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Union rejects hospital’s latest offer
Feds release rocket evidence Images show Russia fired into Ukraine, the U.S. State Department claims. PAGE A-3
Workers could still picket, strike, but group wants negotiations to continue, president says
U.S. sends dirty coal abroad
By Robert Nott The New Mexican
The fossil fuel trade threatens to undermine the United States’ strategy to reduce the gases blamed for global warming. PAGE A-2
The union representing about 400 nurses and 100 medical technicians at Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center voted late Sunday to reject the latest contract offer from hospital leaders. The latest action in the ongoing saga most likely means more negotiations, although
Spectacular views of space New telescopes carry big promises. PAGE A-7
OPERA REVIEW
East, West converge in ‘Dr. Sun Yat-sen’
Fonda Osborn, president of New Mexico District 1199 of the National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees, said the union still could call a strike or picket the hospital. Osborn said 94 percent of the nurses and 82 percent of the technical workers in the union voted to reject the offer. Members also gave union leaders support to issue notice of possible actions should the hospital not
Teen recruiters try to get dropouts back in system
By James M. Keller The New Mexican
D
r. Sun Yat-sen is an ambitious opera in which a libretto by Candace Mui-ngam Chong and a score by Huang Ruo set out to illuminate a tumultuous moment in the history of modern China and scrutinize some aspects of the life of the patriot who fomented it. On Saturday evening, The Santa Fe Opera unveiled the American stage premiere of the piece, which premiered in Hong Kong in 2011 but then encountered obstructions when planned performances in Beijing and Guangzhou were suddenly scrapped. Their cancellation was apparently for Teen volunteers Valerie Alvarado, 18, and Udell Calzadillas, 19, go door to door Wednesday in the Vista Alegre apartment complex on Zepol Road to promote Santa Fe Public Schools’ Engage Santa Fe Program. The program is designed to help dropouts earn a high school diploma. LUIS SÁNCHEZ SATURNO/THE NEW MEXICAN
Volunteers go door to door to encourage peers to join Engage Santa Fe By Robert Nott The New Mexican
want to graduate,” a teen dropout told Valerie Alvarado and Udell Calzadillas one night last week. Alvarado and Calzadillas are among seven peer recruiters charged with encouraging dropouts age 16 to 21 to pursue their high school diplomas in the district’s new Engage Santa Fe program. On Wednesday evening, the duo canvassed the Vista Alegre apartment complex off Airport Road to spread the word about the program and recruit applicants. “There are so many dropouts in Santa Fe,” said Alvarado, 18, who just graduated from Santa Fe High
“I From left, Joseph Dennis is Dr. Sun Yat-sen and Corinne Winters plays his wife, Soong Ching-ling. COURTESY KEN HOWARD/THE SANTA FE OPERA
School. “We each know at least one who we care about and want to help.” Calzadillas, a 19-year-old University of New Mexico student, said he has friends who have dropped out but want another chance in an alternative educational setting. Charged with increasing Santa Fe Public Schools’ graduation rate, Superintendent Joel Boyd initiated the Engage program to draw dropouts into a more flexible learning environment where they can earn credits while adapting schooling to their own schedule. While the district will set up a learning facility somewhere on the south side, much of the class work can be done online, enabling students to work from home during hours that fit their needs.
For the most part, Alvarado and Calzadillas encountered adults as they knocked on doors in the Vista Alegre complex. Many of those with whom the pair spoke expressed interest in the program and said they might know some teens who fit the bill. One woman who said she recently moved to New Mexico from Tennessee even volunteered to tutor for the program. Resident Maria Molinari said it is unfortunate that the Engage program did not exist years ago when she dropped out of school. “There are kids who don’t have the ability to graduate and don’t want a GED [diploma],” she said. “I wish I had this opportunity when I felt like the bottom was caving out in my life.”
