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(Continued from page 21)
• Who would the proposal most directly affect? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women and young people make up disproportionate portions of the 3.3 million people who earned $7.25 or less last year. Both groups traditionally skew Democratic, and the party would love to drive them to the polls in November as it battles to retain Senate control.
• "It's a powerful values issue for middle-class voters," Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin said of the minimum wage push. "And it's a powerful motivator for voters in the Democratic base who are a focal point of Democratic efforts to turn out voters in the midterm elections."
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Volunteers quietly help families of SKorean ferry's lost in manifold ways, from cabs to kebabs
• JINDO, South Korea (AP) -- The mother, slightly drunk, sits on the edge of a windblown dock and wails. A Buddhist monk approaches and wipes the tears from her face as she pours out her grief and longing for her missing son. He leads her away from the dock's edge and, as she weeps, chants Buddhist scriptures and sounds a wooden gong in a prayer for her son's return.
• "They are really suffering," said the monk, Bul Il, who came from the southeastern port city of Busan to help the families of the more than 100 still missing in the sunken South Korean ferry. "It's painful for me to watch their misery," he said, his face peeling and red from long chants on a platform facing the sea.
• Bul Il is one member of an impromptu city that has sprung up at this normally sleepy port for the families of those lost in the disaster. The city runs on the kindness of strangers.
• A sense of national mourning over a tragedy that will likely result in more than 300 deaths, most of them high school students, has prompted an outpouring of volunteers. More than 16,000 people -- about half the island's normal population -- have come to help.
• They handle much of the care that relatives of the missing receive in Jindo as they wait for divers to retrieve the bodies of their loved ones from the wreckage of the ferry Sewol.
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Australia says missing plane's search area to be expanded in 2nd phase of underwater hunt
• CANBERRA, Australia (AP) -- The underwater hunt for the missing Malaysia Air (Continued on page 23)
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