west virginia

You might think that with the economy on its slow climb back to health, Americans would have gotten a little bit happier in 2011. In fact, they got a bit more miserable. And some states have more reasons to be down in the dumps than others.

America's road to economic recovery has been long and slow -- and uneven. Some parts of the country are doing a lot worse than others. It's a pattern that shows up in the jobs numbers, poverty rates, foreclosures. But if you want a quick, simple gauge of how any part of the U.S. is doing economically, just look at its median household income.

For the first time, there's a state-by-state scorecard of America's performance in providing long-term services and support to senior citizens and people with disabilities, and the results aren't much to brag about. But they do point the way toward improving the long-term care system -- and saving the nation billions.

It's a scam that's designed to play on grandparents' heart strings, and the latest version of it has prompted a national awareness campaign as well as consumer alerts from two state attorneys general. It works like this: A con artist calls senior citizens, posing as a grandchild in need and asks...

A now-defunct West Virginia funeral home has to pay $224,000 to consumers in refunds plus interest as part of a settlement worked out with the state for bilking customers for prepaid funeral services, according to state Attorney General Darrell McGraw. Former funeral director T.R. Stevens Jr....

A smaller percentage of mortgage holders were delinquent on their payments in the third quarter than in the second quarter, although the percentage of delinquencies remains up from the same period last year.

The problem of faulty foreclosure documents isn't limited to GMAC: A JPMorgan Chase employee has testified that she was one of eight managers who combined to sign some 18,000 documents a month without the personal knowledge of the facts that the documents claimed they had.

West Virginia consumers that were charged fees by an Ohio debt collector trying to collect on delinquent tuition payments can now get a refund through the state attorney general's office. The refunds are part of a May 20 settlement between National Enterprise Systems and the state to end a...

The results of CQ Press's annual State Crime Rankings are in and, for some states, the results are reassuring. For nearly two decades, these rankings have shown how the 50 states compare against the national average for six crimes: murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and motor...

We all know not to give out our Social Security number on social networking and other websites, but new research indicates that it is possible to determine one out of every ten social security numbers knowing only a place of birth and birthdate! In states with lower numbers of births the odds are...