be released this week, and demographers expect grim findings.

Interviews with six demographers who closely track poverty trends found wide consensus that 2009 figures are likely to show a significant rate increase to the range of 14.7 percent to 15 percent.

Should those estimates hold true, some 45 million people in this country, or more than 1 in 7, were poor last year. It would be the highest single-year increase since the government began calculating poverty figures in 1959.

Calif. gas pipe ranked high-risk

SAN BRUNO, Calif.

The section of gas pipeline that ruptured and exploded in a suburban San Francisco neighborhood, killing four and injuring nearly 60 others, was ranked as high-risk because it ran through a highly populated area, state and federal authorities said Saturday.

One of the victims killed in the inferno Thursday worked for the commission reviewing Pacific Gas & Electric’s investment plans to upgrade its natural-gas lines, including another risky section of the same pipeline within miles of her home, a colleague confirmed.

In addition to the four deaths, five people still were missing from the blast, San Bruno police chief Neil Telford said Saturday afternoon.

Double-decker bus crashes, killing 4

SALINA, N.Y.

A double-decker bus that may have made a wrong turn off the highway slammed into a low railroad bridge in the pre-dawn darkness Saturday in a wreck that killed four passengers and critically injured others, authorities said.

The Megabus was carrying 29 people, including the driver, when it rammed the bridge about 2:30 a.m. on the Onondaga Lake Parkway in Salina, a suburb of Syracuse in central New York.

The bus lay on its side after the crash. Four passengers and the driver, identified as John Tomaszewski, 59, of New Jersey, remained hospitalized Saturday night, according to Onondaga County Sheriff Kevin Walsh.

Associated Press