A severe storm has generated baseball-sized hail, high winds and at least 28 tornadoes in the Midwest, including Oklahoma, Kansas and Iowa. Residents remain in hiding as meteorologists forecast that the severe weather conditions will continue to generate destructive twisters.A large tornado touched down in Moore, Oklahoma, a suburb of Oklahoma City, and seems to have caused catastrophic damage to several housing developments, and at least two schools in the area. Local television news deployed a helicopter to track the tornado as it moved through the area, and then began to survey the extensive destruction to the region.Officials say that 75 children and teachers took shelter at Plaza Towers Elementary in Moore, which was essentially flattened by the passing tornado, and was the site of an ongoing search effort. CBS confirmed that multiple casualties, including a three month baby and a four-year-old child.There was confirmation of at least one structure on fire, possibly caused by a gas leak following the tornado’s path through the community. KOCO reported that cell phone service was down in the Moore region, and aerial footage showed wide swathes of homes wiped out.Moore was last hit hard by a tornado in 1999. That storm had the highest winds ever recorded near the earth’s surface.Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin declared 16 counties as disaster areas. Power companies reported that more than 57,000 outages left people in the dark. In Shawnee, Oklahoma, the body of a 79-year-old man was found lying in an open area of a mobile home community.“You could be killed if not underground or in a tornado shelter,” read a National Weather Service alert posted Sunday. “Complete destruction of neighborhoods, businesses and vehicles will occur. Flying debris will be deadly to people and animals.”<i><i>&lt;i&gt;&amp;lt;i&amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;i&amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;i&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;i&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/i&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/i&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;lt;/i&amp;amp;gt;&amp;lt;/i&amp;gt;&lt;/i&gt;</i></i>In some regions, homes were destroyed, cars and trucks were flipped from highways, downed power lines were sprawled across neighborhoods, and trees were uprooted. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol shut down Interstate 40 after semi-tractor trailer trucks and several other vehicles were flipped by wind gusts, Newsok.com reported.“It’s tearing up everything. Just ripping everything up in its sight,” a helicopter pilot told CNN affiliate KFOR, referencing a tornado near Wellston, Okla. “…Everything was just gone. Like you took the house, you put it in a gigantic blender, you turned it on pulse for a couple minutes and then you just dumped it out.”The state was littered with debris from damaged houses, trailers, and vehicles. About 300 homes were in ruins and at least 23 people were injured, according to Fallin and Red Cross spokesman Ken Garcia.Ethan Mignard, a staffer at a local newspaper, told CNN’s iReport that the damage looked like something he had only ever seen on TV. In some areas, patches of dirt remained where mobile homes once stood, and children’s toys were littered across the ground and hanging from trees. Mignard even came across a plot of land with nothing remaining but the front steps to a house that is now gone.“It looks so out of place… To think that you would have taken these stairs to enter a home, but instead, you look around from up there and you see total destruction everywhere,” he said.Counties across Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois and Missouri were all placed under tornado watches late Sunday, and are expected to experience more damage.“After over 300 reports of severe weather on Sunday, another round of dangerous severe weather is expected Monday with the greatest threat once again in the southern Plains targeting Oklahoma and parts of Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas,” the National Weather Service reported. “However, severe weather is possible much further north towards Chicago and Madison as well.” … Read More
When The System Fails Lives Are Lost
This how my mother came to die. Read it, digest it, think about it, watch for the signs that could tell you something is wrong with the care your loved one is getting. … Read More
‘Sweden next in line for housing market crash’
Sweden tops a list of countries that risk suffering a housing market crash, Germany’s Commerzbank has warned, citing the slackening off of Swedish property prices as a harbinger of a potential downswing. … Read More
French economy returns to recession
Its economy contracted by the same percentage in the last quarter of 2012, which means two consecutive quarters of negative growth, the definition of a recession.Currently France is experiencing record unemployment, reaching 11% in March, 2013, which is forecast to rise further. The latest figures also showed low business and consumer confidence.The Netherlands, which entered recession three months ago, also showed contraction, with GDP falling by 0.1% in the first quarter of this year. Once one of the strongest-looking members of the eurozone, the Netherlands suffers from rising unemployment and the housing market bubble having burst.The eurozone’s strongest economy, Germany, grew by just 0.1% in the first quarter, far less than 0.3% expected by economists. … Read More
