by John Hechinger y Janet Lorin

College graduates, wearing caps and gowns, walk into House Majority Leader John Boehner’s office on Capitol Hill to deliver mock diplomas with more than 10,000 signatures of students and parents demanding an affordable college education. (PHOTO BY MARK WILSON)

More than one in 10 borrowers defaulted on their federal student loans, intensifying concern about a generation hobbled by $1 trillion in debt and the role of colleges in jacking up costs.

The default rate, for the first three years that students are required to make payments, was 13.4 percent, with for-profit colleges reporting the worst results, the U.S. Education Department said today.

The Education Department has revamped the way it reports student-loan defaults, which the government said had reached the highest level in 14 years. Previously, the agency reported the rate only for the first two years payments are required. Congress demanded a more comprehensive measure because of concern that colleges counsel students to defer payments to make default rates appear low.

“Default rates are the tip of the iceberg of borrower distress,” said Pauline Abernathy, vice president of The Institute for College Access & Success, a nonprofit based in Oakland, California.

The data follows complaints that commission-driven debt collectors the government hires aren’t telling students about affordable options to repay their debt, especially a plan that lets them make payments tied to their incomes. Students have borrowed $1 trillion to pay for higher education, surpassing credit-card debt.

More Disclosure

Congress is also examining the often deceptive letters that college financial-aid offices send to admitted students that play down the cost of attendance by making government loans seem like grants. Barack Obama’s administration, as well as Republicans and Democrats in Congress, are calling for more disclosure about college costs and student outcomes.

On the stump, President Obama has touted an executive order that eases the process for applying for a loan program that lets students make lower payments tied to their income — easing their burden and making it less likely they will default.

Republican challenger Mitt Romney said that initiative encourages students to take on more debt. Romney advocates cutting education regulation and encouraging colleges to become more efficient, lowering costs partly through the use of online instruction.

The government tracks default data to protect taxpayers and keep students from attending programs that don’t prepare them for employment.

School Accountability

“We continue to be concerned about default rates and want to ensure that all borrowers have the tools to manage their debt,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a statement. “In addition to helping borrowers, we will also hold schools accountable for ensuring their students are not saddled with unmanageable student loan debt.”

Under the new three-year measure, colleges with default rates of 30 percent or more for three consecutive years risk losing eligibility for federal financial aid. Schools can also be barred from the program if the rate balloons to 40 percent in a single year. The sanctions don’t take effect until results are released in 2014.

Today’s report covers the three years through Sept. 30, 2011. For all colleges, the 13.4 percent rate exceeded the two- year rate of 9.1 percent — the worst in 14 years — and up from 8.8 percent a year earlier.

By the new three-year yardstick, the default rate at for- profit colleges was 22.7 percent. Based on the two-year period, they reported a 12.9 percent default rate.

Under the three-year-period, public colleges reported an 11 percent rate while private nonprofit schools had a rate of 7.5 percent.

Rate Manipulation

Some for-profit colleges encourage students to defer payments in their early years, in an effort to keep down default rates that could jeopardize their federal funding, according to a report by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions released in July.

The report accused for-profits of using the tactic to manipulate their default rates. It singled out the role of SLM Corp. (SLM), the largest U.S. studentloan company commonly known as Sallie Mae. A subsidiary, General Revenue Corp. counsels for- profit colleges on keeping down default rates. University of Phoenix, owned by Apollo Group Inc. (APOL), is a customer, according to the Congressional report.

Apollo, SLM

Apollo and Sallie Mae use loan forbearance ­as “a last resort,” Patricia Nash Christel, a spokeswoman for Sallie Mae, and Richard Castellano, an Apollo spokesman, said in separate e- mails. Apollo provides financial incentives for those administering its loans to get students into repayment plans, rather than defer payments, Castellano said.

“Congress has encouraged schools to reduce default rates, and we help them achieve that goal,” Christel said. Phoenix-based Apollo, the largest for-profit college company, fell 0.65 percent to $29.05 at the close in New York. The stock has declined 31 percent in the past year.

For-profit colleges cater to working adults and firstgeneration college students, Steve Gunderson, president of the Washington-based Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, said in a statement about the default rates. The industry has said the demographics of its students account for its schools’ higher default rates.

The new data suggest that student-loan debt may damage students’ economic prospects for many years, said Stephen Rose, a labor economist at Georgetown University.

