WASHINGTON — Layoffs may be sweeping the U.S., but one enterprise is hiring roughly 1.4 million people nationwide at salaries of $10 to $25 an hour: the 2010 census.

A small army of laborers will be needed to locate, count and categorize each of the nation's residents. This spring, 140,000 workers will verify addresses across the country, and in 2010, an estimated 1.2 million census employees will take to the streets to gather information from Americans who didn't return their census forms, according to U.S. Census Bureau spokesman Stephen Buckner.

The bureau has received an overwhelming response, Buckner said — more than 1 million applicants just for those first 140,000 jobs.

AMERICAN HURT IN ISRAELI CLASH

JERUSALEM — An American demonstrator was critically wounded yesterday in a clash between protesters and Israeli troops over Israel's West Bank separation barrier.

Peace activists with the International Solidarity Movement said Tristan Anderson, of Oakland, Calif., was struck in the head with a tear gas canister fired by Israeli troops. The military and the Tel Aviv hospital where Anderson was taken had no details on how he was hurt.

7 RELEASED AFTER BOMB THREAT

AMSTERDAM — Police released all seven people arrested after an anonymous warning of a plot to plant bombs in an Amsterdam shopping district, prosecutors said yesterday, easing fears that the Dutch capital was the target of a terrorist threat by Moroccan immigrants.

Police had offered no evidence to give credibility to the bomb threat, which coincided with the fifth anniversary of the deadly Madrid train bombings.

But the public prosecutors office defended the police response, which included closing a major entertainment and shopping district Thursday and arresting the suspects, all originally described as Dutch-Moroccans.

VEGAS SIGN MAY MAKE HISTORIC LIST

LAS VEGAS — The famous "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign has moved one step closer to being placed in the National Register of Historic Places.

The state board of musuems yesterday nominated the sign for placement on the list managed by the National Park Service.

The sign is on the south end of the Las Vegas Strip.