May, the 43rd commander in the post’s 91-year history, succeeded Brig. Gen. James Schwitters, who retired Thursday after 32½ years of service.

“We are a nation at war, and our responsibility here is to take those young civilian volunteers and transform them into warriors so that they have the right skills to go into combat to win our nation’s wars,” said May, an armor officer and Iraq war veteran.

May now is in charge of a base that trains half of the soldiers who join an Army fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

About 80 percent of some 40,000 new soldiers who train at Fort Jackson each year will deploy to combat zones before their first year of service is completed.

Children got a crash course Thursday on the inner workings of county government — everything from operating firetrucks and ambulances to caring for animals and dealing with insects — as part of Richland 101 for Kids.

The free, one-day program, hosted by Richland County, was held at Dutch Square Mall and was aimed at children ages 7 to 12.

Home sales slipped nearly 17 percent in the Columbia area for the first six months of the year, compared with the same period in 2007, according to data released Thursday by the S.C. Realtors trade group.

Statewide, sales were down 23 percent in 2008.

Realtors’ confidence also has dipped as fewer buyers sign on for new homes. Even though this is the toughest real estate market in two decades, Columbia — with its stable job base — is doing better than most of the state.

“We do have a market,” said Jay Graham, who has owned Graham Realty in Columbia for 30 years. “It’s just not what it was, and sellers have to have a lot more patience now. It is a great time to be a buyer.”

District 9, which includes the congested Clemson Road and Hard Scrabble Road areas, would have received more than $76 million to widen and add bicycle paths to the heavily traveled roads. It would have been the most money to any district.

But District 9 Councilwoman Val Hutchinson voted against the proposal, saying she couldn’t justify raising the cost of living for her constituents during a time of economic uncertainty.

“I lost a lot of sleep over it,” she said. “But I thought that it was my ultimate responsibility to look out for the citizens of the county and their welfare.”

Overall, the council members who voted no — Hutchinson, Joe McEachern, Bill Malinowski, Joyce Dickerson and Norman Jackson — would have received more than $212 million for their districts. That’s 1½ times the amount that would have gone to the districts of council members who voted for the proposal.

An autopsy is scheduled today on Lawrence “Pete” Brooks, 80, of the Hopkins area, the Lexington County coroner’s office said. Authorities do not suspect foul play.

Doctors at the Joseph M. Still Burn Center at Doctor’s Hospital in Augusta told the Lexington County coroner’s office Brooks died of multi-organ failure, Chief Deputy Coroner Chris Lorick said.

“We have no idea what exactly happened,” Lorick said.

According to a police report, Brooks was giving a friend a ride home around 3:30 p.m. Tuesday when he stopped on Old Pine Plain Road to look at a piece of property he was considering buying.

With so much bad news — we don’t need to remind you of all that here, do we? — some might think happiness is impossible to find.

But some might say it’s easier to find than Waldo.

Take a peek at what we saw Wednesday:

Jill Moody, a self-described Army wife, shepherded her four children through EdVenture’s Bubbleloosa, about the only place where kids can have more fun with suds than in a tub.

The NAACP and the National Collegiate Athletic Association, the governing body of college sports, have sanctions in place against South Carolina because it flies the Confederate flag. The NCAA also has sanctions against Mississippi.

Neither organization, however, penalizes Alabama, which also flies the flag. And that’s unfair, some S.C. officials say.

Four Confederate flags — three national flags and a battle flag — fly at the 82-foot-high Confederate Monument, located at the Alabama state Capitol in Montgomery.

“It’s puzzling,” said state Sen. John Courson, R-Richland.

State Education Superintendent Jim Rex said the “overwhelmingly positive” results show why the idea of single-gender education has spread so rapidly across the state over the past year and that the state’s push has been a good investment.

“If you want to know why more schools are offering this option, the reason is right here in these survey responses,” he said.

South Carolina has become a national leader in offering single-gender programs in public school. At least 250 schools statewide are expected to offer single-gender classes in the coming school year, up from 70 schools last fall. About 30 schools added such classes in the past year.

