When the Jackson family has an issue, it's no small affair. Cops were called to the Jackson family home after there was a reported domestic incident Monday afternoon. The paparazzi has obtained a picture of Jermaine Jackson and Janet Jackson in the middle of a scuffle outside the home after the Sheriff's deputies responded to the call.
According to sources, the deputies responded to a call regarding a domestic incident at Katherine Jackson's Calabasas home after an alleged physical assault. No word yet on whether Janet and Jermaine were the parties involved in the physical altercation.
The Jackson siblings have had some heated discussions regarding the execution of Michael Jackson's estate, after they, along with other siblings, signed a letter demanding that the executors of his estate step down. There was also some reference involving Katherine's mysterious trip to Arizona, which some have suggested was a "brainwashing mission."
Katherine had disappeared, leaving her grandkids behind, as Janet, Jermaine, Randy, Tito, and Rebbie tried to convince her that Michael's will was a fake. Regardless of whether the will in question is a fraud or not, the siblings would still get nothing from Michael's estate, because the previous left them nothing either.
According to TMZ, executors are drafting guardianship papers and court proceedings will take place within the next few days. The executors of the Jackson will feel it is their responsibility to put the kids first, since they are the primary beneficiaries of their late father's estate.
How do you feel about the actions of the Jackson family in the wake of this controversy?
Tags Blogger: Ikam Acosta, Celebrities, Janet Jackson, Jermaine Jackson, Katherine Jackson, michael jackson
Consumer finance agency says college students hurt by ?subprime-style? lending ? ? The Star-Ledger
Andrew Harrer/BloombergRichard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The agency along with the U.S. Department of Education has criticized the private student loan market and urged reforms.
Students grew indebted and went into default at the hands of a ?subprime-style? private loan market that contracted amid the financial crisis, a U.S. government report issued today concluded.
?Our findings reveal that students were yet another group of consumers that were hurt by the boom and bust,? Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said in an e-mailed statement. ?Too many student loan borrowers are struggling to pay off private student loans that they did not understand and cannot afford.?
Education Secretary Arne Duncan, whose department co-wrote the study, urged students to make federal loans their ?first option? to pay for college.
?Subprime-style lending went to college and now students are paying the price,? Duncan said in the statement. ?We still have some work to do to ensure that students who take out private student loans have the same kinds of protections offered by federal loans.?
Private loans can have higher interest rates and lack the same protections as federal loans, including fixed rates, deferments and income-based repayment programs. They represent about 15 percent of the $1 trillion educational debt load.
The CFPB was created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act to help consumers understand financial products including student loans, mortgages and credit cards. The act requires a report by it and the Education Department about the private loan industry one year after the CFPB officially started work on July 21, 2011.
Cordray recommended that Congress require schools to certify that private loans being offered do not exceed the borrower?s need and that it reconsider a 2005 law that made it harder to discharge student debt in bankruptcy. He also called for better publicly available data on private loans.
CFPB Authority
In a conference call with reporters, Cordray declined to specify what the CFPB might do with its authority under the Dodd-Frank law to regulate private loan terms.
Duncan made similar recommendations in the report. He also suggested Congress require schools to determine whether students exhaust their eligibility for federal loans which often have lower interest rates before resorting to private lenders.
The Obama administration has highlighted student lending issues as college-bound Americans grapple with the rising cost of a higher education. Earlier this year, the CFPB and the Education Department created a model form for outlining the costs to attend college, explaining the difference between loans that have to be repaid and grants that don?t.
Families are expected to consider private loans more as a financing option as the gap increases between the cost to attend college and federal loan limits.
Pre-Crisis Cycle
The report outlines a pre-crisis cycle that resembles the one from which the housing market is still recovering. Pushed by demand for asset-backed securities, many lenders made profits by originating and selling private student loans with declining regard for the borrowers? creditworthiness.
The market for private loans rose from $5 billion in 2001 to over $20 billion in 2008 before shrinking to less than $6 billion in 2011, by which time many investors had pulled out of the market.
Using data from lenders and other sources, the agencies found that students now owe $864 billion in federal loans and about $150 billion to private lenders. Students are in default on more than $8.1 billion, representing 850,000 distinct loans.
