From the Trenches World Report
Enforce our Bill of Rights
Maine Public – by Caroline Losneck
The Portland-based construction and renovation company Bondeko actively trains and hires immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers.
Orson Horchler, who started the company two years ago, says the word Bondeko is from Lingala, a Bantu language that is spoken by many Congolese and Angolan residents in Portland. Continue reading “Construction Company Bondeko Strives to be an Inclusive and Welcoming Work Force”
Key legislative leaders say a new proposal by the Scott Administration to build a multi-purpose 925-bed prison in Franklin County is an ambitious plan that deserves a comprehensive review.
One of the biggest questions about the plan is whether it should be financed using a public-private partnership. Continue reading “Lawmakers To Study Proposed 925-Bed Corrections Complex In Northwest Vermont”
Maine Public – by Bill Trotter
More than 3,000 Mainers are vying for one of just 11 new baby eel fishing licenses that Maine will issue this year as it reopens the lucrative fishery.
The Maine Department of Marine Resources will issue the licenses through a lottery, with the drawing scheduled for sometime in the coming week. It will be the first time the state has allowed any new entrants into the fishery for baby eels, or elvers, since 2013. Continue reading “Thousands Of Mainers Vie For 11 Licenses To Fish Baby Eels”
Who else would have access to the best stocked pantry in the world but Martha Stewart?
The lifestyle guru is inviting a member of the public to join her on the first ever expedition to the ‘doomsday’ Svalbard Global Seed Vault in the Arctic.
Buried beneath the world’s northernmost town on an island in the icy reaches of Norway, the vault contains around half a billion seeds of just about every type of crop on the planet. Continue reading “Martha Stewart heading to the ‘Doomsday’ Arctic seed vault”
An escalation in immigration enforcement over the past year has brought a new level of anxiety for the several thousand migrant farm workers living in Vermont.
For the first time since 2010, arrests and detentions by the U.S. Border Patrol increased in Vermont, New Hampshire and northeastern New York last year. Continue reading “For Undocumented Workers On Vermont Farms, 2017 Was A Year Filled With Anxiety”
When Bill Gandy was growing up in Northview Heights in the 1970s and 80s, no one had to show identification to get in. But now there are armed guards and 200 security cameras dotted around this sprawling, isolated public housing project run by the Pittsburgh City Housing Authority. Everyone who enters has to show ID, every time.
“It just feels like a prison system to have a checkpoint in front of a neighborhood,” Gandy says. “That’s already a bad start, to tell you the truth. It’s like going into a military camp.” Continue reading “Residents fled gun violence at a Pittsburgh public housing project. But refugees are still moving in.”
Israel has long been a focal point in international policy for Texas Republican lawmakers. Several current Texas officials have traveled to the country. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick even got baptized in the Jordan River.
But Peggy Fikac, Austin bureau chief for the San Antonio Express News, reports that some aspects of these trips have come with hefty price tags for the state’s taxpayers. Continue reading “Security Tab For Top Officials’ Israeli Visits Tops $150,000”
LOS ANGELES — The nation’s homeless population increased this year for the first time since 2010, driven by a surge in the number of people living on the streets in Los Angeles and other West Coast cities.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development released its annual Point in Time count Wednesday, a report that showed nearly 554,000 homeless people across the country during local tallies conducted in January. That figure is up nearly 1 percent from 2016. Continue reading “America’s homeless population rises for first time in years”
Courier Journal – by Justin Sayers and Phillip M. Bailey
Jeffery Byrd squats down on a plastic crate, wearing the same white paint-splashed jeans and beige coat he’s been wearing for two weeks without a shower.
To his left is Roc Peeler, confined to a wheelchair — the rubber on its wheels worn to the rim — his way to get around after he lost his right leg to frostbite.
Their living room is a blend of dirt, brush and trash, while their walls are a web of blankets, tree limbs and chain-link fencing. Peeler, 48, sleeps in a broken tent while Byrd, 42, takes the ground — unless it is raining and the two will jam inside the small shelter. Continue reading “As Louisville gets rid of homeless camps, some wonder: Where is the ‘compassionate city’?”
A small classroom down a hall at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Lincoln is a long way from Iraq, but this is where a group of Yazidi women find themselves. They’re part of a class led by volunteer Terri Hensley, a former teacher who’s helping them learn English.
“We are learning consonants and vowels and we are starting right from scratch, so it is a very slow process,” Hensley said. Continue reading “Yazidis From Iraq Find Welcome Refuge In Nebraska”
South central Kentucky is expected to have 22,000 open jobs in the next five years. That’s going to intensify the current shortage of workers in the state – an issue that’s facing the entire country.
