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Thursday, the US Department of Labor made grant applications available for the Urban and Non-Urban Homeless Veterans Reintegration Program (HVRP). Employers have thirty days from that date to apply for an estimated 16 grants totaling five million dollars. Veterans Affairs Committee Member Congressman Mike Michaud of Maine predicts that this money will be able to help as many as 3000 homeless veterans find meaningful employment. Grant information and the application are available at the grants.gov website.
The money’s available to just about anyone who has the ability to train and hire a

It’s been more than four years that I haven’t had to battle bulimia. This is such an unbelievable miracle, and I still wake up every morning with the grateful realization that I’m not living in hell anymore.
I have scars and serious wounds from it, like osteoporosis and teeth that had to be replaced with so many implants and crowns that I could have bought a house with the money I spent on saving my smile. My stomach and esophagus hurt and burn all the time, and my kidneys took a serious beating.
The other result from this horrible disease is that I have now a total lack of interest in food. I wish I could just take a pill to get all the nutrients I need to have the energy and nourishment to do all the things I love to do

With the exception of Elizabeth Warren, there are very few heroes fighting for the little guy when it comes to consumer rights and mortgage malpractice. Tom Miller, the Ohio Attorney General, had a brief moment of righteous advocacy until he received $261,445 in campaign contributions from out-of-state law firms and donors from the finance, insurance, and real estate sector shortly after he announced he was seeking criminal charges and retribution from the banks for mortgage fraud — that’s 88 times what he has received in the past decade.
Despite the severity of the situation in which many homeowners now find themselves and with millions of foreclosures predicted in the coming year, our elected officials seem to care very little about us and our plight. HAMP, the administration’s pathetic attempt at rectifying the situation, has resulted in minimal help to homeowners and as Propublica’s Paul Kiel reported earlier this month, even those lucky enough to receive a modification are continually subjected to unscrupulous behavior and practices by the banks and servicers.
Speaker John Boehner’s own district in Ohio is riddled with foreclosures and when Democrats passed a separate foreclosure prevention bill, Boehner blasted it as “a bailout for scam artists and speculators.”
Despite paperwork associated with mortgages being ripe with fraud, false information, and forged signatures no one in government seems to want to sack up and defend homeowners.
But heroes have a habit of popping up from unconventional places.
John O’Brien from the Southern Essex County Registry of Deeds in Salem, Massachusetts, is one such hero. At least to homeowners and homeowner advocates across the country he

The Dallas Mavericks overcame an off-shooting night by Dirk Nowitzki, helped by Jason Terry’s 27 points, to defeat the Miami Heat 105-95 and capture their first NBA Championship. The Mavericks won the last three games of the series by dominating the fourth quarter.
This was another game of runs. Miami, led by LeBron James’ nine early points, ran out to a 20-11 lead. Dallas then went on a 21-4 run of their own, helped by two three-pointers by DeShawn Stevenson to take a 40-28

On December 12th, after 29 previews and 49 regular performances, The Scottsboro Boys closed its Broadway run. Ironically, the production is being recognized, six months later, with twelve Tony Award nominations. When I originally wrote about the play, I opened with a reference to the stage set as underscoring “the many questions about how to frame history, artistic vision, and the truth.” Beowulf Boritt received a nomination for “Best Scenic Design of a Musical” for work that used minimal elements to convey both symbolism and depth.
We spoke about his thoughts on the political aspects of the play, challenging theatre audiences, and process.
How did you get involved with the play?
I was designing a musical called Paradise Found, which Susan Stroman was choreographing and co-directing with Hal Prince — so she and I had met on initial meetings for that project. I think Doug Aibel, the artistic director of the Vineyard theatre, had suggested me to her for The Scottsboro

I don’t like the word “faggot.” I’ll use it — in context or, very rarely, to make a point — but I don’t think it’s worthy of reclamation. It’s a term with a violent, hate-charged history, and I loathe hearing it. That having been said, I would never suggest a comedian not use it. You can’t censor comedy — I mean, you can, but you

Hackers who broke into the International Monetary Fund's computer system may have been backed by a nation state, according to security experts.

They point to the sophisticated nature of the attack and the resources needed to develop it.

Malicious software, designed to steal confidential files, was installed on at least one IMF computer.

Although government involvement is widely suspected, the IMF has not released enough details to be sure.
Digital insider
Based on the limited information made public, it appears that the attack came from a specific PC that had been deliberately infected.

Hacker software was likely to have been installed on it in what is known as a spear-phishing attack, which sees highly targeted scam e-mails sent to specific victims.

