Originally published on Wed January 28, 2015 6:11 am
A day after a monstrous winter storm spun its way across the Northeast, life is slowly getting back to normal.
Some residents of Massachusetts are digging out of almost 3 feet of snow. The AP reports that a travel ban has been lifted and Boston's highways are filling up with traffic.
Originally published on Wed January 28, 2015 3:32 pm
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Ask Americans if someone in their family served in the military, and the answer is probably no. After all, fewer than 1 percent of Americans serve these days.
But ask if one of their grandfathers served, and you'll likely get a different answer. Between World War II and the wars in Korea and Vietnam, millions of men were drafted into service — and both men and women volunteered.
The Council on Law Enforcement Education and Training said Tuesday during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Public Safety and Judiciary that its training track is in desperate need for repair.
CLEET requested $3,809,401 in appropriations for FY2016. In FY2015 they were given $3,554,474.
Director Steven Emmons said their 1.8 mile training track is plagued by deep, hazardous ditches that have formed along the side of the road as a result of soil erosion that is a problem for the area they are located.
A series of state agencies met Tuesday with the Senate Appropriation Subcommittee on General Government and Transportation seeking increases or decreases in their budgets, maintaining their facilities to hiring on additional staff.
The Military Department requested an increase from the $11,868,249 it received in fiscal year 2015 to $15,753,000. The department primarily focused their budget priorities for the new year on maintaining its armories across the state, increasing the facilities’ maintenance budget, and increasing the energy budget.
The Department of Corrections defended its fiscal year 2016 appropriation requests Tuesday during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Public Safety and the Judiciary budget hearing.
The department is requesting appropriations that would be nearly 18 percent more than what they were given for the current fiscal year.
Director of Communications Terri Watkins said the agency wants to eventually get back to levels of funding it saw six or seven years ago.
The Oklahoma School for the Deaf in Sulphur, Oklahoma, one of the agencies requesting a budget increase for FY16 by the Oklahoma Department of Rehabilitation Services.
The trend in requesting budget increases continued into the second day of budget hearings presented to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Health and Human Services.
All four agencies presenting Tuesday requested significant increases to their fiscal year 2016 budgets.
The Oklahoma State University Medical Authority requested a $4.9 million increase, $4 million of which would be a one-time appropriation to replenish funds for the Rural Residency Expansion Act.
Gay rights supporters say Oklahoma is at the forefront of a wave of anti-gay legislation that is unfairly discriminatory and they plan to launch a campaign in the state to oppose more than a dozen bills introduced for the session that begins next week.
Some measures would give broad authority to businesses and corporations to discriminate against gay people. Others would ensure court clerks would not have to issue marriage licenses to gay couples.
Another would allow for so-called conversion therapy to help gay children end "unwanted sexual attraction."
Noted author and death penalty abolitionist Sister Helen Prejean is urging Oklahomans to reconsider the death penalty while the Supreme Court decides whether the state's lethal injection method is constitutional.
The Roman Catholic nun and author of the book "Dead Man Walking" joined a group of death penalty opponents Monday calling on Oklahomans to consider joining the 18 states that have abolished it. The group also delivered more than 30,000 online petition signatures to Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin's office.
This 2007 photo provided by Shell Exploration & Production Company shows the Frontier Discoverer drilling rig as it sits in Dutch Harbor, Alaska. (Shell Exploration & Production via AP)
Originally published on Tue January 27, 2015 3:26 pm
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The Obama Administration today is proposing opening up parts of the Eastern seaboard to offshore drilling, while at the same time proposing a ban on drilling along some parts of Alaska’s Arctic coast.
Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson talks with Phil Flynn, an energy market analyst with Price Futures Group, and Bob Deans of the Natural Resources Defense Council, about the proposal — a win and a loss each for environmentalists and the oil industry
Originally published on Tue January 27, 2015 1:39 pm
President Obama arrived in Saudi Arabia today to meet newly crowned King Salman and said in an interview that the U.S. needs to balance its concerns about Saudi human rights with "immediate concerns" such as counterterrorism and regional stability.
