Diane Alter – AHN News Reporter
Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – Congress Friday swiftly passed a deal to extend the payroll-tax cut through the end of 2012, continue paying unemployment benefits and avoid a steep cut in Medicare doctors’s fee, moving forward from a lengthy fight that had tied up legislators for months. The House voted 293-132 to pass the measure. The Senate quickly followed with a 60-36 vote. The move averts a tax increase on millions of Americas and the end of this month. Under the deal, the tax paid by workers to Social Security will remain at 4.2 percent instead of reverting to 6.2 percent on March 1. The deal also avoids a 27 percent cut in payments to doctors who serve Medicare patients, and extends through year’s end payment rates for Medicare doctors. The costs will be offset in part by taking [...] Continue Reading…
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Diane Alter – AHN News Reporter
New York, NY, United States (AHN) – Stephen Colbert’s “The Colbert Report” was shut down this week because of the host’s ailing 91-year-old mother, according to reports from The New York Post. On Thursday, Comedy Central suspended production due to “unforeseen circumstances.” The network is filling the time by airing repeat episodes to round out the week. The show’s warm-up comedian, Pete Dominick, tweeted about the incident, saying, “Yes I work at the Colbert Report and No I don’t know why the show is off for 2 nights.” Other news sources say the reason for the hiatus was due to a family emergency. Colbert is the youngest of 11 children. His father and two older brothers were killed in a plane crash in 1974, when Colbert was just 10. The family is said to be very close. The [...] Continue Reading…
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Diane Alter – AHN News Reporter
New York, NY, United States (AHN) – New claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly fell last week to the lowest level in nearly four years. The Labor Department reported Thursday that initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 13,000 to a seasonally adjusted 348,000, the lowest since March 2008. Economists had forecast claims rising to 365,000. The four-week moving average for new claims, a better measure of the labor market, fell 1,750 to 365,250, the lowest since April 2008. The number of people still receiving benefits under regular state programs after an initial week of aid fell 100,000 to 3.43 million in the week ending Feb.4. While the numbers are welcome and encouraging, and signal renewed strength in the labor market, things are still not so rosy. Some 23.8 million Americans are currently either out of work or underemployed. There [...] Continue Reading…
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Wisconsin Rapids, WI, United States (KaiserHealth) – For the vast majority of parents-to-be, giving birth involves a stay at a hospital or birthing center. But a growing minority are choosing instead to have babies at home, where, they hope, they can have a more private, low-tech experience and allow the process to unfold naturally. It doesn’t hurt that in these days of rising health-care costs, having a baby at home is a lot cheaper, too. When Jason and Rebecca Sparks were planning for the birth of their second child, Alexander, who’s now almost 4 months old, they decided to have him at their home in Wisconsin Rapids, Wis. The Sparkses had their first child, Ariana, 2, at a hospital in Wausau, about an hour away. The experience felt impersonal, says Jason, now 33, and was more uncomfortable than it needed to be for Rebecca, 31. Not only [...] Continue Reading…
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Tom Ramstack – AHN News Legal Correspondent
Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – A congressional committee took on part of the nation’s illegal immigration problem Thursday during a hearing on guest worker programs. A House Judiciary subcommittee heard from witnesses from state agricultural programs in California, Georgia and North Carolina who support the idea of using foreign workers to harvest their crops. However, almost no one wants them to stay in the United States after they complete their work, which would add to a problem that has created about 12 million illegal immigrants. “There is no numerical limit to H-2A temporary agricultural work visas, yet half of farm workers remain illegal immigrants,” Lamar Smith, chairman of the subcommittee on immigration policy enforcement, said at the hearing. “Why don’t more growers who have heavy demands for seasonal agricultural labor make use of the program? Well, in 2008, the [...] Continue Reading…
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Nairobi, Kenya (IRIN) – At a waterlogged gold mine in western Kenya’s Migori District,–year-old Jacob*, one of 15,000 children toiling in the region’s pits, scours the water for glistering flakes, a job he says beats going to school on an empty stomach. “I would rather work for people here at the mine and at the end of the day they will give me money to spend,” he told IRIN. “Even my parents say what I am doing is right; I can buy my own clothes. What is the point of being in school?” There are few formal job opportunities in the region. Jacob’s employer for the day – one of many people who rent a section of the mine on a daily basis – will pay him 100 shillings (US$1.20) for his labor. A gram of gold sells for around $55 on the world [...] Continue Reading…
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AHN News Staff
Paris, France (AHN) – French aviation workers continued their strike for a third consecutive day Wednesday, forcing carrier Air France to cancel 30 percent of its domestic flights and 40 percent of long-haul flights. The strike has not only affected Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport and regional airports but also thousands of passengers. Aviation workers organized the four-day strike in protest of a proposed law that would require them to individually give at least 48 hours notice before they go on strike. The French Lower House approved the bill last month and is in the Senate for approval.
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Anil Giri – AHN News Correspondent
Kathmandu, Nepal (AHN) – Six years after the end of a decade-long armed conflict, Nepal’s ex-Maoist fighters who have been languishing in various satellite camps have begun leaving their cantonments. The process started Friday in the three major camps–Sindhuli, Chitwan and Nawalparasi–and was scheduled to begin in the other four main camps from Saturday. The entire process is expected to be over in two weeks. The lengthy conflict ended in 2006 after killing nearly 14, 000 people and replacing a century-long Hindu monarchy with a secular republic country. This is an important part of Nepal’s ongoing peace process. The Maoist combatants have been monitored since 2007 by the United Nation’s political mission that oversaw the storage of weapons and the soldiers’ registration, verification and housing. After the UN left Nepal in 2011, Nepal’s political party agreed to set up [...] Continue Reading…
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Tejinder Singh – AHN News Correspondent
Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – The United States this week expanded cooperation with India on labor and employment issues with the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) that was hailed by both as a tool to enhance strong bonds between the two democracies. Calling the MoU “an essential part of our bilateral relationship,” Mark Toner, the State Department spokesman, told journalists on Friday, “When you look at our relationship and the strategic dialogue that we have with India, there’s many baskets of issues that fall under that rubric, and certainly labor laws are one of those.” Earlier on Thursday, Mallikarjun Kharge, visiting Indian minister for labor and employment, and U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis inked a bilateral MoU for cooperation in the areas of skill development, youth employment, occupational safety and health and mines safety and health. Kharge emphasized [...] Continue Reading…
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Hargeisa, Somaliland, Somalia (IRIN) – Cases of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), as well as domestic violence, are increasing in camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Hargeisa, capital of the self-declared independent Republic of Somaliland, with social workers attributing the trend to hard economic times made worse by recent drought in the region. “Numbers of the displaced have increased in recent months, with many families coming to town to escape drought; lack of a police presence within the camps and inadequate lighting have contributed to the increase in some of these cases,” Shukri Osman Said, an SGBV coordinator for an NGO, Comprehensive Community-Based Rehabilitation Somaliland (CCBRS), told IRIN at the Stadium IDP camp in Hargeisa. The Stadium IDP camp, home to an estimated 5,000 families (30,000 people), is one of several IDP camps in Hargeisa where humanitarian organizations such as CCBRS have ongoing programs aimed at [...] Continue Reading…
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