A memo circulated internally at the IMF reported that "suspicious file transfers" had been detected.

Tom Kellerman, a security expert who has worked for the IMF and now sits on the board of the International Cyber Security Protection Alliance told Reuters news agency that it was "a targeted attack" with code written specifically to give a nation state a "digital insider presence" on the IMF network.

Graham Titherington, a security analyst with research firm Ovum agreed with the nation state

An important person once said, “A life full of success is a life less lived” — or maybe I just made that up. There is plenty of success going around, so here is a quick guide to counter that movement and keep things balanced in the world.
1. Don’t make a list.
Don’t list your goals and you won’t be disappointed when you don’t achieve those

Americans are becoming more isolationist. Two years ago, for the first time since the Vietnam War, almost half of all Americans polled by the Pew Research Center stated they would rather “mind [their] own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own.” Those reporting similar sentiments remain relatively constant today with marked increases in “isolationist sentiment among Republicans,” according to a Pew poll released on June 10th.
A recent Quinnipiac University poll underscores how deep this isolationist sentiment runs, particularly regarding U.S. involvement in Libya. 54 percent of those polled said the

Assessing the regional security implications of events in Syria is as difficult as understanding how its internal dynamics will resolve themselves. The revolutionary wave sweeping the Middle East has torn apart the old political order. Consequently, the strategic plans of the main parties are in disarray. That is certainly true of the United

The subprime mortgage disaster caused the greatest loss of wealth from communities of color in modern American history. When banks misled African-American, Asian-American and Latino borrowers into taking on crushing home mortgage debt they could never hope to pay back, we called it what it was: predatory lending.
Today, many for-profit colleges have picked up where the subprime lenders left off. They are using the same promise of the American dream as bait to trap vulnerable students — the vast majority of whom are women and minorities — into underperforming schools and saddling them with a lifetime of debt.
The costs to these students and taxpayers are tremendous. In the 2008-09 school year, the federal government invested more than $4 billion in grant aid to for-profit institutions, quadrupling its investment from just a decade earlier.
Despite this increased federal assistance, tuition at for-profit institutions continues to far outpace other schools, costing more than five times as much as community

Tracy Morgan is rightly facing a storm of criticism for a number of hostile statements he made against the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community in a recent comedy show in Nashville. Particularly alarming was his statement that, if his son were gay, he would stab him to death with a knife. Obviously we must condemn what Morgan has said, as well as make clear that there must be appropriate consequences for promoting violence against a child for being gay. However, we are mistaken if we think this is just about Tracy

Today we get to celebrate a significant milestone for global health equity.
The GAVI Alliance, an organization that helps make sure children in poor countries get the same vaccines that children in rich countries do, just met its fundraising target for the next four years. They did it despite the fact that donors everywhere are coping with budget crises.
This news comes on the heels of an announcement by several multinational and developing country vaccine manufacturers that they will be lowering the prices of some key vaccines. Together, these developments mean that we can save more than 4 million additional lives by

Seven contenders vying to be the Republican candidate in the 2012 US presidential elections are due to face off in the first major debate of the campaign cycle.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is the front-runner in the field bidding to challenge Barack Obama.

The nationally televised debate takes place in Manchester, New Hampshire.

The first primary elections to choose party candidates in the 2012 race do not take place until February.

"This marks the start of a new phase for the campaign as more people pay attention and the candidates begin to engage," Fergus Cullen, a former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party, was quoted by the Associated Press as

The Canadian consortium set up to thwart TMX's planned merger with the London Stock Exchange (LSE) has launched a hostile bid.

Maple Group has offered 3.7bn Canadian dollars ($3.8bn) cash for a 70% stake in the Toronto stock exchange owner.

The widely anticipated move comes three weeks before TMX shareholders are due to vote on the LSE's own offer.

Maple called on investors to vote down the LSE offer, which has been accepted by TMX

The US base at Camp Lemonier in Djibouti is a key operational asset in a troubled region, with al-Qaeda active in nearby Somalia and Yemen. Some 3,000 US troops, as well as armour, fighters and drones are based there. But the US is also experimenting with a different kind of military mission- soft power through soldiers as aid workers, in an effort to deny militant extremists support among Africa's poor. The BBC World Service's Dan Damon has been given rare access to the US operation.

In a one-room library in the remote Djiboutian town of Ali Sabieh, Capt Courtney Sanders, a US soldier from Mississippi, is teaching children how to read English.

She and her team helped build the library and hold regular conversation classes there.

Capt Sanders' Civil Affairs team is part of a counterinsurgency mission with a difference.

