Gov. Dannel P. Malloy is expected to sign a bill eliminating what victim advocates and prosecutors say is a loophole that makes it nearly impossible to prosecute certain sexual assault cases.
The bill expands the legal definition of “physically helpless" in the context of sexual assault. Prosecutors and advocates for victims and people with disabilities say the existing definition is too restrictive.
A key question about federal health care reform is what it will cost to buy health insurance next year, when the key provisions of the law kick in.
And for insurers and regulators, figuring that out requires grappling with more uncertainty than usual.
During a town hall-style meeting at Hartford’s Classical Magnet School Friday, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said schools need to find ways to become safer without being turned into prisons.
The 12-hour session that ended early Friday signaled that the season of deal-making is on at the Connecticut General Assembly, yielding strange, if temporary, alliances in the name of politics and pragmatism. A day after the dyspeptic House required nearly eight hours to pass an immigration bill, the same legislators sitting at the same desks passed 26 bills, most with limited debate and lopsided votes.
Nearly half of the University of Connecticut’s full-time police positions are currently vacant –- a situation that is forcing some officers to work weeks without a day off and costing the school about $68,000 a month in overtime.
“What ends up happening is you force officers to work and they are more likely to get worn down,” said UConn Chief Barbara O’Connor. “We are running at minimum staffing numbers more often than not.”
Don Tuller is pretty sure what will happen to his ice cream business if Connecticut becomes the first state to require labeling of some genetically engineered foods.
“I think it will probably destroy my wholesale market,” he said.
His is only one voice in the debate.
People who have been out of work for more than six months are about to see their unemployment benefits slashed by sequestration cuts.
The Connecticut Department of Labor says it is sending out letters this week to 30,000 thousand people in the state who will take a cut of almost 20 percent in their benefit checks.
Washington -– A compromise over visas for highly skilled workers has pleased many Connecticut companies –- and has angered labor unions.
The Senate Judiciary Committee agreed to allow the number of highly skilled foreign workers admitted to the country each year to rise from 65,000 to 110,000, with the possibility of a further increase to 180,000, depending in part on unemployment levels.
When the governor proposed a dramatic enrollment expansion at the University of Connecticut, concerns immediately arose that it could siphon students away from the state’s other public college system.
But the governing board for the Connecticut State Colleges & Universities will need to sign off on many of those new or expanded programs for UConn.
It wasn’t exactly the campy skullduggery of Mad magazine’s Spy vs. Spy. But a quietly epic lobbying battle between two former House speakers, RIchard J. Balducci and James A. Amann, reached a finale Wednesday at the State Capitol after three years.
Call it Speaker vs. Speaker.
Bad traffic on your way to work? Regardless, Abe Scarr of the Connecticut Public Interest Research Group (ConnPIRG) has some news for you:
“The driving boom is over.”
Struggling to secure the super-majority needed to exceed the current spending cap, legislative leaders are weighing a plan to green-light the extra spending with a simple majority.
Sources close to budget negotiations say Democrats have discussed effectively shifting more than $400 million off the books, using a process common in other states but rarely used here.
A startling –- and some say disturbing -- percentage of young people berate old people on Facebook, a Yale study has found.
Researchers at the Yale School of Public Health found that many Facebook groups analyzed portrayed old people as being debilitated and advocated banning them from driving and shopping. One even suggested they be put before a firing squad.
If a bill passed Tuesday by the state House of Representatives becomes law, 170 inmates who are serving time for offenses committed as juveniles would be eligible for parole after serving 60 percent of their time.
When Dr. Jim O’Connell took a job at a homeless shelter, he wasn’t expecting what the nurses there gave him as his first assignment: Soaking clients’ feet.
What he learned changed the course of his life, changed the care of thousands of indigent people and, with the help of advocates, could change the nation's health care system.
Washington –- Rep. Joe Courtney is in the middle of a partisan fight over how to spare college students from a dramatic hike in the interest rate of a popular student loan. Interest rates on Stafford loans will double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent for thousands of Connecticut college students unless Congress acts before July 1.
A federal jury in New Haven took less than three hours Tuesday to convict Robert Braddock Jr., a top campaign aide to former House Speaker Christopher G. Donovan, on charges related to a conspiracy to bribe Donovan with illegal campaign contributions.
Brendan Smith's farm is a vertical system of clams, scallops, mussels and, since December, an uppermost layer of seaweed, more elegantly known as kelp.
Whatever you want to call it, to most people it’s a slimy, often smelly affront to what otherwise might be a clean beach, a nuisance, and, potentially, a danger to outboard motors. But to Smith, it’s the future.
Former House Speaker Christopher G. Donovan, D-Meriden, asserted his innocence Tuesday in a surprise appearance outside federal court as jurors began deliberating whether a top campaign aide was guilty in the corruption case that derailed his 2012 congressional campaign.
A legislative task force has endorsed repeal of Connecticut’s car tax, but -- like another group before them –- doesn’t recommend relief for most taxpayers to begin before 2018. The Municipal Opportunities and Regional Efficiencies Commission created by House Speaker J. Brendan Sharkey also proposed a common statewide school calendar, new regional planning agencies, and an end to the requirement that communities publish public notices in local papers.
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'Connecticut's budget deficit, and why you should be worried' by Mirror budget reporter Keith Phaneuf
Part One: "Promises, gimmicks and a historic shortfall"
Part Two: "Major concessions deal undermined by bad guesses, secrecy
Part Three: Serious deficit awaits Malloy -- or his successor -- after 2014
Read how Gov. Malloy reacted to our series.
Listen to budget reporter Keith Phaneuf talk about the budget in this special podcast.
Mass shootings in the U.S.
Since 1949, there have been 67. The Mirror's interactive map provides historical detail to the violence and is regularly updated to reflect the most recent mass shootings.