I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
States, including New Mexico, are competing for $4 billion in federal funding for innovative education programs, reports the New York Times. As the story says: “The $4 billion is the most money Washington has ever given to overhaul schools. It is to be awarded in two rounds, in April and September, to about a dozen states that propose bold schemes to shake up the way they evaluate and compensate teachers, use data to raise achievement and intervene in failing schools. With $16 billion in school budget shortfalls projected for next year, states are hungry.”
While Massachusetts recipients of federal stimulus money collectively report 12,374 jobs saved or created, a Boston Globe review shows that number is wildly exaggerated. Organizations that received stimulus money miscounted jobs, filed erroneous figures, or claimed jobs for work that has not yet started. The paper’s finding is based on the federal government’s just-released accounts of stimulus spending at the end of October. It lists the nearly $4 billion in stimulus awards made to an array of Massachusetts government agencies, universities, hospitals, private businesses, and nonprofit organizations, and notes how many jobs each created or saved.
Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell announced Tuesday she wouldn’t run for re-election, throwing next year’s gubernatorial race into chaos, the Hartford Courant reports. Now Democrats and Republicans are suddenly scrambling for front-runner status as they prepare for primaries next August.
A federal judge this week handed down a defeat for several senior creditors that had hoped to buy Philadelphia’s newspapers by bidding the amount that they are owed, the Wall Street Journal reported. The judge reversed a ruling that would have allowed Philadelphia Newspapers LLC’s lenders to bid the more than $300 million they are owed at a coming auction for the newspaper company, the paper reported.
The paper goes on to explain:
Unless they are willing to pay cash, the lenders are now blocked from participating in a coming auction for the company, which publishes the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News. The setback for the lenders marks a victory for a group of local investors who are aiming to buy the company. The local investors are supported by the publishing company’s chief executive, Brian Tierney.
John Allen Muhammad, the sniper who kept the Washington region paralyzed by fear for three weeks as he and a young accomplice gunned down people at random, was executed Tuesday night by lethal injection, the Washington Post reports. This story brings back memories of those horrible days. I didn’t live in Virginia or Maryland, the areas most terrorized in 2002 by the randomness of death, which came unexpectedly to individuals as they pumped gas or walked out of a store. I watched from afar, transfixed, in Connecticut, a state that at the time was coming out of the stupor and disorientation of losing more than 100 residents in the 9/11 terrorist attacks only to imagine the possibility of biological terrorism two months later when anthrax snuffed out the life of a woman who lived 10 miles from me. Yes, the sniper shootings happened hundreds of miles away and nearly a year after 9/11, but all the events blur together for me now.
