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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -
Three years after California voters passed a ballot measure to raise taxes on corporations and generate clean energy jobs by funding energy-efficiency projects in schools, barely one-tenth of the promised jobs have been created, and the state has no comprehensive list to show how much work has been done or how much energy has been saved.
WASHINGTON (AP) —
Hillary Rodham Clinton's plan to make college more affordable and ease the burden of student debt could easily end up costing more than her proposed $350 billion.
Clinton's plan essentially shifts more of the financial burden of college from students and their families to taxpayers. Much of the $350 billion she wants to spend over 10 years would help provide debt-free tuition at public colleges, but many students would still be on the hook for food and housing.
And for the plan to generate all the economic benefits it envisions, the reforms would need to both reduce the rising costs of higher education while increasing graduation rates.
Each challenge reflects the difficulty of transforming a higher-education system increasingly dependent on personal debt.
The amount of outstanding educational loans has nearly tripled over the past decade to $1.3 trillion, a reflection of the rising costs of college, an economy where more entry level jobs require undergraduate degrees and relatively stagnant personal incomes that have made it difficult for parents to save for their children's education.
Clinton sees a decline in state government support as driving that surge in student debt. Her plan would use federal incentives to ensure state colleges charge reasonable tuitions that students could afford without taking on debt. It would also allow students to repay their student debt at lower rates than today and limit payments to a share of their income, while forgiving any lingering balance after 20 years.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) —
Russell Begaye stared into a hole in the side of a Colorado mountain, watching as yellow water contaminated with heavy metals poured out and raced down a slope toward a creek that feeds rivers critical to survival on the nation's largest Native American reservation and in other parts of the Southwest.
At the Gold King Mine, Begaye, president of the Navajo Nation, couldn't help but see the concerned faces of his people — the farmers who no longer had water for corn crops and the ranchers who had to scramble to get their cattle, sheep and goats away from the polluted San Juan River.
"We were told that the water was clearing up and getting back to normal," he said. "This is what EPA was telling us. We wanted to go up there as close as we could to the source. We wanted our people to see the water is still yellow."
Begaye and a small contingent of Navajo officials worked their way unannounced past barriers and up the mountain over the weekend to get a closer look at the mine blowout that federal officials said sent more than 3 million gallons of water laden with lead, arsenic and other metals down the Animas River and into the San Juan River.
The 100-mile plume has since traveled through parts of Colorado, New Mexico and Utah on the way to Lake Powell, a key source of water for the Southwest.
All along the way, signs are posted warning people to stay out of the water. Farmers have stopped irrigating and communities have closed water intake systems. Bottled water on the Navajo Nation is becoming scarce.