Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
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President Joe Biden and Cabinet officials on Monday were in touch with freight-rail companies and unions in an effort to avert a crippling strike by thousands of workers, according to a White House official. The official, who requested anonymity to share the discussions, did not offer further details about the president's message to the parties. Biden's personal involvement in the stalled labor talks signifies how seriously the White House is taking the possibility of a work...
LONDON - Queen Elizabeth II, whose reign took Britain from the age of steam to the era of the smartphone, and who oversaw the largely peaceful breakup of an empire that once spanned the globe, has died. She was 96. She died peacefully at her estate in Balmoral, Scotland, on Thursday afternoon, according to a statement from Buckingham Palace. Ascending the throne in 1952, Elizabeth led the U.K. through a time of political upheaval. She began her reign as head of an empire,...
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell signaled the U.S. central bank is likely to keep raising interest rates and leave them elevated for a while to stamp out inflation, and he pushed back against any idea that the Fed would soon reverse course. "Restoring price stability will likely require maintaining a restrictive policy stance for some time," Powell said Friday in remarks prepared for the Kansas City Fed's annual policy forum in Jackson Hole, Wyo. "The historical record...
The Biden administration plans to begin offering next-generation COVID-19 booster shots as soon as the Labor Day weekend, according to people familiar with the matter, aiming to stave off a fall surge in cases of the disease. Food and Drug Administration regulators are expected to clear the use of COVID-19 vaccines reformulated for omicron variants this week, the people said. They asked not to be identified ahead of an official announcement. The so-called bivalent vaccines are designed to better protect against subvariants...
A Colombian family hoping to visit Disney World right now might have to wait more than two years to get their visas. The same goes for a Nigerian investor looking to close a funding round in Silicon Valley. Around the world, delays in visa processing are preventing scores of foreigners from coming to the U.S. — hurting the economy, sapping investment and undermining America’s image. Fixing the problem demands a more forceful and creative response than the U.S. government has mustered thus far. While processing times vary gre...
The FBI seized classified records — some marked top secret — from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, according to court documents unsealed Friday. The list of information seized includes materials labeled with “Various classified/TS/SCI documents,” which refers to top-secret and sensitive compartmented information. That’s a government label for material gathered through sensitive intelligence sources, methods or analytical processes. The items were taken during the execution of a search warrant signed by a...
WASHINGTON — House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy says a harmful precedent would be set if he and four other Republicans complied with their subpoenas to testify from the congressional panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. “For House Republican leaders to agree to participate in this political stunt would change the House forever,” McCarthy and fellow House Republican Jim Jordan insist in a Wall Street Journal guest editorial. A committee spokesman, Tim Mulvey, had no response. The column, posted Thurs...
As they prepare to spend $1.2 trillion on a bipartisan infrastructure deal, along with a vastly larger sum on a party-line social-policy bill, Democrats might be expected to defend their ambitions on the merits. Instead, progressive leaders seem to be focused on fiscal gimmickry. Their goal is to advance a $3.5 trillion initiative known as Build Back Better. With moderates balking at the bill’s scope and cost, efforts are underway to deliver a slimmer version that might command broader support. Unfortunately, these seem to b...
Social media is a minefield of adolescent anxieties, as any parent can attest. Numerous studies have suggested a connection between excessive use of online platforms (and the devices used to access them) and worrying trends in teenage mental health, including higher rates of depressive symptoms, reduced happiness and an increase in suicidal thoughts. Even in this grim context, Instagram, the wildly popular photo-sharing app owned by Facebook Inc., stands out. Its star-studded milieu — glossy, hedonistic, relentlessly s...
U.S. forces killed two high-profile Islamic State members and wounded another in a strike against the terrorist group blamed for the bombing that left at least 88 people dead near Kabul’s airport. The Pentagon raised the toll inflicted on ISIS-K in Friday’s reprisal after earlier reporting that one member of the group was killed. The targets were “ISIS-K planners and facilitators,” Defense Department spokesman John Kirby said. “They have lost some capability to plan and conduct missions,” Kirby told reporters on Saturday, tho...
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said Thursday morning there had been an explosion outside of Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, hours after the U.S. and U.K. governments warned their citizens to avoid traveling to the airport in Kabul because of the risk of attacks. Two explosions outside Kabul’s international airport caused an unknown number of casualties and deaths less than a week before U.S. forces are due to depart. “A number of US & civilian casualties” were caused by one blast outside the Abbey Gate used by... Full story
The past 18 months have shown that accurately counting the dead is vital for protecting the living. At the outset of the pandemic, many countries lacked adequate registration systems, and others saw their processes break down under strain. This made it harder to track the spread of COVID-19 and deal with its consequences. Even in normal times, lack of data about deaths and their causes can seriously impede efforts to protect public health. Fixing this ought to be a global priority. Reliable information on mortality and...
In the mid-2000s, I spent two years as senior military assistant to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, acting essentially as his military gatekeeper and translating his orders to the U.S. military via the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Before joining his team, I had been a Navy one-star admiral and commander of Enterprise Carrier Strike Group, in charge of 10,000 sailors and a dozen ships in combat in the Arabian Gulf. I mention that because my duties suddenly shifted from a pinnacle of command at sea to overseeing administrative...