One Warren County company saw refugees arriving at the International Center in Bowling Green as the way to get ahead of the competition for quality employees. Continue reading “Bowling Green Manufacturer Fills Jobs with Training and Translators for Immigrants”
A pilot program to provide skill-building career services to immigrants is launching at seven Pittsburgh organizations. These include resettlement agencies, the Allegheny County Library Association and the Greater Pittsburgh Literacy Council.
The program, which is free to participants, was designed by Upwardly Global, a national organization that helps skilled immigrants rebuild their professional careers in the U.S. The local groups participating already have immigrant support programs in place, and the online resource will be supplemental. Continue reading “Pilot Program Will Help Pittsburgh’s Immigrant Population Rebuild Careers In U.S.”
Most drivers who hit roadkill leave the carcass on the ground, but several thousand Pennsylvanians in 2017 wanted to make the dead animal their next meal.
As of mid-December, the Pennsylvania Game Commission had received more than 3,300 inquiries from drivers seeking a permit to eat roadkill, spokesperson Travis Lau said.
“Those are valuable food sources,” he said. “And it is a valuable use of our wildlife resource to allow that animal that’s been killed to now get to somebody who might be in need or who otherwise wants it for food.” Continue reading “More Than 3K Pennsylvanians Requested Permits To Eat Roadkill This Year”
The U.S. foster care system is overwhelmed, in part because America’s opioid crisis is overwhelming. Thousands of children have had to be taken out of the care of parents or a parent who is addicted.
Indiana is among the states that have seen the largest one-year increase in the number of children who need foster care. Judge Marilyn Moores, who heads the juvenile court in Marion County, which includes Indianapolis, says the health crisis is straining resources in Indiana. Continue reading “The Foster Care System Is Flooded With Children Of The Opioid Epidemic”
RALEIGH, N.C. – A Chinese tiremaker is moving more aggressively into the U.S. market, announcing plans Tuesday for a North Carolina factory that is to eventually employ 800 and produce six million tires a year.
A state committee that administers large corporate tax breaks approved plans to coax Triangle Tire to rural Edgecombe County, about 65 miles (100 kilometers) east of the state capital of Raleigh. The $580 million plant is the first in the United States for the Weihai, China-based maker of tires for passenger vehicles, trucks and buses and heavy equipment. Continue reading “Chinese tiremaker picks North Carolina site for major plant”
The chairman of the House Committee on Transportation says he’ll push for more stringent seatbelt laws during the next legislative session.
Colchester Rep. Pat Brennan is a somewhat unlikely advocate for strengthening Vermont’s seatbelt law.
“Personally, I wasn’t until recently a real staunch user of seatbelts,” Brennan says. Continue reading “Key Vermont Lawmaker Eyes Changes To Seatbelt Law In 2018”
Washington Post – by William Booth
LONDON — At $1 billion, it is the most expensive embassy ever constructed. But its designers say the new American chancery on the Thames River marks a paradigm shift: The U.S. Embassy here will exude openness while hiding all the clever ways it defends itself from attack.
After decades of building American embassies that look brutalist or bland, like obvious fortresses, the soon-to-be-opened chancery in London is a crystalline cube, plopped down in the middle of a public park, without visible walls. Continue reading “The new U.S. embassy in London: A crystalline ‘sugar cube’ worth a billion dollars”
Dec 13, 2017 — Washington has ended a temporary residency program for almost 60,000 Haitians allowed to legally enter the United States following an earthquake in 2010. The affected Haitians will have to leave the U.S. by 2019. The program has also been revoked for 2,000 Nicaraguans and it’s unclear if other groups including 300,000 Salvadorans will be allowed to remain. The net result is a continued flow of people crossing the border into Canada by foot.
They are taking advantage of a footnote in a Canada-U.S. treaty that says foot crossers won’t be turned back from Canada until their case is heard. Continue reading “The other side of Roxham Road: Canada grapples with border refugees”
Vermont Public Radio – by Steve Zind
After considerable debate and numerous drafts, a new Vermont Fair and Impartial Policing Policy has been adopted.
The policy was approved by the Vermont Criminal Justice Training Council.
Its purpose is to require that Vermont law enforcement agencies “conduct policing in a fair and impartial manner.” The policy also seeks to, “clarify the circumstances in which officers can consider personal characteristics, or immigration status, when making law enforcement decisions…” Continue reading “Prohibition On Reporting Immigration Status Not Part Of New Policing Policy”
Dec 08, 2017 — The official arm of the Mexican government in New York State is touring St. Lawrence County. Mexico’s consulate wants to reach out to Mexican citizens across the North Country, including dairy farm workers without legal papers.
Mexico has more consulates in the United States than any other country has anywhere. The one in New York City has been working to expand its presence north into Upstate New York. So on Wednesday, its head and staff drove up to Canton. Continue reading “Mexican consulate visits St. Lawrence County, talks dairy farm workers”