Today – just the headlines

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UPDATE: Yesterday’s city council hearing on increasing taxes on businesses along St. Paul’s University Avenue/Central Corridor featured lots of testimony from business owners about the devastating effects of adding increased taxes to the burdens the Central Corridor is already imposing on them, and a decision to postpone a decision – for two weeks. (Pioneer Press)

Today’s headlines include a renewed push for a foreclosure mediation bill in MN (vetoed last year by T-Paw) and, sadly, escalating war news from Afghanistan, Iraq and Sudan. Good news from Wisconsin, though – deerhunters shot fewer buildings this year.

I’m trying to carve out some time for a few longer posts, but no luck yet – and with heavy-duty family time (Avatar, here we come!), today doesn’t look promising either. So – read on for the headlines. 

Headlines – January 7, 2010

• Legislators and MN Attorney General Lori Swanson are pushing for re-passage of a foreclosure mediation bill vetoed by Governor Pawlenty last year: (Star Tribune)

As of Nov. 30, there were 35,091 foreclosures in Minnesota in 2009, according to RealtyTrac. Homeowners lost $7.8 billion in value in the Twin Cities metro area alone last year, reported real estate information provider Zillow.com; 15.5 percent of Minnesotans with a mortgage owe more than their home is worth. …

Swanson’s office decided to step in after receiving numerous complaints from borrowers who have sought loan modifications only to have their paperwork lost repeatedly, their messages never returned and their questions go unanswered.

• Southern Sudan violence escalates, with 140 killed last week, more than in the Darfur region. BBC

• Seven killed in Afghan suicide bombing that apparently targeted security officials in eastern city. BBC

• A bomb blast in Afghanistan’s southeastern Khost province wounded the acting governor and seven others. This is the province where a suicide bomber killed seven CIA employees and one Jordanian intelligence employee last week. (NYT)

Khost, which borders on the remote mountainous Pakistani region of North Waziristan, has been a central front between U.S. forces and militants, especially a Taliban-allied faction led by former anti-Soviet guerrilla chief Jalaluddin Haqqani.

• Bombing in Iraq’s Anbar province kills seven (NYT)

A series of explosions struck the houses of an antiterrorism official and his relatives in Anbar Province in western Iraq on Thursday, killing at least seven people and underlining the precarious situation there.