Thirtysomething: ‘Pasatiempo’ unchained
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Friday, January 3, 2014
Pasatiempo, inside
The New Mexican
Despite early signs that New Mexico’s health insurance exchange for small businesses was operating smoothly and drawing interest among business owners, only a fraction of those businesses have completed the process of choosing a plan to offer their employees, according to the latest numbers from state officials.
While individuals seeking insurance in New Mexico must enroll through the federal healthcare.gov website, which had been plagued with problems from its launch day, Oct. 1, until December, the state is managing its own insurance exchange for businesses with 50 or fewer employees. In late October, nearly 800 businesses had enrolled in the system. By Dec. 30, that number had nearly doubled, with 1,471 small busi-
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Small businesses slow to sign up for health plans, new data show By Staci Matlock
The New Mexic
January 3, 2014
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Lawmaker aims to revive gun measure Bill, if allowed for consideration, would require stricter rules at gun shows. LOCAL NEWS, B-1
INSIDE u Confusion, relief mark start of new health reforms. PAGE A-3
nesses in the system — but only 414 of them had actually selected a plan, and only 180 had finished the entire insurance sign-up process. A total of 207 employees with those
Please see HEALTH, Page A-4
Candidate reacts to complaint
Court: Immigrant can practice law
Joseph Maestas says lack of communication caused failure to disclose $601 in campaign expenditures. LOCAL NEWS, B-1
California Supreme Court grants law license to man who has lived illegally in U.S. for two decades. PAGE A-5
Parks volunteer says call for audit cost her leadership post
Tracking app leads police to stolen iPads, burglary suspect By Chris Quintana The New Mexican
Jennifer Kimball once lost her cellphone when she accidentally left it at a hair salon. Kimball said that was a mistake she didn’t want to repeat, so with some help from one of her colleagues, she installed the application Find My iPhone on her new phone, as well as two iPads belonging to herself and her husband. “Never in a 1,000 years did I think it would capture a thief,” Kimball said Thursday afternoon. But that’s just what happened on New Year’s Eve. Police believe David Wheeler, 22, pried open a window at Kimball’s home in the 1400 block of Canyon Road at about 4:30 p.m. and swiped the two iPads.
Please see STOLEN, Page A-4 Jennifer Kimball and city police were able to recover two iPads that were stolen from her home on New Year’s Eve using the Find My iPhone app. ‘Never in 1,000 years did I think it would capture a thief,’ Kimball said of the app.
Bette Booth, the former chairwoman of the city’s Parks and Open Spaces Advisory Commission, at Frenchy’s Field Park on Thursday. Booth says Mayor David Coss decided not to reappoint her to the panel’s leadership post because she was asking too many questions about the spending of funds from a $30.3 million parks bond. LUIS SÁNCHEZ SATURNO/THE NEW MEXICAN
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JANE PHILLIPS THE NEW MEXICAN
[The invoice] was really a joke between friends, but the gist of it was that I made the mistake of thinking that I should get a thank you.” Bette Booth, former chairwoman of the Parks and Open Space Advisory Commission
Commission member sent city fake invoice for $325,457 to vent frustration By Daniel J. Chacón The New Mexican
he former chairwoman of the city’s parks advisory panel says she jokingly billed the city more than $325,000 for her six years of volunteer work after Mayor David Coss gave her leadership post to another longtime commission member in June 2013. Bette Booth, who served as chairwoman of the Parks and Open Spaces Advisory Commission for six consecutive years, said Coss
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told her she had been asking too many questions. He didn’t elaborate, she said, but she suspects his decision not to reappoint her to the post is related to her questions about the spending of funds from a voter-approved $30.3 million parks bond and her call for an independent audit. “At the May 2013 POSAC meeting, I said that I would be calling for an independent audit of the 2008 parks and trails bond as an action item on the June meeting agenda,” Booth said. “It could have been a coincidence, but the mayor removed me as chair
shortly after that. The last thing I did as chair was to get the audit on the agenda.” Coss, who appointed Booth to another term on the commission, but not as chairwoman, declined requests for comment. To vent her frustration over not being reappointed chairwoman, Booth billed the city $325,437.76, including taxes, on June 9 for her years of volunteer work on the advisory panel. Booth charged $80 an hour for the 3,744 hours, or 12 hours a week, she said she
Please see PARKS, Page A-4
Today
Obituaries
Bottled trouble
Partly sunny. High 48, low 26.
Lorencita Martinez, 88, Santa Fe, Dec. 29 Alberta T. Salazar, 88, Española Valley, Dec. 30
Alcohol use is a problem for some teenagers in Santa Fe Public Schools.
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GENERATION NEXT, C-1
Calendar A-2
Classifieds C-2
Comics B-8
Lotteries A-2
Opinions A-7
Police notes B-2
Editor: Ray Rivera, 986-3033, rrivera@sfnewmexican.com Design and headlines: Kristina Dunham, kdunham@sfnewmexican.com
Sports B-5
Time Out A-8
NSA delves into realm of quantum computing to crack encryption By Steven Rich and Barton Gellman The Washington Post
WASHINGTON — In room-size metal boxes, secure against electromagnetic leaks, the National Security Agency is racing to build a computer that could break nearly every kind of encryption used to protect banking, medical, business and government records around the world. According to documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the effort to build “a cryptologically useful quantum computer” — a machine exponentially faster than classical computers — is part of a $79.7 million research program titled “Penetrating Hard Targets.” Much of the work is hosted under classified contracts at a laboratory in College Park, Md. The development of a quantum computer has long been a goal of many in the scientific community, with revolutionary implications for fields like medicine as well as for the NSA’s code-breaking mission. With such technology, all forms of public key encryption would be broken, including those used on many secure websites as well as the type used to protect state secrets.
Please see NSA, Page A-4
Generation Next C-1
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Three sections, 24 pages Pasatiempo, 64 pages 165th year, No. 3 Publication No. 596-440