Advocates say that by separating girls and boys, lessons can be made more effective because children learn in classrooms tailored to their learning styles and are not distracted by the opposite sex. But Rex stressed the program is a choice only.

Schwitters and his wife, Rebecca, have decided to stay in the Columbia area and be active in Army, community and church activities.

Schwitters said he had no immediate professional plans. “I don’t rule anything in or anything out,” he said.

Here are excerpts of an interview Schwitters last week:

What are your top achievements as commander at Fort Jackson?

But Weaver, of Fort Mill, still wants pets, possibly a dog and a cat.

“Pets have more to contribute than just being around,” said Weaver, who stopped at Wags pet bakery and boutique Thursday in Baxter Village asking for directions to a humane society. “Animals have an effect on your life. It’s not just a novelty thing.”

He’s not alone. While tighter budgets are forcing many to cut back, a 2008 study projects Americans will spend a record $43.4 billion on their pets this year, $2.2 billion more than they paid a year ago.

“Pets have become a more important part of a lot of people’s lives, to the point where you hear the term, ‘humanize’ a lot,” said Bob Vetere, president of the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association, the organization that produced the study. “People will tend to stop spending on a whole lot of things before they’ll stop spending on a, quote, ‘family member.’”

But on the last day of July, Rocky will say “goodbye” to customers for good when Veta Hollaway shuts the doors at the old Victorian-era home on Andrew Corley Road that has housed her shop since 1991.

Hollaway, who owns the business with her husband, Bob, is ready to spread her wings a little more. Instead of being tied to a retail business, she plans to travel more and spend more time with her seven grandchildren.

Although she will not miss the daily rigors of a running a shop, she said she will miss her many customers, who come from across the Carolinas and Georgia to buy her parrots, macaws, caiques, finches, amazons, and cockatoos.

“I’ve had customers beg me not to close,” she said.

Fresh jalapeno peppers are disappearing from store shelves and restaurant menus around Columbia .

Kroger, Publix and Bi-Lo grocery stores all pulled fresh jalapenos from their stores this week as a precaution. Moe’s Southwest Grill did the same last week.

Two large local grocery chains, Wal-Mart and Piggly Wiggly, continue to sell fresh jalapenos, however.

Wal-Mart said it’s continuing to work closely with its supplier, and Piggly Wiggly said its peppers come from a local source in Lexington and the chain feels they are safe.

In just eight trading days, oil has lost more than $20 a barrel, or 14 percent, as record energy prices eat into demand.

Meanwhile, corn has fallen about 20 percent, soybeans close to 15 percent and wheat about 10 percent since the start of the month, as ideal farming weather boosts Midwest crops battered by recent floods.

Even gold, a bellwether of the commodities boom, has lost ground, falling about 5 percent in the last week.

So is the commodities bubble about to burst?

As familiar as his name is, more people probably know Foreman as the affable grill pitchman of the 1990s rather than the ornery heavyweight boxing champion of the 1970s. They may also know him as the face of Meineke mufflers, a street kid who became a born-again preacher, and the guy who named all five of his sons George.

He is colorful, yes. But is there still life left in the George Foreman brand?

Foreman, who is 59, and his business partners think so. Their company, George Foreman Enterprises, has been striking deals for products as varied as vitamin shakes and shoes for diabetics. A reality series starring Foreman and his wife and children, “Family Foreman,” made its debut on the cable channel TV Land last week.

Through his Web site, biggeorge.com, he sells autographed boxing gloves and George Foreman cookbooks and memoirs. Three of his books (about fatherhood, his religious conversion and his personal philosophy) have appeared during the last two years, published by Thomas Nelson, the inspirational-book publisher.

The proposed regulations address a wide range of facilities — including access to courthouses, drinking fountains, amusement park rides, stadium and theater seating, fishing piers, boat slips and bowling lanes — and establish specific requirements for qualifying accessible designs.

For miniature golf courses, 50 percent of the holes would have to be accessible for players in wheelchairs.

The 1,000 pages of regulations proposed by the Justice Department are drawing intense scrutiny from businesses that foresee a financial drain and disability rights advocates who say they are long overdue and don’t go far enough. Both groups say they want more clarity in the changes to the milestone 1990 civil rights law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability.