“The more people having trouble today means that more people will have trouble in the future because they are starting out building up a larger balance, and they’re not paying them off,” Rose said in a telephone interview.

To contact the reporters on this story: John Hechinger in Boston at jhechinger@bloomberg.net; Janet Lorin in New York jlorin@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Lisa Wolfson at lwolfson@bloomberg.net.

by J. D. Heyes

The fact that most fast foods are not a smart, healthy diet choice is well documented by now. Still, it never ceases to amaze us here at Natural News just what kind of harmful garbage fast food companies put in some of their most popular items.

Take the McRib sandwich from McDonald’s. Considering its ingredients it’s a good thing that the fast food chain only offers it once in a while.

According to the restaurant’s website, here are just three of the 70 chemicals and ingredients the sandwich contains: azodicarbonamide, ammonium sulfate and polysorbate 80.

Chock full of…chemicals

“These components are in small enough quantities to be innocuous. But it’s still a little disconcerting to know that, for example, azodicarbonamide, a flour-bleaching agent that is most commonly used in the manufacture of foamed plastics like in gym mats and the soles of shoes, is found in the McRib bun,” Time magazine reported, noting that the compound is banned in Europe and Australia as an additive to foods (the U.S., meanwhile, limits it to 45 parts per million in commercial flour products, according to an analysis of laboratory testing).

In fact, the United Kingdom’s Health and Safety Executive has classified azodicarbonamide as a “respiratory sensitizer” that can potentially contribute to asthma via exposure on the job.

Why the attention? Because the sandwich has developed a sort of cultlike following since it was first introduced, writes Brad Tuttle at  Time’s Moneyland. “Few fast food menu items can say they have their own Facebook page. Then again, few fast food items have experienced the roller coaster-like ups and downs of the McRib,” he writes.

“First introduced in 1982, the sandwich first disappeared in 1985, but then has periodically resurfaced in McDonald’s in the U.S. and abroad. The McRib’s cultlike following has generated not only Facebook pages, but McRib Locator websites and a Twitter account.”

Perhaps if more Americans actually knew what was in a McRib they would be far less eager to find one. Besides the presence of a plethora of questionable ingredients, the sandwich itself is just over the top in terms of sodium content (980 mg – more than half of the daily recommended allowance) and saturated fat (10 g – not exactly heart-healthy).

Even ‘healthy’ fast food… isn’t

The McRib revelations go hand in hand with earlier field research that has found fast food wanting in terms of providing consumers with a healthy choice – even when the same fast food restaurants are hawking supposedly “healthy” choices.

Again, consider Mc-Donald’s. New York Times food writer Mark Bittman wrote that the chain’s Fruit & Maple Oatmeal, which was introduced in early 2011, isn’t even ‘marginally’ better for you, in terms of caloric intake, saturated fats, etc., despite being sold as a “bowl full of wholesome.”

The oatmeal and Mc- Donald’s story broke late last year, when Mickey D’s, in its ongoing effort to tell us that it’s offering “a selection of balanced choices” … began to sell the cereal.

Yet in typical McDonald’s fashion, the company is doing everything it can to turn oatmeal into yet another bad choice. … A more accurate description than “100 percent natural wholegrain oats,” “plump raisins,” “sweet cranberries” and “crisp fresh apples” would be “oats, sugar, sweetened dried fruit, cream and 11 weird ingredients you would never keep in your kitchen.”

Some people might even justify this by saying that buying the McDonald’s version of oatmeal is at least much more convenient­than making it at home, but many of those people likely have never made oatmeal at home. Besides, what about the waiting in line and the additional cost?

Other so-called “healthy foods” that are being misrepresented by fast-food chains include:

— McDonald’s Premium Caesar Salad with Grilled Chicken (220 cal., 6 g of fat and 5 g of sugar per serving – without the dressing).

— Jamba Juice’s Mango Mantra Light Smoothie (Mango-a-go-go contains 85g of sugar – far above the daily limit of 34g of added sugar for women and 36g for men that is recommended by the American Heart Association).

— Subway’s Sweet Onion Chicken Teriyaki Sandwich (contains 760 cal. and 2,020 mg of sodium – that’s 520 mg more salt than the USDA recommends that children, those with high blood pressure, the elderly and African Americans should consume in an entire day; it also contains 34 grams of sugar, all you should reasonably have in a single day).

by the El Reportero’s wire services

Antonio Trejo

Honduran attorney Antonio Trejo, who represented peasants who have attempted to reclaim land in the Caribbean province of Colon, was murdered by unknown killers in Tegucigalpa, a human rights group announced Sunday.

