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.
New Mexico is one of the growing number of states that allows marijuana for medicinal use. Now New Jersey appears poised to become the next state to allow residents to use marijuana, when recommended by a doctor, for relief from serious diseases and medical conditions, according to the Wall Street Journal. The New Jersey state Senate has approved the bill and the state Assembly is expected to follow. The legislation would then head to the office of outgoing Gov. John Corzine.
Top Florida lawmakers are balking at Congress’ plans to help more poor people get health care, though they’ve protected an entitlement of their own for years: free insurance premiums, the St. Petersburg Times reports. Florida taxpayers have been stuck with covering the premiums — at an annual cost of about $45 million — even while lawmakers pledged to scrimp and save as they grappled with three straight years of budget shortfalls.
Gov. Haley Barbour‘s proposal to merge Mississippi‘s three public historically black universities is sparking debate over its racial undertones and raising questions over the state’s funding of those colleges, according to the Jackson Clarion-Ledger. Barbour made news last month when he proposed the plan, but some see it as yet another attack on historically black colleges in a Southern state with a long history of discrimination.
“Wow” is all I got for this item: Philadelphia football fans may jeer when the New York Giants come to town, but city and state budget officials are likely to cheer. That’s because Philadelphia and Pennsylvania — as well as neighboring New Jersey — tax the income of visiting athletes, according to Stateline.org. Stateline quotes a Philadelphia Inquirer story for the facts.
Four hundred years after John Rolfe planted the nation’s first commercial tobacco in Virginia, and decades after state leaders paid homage to the crop by carving its leaves into the ceiling of the old state Senate chamber, smoking officially became illegal Tuesday in the state’s 17,500 bars and restaurants, the Washington Post reports.
One resident quoted by the Post articulated how noteworthy the ban was:
“I’ve always said, if there’s a state that would never pass a smoking ban, it’s Virginia,” said Manassas resident Ed Bennett, leaning on the polished wooden bar with a cocktail cigar in his right hand. “I lost a lot of bets on that one.”
President Obama has decided to expedite the deployment of 30,000 additional American troops to Afghanistan over the next six months, in an effort to reverse the momentum of Taliban gains and create urgency for the government in Kabul to match the American surge with one using its own forces, the New York Times reports.
And here’s some more international news, although it’s about a ‘lost’ civilization in southeastern Europe that existed as early as 5,000 B.C., predating more famous early societies. Here’s the lead of the story to whet your appetite.
Before the glory that was Greece and Rome, even before the first cities of Mesopotamia or temples along the Nile, there lived in the Lower Danube Valley and the Balkan foothills people who were ahead of their time in art, technology and long-distance trade.
On the media front, here’s an update from the New York Times on the tumult disrupting life at the Washington Times, the Washington Post’s much smaller, conservative competitor.
And more and more people are listening to online radio, but that hasn’t translated into an explosion of cash from online advertising, reports the Wall Street Journal.