Richard Hunt, head of the Arlington, Virginia-based Consumer Bankers Association, which represents lenders, said companies see student loans as a part of the retail business, which is focusing on building deeper relationships with customers.
Borrower Preference
?Some people would rather deal with their bank than the federal government,? Hunt said in an interview. ?They do all their other banking there like auto or mortgage, and they can do student lending too.?
Hunt said the report should also have considered the impact of federal student loans, which he said constitute most of the market. ?The report does not provide a complete, clear and objective analysis of the student lending market,? he said in an e-mail.
Critics of the private lending business don?t dispute the need for it, since federal loans can?t cover the rising cost of a higher education. They do emphasize the need for students to use all of their federal options before getting private loans.
?It?s like taking a subprime mortgage if you qualify for a prime loan,? Pauline Abernathy, vice president at The Institute for College Access and Success, an advocacy group. ?There?s no reason to do it.?
Senate Bill
Senators Richard Durbin and Tom Harkin, Democrats from Illinois and Iowa, respectively, introduced a bill in March that would require colleges to counsel students about taking out the maximum in federal loans before taking out private educational debt.
About 30 lenders are issuing private loans today. Among the largest are SLM Corp., better known as Sallie Mae; Wells Fargo Co.; and Discover Financial Services, according to the consumer bankers group.
?Some banks have exited, some have stayed. Very, very few have entered,? said Hunt. ?But the ones that have stayed have seen a good retention rate and a slight increase in the portfolio.?
Private loans offer mostly variable rates that can be more than twice what some people pay in the federal program. The rate for unsubsidized Stafford loans for undergraduates is 6.8 percent. Several private lenders have introduced fixed-rate student loans.
In addition to banks, some quasi-state agencies can issue private loans, including the Iowa Student Loan Liquidity Corp., the Rhode Island Student Loan Authority and the South Carolina Student Loan Corp. Many of those nonprofit agencies offer fixed- rate loans.
In Turkey, the land of kebabs and sweet lokum, expanding waistlines are the target of a new anti-obesity campaign by the government to help one million Turks slim down over the next year.
The numbers are staggering: a little over one out of every three people is obese, according to health ministry figures. Even more when it comes to women.
?The fight against obesity starts now,? say publicity spots rolled out by the ministry to push back against lifestyle changes doctors believe are bulking up the 73 million population.
?Modern-day life has set constraints that make us eat faster and more without paying attention to the quality of the food we?re ingesting,? said paediatrician Murat Tuncer, a specialist in blood disorders.
But on the upside, he added, as a Mediterranean country Turkey has all the vegetables, fruit and fish required for a healthy diet.
The ministry sounded the alarm on the problem last month.
?Thirty-five percent of the population is obese,? said Health Minister Recep Akdag, who himself recently set an example by losing 22 pounds and recommends a walking regime of 10,000 steps a day.
With more and more Turks in treatment for obesity-triggered diseases such as hypertension and diabetes, the government has started pushing health and dietary tactics, along with the television and newspaper ads, to urge Turks to eat less and work to lose weight.
Unverified footage purports to show a government tank ablaze in Aleppo
Syria has said it will not use chemical weapons against its own people, but would do so against an external attack.
Acknowledging their existence for the first time, Damascus said the weapons, stored and secured by the armed forces, would never be used "inside Syria".
Rebels have told the BBC's Paul Wood in Syria that they are encouraged by the killing of four top security officials.
But the refugee crisis has deepened, and Iraq has announced it is opening its borders to help people flee.
An estimated 1.5 million people are homeless within Syria, according to the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, which says the number is rising.
'External aggression'
"Any chemical or biological weapons will never be used, I repeat, will never be used in the Syrian crisis, no matter what the internal developments in this crisis are," foreign ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi said, at a news conference broadcast on Syrian state TV.
"All varieties of these weapons are stored and secured by the Syrian armed forces and under its direct supervision, and will not be used unless Syria is subjected to external aggression."