Trejo was the legal adviser to the MARCA land reclamation movement and was shot to death Saturday night near the Toncontin International Airport, the Committee of Relatives of Disappeared Detainees in Honduras, or Cofadeh, said.

According to the versions of the murder published in the local media, Trejo attended a wedding on Saturday night in the southern capital neighborhood of America near the airport and when he left the noisy venue to answer a cell phone call he had received he was riddled with bullets by gunmen waiting outside.

Trejo was taken to the state-run Escuela Hospital, where he died, the Cofadeh report added.

The attorney was brought to trial by the Public Ministry in August after a peasant demonstration in the capital in which the protesters, some of them from MARCA, were demanding land.

The protest was broken up by the National Police and several of the demonstrators were injured in the melee.

Trejo, Confadeh said, “played a significant role in the defense of the right to land by peasant cooperatives affiliated with MARCA: San Isidro, Despertar, San Esteban and La Trinidad.”

The attorney presented “legal motions for several years until he got a civil judge to issue a ruling that returned the lands to the peasants on June 29 of this year, 18 years after they were taken from them by landowners Miguel Facusse and Rene Morales,” Cofadeh said.

However, according to the humanitarian organization, during a Supreme Court recess, the landowners had their lawyers introduce a motion that was resolved in an illegal manner to benefit them.

On July 18, Trejo said at a press conference at Cofadeh headquarters that the landowners were influence peddling in the courts to reverse a ruling returning the lands to the MARCA peasants.

In Bajo Aguan, one of the most fertile areas of Honduras, groups of peasants are demanding land from the government. It is a tense region with frequent armed clashes between laborers and security guards working for local landowners and over the past three years more than 60 people have been killed.

The violence has not fallen off despite the fact that the government signed an agreement with the landholders to buy more than 4,000 hectares (10,000 acres), some of it cultivated with African palm, from which palm oil is extracted, to return to the peasants.

Honduran authorities say that the clashes that continue to occur in the region are being provoked by armed criminal bands who say they are peasants.

Other groups of laborers who are demanding land are affiliated with the Unified Movement of Peasants of Aguan, or MUCA.

­(Reported by Hispanically Speaking News).

But your help still needed!

by Mike Adams
Natural News

Proposition 37, the GMO labeling bill that’s on the ballot in California, is polling 2-to-1 in favor of passing, the LA Times is now reporting. 61 percent of registered voters currently support GMO labeling, and only 25 percent oppose it.

This high support rate is the result of a massive, decentralized grassroots effort involving non-profits, independent news outlets (like Natural News), educators like Jeffrey Smith, activists like Ronnie Cummins, large financial donors like Dr. Mercola, honest companies like Dr. Bronner, and countless volunteers who have donated their time, money and effort to get Proposition 37 passed.

But this race is nowhere near over. Huge corporations are, of course, lined up in opposition of Proposition 37 because they don’t want you to know that you’re eating GMO. Monsanto, Dupont, Coca-Cola, Pepsico and all the other usual suspects have funneled tens of millions of dollars into defeating Prop 37, and their ads have only begun to start running.

Over the next four weeks, these corporate liars are going to pummel California voters with a barrage of disinformation about Proposition 37 in a desperate bid to defeat this ballot measure. “Their upcoming avalanche of attack ads will try to scare voters into believing food costs will go up if Proposition 37 passes, using bogus figures from bogus ‘studies’ funded by their own campaign,” explained Gary Ruskin, campaign manager for YES on 37.

What’s really funny about these attack ads, by the way, is that they never use the words “genetically modified” or “GMO” because they know people don’t want GMO! So they try to pretend Prop 37 is about something else entirely, hoping to confuse voters into voting it down.

Your help is desperately needed in this final hour

Right now, we’ve got to fight money with money. We’ve already achieved huge success just getting this measure on the ballot. We’ve waged a wildly successful grassroots activism campaign on the internet, spreading the message of GMO labeling across Facebook, Twitter, email, YouTube and websites. This victory is now within reach, and it would be one of the most significant consumer victories in the history of America!

Right now, I urge you to donate to the YES on 37 campaign. Click here to go to the donation page.

Every donation helps, even $7, $15 or $20. Please consider donating what you can, even if you don’t live in California. Why? Because if this measure passes in California, it could very well halt the use of GMOs nationwide! Proposition 37 is the leverage point for achieving a sweeping victory against the hidden use of GMOs in our food across the nation.

