Camps

School bus driver Barb Russell heard there was good money to be made here in the oil fields of North Dakota, so last month she packed a bag, locked her Farmington, Minn., home, and headed west. She tripled her income. The 60-year-old grandmother rose every morning at 3 a.m. in September to drive a bus full of Halliburton Co. workers to drilling rigs in a place where trucks roar nonstop and everybody who wants a job has one. Finding somewhere to lay your head is another matter.

CAMP DAVID, Md. - In a significant political victory for President Obama, the leaders of Germany and other European nations endorsed a policy of economic growth over austerity and emphasized that Greece, which is trying to battle its way out of a crippling debt crisis, should remain in the Eurozone. Meeting on the cloistered grounds of the presidential retreat here, the leaders of the Group of 8 industrialized nations said in a joint statement that Eurozone economies should work to narrow deficits through "fiscal consolidation" and that each country must decide for itself the best mix of policies for promoting economic recovery.

The end of the school year means more to Guillermo Canales than just days without teachers and homework. For the past few years, the 11-year-old has spent his time off at the Mid Valley Family YMCA's Summer Day Camp, which runs for 11 weeks. "I like going on field trips, playing basketball and swimming," said the Cohasset Elementary School fifth-grader. The Mid Valley Family YMCA in Van Nuys offers day camp from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Tim Sae Koo had an idea for a tech start-up, but the first-time entrepreneur had no idea what to do next. In January, at the advice of a friend he joined the inaugural class of tech accelerator StartEngine, hoping to turn his vision for Hypemarks - a website at which users create collections of their favorite links - into a bona fide business. Within three months Koo launched the website, and is now talking to a local investor about a substantial investment in the company.

Stella Goldschlag was a greifer for the Gestapo's Jewish Scouting Service during World War II. The beautiful young woman with the Aryan looks hunted down fellow Jews hiding in Berlin and delivered them to the Holocaust. Her postwar accusers said her work sent more than 2,000 people to concentration camps. Peter Wyden, Stella's former schoolmate at Berlin's Goldschmidt School for Jewish children, fled Germany with his family in 1937. Like most of the boys, he said, he'd had a crush on her. It lingered in his fantasies for years and made it all the more difficult to absorb thehorrible news and rumors about her. Wyden, now 69, became a noted American journalist as a Newsweek correspondent, an editor for the Saturday Evening Post and Ladies Home Journal and author of books about Lee Iacocca, the Berlin Wall and the Bay of Pigs.

Looking for an African safari that works for adults and teens? U.K.-based Expert Africa creates itineraries with teens and tweens in mind. The Spotted Hyaena Safari, for example, explores the wildlife-rich South Luangwa River in Zambia and offers nature walks and safari quizzes for kids 12 and older to take on day and night drives into the bush. Children also may spend afternoons cooling off in a swimming pool at one of the rustic camps and listening for the sounds of lions and other animals.

This was an unlucky year to get lucky in the lottery for Yosemite High Sierra Camps reservations. The five seasonal camps , assembled each year at high elevations in the park's spectacular back country, were supposed to open as early as this month, but they have been delayed by this year's mighty Sierra snowpack . "We've pushed the dates back four times, starting about a month ago," said Lisa Cesaro, spokeswoman for DNC Parks...

I have just finished reading a very interesting article (Opinion, April 6), "After 2 Millenia, a Pope Will Visit a Synagogue," by George Armstrong. Having been born and raised in Poland, and having spent the World War II years there, it hurts me to read again and again "Polish concentration camps" in your paper. I wonder, whether it is done through ignorance or maybe on purpose . . . . Many readers who do not know, or understand history, will not realize that there were no "Polish concentration camps," only German (Nazi)

If it weren't hard enough looking after 2,000 earthquake victims crammed into a sweltering schoolyard, Jean Robert Charles now has to worry about rapists. Charles is the de facto mayor of a tent settlement that fills a school and a soccer field in the gang-plagued Matisan section of the Haitian capital. A recent series of rapes has created fear in his camp and others nearby, adding crime and safety to the long list of anxieties facing residents displaced by the Jan. 12 earthquake.

