NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The national unemployment rate may have only ticked up slightly in August, but on a state-by-state basis, the jobs picture continues to look a lot more grim in places like Nevada, Michigan and California.
A total of 27 states reported higher unemployment rates in August, nearly double the 14 that saw increases in July, the Labor Department said in its monthly report on state unemployment Tuesday.
While the rate remained at 9.6% for the country as a whole, Nevada, Michigan and California have consistently racked up rates above 12%.
Nevada had the worst rate for the fourth month in a row, at a record high of 14.4%, up from 14.3% in July. Michigan followed with 13.1% unemployment, unchanged from the prior rate, and California was third with a 12.4% rate, an increase from 12.3% in July.
LONGMONT, Colo. - The mother of a male student at Skyline High School in Longmont is under fire for allegedly passing out condoms to students during the school's homecoming dance.
It happened on the evening of September 11th.
Both parents and students tell FOX31 News the mother was attending the dance and began distributing the condoms while telling students, "Condoms are cheaper than babies."
One parent, who just found out about the incident on Monday was angry and contacted FOX31 News by email.
We contacted the St. Vrain School District which said administrators were angry and disturbed as well.
A district spokesperson told us the news came as a complete surprise to them and they had no idea it happened until Monday.
"This is a gross violation of school policy and something we will not tolerate,” says John Poynton, spokesperson for the St. Vrain School District. "If we do find that this parent was handing out condoms to students on school property, we will take the appropriate action and she will not be allowed on campus again."
In downtown Atlanta today, an entire block on Ellis Street was sectioned off for Lazarus Ministries’ fourth annual Health Day with the homeless men and women of the city. The street was packed with volunteers and local homeless people talking, eating, and playing games together. Scores of clothes, sack lunches, and health-related services were offered to people, as well as entertainment and opportunities for conversation. A collaborative effort between Lazarus Ministries and SafeHouse Outreach, Health Day is a chance for the homeless to be overwhelmed by abundance, not need.
The event featured complimentary blood pressure checks, dental examinations, haircuts, manicures, coffee, and entertainment for all who participated. Homeless men, women, and children - many living in and out of local shelters - filled the street where tables were set up for health and hygiene screenings, clothes donations, and job readiness counseling. Volunteers at these stations included doctors and other health professionals, beauticians, and counselors. Groups from local churches and shelters also helped with the event, facilitating entertainment through karaoke, face painting, board games, and a dunk-tank.
The parting of the waters described in the book of Exodus that enabled Moses and the Israelites to escape the pharaoh's army is possible, computer simulations run by researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado at Boulder show.
To test the theory that the biblical account may have depicted actual events, the researchers studied maps of the region, archaeological records and satellite measurements to find a topographical feature where such an event might have been possible. They settled on an area south of the Mediterranean Sea where some oceanographers say a branch of the Nile River drained into what was called the Lake of Tanis, a coastal lagoon 3,000 years ago.
The computer model shows a 63 mph east wind blowing across the area and its 6-feet-deep waters for 12 hours. In the scenario, the wind pushed back the waters into both the lake and the channel of the river, exposing a mud flat 2 to 2.5 miles long and 3 miles wide for four hours. As the winds died down, the waters quickly flowed back in and in theory would have drowned anyone on the mud flat.
“The simulations match fairly closely with the account in Exodus,” said Carl Drews of NCAR, the lead author of the study published in the online journal PLoS ONE. (Read the full study)
“The parting of the waters can be understood through fluid dynamics. The wind moves the water in a way that’s in accordance with physical laws, creating a safe passage with water on two sides and then abruptly allowing the water to rush back in.”
On April 25, 1976 at Dodger Stadium, Rick Monday of the Chicago Cubs, grabbed and secured the American flag from two Men attempting to burn our flag in the middle of the playing field. It was an outstanding display of American Patriotism. Our Question Is Why Aren't More American's like this today. We see people in America allowed to trample, and burn our flag and we are just standing by and not stopping it. There are some debates whether it is against the law or not to desecrate our Nations Flag. But what this man did was the greatest baseball play in history we need more Americans like him today to stand up and just run and take the flag back.
The UK's tax collection agency is putting forth a proposal that all employers send employee paychecks to the government, after which the government would deduct what it deems as the appropriate tax and pay the employees by bank transfer.
