More female veterans are winding up homeless, By Bryan Bender, July 6, 2009, Boston Globe: “The number of female service members who have become homeless after leaving the military has jumped dramatically in recent years, according to new government estimates, presenting the Veterans Administration with a challenge as it struggles to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.  As more women serve in combat zones, the share of female veterans who end up homeless, while still relatively small at an estimated 6,500, has nearly doubled over the last decade, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs…”

Tracking the recession: States push job training, By Christine Vestal, July 3, 2009, Stateline.org: “Everyone agrees the way out of this recession is jobs. But even as the recession begins to lift and stimulus projects generate jobs, many unemployed workers will have few prospects because their skills won’t match new openings.  That’s where state workforce agencies come in…”

Despair flows as fields go dry and unemployment rises, By Alana Semuels, July 6, 2009, Los Angeles Times: “Water built the semi-arid San Joaquin Valley into an agricultural powerhouse. Drought and irrigation battles now threaten to turn huge swaths of it into a dust bowl.  Farmers have idled half a million acres of once-productive ground and are laying off legions of farmhands. That’s sending joblessness soaring in a region already plagued by chronic poverty…”

Welfare checks to increase for first time in 19 years, By Julie Bosman, July 5, 2009, New York Times: “The last time welfare recipients in New York saw an increase in their basic cash allowance, Derek Jeter was in high school, a subway token cost $1.15 and David N. Dinkins had just been sworn in as mayor.  Nineteen years later, they will see another long-awaited increase beginning this month, bringing a subsidy for a typical family of three to $321 a month, from $291, city and state officials said…”

Safety net is fraying for the very poor, By Erik Eckholm, July 4, 2009, New York Times: “Government ’safety net’ programs like Social Security and food stamps have pulled growing numbers of Americans out of poverty since the mid-1990s. But even before the current recession, these programs were providing less help to the most desperately poor, mainly nonworking families with children, according to a new study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a private group in Washington…”

• Climate change shifting seasons is causing widespread hunger, By Louise Gray, July 6, 2009, The Telegraph: “The regular arrival of the rains or a dry period to harvest staple crops ensures the majority of people around the world can grow enough food to eat. But a new report by Oxfam has found that poor farmers in developing countries are increasingly finding the growing season is changing as a consequence of climate change…”
• Third World hardest hit by climate change, report finds, By Sue Bailey, July 6, 2009, The Globe and Mail: “The globe’s richest powerhouses must get serious about how First World pollution is spreading disease and hunger in the poorest countries, a new report says. Oxfam International is calling for drastic action on global warming as Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other Group of Eight leaders gather tomorow in Italy…”