(Continued from page 29)

job for the second time in four months.
• Officials from both unions representing workers for Bay Area Rapid Transit as well as the agency itself confirmed the strike.
• The walkout began at midnight Thursday, the culmination of six months of on-again, off-again talks that fell apart. The impasse came after a marathon negotiating session that led the agency and its two largest unions closer to a contract deal.
• About 400,000 riders take BART every weekday on the nation's fifth-largest commuter rail system. The system carries passengers from the farthest reaches of the densely populated eastern suburbs to San Francisco International Airport across the bay.
• Antoinette Bryant of Amalgamated Transit Union told The Associated Press early Friday morning that her workers were on strike as of midnight, while Cecille Isidro of the Service Employees International Union confirmed to the San Francisco Chronicle that the unions were striking.
• ___

• CHICAGO (AP) -- Our food was a little less safe, our workplaces a little more dangerous. The risk of getting sick was a bit higher, our kids' homework tougher to complete.
• The federal government shutdown may have seemed like a frustrating squabble in far-off Washington, but it crept into our lives in small, subtle ways -- from missed vegetable inspections to inaccessible federal websites.
• The "feds" always are there in the background, setting the standards by which we live, providing funds to research cures for our kids' illnesses, watching over our food supply and work environment.
• So how did the shutdown alter our daily routines? Here's a look at a day in the life of the 2013 government shutdown.
• ___

• WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama's selection of a former top Pentagon lawyer to head the Homeland Security Department suggests the agency will be stepping back from its preoccupation with immigration to focus more on pro

(Continued on page 31)