­So please, to the extent you can, donate NOW to Yes on 37.

What we’re doing to help support Proposition 37

As I’m writing this story, right now, I’m donating $1,000 to this campaign from my own personal funds. But that’s just a small drop in the bucket compared to what we’re now working on raising with the opening of our new online store, the Natural News Store, which is now open for business and is shipping out orders right now!

A portion of every sale between now and October 26th is being donated to help support Proposition 37. So with every purchase of the superfoods, nutritional supplements and other items we have available at the store, you also help support Proposition 37. Check out our amazing liquid Turmeric extract, by the way, which is unique in the industry.

Finally, I’m also finishing up a new song and music video called “Just Label It” which could be launched as early as one week from today. That song and music video also supports Proposition 37 and helps educate people about why we need GMO labels in our food.

This will be my second song on the issue of GMO. See my previous song and music video entitled, “Just Say No to GMO” at:

http://www.naturalnews.com/NoGMO.html.

­Cities across the U.S. are marketing “micro”-apartments scarcely bigger than jail cells. Any takers? (It’s for the Earth.)

by Melissa Melton

Infowars.com

An illustration of the houses that the governing elite will impose through the government that serves their interests, to the American people.

While some people are still debating whether or not the United Nations’ Agenda 21 plan is real, major cities all over the country are about to offer more proof of its implementation in the form of tiny, “shoebox-style” housing units barely big enough for one person to live in.

New York and Boston are already beta testing itty bitty apartments, and yesterday the LA Times reported that San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors is considering official revisions to the city’s building code to allow for even less living space.

If approved, the new quarters — branded as “affordable by design” — would drop minimum housing code requirements to a mere 220 square feet from 290, only 150 of which could be considered actual living space (unless sleeping in a closet counts). To give some perspective on just how small 220 square feet of space really is, the inside of an average school bus is approximately 250 square feet. A person’s entire apartment would be small enough to fit inside the bus — bathroom, kitchen, and closet included. This vision of an austere lifestyle could hardly accommodate one person, let alone someone with a spouse, children, or pets.

While such housing is designed to dissuade people from owning a car in favor of bicycles and mass transit use, opponents are right to note that such a move could spike population density and strain both community spaces and public transportation systems.

The question remains, will anyone actually go along with this scheme? In a recent man-on-the-street report for Infowars Nightly News, I asked people if they would live in these prison-like units if it would benefit the Earth. As you can see below, many said they would:

Although such ridiculously small spaces are being publicized as cheaper, more plentiful housing that will help protect the environment, the intent behind such moves is clear. Using adjectives like “micro” to sell tiny living spaces as cute and trendy does not change the fact that concentrating growth and density in urban areas is one of the main tenets of Agenda 21′s control grid takeover.

Many have pointed out the fact that these initial developments are no big deal because people residing in large metro areas like New York City and San Francisco already live in smaller places on average.

However, the truth is that the practice of building jail cell-sized accommodations under Agenda 21 was never intended to stop at just big cities — this is only the beginning.

The ultimate plan is a trickle down takeover where “smart growth” is concentrated in every city in the country. As extensively reported on by Infowars.com, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in league with the Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are gracing towns all across the U.S. with grants to promote sustainable development. People are told it is in their community’s best interest to focus a town’s resources on eco-friendly “concentrated and balanced growth.” This is despite the fact that some of these towns, such as Elgin, Texas, have less than 9,000 people residing in them.

The ultimate goal of Agenda 21 is to end national sovereignty and private property rights, restructure the family unit, and increase limitations on individual movement and opportunity. The plan works at the local level and uses Delphi technique manipulation and “green guilt” — the idea that humans are overpopulating the Earth, causing global warming, and straining resources regardless of a lack of valid proof to substantiate such a claim — to repeatedly force feed people the idea that living in a hole in the wall is the best thing they can do for the environment.

One brazen planner at a recent Hutto, Texas sustainable development meeting told the townspeople, “This is your vision for your community,” even though the plans had been put in motion by unelected local boards years before they were even made public.

­As with the new rules imposed by Mayor Bloomberg in New York City which would cut salt in restaurant food and ban the purchase of sugary drinks over 16 ounces, all of these new policies and regulations are about one thing: control. Herding people into smaller and smaller housing in tighter and tighter areas allows them to be more easily controlled while the system ratchets up its plan for domination.

