Authorities arrested a man they say tried to kill himself by setting fire to a house in Richmond’s East End, only to be rescued by firefighters from the burning building. Authorities charged David Junious McLean Jr., 34, with arson after the fire that started late Wednesday night in the 1200 block of North 26th Street. The blaze was reported at 11:43 p.m. When the first fire trucks arrived, the two-story house was ablaze.

Workplace suicides surged 28 percent last year, the Labor Department said yesterday, as anxious workers dealt with a struggling economy and watched colleagues depart in a rash of layoffs. At the same time, the agency’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said the total number of workers who died on the job from any cause fell by 10 percent. The 5,071 workplace fatalities recorded in 2008 was the lowest number since the agency began tracking the data in 1992.

The holidays are over and the new year has begun. Americans—for the most part an eternally optimistic bunch—begin 2009 with trepidation, unsure of what the coming months hold.