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A convicted murderer in a Cincinnati prison has been awarded $7,500 of taxpayer money after being disfigured in a dog bite incident while serving time. The Columbus Dispatch reports that the dog bite attack occurred last year while inmate Vincent Doan was participating in a state prison adopt-a-dog program. He consequently sued prison officials; Doan and the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction reached a settlement last week. Doan was convicted of the kidnapping and murder of his ex-girlfriend Carrie Culberson in 1997. He is serving a life sentence. The incident happened almost a year ago on April 18th. A dog -- thought to be a German Shepherd by Doan's attorney Jose Lopez -- attacked Doan, biting off a part of his nose, ripping his cheek, and causing permanent nerve damage ...

Expansions at many of New York City's cultural institutions has added around 10,000 jobs and accounts for $1.3 billion in new construction spending in the past five years, according to the New York Building Congress. Construction in 2014 alone totaled $208 million, an increase of 46% since 2013. The year 2011 saw the most construction projects in the city, totaling $491 million. One of the most high profile constructions included the building of the new Whitney Museum of American Art, which cost $422 million and will open later this year. Also included on the list of high-profile constructions were the $81.3 million renovation of the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum and the $65 million renovation of the fountains and exterior of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The improvements a...

Mortgages adapt to the 21st century as more and more mortgage lenders offer their services online. The New York Times reports that investments into online mortgage vendor start-ups are increasing, as potential home buyers from the "millennial" generation demand online services for acquiring a mortgage. Jason van den Brand, the CEO of Lenda, an online mortgage lender based in San Francisco, says that the next generation of homeowners desire the "ease of use and transparency" that the online services they have become accustomed to offer. "They do not want to go through the same methods that their parents went through," he remarked. A recent survey conducted by Discover Home Loans confirms his conviction. More than half of current home buyers claim that they filled their mortgage applicati...

For many Americans, homeowner insurance is a useful way to protect themselves against a variety of potential problems, ranging from fire damage to vandalism and theft. Often, these insurance plans will also include liability coverage, which helps cover medical costs, repair bills and legal charges if someone is injured in the home. However, many Americans are finding that a key member of their family may not be included under this coverage: increasingly, American insurance providers are refusing to cover certain dog breeds, with some even considering homeowners ineligible because of their pet. In 2013 alone, U.S. insurance companies collectively paid $483 million for 17,369 claims related to dog-bite injuries. According to the Insurance Information Institute, these injuries comprised mo...

A North Carolina man, Hubolist Elliott, admitted in a federal court Feb. 23 to a real estate scam costing investors more than $1 million between 2009 and 2014, prosecutors have said. Elliott, a 43-year-old resident of Cary, offered vacation properties in Florida through the company Travel World Vacations Inc. But sometimes the properties in question were owned by neither Elliott nor his company, or simply didn’t exist at all. Most of the transactions, which were conducted with at least 10 people from all over the country, involved fractional ownership. (Fractional ownership is a concept similar to timeshares, with which most laypeople are probably more familiar; in fractional ownership, investors purchase part of the title to a property, as opposed to units of time.) Elliott has pleade...

A study conducted at two retirement homes in Nebraska suggests that “happiness training” can have a significant impact on quality of life for seniors. Professors and students from the University of Nebraska -- Kearney implemented a program called the Wonderful Life Project at one senior home, Riverside Lodge, while another home, Northridge Senior Living, was used as a control. The researchers announced March 2 that after a year of happiness coaching, seniors at Riverside Lodge had maintained their activity levels, while seniors at Northridge had dropped their activity levels by two points on a 20-point scale. This is significant, they said, because activity levels correlate to happiness as well as self-care ability. “If we can help to manage a decline in activities of daily living, then...

February 2015 was a record-breaking month for many areas in the Northeast and has proven to be one of the harshest winters in recent memory. In addition to bitter temperatures and heavy snowfall, the effects of this winter are also making themselves known at homes and businesses -- and helping roofing companies set records of their own. Roofing companies are seeing an unprecedented number of calls from homeowners and business owners about ice dams on their roofs or leaks and damage that occur as a result of them. "This has been a really cold, prolonged winter with no big thaws," Jeff Kline told the Democrat and Chronicle. Kline is the production manager of Graves Bros. Home Improvement Company in Rochester, NY. "When it gets cold and stays cold like this, we have problems. Right now ther...

Last April, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned that a medical power tool sometimes used to remove uterine fibroids could spread hidden cancers throughout patients' bodies. However, a new study reveals that the likelihood of this actually happening is fairly low. Fibroids are common tumors that develop in the wall of the uterus. Although the vast majority are benign and asymptomatic, some fibroids can cause serious issues such as abdominal pressure, pain during intercourse, and menstrual bleeding heavy enough to cause a woman to develop anemia. In order to remove these problematic tumors, doctors would often use morcellators, small power tools that divide uterine tissues into smaller pieces so that they can be removed through a small incision in the abdomen, thusly removing the...

Physicians often believe that patient requests for inappropriate care are responsible for a major portion of rapidly rising healthcare costs, but that perception isn’t borne out by the latest research. In a study published Feb. 12 in the journal JAMA Oncology, Ezekiel Emanuel and colleagues found that the rate at which such requests are fulfilled, at least in the field of oncology, is quite low, and therefore patient requests “are unlikely to add significantly to health care costs.” The researchers used data from 5,050 patient-clinician encounters occurring in three outpatient oncology centers between October of 2013 and June of 2014. Of those, only 8.7% included a patient demand for any specific medical intervention. Most of the time, physicians judged those requests to be clinicall...

It's only mid-February, and homeowners across the Northeast and Midwest regions are already counting down the days until spring begins, thanks to the constant snowstorms and sub-freezing temperatures that have caused entire cities to shut down for days on end. But for thousands of homeowners, the inconvenience of winter weather weather goes beyond messy work commutes and extra layers of winter clothing. According to the Boston Herald, about 150,000 low-income residents in Massachusetts depend on heating assistance programs, and 18,000 homes in the Boston area alone are in need of immediate aid at the moment, despite the $13 million that the federal government awarded to Massachusetts on January 21. That $13 million, bringing the state's total federal fuel assistance to $144 million for 2...