ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- Winds and erratic flames forced firefighters to sit on the sidelines Thursday as a massive fire that destroyed a dozen homes and several other structures in small New Mexico community grew larger and put more buildings at risk.Tripling in size over the last day, the lightning-sparked Whitewater and Baldy fires merged to burn across more than 110 square miles of the Gila National Forest by Thursday."At this point it's just a monitoring situation to see whether (crews) can find some place where they can build lines or do something to slow it down," said fire information officer Iris Estes. The wind-whipped fire burned Wednesday afternoon through the Willow Creek subdivision, a small summer community in southwestern New Mexico. Officials confirmed 12 cabins ... Continue reading →
PHOENIX (AP) -- Arizona is considering requests to expand its fledgling medical marijuana program to allow use of the drug for an array of conditions, including post-traumatic stress syndrome and migraines, beyond those allowed under the law approved by voters two years ago. The Department of Health Services, which is required under the 2010 law to consider requests to expand coverage, holds a public hearing Friday on the first batch of requests. Besides PTSD and migraines, the requests for covered conditions include depression and general anxiety disorder. The law already permits medical marijuana use for such medical reasons as cancer, glaucoma, AIDS, chronic pain, muscle spasms and hepatitis C. Even as the state considers expanding the program, it is still implementing a key part of ... Continue reading →
This evening, the New Yorker Fiction Department (@NYerFiction) will start tweeting Jennifer Egan’s new story “Black Box,” which will appear in its entirety in the Science Fiction Issue, out on Monday. We asked Egan what inspired her to structure her story in paragraphs of a hundred and forty characters or fewer. Several of my long-standing fictional interests converged in the writing of “Black Box.” One involves fiction that takes the form of lists; stories that appear to be told inadvertently, using a narrator’s notes to him or herself. My working title for this story was “Lessons Learned,” and my hope was to tell a story whose shape would emerge from the lessons the narrator derived from each step in the action, rather than from descriptions ... Continue reading →
WASHINGTON — Uncle Sam may not want you after all.In sharp contrast to the peak years of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the Army last year took in no recruits with misconduct convictions or drug or alcohol issues, according to internal documents obtained by The Associated Press. And soldiers already serving on active duty now must meet tougher standards to stay on for further tours in uniform.The Army is also spending hundreds of thousands of dollars less in bonuses to attract recruits or entice soldiers to remain.It’s all part of an effort to slash the size of the active duty Army from about 570,000 at the height of the Iraq war to 490,000 by 2017. The cutbacks began last year, and as of the end ... Continue reading →
PHOENIX (AP) -- Six structures now have been lost in a 14,000-acre wildfire north of Phoenix. Fire information officer Dan Bastion says crews reported Monday that two more structures had been destroyed by the Gladiator Fire, up from four last week. He says it's not clear where they were located or when they burned. Meanwhile, crews faced high wind and low humidity as the fire burned into a second week. It is now 15 percent contained. The winds shifted direction Sunday, almost trapping a crew from Kernville, Calif., that was working north of the community of Crown King. Fire officials say the crew was able to move to a safe location. Residents of Crown King and three other, smaller communities to the north are under ... Continue reading →
We're all in a state of despair these days over our inability to monetize our journalism online the way we've been used to doing in print. A big part of the problem is that we're doing a really poor job of connecting buyers and sellers on our newspaper Web sites. Solving that problem should be the top priority for the folks on the business and technology sides of our business. But some of our shortcomings are purely journalistic. We need to come to terms with the fact that one reason we're having such a tough time is that we are still fundamentally failing to deliver the value of our newsroom to Internet users. Our reporters and editors are curious, passionate, and voracious discoverers and devourers ... Continue reading →
