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.
Gov. Bill Richardson recently ordered five furlough days for state workers and said he wants to eliminate more than 1,000 vacant positions across state government as a response to New Mexico’s worsening financial situation. But next year’s budget likely will be worse than this year’s. Stateline.org reports that many states are moving from furloughs of state employees to more permanent downsizing to hammer out their budgets for next year.
As Stateline reports:
In preparation, many are taking stock of every position in state government to determine what effect job cuts and the possible elimination of whole departments will have on revenues, expenses and the quality of government services.
Will that happen in New Mexico? That remains to be seen. State lawmakers convene next month in Santa Fe for a 30-day legislative session whose main responsibility is crafting next year’s budget. According to some, New Mexico may confront a $1 billion shortfall next year.
Black joblessness has long far outstripped that of whites. But surprisingly the disparity as the recession has dragged on has been even more pronounced for those with college degrees, compared with those without, according to the New York Times. Education, it seems, does not level the playing field — in fact, it appears to have made it more uneven, the paper reports.
College-educated black men, especially, have struggled relative to their white counterparts in this downturn, according to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate for black male college graduates 25 and older in 2009 has been nearly twice that of white male college graduates — 8.4 percent compared with 4.4 percent.
Moving on to news from the Internet, more than 3,500 offenders registered in New York have been kicked off the social networking giants Facebook and MySpace in the months since the state implemented a law requiring sex crime convicts to register their e-mail addresses, as well as their dwellings, according to the Associated Press.
The story goes on to report:
Both MySpace and Facebook have long had policies banning sex offenders, and have routinely used state registries in the past to block tens of thousands of convicts from joining.
But the task of identifying convicts among millions of users has been both tricky and labor-intensive, and the companies said Tuesday that New York’s new law and others like it in 24 other states are streamlining the process.
A emotionally charged battle continues in the world of climate science, as a scientist at the center of an uproar over pirated e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit announced Tuesday that he is stepping down as the unit’s director during the investigation, the Washington Post reports.
Is a battle brewing between the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times over local news coverage in NYC? Seems like it. Apparently Journal owner Rupert Murdoch is ready to unveil a $15 million New York edition of the Journal, which would position the paper as a local news source, according to the New York Observer. The Journal historically has focused on business, and meatier, national and international stories which often appeared on its front page. But ever since Murdoch bought the Journal he has worked to move the Journal past its business news niche to become a source for general news and become a direct competitor of the Times. At the same time the Times has shrunk its local news coverage, getting rid of a stand-alone Metro section. The Journal is apparently trying to exploit that move by the Times.