President Joe Biden renewed his call for added gun-control laws and ordered U.S. flags to fly at half-staff after a deadly shooting near the Indianapolis airport, the latest in series of massacres that have shaken the nation. “Too many Americans are dying every single day from gun violence,” Biden said in a statement on Friday, noting that he earlier urged Congress to pass new gun laws. “It stains our character and pierces the very soul of our nation. We can, and must, do more to act and to save lives.” A gunman opened...
The details of what went wrong in Texas last week — most likely the biggest forced blackout in U.S. history — will take time to establish. So will exactly what to do about it. But this emergency already underlines something that should’ve been obvious before. As the growing threat of extreme weather puts vital economic systems at risk, climate resilience needs to be taken much more seriously. Even Friday morning, nearly 190,000 homes were still without power as Texas grappled with an unusual weather pattern that sent tempe...
For all its unilateral tendencies, the U.S. typically isn't known as a rogue state. But in one area it has come close: By failing to share information with other countries, it has thwarted global efforts to track down tax cheats, money launderers and terrorists — efforts that it once led. Congress has just taken a step in the right direction by supporting provisions attached to the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act that would require certain U.S. companies to report their beneficial owners to Treasury. (President D...
After the killing of Iran’s top nuclear scientist last month, President-elect Joe Biden is coming under renewed pressure to quickly resume negotiations with the regime. He should slow down and proceed with caution. Biden has long since telegraphed his desire to resuscitate the nuclear deal that Iran agreed to with the U.S. and other world powers in 2015. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as it was known, was designed to pause Tehran’s nuclear-development program well short of the weaponization stage. Since Pre...
The loss of Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a double blow. It will be felt as a personal loss by millions of Americans, and it will stress America's politics at a moment when its fabric is already threatening to come apart. Consider this a measure of the country's current plight: What could be sadder than to fear that the death of a selfless and extraordinary public servant is more likely in the coming weeks to divide the nation than unite it? Justice Ginsburg taught many lessons over the course of her career in the law. One of the...
In politics, what looks like sordid intrigue often turns out to be garden-variety incompetence. Case in point: After much testimony and investigation, it seems likely that the U.S. Postal Service was not engaged in a plot to derail November’s election by slowing down the mail, as many of President Donald Trump’s critics have alleged in recent weeks. The truth about the service’s recent decline is, in all probability, mundanely disheartening rather than sinister. Anecdotal reports — some quite grim — of foul-ups and delays in...
Kudos to Bernie Sanders for saying that he will celebrate tax day by releasing his tax returns for the last 10 years. Quite right. And congratulations to the Vermont senator and Democratic presidential candidate for acknowledging that he has become a millionaire. The next step might be for Sanders, who routinely vilifies “millionaires and billionaires” on the campaign trail, to say something constructive about work and wealth, and how to use public policy to promote them. When asked about his happy financial status, Sanders o...
The process of funding the U.S. government begins when the president submits a budget request to Congress in February. Then everything falls apart. At least, that’s the way things have been going, year after year. In a more rational world, Congress would prepare a budget resolution of its own, as the law requires. The details would be worked out in committees, and compromise between House and Senate versions would be achieved. Then Congress would use the final resolution to arrive at appropriations for each federal d...
Forty years ago, military veterans made up roughly three-quarters of Congress. By 2017, the proportion had dwindled to fewer than one in five. The number of veterans on Capitol Hill will dip slightly again next year, because of retirements — but the elections of 2018 were nonetheless a turning point of sorts. At least 170 veterans received major-party nominations for national office and at least 75 won office. (The figures are estimates: There’s no official tally.) Of these, at least 18 are new to Congress — the most in ne...
President Donald Trump has announced his first potentially strong action against America’s inordinate prescription drug prices — the first that could meaningfully lower Medicare drug spending. The idea is to narrow the gap between U.S. prices and those of other countries. The plan is far from finished, and pushback from the pharmaceutical industry will be fierce. But to drive U.S. drug prices down, a move of this kind is going to be needed. The strategy concentrates on drugs administered by doctors — mainly the newer, expen...
Whether or not U.S. Rep. Chris Collins engaged in insider trading, as federal prosecutors allege, his indictment last week exposes what a poor job Congress has done to guard against such transgressions. Collins, a New York Republican, is accused of sharing insider information about the value of a publicly traded Australian biotech company. Collins didn’t gather the inside information in Congress — that would violate the 2012 Stock Act, which made it illegal for members and their staff to trade on privileged knowledge hav...
Having driven his country and its once-rich oil industry into a ditch, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is now pushing for snap elections that would allow him to lock in another term. The U.S. can halt Venezuela’s slide toward autocracy, if it convinces other countries to do more of the heavy lifting. That’s easier said than done. Getting Venezuela’s neighbors, who face their own troubles and elections, to ratchet up the pressure on Maduro will require canny behind-the-scenes diplomacy. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tille...
