A new report on child welfare that found more U.S. children living in poverty than before the Great Recession belies the fanfare of the nation’s economic turnaround.
Twenty-two percent of American children were living in poverty in 2013 compared with 18 percent in 2008, according to the latest Kids Count Data Book, with poverty rates nearly double among African-Americans and American Indians and problems most severe in South and Southwest.
The report, released Tuesday from the child advocacy group the Annie E. Casey Foundation, showed some signs of slight improvement, including high school graduation rates at an all-time high and a falling percentage of uninsured children. But the bright spots weren’t enough to offset a picture that many children have been left behind amid the nation’s economic recovery.
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Earth dialed the heat up in June, smashing warm temperature records for both the month and the first half of the year.
Off-the-charts heat is “getting to be a monthly thing,” said Jessica Blunden, a climate scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. June was the fourth month of 2015 that set a record, she said.
“There is almost no way that 2015 isn’t going to be the warmest on record,” she added.
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The nuclear accord with Iran required a difficult series of compromises for world powers and Tehran.
For President Barack Obama, it meant climbing down from demands that Tehran halt almost all of its enrichment of potential bomb-making material and shutter an underground facility possibly impervious to an air attack. It also meant dropping pledges to secure “anytime, anywhere” inspections and Iran’s complete answering of questions related to past weapons work.
But Iran’s supreme leader was forced to retreat on some key issues, too. Relief from crippling economic sanctions won’t come on Day 1, as he long clamored for, and his country will have to open up military sites to international inspectors at some point if the Islamic Republic is going to fulfill its commitments. Iran also will have to adhere to multiyear restrictions on enrichment and nuclear research and development that Ayatollah Khamenei and other leaders once opposed.
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Chinese authorities have evacuated tens of thousands of people, canceled scores of trains and flights and shuttered seaside resorts as a super-typhoon with wind gusts up to 200 kilometers per hour (125 mph) heads toward the southeastern coast.
China’s national weather service said super Typhoon Chan-hom is expected to make landfall by early Saturday at Fujian or Zhejiang province, and has issued its highest-level alert.
Zhejiang’s Civil Affairs Bureau said nearly 60,000 people were evacuated from coastal areas. The country’s railway service said more than 100 trains between the region’s cities are canceled through Sunday.
More than 50 years after South Carolina raised a Confederate flag at its Statehouse to protest the civil rights movement, the state is getting ready to remove the rebel banner.
A bill pulling down the flag from the Capitol’s front lawn and the flagpole it flies on passed the South Carolina House early Thursday morning. It should get to Gov. Nikki Haley’s desk before the end of the day.
The governor promised to sign it quickly, but didn’t say exactly when. That’s important, because the bill requires the flag be taken down within 24 hours of her pen hitting the paper and shipped to the Confederate Relic Room.
The last time the Burmese slave made the same request, he was beaten almost to death. But after being gone eight years and forced to work on a boat in faraway Indonesia, Myint Naing was willing to risk everything to see his mother again.
So he threw himself on the ground and begged for freedom. Instead, the captain vowed to kill him for trying to jump ship, and chained him for three days without food or water.
He was afraid he would disappear. And that his mother would have no idea where to look.
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In this May 16, 2015, photo, former slave fisherman Myint Naing, left, is embraced by his mother Khin Than, second left, as his sister Mawli Than, right, is overcome with emotion after they were reunited after 22 years in their village in Mon State, Myanmar. Myint, 40, is among hundreds of former slave fishermen who returned to Myanmar following an Associated Press investigation into the use of forced labor in Southeast Asiaâs seafood industry. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe) | ASSOCIATED PRESS
A man was accused of killing his parents after their bodies were found in a freezer at their Oregon home by police who twice checked on them but were deterred by notes saying the family was away, authorities said Thursday.
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Jeremy Daniel Ringquist, 38, was jailed on two counts of aggravated murder in the deaths of Randy and Karen Ringquist, whom he lived with in Springfield, police Sgt. Rich Charboneau said.
It was not immediately known if Jeremy Ringquist has retained a lawyer or will ask a judge for a court-appointed attorney at a court appearance set for Friday.
This week’s slaughter of nine people in a South Carolina church left prospects that Congress will curb guns right where they’ve been for years — remote for now, according to lawmakers and activists on both sides of the issue.
Conceding that congressional action was unlikely soon, President Barack Obama said lawmakers will tighten federal firearms restrictions when they believe the public is demanding it.
“I am not resigned,” Obama told the U.S. Conference of Mayors in San Francisco on Friday. “I have faith we will eventually do the right thing.”
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The GOP-controlled House passed legislation Tuesday to cut Amtrak’s budget by $242 million, though lawmakers added new funding for video cameras inside locomotive cabs to record engineers and help investigators get to the bottom of crashes such as last month’s deadly derailment in Philadelphia.
Amtrak announced last month it is going to install the cameras after years of delays. The transportation and housing measure approved by a narrow 216-210 vote contains $9 million approved last week to fund the inward-facing camera initiative in the budget year starting in October.
Amtrak is among many domestic programs whose budgets are cut or frozen by the GOP measures, as automatic spending curbs known as sequestration are again hitting federal agencies after two years of relief. Previous House GOP attempts to cut Amtrak over the years have been reversed, and Tuesday’s transportation measure is but an opening move in a longer chess match with the White House over spending levels for agency operating budgets passed annually by Congress.
China-based hackers are suspected of breaking into the computer networks of the U.S. government personnel office and stealing identifying information of at least 4 million federal workers, American officials said Thursday.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that data from the Office of Personnel Management and the Interior Department had been compromised.
“The FBI is conducting an investigation to identify how and why this occurred,” the statement said.
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Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
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Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Image: Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Down it comes
James' World 2 