| DeNaples' priest had deep debt
On a take-home pay of $880 a month, the Rev. Joseph Sica amassed debts of $218,000.
And he owed the vast bulk of the money -- $148,000 -- to a bank headed by his friend, Louis DeNaples, owner of Mount Airy Casino Resort.
How Sica qualified for credit cards, auto and personal loans on a Roman Catholic priest's income, and what he spent all the money on, are mysteries unaddressed by the bankruptcy court papers that document his financial hole.
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Centre to double grant for rural health: Minister
The Centre will set up a National Urban Health Mission on the lines of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) next year. This was disclosed by the Punjab health minister Laxmi Kanta Chawla after her meeting with the union health minister in New Delhi yesterday. Talking to newsmen at a rest house here today, Chawla said the NRHM had provided a grant of Rs 261 crore and the state government would contribute Rs 28 crore for various health projects in rural areas of the state. The amount would be doubled next year, Chawla added. She said the infant death rate in Punjab was 40 per 1,000, while the national-level ratio was 58 per 1,000. She said she had initiated a campaign to save motherhood and reduce the ratio of infant deaths to 30 per 1,000 within a year. She disclosed that 15,000 women, including daughters and daughters-in-law, from various villages of the state would be provided proper training for this purpose.
Tax refund loan costs lower
Consumers who take out refund anticipation loans this year will probably pay less, but critics of the controversial loans say they are still a big drain on income. Refund anticipation loans, or RALs, are short-term bank loans — usually from 7 to 14 days — secured by a taxpayer's expected refund. They are usually obtained for a fee through a tax preparation company. Tax preparers say RALs offer convenience and a faster way to get a tax refund. Taxpayers can also avoid upfront tax preparation fees by having them withheld from the loan amount. But under pressure from critics, most big-name professional tax preparation organizations have lowered or even eliminated some fees. Fees charged for RALs in the past often amounted to an effective annual interest rate of 50 percent to 500 percent.
PNC aids bid to prevent foreclosures
PNC Financial Services Group is putting up $5 million to jump-start a foreclosure-prevention fund for homeowners in Southeastern Pennsylvania. "As Pennsylvania's largest financial institution, we felt it was necessary to step in," PNC Bank regional president J. William Mills II said yesterday during a news conference with city and state officials at Philadelphia City Hall. The Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency will use PNC's 15-year, low-interest loan to buy severely delinquent mortgages - sometimes at a discount - from private lenders. The agency then will set up affordable repayment plans for the borrowers and contribute some of the interest income from those loans to a reserve fund to cover potential losses. The housing-finance agency then will use the loss-reserve fund, which already has $1 million each from Philadelphia's Neighborhood Transformation Initiative and the housing agency, as a basis for borrowing money in the bond market, said Brian Hudson, executive director of the state housing agency.
Can’t get enough sleep? Blame your cell phone
The study indicates that during laboratory exposure to 884 MHz wireless signals, components of sleep, believed to be important for recovery from daily wear and tear, are adversely affected," says consultant, Critical care & Sleep, Dr Rajesh Chawla. .
TBI task force identifies shortfalls in care
The task force of 17 medical professionals, writers and researchers from the Army, Marine Corps and Air Force conducted a review of policies governing TBI patient care, including diagnosis, education, research and case management. The study was conducted between January and May. Task force members visited dozens of sites in the U.S., Germany and Puerto Rico, where they interviewed soldiers, family members, caregivers and TBI experts in and out of the military system. Though the task force found that the Army has made important progress in the identification and treatment of severe or penetrating TBI, the mild form of the injury, similar to a concussion with symptoms such as headache, sleeplessness or grogginess, has been harder to detect and catalog. Troopers exposed to blasts are checked immediately after the event in theater through a standardized test called the military acute concussion evaluation, a screening tool that uses a series of questions and observations by medical personnel to make an initial evaluation.
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