The proposal by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) stresses the need for employers to provide real-time information to the government so that it can monitor all payments and make a better assessment of whether the correct tax is being paid.
Currently employers withhold tax and pay the government, providing information at the end of the year, a system know as Pay as You Earn (PAYE). There is no option for those employees to refuse withholding and individually file a tax return at the end of the year.
If the real-time information plan works, it further proposes that employers hand over employee salaries to the government first.
"The next step could be to use (real-time) information as the basis for centralizing the calculation and deduction of tax," HMRC said in a July discussion paper.
HMRC described the plan as "radical" as it would be a huge change from the current system that has been largely unchanged for 66 years.
Even though the centralized deductions proposal would provide much-needed oversight, there are some major concerns, George Bull, head of Tax at Baker Tilly, told CNBC.com.
"If HMRC has direct access to employees' bank accounts and makes a mistake, people are going to feel very exposed and vulnerable," Bull said.
And the chance of widespread mistakes could be high, according to Bull. HMRC does not have a good track record of handling large computer systems and has suffered high-profile errors with data, he said.
The system would be massive in terms of data management, larger than a recent attempt to centralize the National Health Service'sdata, which was later scrapped, Bull said.
If there's a mistake and the HMRC collects too much money, the difficulty of getting it back could be high with repayments of tax taking weeks or months, he said.
"There has to be some very clear understanding of how quickly repayments were made if there was a mistake," Bull said.
HMRC estimated the potential savings to employers from the introduction of the concept would be about £500 million ($780 million).
But the cost of implementing the new system would be "phenomenal," Bull pointed out.
A Massachusetts school district has apologized to parents after a group of schoolchildren participated in midday Muslim prayers during a field trip to a Boston-area mosque.
The incident occurred in May when a social studies class from Wellesley Middle School toured the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, one of the largest mosques in the Northeast.
Parents were told their children would be learning about the architecture of a mosque and they would be allowed to observe a prayer service. But the students wound up being given a lecture on the Prophet Muhammad, and some boys participated in a midday prayer service.
The field trip was videotaped by a parent whose child was on the trip. At one point, the video shows a spokeswoman for the mosque telling students, “You have to believe in Allah, and Allah is the one God, the only one worthy of worship, all forgiving, all merciful."
Attorney Rob Meltzer represents the parent, who asked not to be identified. He’s launched an investigation into the incident and says he may consider filing a lawsuit or complaint against the school district.
“Personally, I was appalled,” Meltzer told FOX News Radio. “We are obviously very concerned about how much control parents were given and the lack of informed consent.”
The sixth graders were also reportedly told that jihad is a personal spiritual struggle that has nothing to do with holy war, and girls on the field trip were told that Islam is pro-women.
Ohio Tea Party rally at the Cuyahoga County Fairground, Berea, Ohio, Sunday, April 11, 2010. (AP photo)
(CNSNews.com) – A district court judge in Northern Ohio ruled late Wednesday that Tea Party activists will be able to celebrate Constitution Day on Sept. 17 with a rally in tiny Andover Township, Ohio, despite the fact that the township initially tried to block the event because it was too political.
As CNSNews.com previously reported, the trustees of Andover Township denied the Andover Tea Party chapter use of the public square at the center of town based on the group’s “political affiliation.”
The group wanted to use the square for a rally with patriotic singers to commemorate Sept. 17, 1787, the day the U.S. Constitution was implemented.
But on Aug. 25, the trustees sent a letter saying: “Due to your group’s political affiliation, in our opinion as a case by case option we are denying your request to use Andover Township Park.”
The 1851 Center for Constitutional Law, a libertarian legal group in Ohio, filed a request in federal court for a temporary restraining order on Sept. 10. The center’s executive director, Maurice Thompson, pointed out the irony in the Tea Party’s First Amendment rights being infringed upon as they sought to celebrate the same document in which it is contained.
“The first thing you note is the extreme irony of the unconstitutional prohibition of the commemoration of the Constitution,” Thompson told CNSNews.com.
“(A)nd the second thing that’s notable is either the extreme arrogance or ignorance of many local government officals," said Thompson. "There’s so much focus on federal government, yet some of the worst actors are at the ground level.”
