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11,500-acre fire in South Dakota's Shannon County.
• FEMA Regional Administrator Robin Finegan says the agency approved a fire management assistance grant, which covers 75 percent of the state's eligible firefighting costs for managing, mitigating and controlling the Welcome Fire.
• At the time of the state's request, the fire was threatening 175 homes and businesses and seven communities on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Mandatory evacuations were ordered for 1,600 people and one shelter was open in the town of Pine Ridge.
• The grants do not provide assistance to individual home or business owners and do not cover other infrastructure damage.
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• CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) -- When the Democratic Party's national convention opens this week, President Barack Obama's target audience won't be in the crowd. It will be the small sliver of undecided voters in battleground states who will be critical to the outcome of what the polls show is a tight race with two months to go.
• Obama's campaign will turn to technology to get some of those voters engaged in the convention. The campaign will stream the entire event online, incorporate voter comments into the feed, and have convention attendees interact electronically with those watching on the Internet and mobile devices.
• It's an attempt to recapture the Obama team's insurgent, grassroots appeal from 2008, when the campaign set new standards for using technology in politics. The high-tech engagement also helps the campaign capture data on voters that can be used for registration drives and get out the vote efforts.
• Targeting Hispanics, the convention will be streamed online simultaneously in Spanish. Obama is hoping his sizeable advantage over Republican rival Mitt Romney with Hispanics will help him win key battleground states in the West, as well as Florida and Virginia.
• Republicans also streamed much of their convention on YouTube, though the feed was not interactive.
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