Costs to 7 million affected businesses plus state and local government agencies would total $23 billion over 40 years, according to the Justice Department.

Still, there are limits to these new set-top boxes and software. There are myriad formats and encryption methods for videos on the Web and on computers, meaning some videos may still not be accessible.

• The ZvBox, from ZeeVee Inc. of Littleton, Mass., connects to a PC and the home’s existing cable wiring. The device then displays whatever is on the PC screen onto an unused TV channel — which can be viewed from any cable-connected TV in the home. ZeeVee expects to start shipping the $500 device July 31.

• Icron Technologies Corp. of Canada plans to sell a chipset to set-top box manufacturers and others that connects to the computer’s high-speed USB port to display the PC screen on a TV set. The box would transmit the data wirelessly or over the electrical wiring in the home. The device should sell for about $300.

• A set-top box called the Pod bypasses the PC altogether, for those who mainly want to watch Web video. It will allow viewers to search the Internet and stream online videos directly onto their TV sets. Made by Verismo Networks., the Pod is expected to be available in August for $99.

Numerous companies have announced plans to build plants that would take in material like wood chips, garbage or crop waste and turn out motor fuels. About 28 small plants are in advanced planning, under construction or, in a handful of cases, already up and running in test mode.

For decades scientists have known it was possible to convert waste to fuel, but in an era of cheap oil, it made little sense. With oil now trading around $125 a barrel and gasoline above $4 a gallon, the potential economics of a waste-to-fuel industry have shifted radically, setting off a frenzy to be first to market.

Success is far from assured, however. Some of the latest announcements come from small companies whose dreams may be bigger than their bank accounts. They are counting on billions in taxpayer subsidies. Big technological hurdles remain, and even if they can be solved, no one is sure what unintended consequences will emerge or what it will really cost to produce this type of fuel.

Still, the incentive to make fuel from something, anything, besides oil and food is greater than ever. Moreover, the federal government is offering grants to help plants get off the ground and subsidies for one type of fuel of $1.01 a gallon, twice the subsidy it historically offered to ethanol made from corn.

Record gas prices have people talking about joining car pools and trading in gas-guzzling SUVs. Now, as many Americans hit the open road, an uncertain economy is putting a crimp in summer vacation plans as well.

“For Americans, summer travel is almost a birthright,” said Brad Dean, president and chief executive of the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce. “People are still traveling but we are seeing a consistent trend of shorter stays and reduced spending.”

The Travel Industry Association projects summer travel will drop 1.5 percent from last year, the first decline in four years.

But Americans are still expected to take an estimated 327 million vacation trips this summer, said Cathy Keefe, a spokeswoman for the trade group. July and August are peak months for domestic travel, about three-quarters of it by car or truck.

More than 2 million low-wage workers will get a small raise today when the federal minimum wage jumps 12 percent, from $5.85 to $6.55 an hour.

And depending on whom you talk to, it’s either the best of times or the worst of times for the nation’s base wage to rise.

While most Americans have traditionally supported minimum wage increases, the new rate hike comes at a bad time for businesses, particularly small businesses, struggling through the economic downturn.

As energy costs increase, credit tightens and consumers hold on to their spare cash, business owners are loath to increase their labor costs.

The 272-152 vote reflected a congressional push to send election-year help to struggling borrowers and to reassure jittery financial markets about the health of two pillars of the mortgage market.

Hours before the vote, President Bush dropped his opposition to the measure, which is now on track to pass the Senate and become law within days.

The White House swallowed its distaste for $3.9 billion in grants the bill would provide for devastated neighborhoods. The Bush administration gains the power to throw a lifeline to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as part of the measure that also is designed to rein in the government-sponsored mortgage firms.

The administration and lawmakers in both parties teamed to negotiate the measure, which accomplishes several Democratic priorities, including federal help for homeowners, a new permanent affordable housing fund financed by Fannie and Freddie and the $3.9 billion for hard-hit neighborhoods. The grants are for buying and fixing up foreclosed properties.