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 cabbie accused of preying on arriving passengers at New York's Kennedy Airport has pleaded guilty to unlawful imprisonment after driving off with passengers when officers approached. Authorities say the driver locked the doors and took off, then got into a car crash. Queens Dist. Atty. Richard Brown says driver Bhupinder Singh is facing six months in jail . . . . Planning your summer camping? Note that of the 12 campgrounds in Yellowstone, five of them - containing more than 1,400 individual sites - can be reserved online at www.YellowstoneNationalParkLodges.com or by calling toll-free (866)

AFRICA Presentation Bob Ihsen will discuss his four-wheel-drive camping adventure in Algeria and Niger. When, where : 5 p.m. Sunday at the Biergarten, 206 N. Western Ave., Los Angeles. Admission, info: $18.50 for dinner and program. Hosted by the Network for Travel Club. RSVP to (323) 578-3601. WESTERN U.S. Presentation Mark Bedor, author of "Great Ranches of Today's Wild West," will take readers on a journey to 20 great ranches. When, where: 7:30 p.m. Monday at Distant Lands, 20 S. Raymond Ave., Pasadena.

Birds twitter and sunshine twinkles through groves of bamboo and banyan trees adorned with cascades of orchids. With every step, my Vibram boot soles crush hibiscus blossoms littering a pathway, while butterflies flutter around a group of elderly folks welcoming the morning with the gracious silent semaphore of tai chi. At a clearing where remnants of a World War ll gun emplacement rust, half-swallowed in greenery, an opening in the jungle reveals...

Looking for an African safari that works for adults and teens? U.K.-based Expert Africa creates itineraries with teens and tweens in mind. The Spotted Hyaena Safari, for example, explores the wildlife-rich South Luangwa River in Zambia and offers nature walks and safari quizzes for kids 12 and older to take on day and night drives into the bush. Children also may spend afternoons cooling off in a swimming pool at one of the rustic camps and listening for the sounds of lions and other animals.

Is President Obama trying to wedge his way to a second term? The economy will doubtless be the overriding issue in November's presidential contest, and Obama is hardly ignoring it. But a successful candidate appeals to all sorts of voters harboring all sorts of concerns, and the president and his backers appear to be using a pair of wedge issues to target two groups, Latinos and women, with messages grounded more in emotionalism than economics....

There's no sign of Caine Monroy's game arcade when I pull up to his father's Boyle Heights auto parts shop. The 9-year-old is taking his show on the road, enjoying the perks of becoming a viral video star. He and his dad will be at the Exploratorium museum in San Francisco this weekend, so Caine can explain to geeked-up science fans how he turned a bunch of cardboard boxes into an elaborate arcade and social network phenomenon. "They sent a 17-foot semi truck and loaded everything up," Caine's father, George Monroy told me. Next, Caine's headed to New York City, for a meeting with an arcade company.

School is nearly over, and you can't wait to go to sleep-away camp. You've been looking forward to this new experience for months. So why is it when you finally arrive at camp, you feel sad and you actually miss your annoying little brother? Not to worry. Feeling homesick the first time you're away from your family is normal, according to Dr. David Feinberg, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at UCLA. Most kids who go away to camp miss their families at first.

Camp opens for most teams this week. USC jumped the starter's gun last Wednesday, but it wasn't an NCAA violation (the school has enough of those) because the Trojans play an early game at Hawaii. Here are a few boilerplate questions as schools work their way into condition and contention: Is USC still the team to beat in the Pacific 10? No, but don't blame the NCAA. The defending Emerald (now Kraft Fight Hunger) Bowl champions weren't the team to beat last year.

A body found near Lake Skinner in Riverside County has been identified as that of 22-year-old Brittany Dawn Killgore, a Marine wife missing since Friday, the San Diego County medical examiner's office announced Wednesday. Meanwhile, Marine Staff Sgt. Louis Ray Perez, 45, considered a person of interest in the case, pleaded not guilty Wednesday in San Diego County Superior Court in Vista to charges of receiving stolen property and possession of a stolen assault rifle. Bail was set at $500,000.

Until the mats, blankets and other comforts of Necessity Village were finally packed up at sunrise Tuesday, Jerome Clark had been sleeping soundly for the first time in years. For the last decade, the 65-year-old homeless man's on-and-off residence has been the Santa Ana Civic Center, usually the lawn. Like others who live on the streets of Orange County's second largest city, Clark said his nights were fitful, sleep always elusive as he worried about being slapped with a ticket for violating the city's no-camping ordinance.