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.
After 90 minutes of impassioned debate that invoked the sweep of American history, the New Jersey state Senate yesterday voted down a bill to legalize same-sex marriage, the Newark Star-Ledger reports. Gay-rights advocates immediately said they would bring their campaign to the courts.
Domestic partnership is a topic we expect to come up in New Mexico’s legislative session later this month.
California could not apply for federal Race to the Top funds because of an educational “firewall” that kept its students’ test scores from being used to evaluate teachers, according to the Christian Science Monitor. Two bipartisan measures in California have cleared away that hurdle and adopted a “parent trigger” that will let 50 percent of parents of students at failing schools demand changes in staff, leadership, and how the school operates, including getting the school to close or inviting a charter school to take over from district administrators, the paper reports. The federal government has set aside billions of dollars in its Race to the Top initiative for qualifying states to enact various education reforms.
A team of independent safety inspectors was nearly hit last month by a Metro train that appeared to be traveling at full speed and making no attempt to slow, as required by agency rules, according to the Washington Post. The Metro system, which serves the nation’s capital and surrounding areas, has come under intense scrutiny over what critics consider too many safety lapses in recent years.
On another front in education, Kentucky expects to become the first state in the nation to officially adopt new common core-content standards for math and English in grades K-12, reports the Lexington Herald-Leader.
President Obama on Thursday ordered intelligence agencies to take a series of steps to streamline how terrorism threats are pursued and analyzed, saying the government had to respond aggressively to the failures that allowed a Nigerian man to ignite an explosive mixture on a commercial jetliner on Christmas Day, according to the New York Times.
Related to the thwarted Christmas day bombing, the Times also is reporting that a senior Yemeni official said Thursday that the young Nigerian man accused of trying to bring down the airliner had met with operatives of Al Qaeda and probably with Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American-born Internet preacher, in Yemen before setting out on his journey.
Meanwhile, France could start taxing Internet advertising revenues from online giants such as Google, using the funds to support creative industries that have been hit by the digital revolution, according to Reuters, which quoted a French newspaper.