Bank of America settles $1.7bn over faulty mortgage disputes
MBIA will get a 5% stake in BoA, as well as receive a $500 million credit line. MBIA will also have no further payment obligations on any of its insurance policies held by Bank of America.In exchange, the bond insurer will drop its litigation brought against Countrywide Financial, a BoA mortgage subsidiary. Countrywide’s out of control lending of shoddy mortgages all but destroyed MBIA when the housing bubble burst. The company has already paid out $3 billion to policyholders on ‘bad’ BoA loans on some $20 billion in securities it insured and BoA allegedly ‘misrepresented’ to clients.MBIA Chief Executive Jay Brown has hailed the deal as a ‘significant milestone’.MBIA shares surged to the highest since September 2008 on the news, up 57% after the settlement news broke. BoA shares also closed up 5.2% in New York at $12.88.If MBIA didn’t settle with BoA, it would have risked running out of money within months. Previously MBIA had accused BoA of ‘dragging out’ the litigation, but on Monday, Brown said he appreciated the bank’s efforts in arriving at a fair settlement.“This comprehensive and important settlement is a very positive step forward for both Bank of America and MBIA,” Benjamin Lawsky, New York’s superintendent of financial services, said in a statement.“It resolves significant exposure and expensive litigation for Bank of America, while also giving MBIA a path forward,” said Lawsky.High stakes paybackThe 2008 crisis was the perfect financial storm, and MBIA, formally the largest bond issuer in the United States, just barely survived. Suffering from heavy losses from ‘bad’ mortgages through Countrywide and BoA, the company’s market capitalization dropped from $10 billion pre crisis to its current $2 billion valuation.After the US Federal Reserve cut interest rates to record lows, the real estate market became the driving force of the economy. Looking to capitalize on the market, investment banks, driven by short-term profits, issued too many loans to low and moderate income borrowers in 2006-2007 to people buying homes, fulfilling their ‘American dream’.Investment banks starting providing loans to keep up with demand for home purchases, but the loans proved to be harmful, because it left them with very little equity in their property. Payments were deferred, and eventually, an enormous number of homeowners defaulted on their mortgage, which left the banks, and their bond issuers, with huge liabilities.The MBIA settlement is a continuation of BoA’s marathon payouts to regain credibility within the industry. In January the lender reached an $11.6 billion settlement with government mortgage agency Fanny Mae and in April BoA settled a class-action lawsuit by investors who said they were misled by around $350 billion mortgage investments from Countrywide.Next Hurdle: NY Attorney General plans to sueThe same day it settled with MBIA , a fresh accusation against BoA came from New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman for violating last year’s national mortgage settlement by failing to process hundreds of refinancing requests in a timely manner.Wells Fargo also allegedly did not carry out the requests on time.The Attorney General cited complaints of 210 prompt-processing violations by Wells Fargo and 129 by BoA.Last year the banks agreed to provide $25 billion in relief to homeowners to make reparations for foreclosure misconduct during the housing mortgage bubble which triggered the 2008 financial crisis. … Read More
Thousands still homeless after Sandy
Some victims are living out of cardboard boxes, overstaying their welcomes at the homes of friends and family while their own houses remain demolished. Families remain separated, dispersed throughout the country as they continue to fight with their insurance companies for assistance that has never come. Businesses are shuttered, homes are overtaken by mold and piles of rubble litter the backyards of the houses that now stand empty.Victims relying on subsidized hotel rooms could soon end up on the streets, since government relief funding is set to expire. Advocates claim there is not enough public and low-income housing to accommodate the hundreds who have relied on FEMA-subsidized hotel rooms for the past six months.In the seaside community of Breezy Point, Queens, 2,400 of the 2,800 homes remain unoccupied. The neighborhood stands as a ghost town, illuminated only by the flames of the fire burning down the houses red-tagged for demolition.“Insurance and the new building codes delay everything. It’s like Breezy is frozen in time,” Michael Sullivan, a resident of the seaside community, told the New York Daily News.And after six months of a gruelingly slow recovery, tens of thousands of residents remain homeless, dreaming of a normal life that they may never be able to return to.“Some people are still very much in the midst of recovery. You still have people in hotel rooms, you still have people doubling up, you still have people fighting with insurance companies, and for them it’s been terrible and horrendous,” said Gov. Andrew Cuomo, ahead of the six-month anniversary of Hurricane Sandy.But despite the cries of the forgotten victims of October’s superstorm, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Monday that President Barack Obama “has kept every promise he’s made” in regards to the recovery effort.