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...plan, unveiled Friday, March 26, banks will be asked to lower the principal loan balance for certain homeowners whose mortgages exceed the value of their homes. The loans would be refinanced as mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), fully backed by the government. In the past, loan modifications under the $50 billion federal Home Modification Program (HAMP) involved primarily reducing interest rates or lengthening the term of the mortgage, and most did not entail a government guarantee. (See high-end homes that won't sell...
Initial reactions to the plan are mixed. Bob Curran, managing director of Fitch Ratings, calls it a step in the right direction. He says principal reductions will likely be more effective in modifying loans than past efforts that involved only interest-rate cuts and extensions of loan terms. "The loan-modification effort has not been very successful to this point in time," he says. However, he believes that only a small fraction of troubled homeowners will qualify for the program. "It will probably help some additional portion of the public, but I'm not sure it's enough to make...
...loss, the apes face threats from human population growth and a surge in the bush-meat trade - locals and organized traders killing wildlife to eat and sell - along with the spread of the Ebola virus, estimated to have killed about a third of the world's gorillas in the past 15 years. (Read why Ebola is killing gorillas...
...wake of three apparent suicides at Cornell University in the past six weeks, members of the mental health community at Harvard reaffirmed their commitment to providing support for students at risk but disagreed on the need to take immediate steps in response...
...church staunchly continue to defend the Pope. They say Benedict has pushed for far greater transparency and penitence than his predecessor, and certainly more than many of the local bishops who should have been the ones managing the individual cases. And so far, each new revelation from Ratzinger's past seems to show more administrative detachment than bad judgment from the future Pope - though that is still a surprising hands-off management style for the man who would earn a reputation as a micromanager as he rose to become the éminence grise in John Paul II's Vatican...