Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – New claims for unemployment compensation dropped to 421,000 for the week ending Dec. 4, a decrease of 17,000 claims from the week before, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Not all jobless workers are insured by the unemployment compensation program. The advance seasonally adjusted rate of insured unemployed workers was 3.2 percent for the week ending Nov. 27, which was a decrease of 0.2 percentage point from the prior week’s unrevised rate of 3.4 percent, the DOL said in a statement.

The DOL also released the figures for the week ending Nov. 27 for the advance number of seasonally adjusted insured unemployment, which was 4,086,000. That was a decrease of 191,000 from the preceding week’s revised number of 4,277,000 insured unemployed.

Advance unadjusted figures for the week ending Nov. 27 showed the percentage of unemployed workers eligible for unemployment compensation was 3.3 percent. However, the unemployment rate during that week was 9.6 percent.

Figures for the number of unemployed Americans claiming benefits under all unemployment compensation programs was from a week earlier, or the week ending Nov. 13 was 8,297,938.

Extended unemployment compensation benefits, for jobless Americans who are covered by that insurance program, were available in 35 states and the District of Columbia for the week ending Nov. 20.

Those states were Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

View full post on All Stories

New York, NY, United States (NewsBahn) – An international rights organization is accusing state governments in the southern United States of a “public health failure” that has seen the number of HIV/AIDS cases in the region rise the most in the nation because of policies that are ineffective and discriminate against people with the virus.

Human Rights Watch, in a report issued Friday, said “progress in the fight against AIDS in the southern United States is undermined by state laws and policies that impose ineffective approaches and fuel stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV.”

The report says HIV is increasing in 17 southern states at the fastest rate in the nation. It documents practices in the region that HRW says have undercut progress on combating HIV, including:

• Refusal of southern states to provide comprehensive sex education in the schools
• State laws that impede access to sterile syringes
• Criminal penalties for exposing others to HIV.

The report termed as “alarming” the rise of HIV/AIDS in the South, saying that “roughly half” of Americans who die of AIDS live in the South. Those states also have the highest rates of new HIV infections in the country, HRW said. Hardest hit are minorities, particularly African-Americans, whom the report said “bear a disproportionate burden of infection.”

The report found that in 2008 in Mississippi, for example, African-Americans were 37 percent of the population but 76 percent of new cases of HIV. In South Carolina, African-Americans were 28 percent of the population but 72 percent of people living with AIDS.

“The South is the epicenter of HIV infection in the United States, but southern states resist proven methods of HIV prevention and refuse to provide adequate funding for HIV care and services,” said Megan McLemore, senior health researcher at Human Rights Watch. “This is a public health failure, but also a violation of fundamental human rights for those at risk and infected with HIV.”

The 23-page report, “Southern Exposure: HIV and Human Rights in the Southern United States,” was released in advance of World AIDS Day on Dec. 1

The 17 states cited in the report lead the nation in the percentage of people living in poverty, according to the organization. They also lead in the lack of access to health care and the numbers of people without health insurance, factors that increase the risk of HIV infection or AIDS deaths. HRW said southern states also report the nation’s highest rates of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis, sexually transmitted diseases that can significantly increase an individual’s risk of becoming infected with HIV.

“While the federal government has recognized the importance of comprehensive sex education, many southern states continue to promote unproven and ineffective abstinence-based approaches,” HRW said. The result “is the denial of potentially life-saving information to adolescents at risk of HIV infection. Abstinence-based programs often include, and even require, negative messages about homosexuality, which can stigmatize gay youth and drive individuals in need of HIV information away from essential treatment and services.”

Some laws in southern states also prohibit needle exchange programs in which used syringes are exchanged for clean ones. Drug users sharing needles is considered a significant method of transmitting the AIDS virus.

Other states in the region punish those who knowingly pass the virus to others, HRW noted, discouraging people from being tested for AIDS.

Human Rights Watch also charged that both the federal and state governments do not adequately fund HIV/AIDS programs in the South. HRW said federal funding “has consistently shortchanged the South due to outdated formulas based on cumulative AIDS cases rather than on new HIV infections.”

In addition, restrictive Medicaid eligibility rules in southern states leave many with HIV unable to afford health care. In Alabama, Arkansas, South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Georgia, HRW said, 40-65 percent of people diagnosed with HIV are not in regular treatment, compared with the national average of 30 percent.

View full post on Politics Stories

The House panel, in a vote of 39 to 29, approved the Consumer Financial Protection Agency Act of 2009 (H.R. 3126), a centerpiece of the Obama administration’s pursuit to overhaul the nation’s financial regulatory system.

