NATIONAL NEWS AT A GLANCE Editors: To avoid duplication, please note that all these stories are also moving in longer form. For publication on Friday, Aug. 27. POST-KATRINA INQUIRIES UNCOVER RACIAL ATTACKSPOST-KATRINA INQUIRIES UNCOVER RACIAL ATTACKS In the days after Hurricane Katrina left much of New Orleans in flooded ruins, the narrative of those early, chaotic days quickly hardened into a kind of ugly consensus: Poor blacks and looters were murdering innocents and terrorizing whoever crossed their path. Today, a clearer picture is emerging, and it is an equally ugly one, including white vigilante violence, police killings, official cover-ups and a suffering population far more brutalized than many were willing to believe. Several police officers and a white civilian accused of racially motivated violence have recently been indicted, and more incidents are coming to light as the Justice Department has started investigations into civil rights violations. IMMIGRATION AGENCY ENDS SOME DEPORTATIONS Immigration enforcement officials have started to cancel the deportations of thousands of immigrants they have detained, a policy they said would pare huge case backlogs in the immigration courts. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said the new approach was part of a broad shift in priorities at the agency, to focus its efforts on catching and deporting immigrants who have been convicted of crimes or pose a national security threat. The policy drew praise from immigrant advocates, and was denounced by several Republicans as evidence that the Obama administration was weakening enforcement and making it easier for illegal immigrants to remain in the country. STRUGGLING CITIES SHUT DOWN FIREHOUSES IN BUDGET CRISIS Fire departments around the nation are cutting jobs, closing firehouses and increasingly resorting to 'rolling brownouts' in which they shut different fire companies on different days as the economic downturn forces many cities and towns to make deep cuts that are slowing their responses to fires and other emergencies. Philadelphia began rolling brownouts this month, joining cities from Baltimore to Sacramento that now shut some units every day. San Jose, Calif., laid off 49 firefighters last month. And Lawrence, Mass., north of Boston, has laid off firefighters and shut down half of its six firehouses. YOUNG BUILDER OF ISLAMIC CENTER IS AT SQUARE ONE Sharif el-Gamal is a relative newcomer to the New York City real estate business. He got his broker's license in 2002. He is developing two condominium projects. And at 37, he has taken on a colossal challenge. He is the developer planning a Muslim community center on property he owns near ground zero -- a $100 million project, he estimates, at the center of the most contentious national debate over Islam, America and freedom of religion in the nine years since 9/11. Putting aside sweeping debates over the project's propriety and meaning, many ask a simpler question: Can el-Gamal pull it off? TENSIONS IN IOWA TOWN AT THE HEART OF THE EGGS RECALL Federal authorities announced Thursday that they had found samples of salmonella matching the strain of the recent outbreak in the feed and barns of Wright County Egg, the DeCoster families' facilities in Iowa. The intense scrutiny DeCoster and another producer, Hillandale Farms, have come under has reopened a fault line in central Iowa: those who detest enormous, industrial-size farms and say the risk of a widespread salmonella outbreak is one more reason to fear them; and others who see such farming as the economic savior of these wide open spaces. 