Instead of sending in fighting troops once trouble has started in a poor country, the US is getting its soldiers to work on projects that, it is hoped, will build enough stability and opportunity to encourage the people of East Africa to hold onto peace and not fight over scarce resources.

"Since 9/11, the US government has gone through a profound shift in its philosophy behind how operations are conducted in the Horn of Africa," says Col William Hollingsworth, one of the longest serving members of the Combined Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa, or CJTF-HOA, which is coordinating the humanitarian side of soldiering here.

"The 'bumper sticker' name for this is the 3D process," he says.

Defence, diplomacy and development are the 3 Ds, designed as a virtuous triangle of American power projected overseas.

James Swan, ambassador to Djibouti, talks about the US military's work in the country

Air strikes

The base for the CJTF, Camp Lemonier in Djibouti City, houses plenty of conventional military firepower.

In a hanger on the airstrip, there is a Predator

To the Readers of Huffington Post.
I was recently sent the following piece by a musician friend and want to give it wider readership. It expresses the mood of many artists working today in a country that barely tolerates their existence and denies them official support. It also reminds us that in good writing, irony still has a

If Abigail Washburn didn’t already have a job as an earnest clawhammer banjo player who takes adventurous side trips away from the bluegrass realm that has served her so well, the singer-songwriter could run for mayor of Telluride. And win.
Never missing a chance to play at the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, whether it’s on the main stage with Uncle Earl or the Sparrow Quartet or by her lonesome in Elks Park, Washburn squeals with delight when the subject of Colorado’s most revered music festival comes up.
She credits her former mentor in Uncle Earl,

College-educated women, as much as you may want children, you’re not having them when the Census Bureau thinks you should, and it’s your fault.
You went to college. You got an education. You went to work so that you could support yourself. And because of that, they’re going to point a finger at your uterus and say: “Delayer.”
Any woman who didn’t have a child by the time she hit 30 used to be called a “career woman” until someone knocked on 2011′s door and said that careers for single women, even married women, even moms, are not so much of a choice these days.
So now you’ve got a new name: ‘delayer.” “Women with a college degree are experiencing a “delayer boom,” the Census Bureau states in a report, “giving birth at a later age than other women but still having fewer children overall by the end of their childbearing years.”
Yes, we’re having children later, if at all — 18 percent of American women are not moms by age

I was surfing the web looking at different statutes of limitations and legalities for rape crimes, when I found an article that proposed a repeal of statutes for certain rape cases in the state of Connecticut. In the article, Governor Jodi Rell is quoted as saying of rape crime, “It is violence of the most personal and devastating kind, as brutal in its own right as murder.”
In the article, Rell points out that rape is not a crime of passion, but rather a violent crime, which is a common misconception for many. The term rape from the Latin word Rapere, originally had no sexual connotation, and meant “to seize or take by force.” It simply meant to steal. If you are someone or know someone who has been raped, you can testify that this definition is still applicable to the verb “rape” as we use it

Around the time I turned 40, I went to see a therapist, a man who knew me well. I tended call him once or twice a year on an as-needed (read: crisis) basis. I had reached the point of being able to sort through most problems on my own. But life had — as it occasionally does — grown suddenly

“Have you chosen your bridesmaids?”
When I got engaged earlier this year, I heard this question over and over, along with queries about dates, locations and wedding colors. While I was happy to commit to a Michigan wedding in the summer of 2012, I demurred from commenting on bridesmaids. I had many (in fact, too many) great female friends whom I could ask, so my reticence wasn’t due to lack of choices. Rather, it was the term bridesmaid that gave me

I just lost one of my best girlfriends. Her name was Sheila Ginesin.
Sheila died of melanoma. So, as we begin the summer season, of course I am reminded of the importance of using sun block and limiting sun

The other night, as we were getting ready to go out, my husband asked me once again if I really needed everything in my purse — a word I use loosely since the bag I carry is closer in size to a small suitcase than to a dainty little handbag. Because my 50-year-old hormones were raging, rather than simply saying, “Yes, honey, I do,” I proceeded to dump the contents to show him exactly what I was toting around with me.
Out poured my wallet (which was bulging with credit cards, frequent buyer cards, bank cards, gift cards, business cards, Sweet N’Low packets), cell phone, tissues, hairbrush, lip gloss, pens, Advil, Tums, checkbook, gum, sunglasses, keys, fragrance and dental floss. All necessities, right? The question wasn’t whether I needed to carry all this — it was why my husband didn’t!
And then the answer became obvious. I was carrying everything we both needed, including his keys, his cell phone, his wallet, his medication and his