Please see DROPOUTS, Page A-4
Pond scum offers clues to life’s puzzles, gray areas ABOUT THE SERIES The Santa Fe Institute is a private, nonprofit, independent research and education center founded in 1984, where top researchers from around the world gather to study and understand the theoretical foundations and patterns underlying the complex systems that are most critical to human society — economies, ecosystems, conflict, disease, human social institutions and the global condition. This column is part of a series written by researchers at the Santa Fe Institute and published in The New Mexican.
Index
Calendar A-2
U
so. Pond scum and sushi pon seeing or hearing the word evolution, wrappings lack the wonder one might think of a and warmth of dinosaurs cartoon showing a parade of and puppies. What algae lack increasingly upright apes and in public persona, however, humans. Alternatively, one they make up for in flexibility, might envision a black-andstretching many traditional white picture of a bearded notions in biology. naturalist examining the For example, some species Eric Libby beaks of finches. Me, I think of algae can take on two or Science in a of algae. three completely different Complex World In their own beautiful, forms — so different, in fact, slimy way, algae challenge that scientists have thought some of our most basic conthey were separate species. cepts in evolution and give us clues Compare this with people. From about how complex life might have birth to death, we pretty much always evolved. look like humans. Moreover, these difIt’s hard to write a piece that seduces ferent forms of algae vary tremendously in size, with some being single cells people with algae, and perhaps rightly
Classifieds B-5
Please see HOSPITAL, Page A-8
Lawmakers move to protect the homeless
T
Chinese opera makes American debut at SFO
Please see SUN, Page A-8
respond to the offer to return to the table for talks. Osborn declined to say how many union members took part in the vote. “It’s up to [the hospital] to respond if they will,” Osborn said. “If they don’t respond, I will issue something — from picketing to a limited strike to a full-blown unlimited strike.” She said the union is required to give the hospital 10
Comics B-10
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Crosswords B-6, B-9
Life & Science A-7
El Nuevo A-5
and others being part of large, multicellular bodies. This particular aspect of algae is interesting to me because I want to know the ways multicellular life could have evolved from singlecelled ancestors. Algae are the masters of gray areas, straddling the boundaries between single-celled life and multicellularity. At this point, it might be best to provide some useful backstory. The first life on Earth appeared billions of years ago. Its origins are a complicated and fascinating topic that intrigues and tantalizes scientists, including some of my colleagues at the Santa Fe Institute. Nonetheless, let’s skip over
Opinions A-9
he ugly underbelly of life in New Mexico has not changed in 40 years. In 1974, three students at Farmington High School were charged in the torture and murders of three Navajo men in Chokecherry Canyon. Perpetrators of this sort of violence against helpless or drunken men gave it the euphemistic name “Indian rolling,” Milan as though bigotry, Simonich assault and murRingside Seat der were a sport. This month, three teenagers in Albuquerque were arrested in the murders of two homeless men, attacked as they lay on a dirty mattress in an otherwise deserted lot. The killers in Farmington ended up in reform school for two years, spared of a murder trial. Prosecutors will not be so lenient in moving against the defendants in Albuquerque. State Sen. Bill O’Neill knows that occasional high-profile attacks on vagrants draw attention, then emotions cool and so does interest in protecting defenseless people. So he will reintroduce a bill to make attacks on homeless people a hate crime,
Please see RINGSIDE, Page A-4
Today Partly sunny; storms possible. High 83, low 60. PAGE A-10
Obituaries Joe Lawrence Mascarenas, July 21 PAGE A-8
Pasapick www.pasatiempomagazine.com
42nd annual Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival 10 a.m., free youth concert, violinist Jennifer Frautschi, violist Hsin-Yun Huang and cellist Wilhelmina Smith; 6 p.m. concert, music of Haydn, Mendelssohn and Ligeti; performers include hornist Eric Ruske and violists Brett Dean and Huang, St. Francis Auditorium, New Mexico Museum of Art, 107 W. Palace Ave., $10-$75, www.santafe chambermusic.com, 982-1890.
Please see SCIENCE, Page A-4
Sports B-1
Tech A-6
Time Out B-9
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