So, is you and your family and neighbors living in a 220-square-foot space in a densely populated urban area with limited freedom under the tight grip of government control “your vision for your community”?

by Jon Rappoport
Natural News

During his 2008 campaign for president, Barack Obama transmitted signals that he understood the GMO issue. Several key anti-GMO activists were impressed. They thought Obama, once in the White House, would listen to their concerns and act on them.

These activists weren’t just reading tea leaves. On the campaign trail, Obama said: “Let folks know when their food is genetically modified, because Americans have a right to know what they’re buying.”

Making the distinction between GMO and non-GMO was certainly an indication that Obama, unlike the FDA and USDA, saw there was an important line to draw in the sand.

Beyond that, Obama was promising a new era of transparency in government. He was adamant in promising that, if elected, his administration wouldn’t do business in “the old way.” He would be “responsive to people’s needs.” Then came the reality.

After the election, and during Obama’s term as president, people who had been working to label GMO food and warn the public of its huge dangers were shocked to the core. They saw Obama had been pulling a bait and switch.

The new president filled key posts with Monsanto people, in federal agencies that wield tremendous force in food issues, the USDA and the FDA:

At the USDA, as the director of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Roger Beachy, former director of the Monsanto Danforth Center.

As deputy commissioner of the FDA, the new food-safety-issues czar, the infamous Michael Taylor, former vice-president for public policy for Monsanto. Taylor had been instrumental in getting approval for Monsanto’s genetically engineered bovine growth hormone.

As commissioner of the USDA, Iowa governor, Tom Vilsack. Vilsack had set up a national group, the Governors’ Biotechnology Partnership, and had been given a Governor of the Year Award by the Biotechnology Industry Organization, whose members include Monsanto.

As the new Agriculture Trade Representative, who would push GMOs for export, Islam Siddiqui, a former Monsanto lobbyist. As the new counsel for the USDA, Ramona Romero, who had been corporate counsel for another biotech giant, DuPont.

As the new head of the USAID, Rajiv Shah, who had preciously worked in key positions for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a major funder of GMO agriculture research.

We should also remember that Obama’s secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, once worked for the Rose law firm. That firm was counsel to Monsanto.

Obama nominated Elena Kagan to the US Supreme Court. Kagan, as federal solicitor general, had previously argued for Monsanto in the Monsanto v. Geertson seed case before the Supreme Court.

The deck was stacked. Obama hadn’t simply made honest mistakes. Obama hadn’t just failed to exercise proper oversight in selecting appointees. He wasn’t just experiencing a failure of short-term memory. He was staking out territory on behalf of Monsanto and other GMO corporate giants.

And now let us look at what key Obama appointees have wrought for their true bosses. Let’s see what GMO crops have walked through the open door of the Obama presidency. Monsanto GMO alfalfa.

Monsanto GMO sugar beets.

Monsanto GMO Bt soy bean.

Coming soon: Monsanto’s GMO sweet corn.

Syngenta GMO corn for ethanol.

Syngenta GMO s­tacked corn.

Pioneer GMO soybean.

Syngenta GMO Bt cotton.

Bayer GMO cotton.

ATryn, an anti-clotting agent from the milk of transgenic goats.

A GMO papaya strain.

And perhaps, soon, genetically engineered salmon and apples.

This is an extraordinary parade. It, in fact, makes Barack Obama the most GMO-dedicated politician in America.

You don’t attain that position through errors or oversights. Obama was, all along, a stealth operative on behalf of Monsanto, biotech, GMOs, and corporate control of the future of agriculture.

From this perspective, Michelle Obama’s campaign for home gardens and clean nutritious food suddenly looks like a diversion, a cover story floated to obscure what her husband has actually been doing.

Nor does it seem coincidental that two of the Obama’s biggest supporters, Bill Gates and George Soros, purchased 900,000 and 500,000 shares of Monsanto, respectively, in 2010. Because this is an election season, people will say, “But what about Romney? Is he any better?” I see no indication that he is. The point, however, is that we are talking about a sitting president here, a president who presented himself, and was believed by many to be, an extraordinary departure from politics as usual. Not only was that a wrong assessment, Obama was lying all along. He was, and he still is, Monsanto’s man in Washington.

To those people who fight for GMO labeling, and against the decimation of the food supply and the destruction of human health, but still believe Obama is a beacon in bleak times: W a k e u p .