Don Tuller is pretty sure what will happen to his Tulmeadow Farm ice cream business if legislation to require labeling of some genetically engineered foods becomes law in Connecticut.
“I think it will probably destroy my wholesale market,” he said.
His is only one voice in the ongoing debate about whether Connecticut should become the nation's first state to requiring labeling of GMOs.
People who have been out of work for more than six months are about to see their unemployment benefits slashed by sequestration cuts.
The Connecticut Department of Labor says it is sending out letters this week to 30,000 thousand people in the state who will take a cut of almost 20 percent in their benefit checks.
Washington -– A compromise over visas for highly skilled workers has pleased many Connecticut companies –- and has angered labor unions.
The Senate Judiciary Committee agreed to allow the number of highly skilled foreign workers admitted to the country each year to rise from 65,000 to 110,000, with the possibility of a further increase to 180,000, depending in part on unemployment levels.
When the governor proposed a dramatic enrollment expansion at the University of Connecticut, concerns immediately arose as to whether that would siphon students away from the state’s other public college system already coping with steady enrollment declines.
But the governing board for the Connecticut State Colleges & Universities will need to sign off on many of those new or expanded programs for UConn, and has already begun. Last week, without discussion, the Board of Regents unanimously approved the first of many new degrees at UConn and its regional campuses.
It wasn’t exactly the campy skullduggery of Mad magazine’s Spy vs. Spy. But a quietly epic lobbying battle between two former House speakers, RIchard J. Balducci and James A. Amann, reached a finale Wednesday at the State Capitol after three years.
Call it Speaker vs. Speaker.
Bad traffic on your way to work? Regardless, Abe Scarr of the Connecticut Public Interest Research Group (ConnPIRG) has some news for you:
“The driving boom is over.”
Struggling to secure the super-majority needed to exceed the current spending cap by half-a-billion dollars, legislative leaders are weighing a plan to green-light the extra spending with a simple majority.
According to sources close to budget negotiations, the Democratic majority has discussed effectively shifting more than $400 million in Medicaid spending off the books next fiscal year, using a process common in other states but rarely used here – and never before involving that much money.
Ageism exists and has been unmasked on Facebook.
A startling – and some say disturbing -- percentage of young people berate old people on Facebook, a Yale study has found.
Researchers at the Yale School of Public Health analyzed 84 Facebook groups and found that all but one had negative stereotypes of the elderly. Many portrayed old people as being debilitated and advocated banning them from driving and shopping. One even suggested they be put before a firing squad.
If a bill passed Tuesday by the state House of Representatives becomes law, 170 inmates who are serving time for offenses committed as juveniles would be eligible for parole after serving 60 percent of their time.
Dr. Jim O’Connell was fresh off his residency when he took what he expected would be a six-month job at a Boston homeless shelter. He figured the staff would be thrilled to have someone with his training. He certainly wasn’t expecting what the nurses there gave him as his first assignment: Soaking clients’ feet.
What he learned changed the course of his life, changed the care of thousands of indigent people and, with the help of advocates, could change the nation's health care system.
Washington –- Rep. Joe Courtney is in the middle of a partisan fight over how to spare college students from a dramatic hike in the interest rate of a popular student loan. Interest rates on Stafford loans will double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent for thousands of Connecticut college students unless Congress acts before July 1.
A federal jury in New Haven took less than three hours Tuesday to convict Robert Braddock Jr., a top campaign aide to former House Speaker Christopher G. Donovan, on charges related to a conspiracy to bribe Donovan with illegal campaign contributions.
Thimble Islands – Brendan Smith sidles his small fishing boat, Mookie, alongside a row of basketball-size black buoys, bobbing barely a mile off Branford in the Thimble Island section of Long Island Sound.
“That’s my floating long-line gear and those float on the surface,” he says. And then pointing to what looks like a dark shadow beneath them. “That there’s another line and that’s about a meter down and that’s what the seaweed is growing on.”
Yup, seaweed.
Former House Speaker Christopher G. Donovan, D-Meriden, asserted his innocence Tuesday in a surprise appearance outside federal court as jurors began deliberating whether a top campaign aide was guilty in the corruption case that derailed his 2012 congressional campaign.
A legislative task force has endorsed repeal of Connecticut’s car tax, but -- like another group before them – doesn’t recommend relief for most taxpayers to begin before 2018. The Municipal Opportunities and Regional Efficiencies Commission created by House Speaker J. Brendan Sharkey also proposed a common statewide school calendar, new regional planning agencies, and an end to the requirement that communities publish public notices in local papers.
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Believe it or not, Connecticut has faced its fair share of water shortages over the years -- and more may be on the way. Listen to Neena Satija talk about water live on WNPR Friday morning from 9-10, hosting "Where We Live." You'll also hear from the U.S. Geological Survey, the former director of UConn's Water Resources Institute and the Connecticut Water Company. Listen live on Connecticut Public Radio or at wnpr.org.
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