Homeless Beatings Widespread on YouTube

There are 86,000 videos available on YouTube depicting brutal beatings of homeless people.

Videos of homeless people, subject to brutal beatings and forced into humiliating acts, are apparently becoming more popular online according to a report released by the AFP. The videos are so horrible that US lawmakers are now taking action against the filmmakers, seeking harsher penalties for hate crimes against those poor and hungry souls living off the streets.
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Unshackling Prison Reform

Rioting inmates in Chino recently torched a dormitory, ravaged five other dorms and destroyed 1,200 beds. Roughly 1,300 convicts participated and 175 were injured. The state caught a break.

No guard was hurt. And no prisoner was killed.

"It turned out better than we thought," says Matthew Cate, the state's prison boss as secretary of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

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'Better to Be Deported Alive Than to Be Dead'

Ulises Martinez received the first call on a cold January morning, a stern voice shocking him through his cellphone. His in-laws had been taken hostage after a grueling border crossing from the Mexican desert into Arizona. Martinez would have to pay $3,000 to secure their release.

"I am not responsible for what will happen to them if you do not pay the money," the voice said. He would dismember the in-laws and dump them in the desert if Martinez didn't pay up. It was $3,000 Martinez, a 40-year-old Alexandria mechanic with a wife and toddler, didn't have and couldn't get.


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Quantcast 'Which Way Home' tracks child migrants' dangerous journeys

It was the anguish of a 9-year-old child that made Rebecca Cammisa vow to press on.

When the filmmaker first met the Honduran boy named José at a detention center in southern Mexico, he was alone, scared and crying. He was one of an estimated tens of thousands of Latin American children who annually try to cross illegally into the United States, many by riding the tops of railroad freight cars, most in search of work or missing parents.


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Stimulus Money to Help Parents Find Work to Pay Child Support

Federal stimulus money has created 21 jobs in the state, that in turn helps parents find jobs so they can pay child support. The Fatherhood Program is a state-provided service that helps unemployed moms and dads find work by paying for job training and connecting them with job placement resources in their communities. Its staff is doubling. With a couple hundred thousand dollars in federal stimulus money, the Department of Human Services is hiring 21 more agents to act as advocates for unemployed parents.

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Stimulus funds start flowing locally to help weatherize low-income homes

The Lovato family's 1954 brick home in central Phoenix is one of the first in Arizona to receive federal stimulus money aimed at making lower- income residences more energy efficient.

With the mercury in 100-plus-degree territory, construction workers Wednesday replaced a leaky duct system, upgraded air-conditioning units and spread insulation in the attic of a home in the St. Gregory neighborhood, the first sign weatherization stimulus dollars finally are flowing into the local economy.

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More low-income kids could be college boun

Washington is having great success so far with a new program designed to get low-income kids planning early for a college education. The state-wide program is called College Bound, and even though it has only been around for two years, this year it has already seen its enrollment double from last year. By catching kids early in their school career, while they still have time to get prepared for college, College Bound promises middle school kids who are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch a scholarship covering tuition and books at Washington’s two- and four-year public colleges and universities, and many of its private schools too.

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Workforce Solutions receives stimulus funds to pay for child care

San Antonio-area parents in need of child care as they look for a job, go to school or seek job training will have help from the federal government.

Workforce Solutions Alamo received $17 million from the federal government as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to fund up to 22 months of child care for qualified parents. The goal of the investment is to provide available child care to single or low-income parents as they either look for jobs or upgrade their skills to get better jobs. Parents will pay a portion of the cost of child care based on their income level and number of children at home.

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