Alex Pearlstein

<p>Borrowing rhetoric and programmatic ideas from U.S. efforts, the Blair administration in Britaan has managed to cut the nation's child poverty rate by more than half. But anti-poverty policies have not been without their critics.</p>

<p>With new development threatening quirky non-chain restaurants and other retail stores, the City of Austin wants to create a fund to support and attract certain types of downtown businesses.</p>

<p>New rules approved by the Austin City Council require that neighbors be notified of proposed big-box development and that a public hearing be held for the project.</p>

<p>In a creative deal to save a historic structure and also add to the city's desperately needed stock of workforce housing, the school district in Waco, Texas, agreed to sell the old Waco High building to a private developer.</p>

<p>Though the numbers show that ridership on MARTA's rail service is up 10 percent, the increase could only be a result of new fare gates that have curbed turnstile-jumping.</p>