The approved legislation would create a new federal agency, the CFPA, which would have centralized oversight of various forms of consumer credit, such as mortgages and credit cards, as well as private student loans.

The New Consumer Financial Protection Agency

The CFPA would have the authority to write new consumer lending protection rules, monitor financial institutions for compliance with these rules, and penalize institutions for any infractions. The CFPA would also have the ability to ban products, marketing tactics, and other business practices that it deems “unfair, deceptive, or abusive.”

“The Consumer Financial Protection Agency will prevent predatory lending practices and other abuses and will ensure that consumers get clear information they can understand about financial products like credit cards and mortgages,” President Obama said in a commendation of the House committee’s approval of the bill.

The measure passed despite strong Republican opposition and forceful lobbying from banks and business groups.

“It’s not about protecting consumers; it’s about a new government bureaucracy making decisions for us,” said Representative Spencer Bachus of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the House panel.

Consumer Groups Back Oversight of Private Student Loans

A number of student and consumer advocacy groups had been urging the House committee to approve bringing the CFPA’s oversight to private student loans — non-federally guaranteed education loans issued by banks and private lenders rather than by the U.S. Department of Education.

Until this year, when private student lenders have been forced to make their credit requirements much more stringent in response to skittish investors and a risk-averse credit market, private student loans had been steadily attracting more and more borrowers as families struggled to meet ever-rising college costs.

“Private student loans are one of the riskiest ways to pay for college, yet a growing number of students have private student loans as well as, or instead of, federal student loans,” a coalition of student and consumer groups wrote in a joint letter to Representative Barney Frank, the Democratic chairman of the House Financial Services Committee.

“Private student loans are expensive, mostly variable-rate loans that cost more for those who can least afford them,” the letter reads. “They lack the fixed rates, consumer protections and flexible repayment options of federal student loans, and are not financial aid any more than a credit card is when used to pay for textbooks or tuition.”

The Fight for Regulation of ‘Gap Loans’

In their letter to Frank, the consumer and student advocate groups also pressed for a legislated clarification that school-sponsored “gap loans” wouldn’t be exempted from the CFPA’s oversight.

“Gap” student loans — so-called because they’re intended to cover students’ financing gaps, any attendance costs that aren’t covered by other financial aid such as grants and federal student loans — are increasingly being offered by for-profit colleges and vocational schools to boost enrollment as these institutions encounter a growing flood of unemployed and low-income students looking to return to school.

For-profit schools that provide gap financing, say that their financing programs allow students to attend school who wouldn’t otherwise be able to afford a higher education.

But these gap financing programs are risky and expensive for students, consumer advocates maintain. Gap loans typically carry high interest rates and large monthly payments that the schools’ generally low-income students often aren’t able to handle — all while allowing the schools to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal money from the federal financial aid that students use to pay the bulk of their attendance costs.

Concerned about the potential for student loans made by for-profit schools to be exempted from the CFPA legislation under a small-business clause in the bill, consumer and student advocate groups had been lobbying in support of an amendment, sponsored by Democratic Representative Maxine Waters of California, that would have specifically placed gap loans under the authority of the CFPA.

“We just want to make sure that the risky financial products that some colleges, for-profits in particular, have been making to students are still covered by this agency,” said Lauren Asher, president of The Institute for College Access & Success.

Proprietary colleges argued against the proposed amendment, saying that gap student loans are already regulated by the federal Truth in Lending Act. New TILA rules, mandated under last year’s Higher Education Opportunity Act (H.R. 4137) and which will go into effect in February, will require student lenders to disclose more details about their private loan programs, including interest rates and estimated monthly payments, and to inform applicants for private student loans about federal student loan options.

Consumer advocates, however, hold that TILA regulations aren’t sufficient and that the stricter oversight of the CFPA is necessary in order to protect student loan borrowers.

“To effectively protect consumers, the CFPA must have full authority to regulate private student loans regardless of the institution offering them,” the consumer and student advocate groups wrote in their letter to Frank. “For consumers, a private student loan can pose the same serious risks whether issued by a financial institution or by a school. The CFPA should apply and enforce standards based upon the product and not the issuing institution.”

Jeff Mictabor is an enthusiast on the topic of student loan issues in the news. He has been writing for the past 10 years for a variety of education publications. He now offers his writing services on a freelance basis.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/loans-articles/expanding-federal-regulation-of-private-student-loans-1456931.html