Continue reading the main story
Syria's chemical weapons
Fourth largest stockpile in the world
Programme active since 1980s, US believes
Initially three weapons production plants, including Al Safir southeast of Aleppo, which has been redeveloped in recent years
Chemical plants said to be active near Homs and Hama from early 1990s
Suspected stocks of mustard gas, sarin gas and VX nerve gas from late 1990s
Source: Janes, US State Department, International Institute for Strategic Studies
Until now, Syria has never officially confirmed it has chemical weapons. It is not a signatory to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which outlaws production.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said "it would be reprehensible if anybody in Syria is contemplating use of such weapons of mass destruction like chemical weapons".
"Any talk about any use of any kind of a weapon like that is horrific and chilling," US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.
While Damascus's acknowledgement that it has such arms adds a new dimension, it is not in itself significant, says Leonard Spector of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in the US.
"This has been part of the military balance for decades," he has told the BBC news website.
The West and Israel have been deeply worried that Syria might use its stocks of chemical weapons, says the BBC's Jim Muir in neighbouring Lebanon.
On 16 July, the most senior Syrian politician to defect to the opposition told the BBC the government would not hesitate to use chemical weapons if it were cornered.
Nawaf al-Fares, Syria's former ambassador to Iraq, said unconfirmed reports indicated such weapons might have already been used.
However, the opposition has not reported any use of chemical weapons.
Aleppo offensive
Meanwhile, Arab League foreign ministers have urged President Assad to resign rapidly, offering him safe passage. They say the opposition should form a transitional government.
Continue reading the main story
At the scene
After days of walking, we reach a town which is tenuously in rebel hands. But the town is ringed by Syrian artillery. It starts up at various times of the day, targeting the orchards where rebel fighters hide.
During a pause in the shelling, a couple of fighters drive me and our translator around town, describing some of their recent clashes with army forces.
The town is deserted now, with plenty of debris on the streets, burned out cars, big holes in the walls from mortars and shells. One or two people are walking about though, so it seems people are still here.
The assassinations in Damascus were a major blow to the regime, the men tell me, but it has retaliated by targeting civilians.
Rebels from the Free Syrian Army (FSA) told our correspondent undercover with them near Damascus that the once-feared secret police is now a spent force, and the government is relying entirely on a weakened military.
They say the deaths of four men, including the defence minister and President Assad's brother-in-law, in a Damascus bombing on 18 July, were a severe blow to the government.
But parts of the capital that had fallen into rebel hands have been recaptured by government forces.
State TV on Monday showed images of troops going house-to-house and kicking down doors in Damascus, searching for rebel fighters.
Continued clashes were reported in the northern city of Aleppo.
Rebels launched a new offensive at the weekend, vowing to take the city completely and use it as a base for liberating the whole country.
Videos posted online on Monday showed jubilant rebel fighters in the Sakhour district.
State TV played down the scale of the violence, saying troops were merely hunting down "terrorists".
Most of the refugees fleeing the Syrian conflict are children
The most senior Turkish diplomat remaining in Syria, the consul in Aleppo, has been withdrawn for consultations.
Turkey and Lebanon have taken in thousands of refugees in camps near the Syrian border and the UN refugee agency says its staff are building a camp in Jordan as well.
Around 1,000 people are arriving in Jordan every day and the agency says the site at Za'atri should be able to cope with more than 100,000 refugees.
Tighter sanctions
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton has announced another 20m euros for "emergency medical care, shelter, food and water to those Syrians most affected by the ever-worsening crisis, both inside and outside the country".
The aid coincided with a decision by EU foreign ministers to tighten EU sanctions on the Syrian government.
EU member states will be required to send inspectors to board planes and ships on their territory believed to be carrying weapons or suspicious supplies to Damascus.
UK Foreign Secretary William Hague called for more support for the opposition, "including helping them prepare for Syria after Assad".
Russian airline Aeroflot is to end flights to Damascus from 6 August, citing lack of demand.
On Sunday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that at least 19,106 people had been killed since March 2011. The UN said in May that at least 10,000 people had been killed.
Syria blames the violence on foreign-backed "armed terrorist gangs".
In June, the Syrian government reported that 6,947 Syrians had died, including at least 3,211 civilians and 2,566 security forces personnel.
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