“I think he’s done a good job. He kept his word,” he told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on the six-month anniversary of the storm.“Everything the president promised me they’d do, they’ve done. I don’t have any complaint this morning on the issue of disaster relief,” he added.In New Jersey alone, Hurricane Sandy destroyed 360,000 homes and apartments, many of which remain uninhabitable. And American lives have been unnecessarily lost to the slow recovery effort. The National Hurricane Center attributes 72 deaths directly to the superstorm and 87 deaths to storm-related causes, such as hypothermia due to power outages, carbon monoxide poisoning and other accidents resulting from the cleanup process.Many of the storm-ravaged areas look no different than they did a few months ago. In January, victims complained that the president broke the promises he made before he was re-elected.After the storm struck, Obama pledged to assist the victims as quickly as he could, posing for a photograph with New Jersey business owner Donna Vanzant, who had lost most of what she owned. In an image that quickly went ‘viral’, the president embraced the devastated woman. But a few months later, Vanzant said she was quickly forgotten by the administration.“I have probably suffered $500,000 in losses,” she told the Philly Post. “And we’ve lost all of our docks and our bulkhead, and the estimate for that is $200,000, and you can’t get insurance on your docks or bulkhead.”At the start of the year, some lawmakers complained that Congress had betrayed the victims of New York and New Jersey, instilling feelings of abandonment and outrage among the residents of storm-afflicted areas.But while Christie announced a $1.7 billion federal grant on storm recovery efforts and describes a “return to normalcy”, the tens of thousands who remain homeless continue to live shattered lives.“Everybody’s house had pretty much the same amount of damage, but people are getting different amounts of money, and that’s caused some problems,” George Stauble, a New Jersey resident who lost his home in the storm, told NBC.But the president’s promise has been broken in the eyes of those who were refused adequate assistance by insurance companies and the federal government.“We still have tens of thousands of families who aren’t back in their homes,” Christie admitted, before announcing the state’s $1.8 billion federal grant awarded this month. “Job one is to get the grant program going.” … Read More
Homeless Sandy victims pushed into the street by NY lawmakers
Approximately 1,000 people have relied on hotel rooms paid for by state and local government aid packages. But during a New York City Council meeting Friday Seth Diamond, the commissioner of homeless services, said that only 600 of those evacuees would be allowed to stay in the hotels through the end of May because they were preparing to move into new permanent housing. Those without a “housing transition plan,” according to The New York Times, would be pushed out into the street. To make matters worse, many of the evictees have lost their jobs, do not qualify for assistance from the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), or both. The Sandy victims were mailed a letter late last month reminding them that the April 30 deadline was fast approaching.“I’m trying real hard to find an apartment,” Carmen Ortiz, a former EMT who lost her job because of health problems, told the Village Voice. “I’ve been homeless before…I can’t believe that here, in New York City, where they put all this damn money into the ball parks, and you can’t open an apartment building for us to live?”City councilman Brad Lander, deeming the situation “Kafka-esque,” blamed part of the problem on the government’s tardiness in mailing Disaster Housing Assistance Program vouchers, which still have yet to arrive six months after the devastating storm. Complicating matters further is the fact that the NYCHA is permitted to deny housing to undocumented immigrants and disqualify applicants with a criminal history.“This could be someone who got stopped and frisked and found with marijuana,” Lander said to the Village Voice Friday. Many of the people still without housing formerly resided in Jamaica, Queens, a low-income area that was among the worst-hit by Sandy. The so-called Super storm left at least 53 people dead and hundreds without power in New York and New Jersey. The NYCHA is notorious for obstructing access to information. Earlier this week, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio published a report that found the agency left at least one third of Freedom of Information Act requests unanswered over a three-month period, hardly good news for homeless Sandy victims searching for answers.The bureaucratic machine continued to stonewall at a city meeting Friday, where Pete Nagy, a campaign director of New York Communities for Change, admitted the outlook appears bleak.“All the council members really showed a united front in the committee to this incredibly misguided policy,” he said. “The city is still going through with this unconscionable plan.” … Read More
