LANSING (AP) – Michigan will receive $100 million from the federal government to tear down thousands of vacant houses and clean up struggling neighborhoods in Detroit and four other cities.
The pilot program to address blight was approved Thursday by the U.S. Treasury Department, according to Gov. Rick Snyder.
The money comes from the Hardest Hit Fund and will be used in Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids, Pontiac and Saginaw. The fund was created in 2010 to help states struggling through the economic and mortgage crisis.
It isn’t clear how much money each city will receive.
Flint had more than 5,800 vacant homes and Grand Rapids over 2,700, according to estimates in the 2010 U.S. Census. Detroit has more than 30,000 vacant and abandoned houses.
Movie star Nicolas Cage traveled to Carson City earlier this month to urge state lawmakers to pass a movie tax incentive bill, promising to use his connections in the industry to help spark a filmmaking boom in Nevada.
“My name is Nicolas Cage, and I’m an American filmmaker,”
“I have four scripts that could easily be shot in Nevada,” said Cage, who described himself as a Nevada resident, adding he’d like to wake up at home, go to work shooting a film and return home at the end of the day. (more…)
A flawless diamond has set a world auction record, selling for $26.7m (£17.5m).
The rare Botswana-mined 101-carat diamond was sold at a Christie’s auction in Geneva.
It was bought by the Harry Winston firm and beat the previous record set by the 76-carat Archduke Joseph diamond, which sold for $21 m (£13.8m) in November 2012.
Olivia Sprauer taught English at Martin High School in Florida by day and modeled under the name Victoria Valentine James in her spare time.
On April 29th she was called into the principle’s office and shown a photo that had been sent to the principal. Sprauer admitted it was her in the photo.
The principal asked for her resignation and had her escorted off campus.
Checkout More photos of Victoria James after the jump. (more…)
284,000: Number of American college graduates working in minimum-wage jobs in 2012.
The Wall Street Journal this week reported on the troubling trend of college graduates getting stuck in low-skilled jobs, a problem that new research suggests may endure even after the economy improves.
According to the Labor Department, there were 284,000 graduates—those with at least a bachelor’s degree—working minimum-wage jobs in 2012, including 37,000 holders of advanced degrees. That’s down from a peak of 327,000 in 2010, but double the number in 2007 and up 70% from a decade earlier.
“A formal education will make you a living; self education will make you a fortune” -Jim Rohn
President Barack Obama on Tuesday unveiled a plan to develop tools that can better map the human brain, furthering scientists’ understanding of how it works and how it can be healed when damaged. The Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies initiative, or BRAIN, will begin with a $100 million investment in Obama’s 2014 budget.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will ultimately cost between $4 trillion and $6 trillion, with medical care and disability benefits weighing heavily for decades to come, according to a new analysis.
The bill to taxpayers so far has been $2 trillion, plus $260 billion in interest on the resulting debt. By comparison, the current federal budget is $3.8 trillion.
Infographics on the distribution of wealth in America, highlighting both the inequality and the difference between our perception of inequality and the actual numbers.
NBC News reports that through November 2012, 177 active-duty soldiers had committed suicide. In all of 2012, 176 soldiers were killed in action while serving in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.
Las Vegas, NV ranks no. 4 in the United States in homeless population rate in 2012. GWOP Magazine takes an exclusive inside look at the homeless underworld of Sin City and the effects of poverty on our nation. There are approximately 3.5 million homeless people in America and 18.5 million vacant foreclosed homes in the country at the same time.
