Burning Season: Authorities were working yesterday to finish the evacuation of work camps in the oil sands fields outside fire-ravaged Fort McMurray, Alberta. The fires, which have burned at least 400,000 acres, are reported to be nowhere near controlled and could double in size.

The fires and evacuation of the city have forced the shutdown of a quarter of Canada’s oil production in a local economy already hurt by the basement price of oil. Alberta’s oil sands hold the third largest oil reserves in the world.

To the Graduates: President Obama told the graduating class at the all-black Howard University that America had yet to become a “post-racial society” and that there is still work to be done. “Be confident in your heritage. Be confident in your blackness,” he told the graduates. “There’s no one way to be black. Take it from somebody who’s seen both sides of the debate about whether I’m black enough.”

Post Time: The undefeated colt Nyquist, the favorite in the Kentucky Derby, maintained a perfect record to finish first at Churchill Downs. The running of the Derby starts the annual discussion about whether there will a Triple Crown winner. Nyquist has a better record than last year’s Triple winner American Pharoah, only the 12^th since 1919.

The Kingdom: Saudi Arabia’s King Salmon shook up the government yesterday, replacing top ministers and restructuring government organizations in the first steps toward reducing the country’s dependence on oil and moving toward a more diversified economy. The currently low price of oil has the Kingdom running a deficit.

World News Roundup: There’s at least one winning ticket out there for the $429.6 million Powerball Lottery, the ninth-biggest U.S. lottery jackpot in history … Sharon Osbourne is reported to have broken up with her mumbling husband Ozzy because he’s been having an affair with a celebrity hairdresser … A study released this past week says that the third leading cause of death in America is medical errors — just behind heart disease and cancer.

The Obit Page: Frank Levingston, who was credited with being the oldest surviving World War II veteran, and, as of April 19, the oldest living man in the United States, died at age 110. Levingston, who was black, served in the infantry during the invasion of Italy. After the war he became a cement worker.

See Something, Say Something: A woman on an Air Wisconsin fight from Philadelphia to Syracuse passed a note to flight attendants Thursday because she was concerned that the passenger next to her might be a terrorist. The man was writing strange hieroglyphic symbols on a piece of paper. Questioned by the flight crew, the suspicious passenger turned out to be a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who was working on a complicated mathematics problem that proved beyond doubt the woman siting next to him must have been educated in America.

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