Week in Review

Sunday

North Korea: North Korea said it will resume disabling its key nuclear complex after the U.S. dropped the country from a terrorism blacklist -- a breakthrough expected to help energize stalled talks aimed at ending the country's atomic ambitions.

HURRICANE IKE: Recovery continues after the devastating storm killed 37 people and crippled parts of Texas nearly a month ago. It was the most expensive in Texas history, with an estimated price tag of $11.4 billion so far.

VITAMIN D: The nation's leading pediatricians group says children from newborns to teens should get double the usually recommended amount of vitamin D because of evidence that it might help prevent serious diseases. The new advice for 400 units replaces 2003 advice for 200 units.

Monday

economy: Wall Street traders sent stocks stampeding back to life with the Dow Jones industrial average gain of more than 900 points, its biggest one-day point gain ever and all three major U.S. stock indices scored gains of more than 11 percent.

FOOTBALL: Clemson coach Tommy Bowden stepped down in the middle of the season in his 10th year at the university. Mr. Bowden was replaced by assistant coach Dabo Swinney.

Tuesday

economy: Big banks started falling in line behind a rejiggered bailout plan that will have the government forking over as much as $250 billion in exchange for partial ownership -- putting the world's bastion of capitalism and free markets squarely in the banking business.

CRIME: Richmond County Animal Services employee Ernest Griffin, 39, of the 3800 block of Winchester Court, is in jail after the release last week of a gas station surveillance video that authorities say shows the man using a county-issued gas card for fuel.

BUSINESS: Food Lion is adding three grocery stores to the Augusta area. The first, at 526 N. Belair Road, should be ready by the end of the year, Food Lion spokeswoman Jennifer Anderson-Speck said. Stores at Furys Ferry and Evans to Locks roads and at Columbia and Lewiston roads are scheduled for completion during the middle of 2009.

Wednesday

economy: The economy lurched deeper into the doldrums and took the stock market down with it, sending the Dow Jones industrial average to a staggering 733-point loss and erasing any hopes that the convulsions that have shaken Wall Street for a month were over.

EDUCATION: Aiken County's graduation rate continued a three-year decline, dipping to 68.6 percent in 2008, according to final federal Adequate Yearly Progress data.

HEALTH: Monkeys taught to play a computer game were able to overcome wrist paralysis with an experimental device that monitored the activity of a brain cell and used that as a cue to stimulate wrist muscles electrically, which might lead to new treatments for patients with stroke and spinal cord injury.

Thursday

CRIME: Betty Neumar, a Georgia grandmother who came under suspicion because all five of her husbands had died, was released from a North Carolina jail where she had been held on charges in one of their deaths. Ms. Neumar, 76, posted $300,000 bond.

BUSINESS: The national economic scene has not deterred Automatic Data Processing Inc. from wanting to fill its new building to the brim. ADP executives confirmed the company plans to add 200 employees each year for the next three years, said Steve Penrose, ADP's senior vice president of operations.

MONEY: Social Security checks are going up $63 a month for the typical retiree -- the largest increase in more than a quarter century but likely to seem puny to the millions who have been watching in horror as Wall Street lays waste to their retirement nest eggs. The yearly adjustment in Social Security checks is linked to government inflation figures, but advocacy groups for seniors say it's far short of what the typical retiree needs.

Friday

CAMPAIGN 2008: The Aiken County Election Commission voted in an emergency meeting to re-establish three satellite absentee voting locations in Wagener, North Augusta and Aiken.

MINOR LEAGUE HOCKEY: The Augusta Lynx opened their 11th season Friday night with a 4-2 loss to the Mississippi Sea Wolves.

OBITUARY: Four Tops frontman Levi Stubbs, whose dynamic and emotive voice drove such Motown classics as Reach Out (I'll Be There) and Baby I Need Your Loving , died in his sleep at his home at age 72.

STATE: A family property dispute erupted in Dalton, Ga,, when a 78-year-old man threw an explosive into a law firm that represented his son, causing a blast that killed the father and hurt four people in the office.

HISTORY: New research out Friday shows evidence that supports the theory that the eight-man crew in the Confederate submarine, the Hunley, may have suffocated while waiting to return to land.