- Effort to save state’s unemployment insurance program is underway, By Marc Lifsher, April 19, 2013, Los Angeles Times: “A rescue effort is underway for the state’s financially troubled unemployment insurance program, an economic lifeline that currently provides weekly monetary support for 525,000 jobless Californians. More than $10 billion in the red, the unemployment insurance fund has been spiraling toward bankruptcy in recent years, even as it continues to provide weekly jobless benefits of as much as $450 for job seekers…”
- Senate backs unemployment insurance exemption for Arizona religious groups, By Howard Fischer, April 11, 2013, Arizona Daily Sun: “Hundreds of teachers at religious schools around the state could soon be at risk of being laid off with no prospect of collecting jobless benefits. On a voice vote Wednesday, the Senate agreed to specifically exempt religious organizations from having to provide unemployment insurance to those who work for them in educational and child care services. The only requirement is that those services include some religious instruction, though HB2645 does not say how much — or how little — would qualify. The move came despite opposition from several Democratic lawmakers who questioned the whole idea of what amounts to giving religious schools a tax break. That’s because companies do not pay jobless benefits themselves but instead are required to obtain insurance through the state. The premiums are based on how frequently an employer lays off workers…”
Day: April 19, 2013
Extreme Poverty Worldwide
- Where the world’s poorest people live, By Sudeep Reddy, April 17, 2013, Wall Street Journal: “The world’s poorest people are now concentrated most heavily in Sub-Saharan Africa after China’s huge leap in pulling its citizens out of extreme poverty in recent decades, according to new estimates released Wednesday by the World Bank. About 1.2 billion people in the world lived in extreme poverty in 2010, subsisting on less than $1.25 a day. That’s down from 1.9 billion three decades ago despite a nearly 60% increase in the developing world’s population…”
- India has one third of world’s poorest, says World Bank, By Dean Nelson, April 18, 2013, The Telegraph: “While new figures show that the number of those in extreme poverty around the world – surviving on 82 pence per day or less – has declined significantly, India now has a greater share of the world’s poorest than it did thirty years ago. Then it was home to one fifth of the world’s poorest people, but today it accounts for one-third – 400 million. The study, The State of the Poor: Where are the Poor and Where are the Poorest?, found the number of extremely poor people had declined from half the world’s population in 1981 to one fifth in 2010, but voiced concern at its increase in Sub-Saharan Africa and continuing high level in India…”
Child Hunger – Greece
More children in Greece are going hungry, By Liz Alderman, April 17, 2013, New York Times: “As an elementary school principal, Leonidas Nikas is used to seeing children play, laugh and dream about the future. But recently he has seen something altogether different, something he thought was impossible in Greece: children picking through school trash cans for food; needy youngsters asking playmates for leftovers; and an 11-year-old boy, Pantelis Petrakis, bent over with hunger pains. ‘He had eaten almost nothing at home,’ Mr. Nikas said, sitting in his cramped school office near the port of Piraeus, a working-class suburb of Athens, as the sound of a jump rope skittered across the playground. He confronted Pantelis’s parents, who were ashamed and embarrassed but admitted that they had not been able to find work for months. Their savings were gone, and they were living on rations of pasta and ketchup…”