Camps

The capital's tent city sprawls messily on a grassed-over landfill beneath power lines, home to some 200 men and women with nowhere else to go. It has been here for more than a year, but in the last three weeks it has transformed into a vivid symbol of a financial crisis otherwise invisible to most Americans. The Depression had Hoovervilles. The energy crisis had snaking gas lines. The state's droughts have empty reservoirs and brown lawns.

Hundreds of children have been sent home from summer camps across Southern California in recent weeks with flu-like symptoms, and camp counselors and directors are taking precautions to prevent the spread of the H1N1, or swine flu, virus in cabins and mess halls.

A German man reportedly dumped by a Brazilian woman he met on the Internet camped out at an airport for 13 days before being taken Thursday to a hospital for a psychological evaluation. The man, identified by authorities as Heinz Muller, was out of money and wouldn't say when he planned to leave, according to airport workers, some of whom brought him meals from the food court. The former pilot, 46, spent his time wandering the airport in Campinas, about an hour's drive from Sao Paulo, and using his laptop perched on a luggage cart.

A U.N. official and a guard were shot and killed Thursday during an attempted kidnapping at a displacement camp in northwestern Pakistan, underscoring the level of violence plaguing the country even as government leaders say it's safe for camp dwellers to return to the volatile Swat Valley. The slayings occurred at the Kacha Garhi camp outside Peshawar, northwestern Pakistan's largest city. Zelle Usman, a Pakistani field officer with the Office of the U.N.

For the past two weeks, Grace and Tess Heagy have bounded out of bed each morning anxious for camp, where they sing, paint, dance and practice their penmanship. Penmanship? At Handwriting Heroes Summer Camp, Captain Pencil is the resident superhero and mastery of r's, m's, n's, p's, and other letters earns high praise. At a time when summer enrichment camps trend toward the high tech -- there are camps for budding astronomers, those for enhancing computer skills and filmmaking -- handwriting camp may seem old school.

The Station fire was bearing down on Altadena and Sierra Madre; fire command staff was mourning the death of two comrades and worrying about visibility conditions that had grounded jet tankers; and most folks hadn't slept more than four or five hours in days. But none of that stopped mobile human relations specialist Christopher Jefferson from producing the "Thought for the Day," a reminder to "exercise tolerance" and "respect people whose abilities, beliefs, culture, race, sexual identity . . . are different from your own."