Thompson described the case as “pretty straightforward,” and said he expected a ruling in his clients’ favor before the event, citing a call with the judge in which the judge told the township they were “not in a very strong position here.”
Indeed, Judge Donald F. Nugent granted a “preliminary injunction that shall remain in effect until further notice,” allowing the Andover Tea Party group to go ahead with their planned rally.
At a later date, Nugent said he will determine the case on the merits, deciding whether the authority cited by the trustees violates the First Amendment rights of the Tea Partiers to peacefully assemble.
In their letter, the trustees cited a 2006 resolution, Andover Resolution 06-104, which “prohibit(s) any for-profit advertising or political signs on the Andover Square” and that permission to use the square would be made by the trustees “on case by case bases.”
“You know, the First Amendment is something that everybody knows enough about to make this an easy issue,” Thompson said. “These people again are either ill-intentioned or thoughtless -- we really don’t know which. Either is bad government.”
Members of the Andover Township board of trustees did not respond to CNSNews.com’s requests for an interview.
(CNN) -- IHOP has filed a lawsuit against a church group called the International House of Prayer claiming that the group is illegally using the pancake house's famous acronym.
The legal flap started earlier this month when the International House of Pancakes filed the lawsuit in a federal court in California.
The Kansas City, Missouri-based church group "selected and adopted the International House of Prayer name, knowing it would be abbreviated IHOP. IHOP-KC intended to misappropriate the fame and notoriety of the household name IHOP to help promote and make recognizable their religious organization," the lawsuit says.
Lawyers from the pancake restaurant say the odds are stacked against the church group and provided the court with pages and pages of documentation of websites, newsletters and signs on buildings where the prayer group allegedly used the IHOP acronym.
The use of the acronym infringes on the restaurant's trademark, the restaurant contends.
So, IHOP, the pancake house, is asking a judge to get IHOP, the church group, to stop using the letters IHOP.
The restaurant says it has used the acronym for more than 30 years
To be quite Honest we are not surprised that IHop (pancakes) Is sueing IHop (prayer) We follow the International House of Prayer and I commented once saying, "I just don't see how they can use IHOP when the Pancake Restaurant is using it as well. I bet there will be a lawsuit in the near future." We ourselves have seen other ministries have to either shut down a website or even a facebook group because they used the name of someone elses already existing business or organization.
We hope that IHOP and IHOP can get this worked out as easily as possible and they both can continue in their work, one feeding the body and one feeding the soul.
At the San Jose Mine, Chile (CNN) -- Brandon Fisher has the deep orange hue of someone who has a sunburn on top of a sunburn. The creases under his eyes are evidence of how little sleep he has had lately.
Fisher and a small crew of American drillers are the tip of the spear for Plan B, one of the three drilling teams racing to rescue 33 trapped miners buried 2,300 feet below the ground.
It's a high pressure assignment expected to continue for months in Chile's remote and unforgiving Atacama Desert.
Fisher's crew has been working around the clock for more than a week. Despite the grueling schedule, he said he's up for the challenge.
"We have got humans in the ground. It doesn't matter if they are Americans or Chileans," Fisher said Monday in his first interview since arriving in Chile eight days earlier.
"We have the ability to help them out, and that's the whole reason we are here. Miners are miners; it doesn't matter what country they are from."
Fisher is based in Berlin, Pennsylvania, in the heart of the state's mining country thousands of miles from Chile. His company, Center Rock Inc., aided in the rescue of nine miners who were trapped for more than four days after the 2002 collapse of the Quecreek Mine. He has drilled oil, gas and water holes and the foundations for the Trump Tower in Chicago, Illinois.But those assignments pale in comparison to the difficulties of rescuing 33 men who became trapped August 5 when the copper and gold mine they were working in collapsed around them.Fisher became involved in the rescue effort when the company that distributes his custom-made drills in Chile put the Chilean government in touch with him."They understood our plan," Fisher said of the Chilean government. "Hopefully we will get a hole in the ground successfully."Creating that "hole" -- as the drillers call it -- is as risky as a tightrope walk over a minefield as the drill attempts to widen a 5-inch opening previously drilled when rescuers were searching for the missing miners.Eventually Fisher's drill bits could widen the hole to a diameter where the miners would be rescued one at a time in a specially designed cage.
