When the governor proposed a dramatic enrollment expansion at the University of Connecticut, concerns immediately arose as to whether that would siphon students away from the state’s other public college system already coping with steady enrollment declines. But the governing board for the Connecticut State Colleges & Universities will need to sign off on many […]

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.” In other words, the decades-long increase in driving in the United States that began after World War I  is finally starting to reverse. Americans today don’t drive […]

Struggling to secure the super-majority necessary to exceed the current spending cap by half-a-billion dollars, legislative leaders are weighing a plan to green-light the extra spending with a simple majority. According to sources close to budget negotiations, the Democratic majority has discussed effectively shifting more than $400 million in Medicaid spending off the books over […]

Ageism exists and has been unmasked on Facebook. 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 analyzed 84 Facebook groups and found that all but one had negative stereotypes of older people. Many […]

When he’s with friends in college, Dan Olguin said, he sometimes feels like he’s leading a double life. He’s wary of how people will react if he tells them he has bipolar disorder, so he avoids talking about his past or letting them know he survived a life-altering crisis. Statistics suggest Olguin is far from […]

Dr. Jim O’Connell was fresh off his residency when he took what he expected would be a six-month job at a Boston homeless shelter. He figured the staff would be thrilled to have someone with his training. He certainly wasn’t expecting what the nurses there gave him as his first assignment: Soaking clients’ feet. It […]

Inmates serving lengthy prison sentences for crimes committed as children may be released much sooner than expected, as the House of Representatives passed a bill Tuesday that would make dozens of inmates eligible for parole as soon as this fall. One of those inmates is William Freeman Jr., who has been incarcerated for the last 33 years […]

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 […]

New Haven — A federal jury 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. The jury of nine men and three women convicted Braddock, 34, on all three […]

New Haven – Former House Speaker Christopher G. Donovan asserted his innocence Tuesday outside U.S. District Court as jurors began deliberating whether a top campaign aide was guilty of conspiracy in the corruption case that derailed his 2012 congressional campaign. Donovan, a Meriden Democrat, arrived minutes after the government and defense made closing arguments in […]

A legislative task force has endorsed the 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, D-Hamden, also proposed a common statewide school calendar, new “master” regional […]

The state’s largest teachers’ union has filed a complaint against Bridgeport, the state’s largest school district, claiming the superintendent is shutting out teachers and parents from important decisions. “The Board of Education of Bridgeport, through its superintent Paul Vallas, is not interested in following statutory mandates,” says the complaint filed Tuesday with the State Board of […]