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According to a July 2023 report in the Telegram & Gazette (Worcester, MA), state legislators have proposed to add $60 million to the state’s annual budget to fund rural school districts. Those districts include Franklin County, where declining enrollments and limited real estate tax revenues have resulted in inadequate funding compared to other schools in the state. Students in rural areas often receive lower quality, unequal education, compared with peers in the rest of the state, due to lack of funding.

Exacerbating the problem, the cost of maintaining schools with low enrollment is higher than schools with greater enrollment, with ripple effects on the quality of education available to students in those schools. Despite these districts’ efforts to trim their budgets, they are still unable to provide adequate learning environments.

Real estate taxes typically generate school funding. However, state-owned land does not produce tax revenues for local schools. Franklin County, for example, includes 460,000 acres of state land that generates no tax revenues.

State legislators in Massachusetts are not alone in seeking legislative solutions to these problems. Overall, the Telegram and Gazette reported, “Some 37 states throughout the U.S. have responded to the fiscal challenges faced by rural schools by increasing aid to schools.” 

The corporate media tend to cover education issues in more populated areas, often neglecting challenges that are particular to rural communities. When laws and regulations are developed, the corporate media often fail to consider impacts on less populated communities.

As a result of under-reporting issues in rural communities by the corporate media, solutions to problems faced by rural communities are made more difficult. Without adequate news coverage, the issue may be unknown or seem to lack urgency, to many people, who might otherwise be mobilized to push for policies that promote educational equity in rural communities. Despite neglect by corporate news media, rural school districts deserve an equal opportunity for a quality education.

Source: Kinga Borondy, “Rural Lawmakers Back Mass. Schools Funding Bill to Increase Money for Rural Schools,” Telegram & Gazette, July 20, 2023.

Student Researchers: Alexander Bozoglos, Aine Doyle, Mina Pabst, Hannah Sylvester, and Katelyn Warner (University of Massachusetts Amherst) 

Faculty Evaluators: Allison Butler and Jeewon Chon (University of Massachusetts Amherst)

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From mine sales to expansion into nickel and aluminium smelting, coal producers in Indonesia are reducing their exposure to the commodity as finding financing for the “dirtiest” fossil fuel becomes increasingly difficult.

The south-east Asian country’s coal capacity is still growing, and the world’s top exporter also remains one of the biggest emitters of carbon, with environmental groups criticising Jakarta for its slow progress towards greener energy sources.

But corporate efforts to diversify underscore the scrutiny businesses are now facing amid the energy transition and concerns over long-term demand for coal.

“There are obviously growing [environmental, social and governance] pressures, and coal is front and centre in this discussion,” said Ray Gunara, president-director of Harum Energy, which has been expanding rapidly into nickel processing. “It’s very challenging for us to raise any money for anything that’s coal-related. It has been the case for the last few years.”

Harum is one of Indonesia’s smaller coal producers, but it is expected to be one of the first to make coal a minority business. It has not put any new funds into coal in the past five years. “We have simply been accumulating cash from the existing [coal] business and all that cash is going into growing our nickel business,” Gunara said.

The company plans to close its coal business when reserves run out in a few years. “Just by continuing business as usual, in six to seven years, the coal business would just slowly run its course,” Gunara said.

The company entered the nickel business in 2020 to tap into soaring demand for the metal used in electric vehicle batteries. It expects nickel to contribute about 60 per cent of revenues by the end of this year — a big jump from 11 per cent last year — and aims to double production capacity to 150,000 tonnes by the end of 2025.

Other coal producers are also transitioning. Indika Energy has launched electric motorbikes and solar power plants and sold some coal mines. It is aiming to reduce its coal business to 50 per cent of total revenues by 2025.

Adaro Energy, run by billionaire Garibaldi Thohir, is building an aluminium smelter and a hydro power plant. Last month, it announced a plan to spin off its coal business through a public offering valuing it at about $2.5bn.

An analysis by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis shows that five of the seven major publicly listed Indonesian coal producers are investing in diversification.

“It’s very difficult to get financing, that’s the biggest problem,” said Ghee Peh, energy finance analyst at the IEEFA. Peh added that Adaro’s spin-off strategy was a model that could be replicated by its rivals.

In recent years, foreign banks have largely stopped financing coal operations, with Indonesian companies primarily securing financing from domestic institutions.

Adaro struggled to find funds for a $2bn aluminium project involving a coal power plant, the Financial Times reported last year, and in April, carmaker Hyundai called off an aluminium supply agreement with Adaro.

Despite diversification efforts, Indonesia’s coal capacity is still increasing and threatens its goal to reach net zero emissions by 2060.

The government banned the construction of new coal power plants in 2022 but granted a number of exceptions where construction could still proceed. New plants can be built for exclusive use within mineral processing sites and for other projects deemed as strategic to national interests.

The IEEFA’s Peh said two of the seven listed Indonesian coal producers had major expansion plans that would add an estimated 58mn tonnes of capacity. Indonesia produced a record 775mn tonnes of coal last year.

Coal is responsible for more than 60 per cent of electricity generated in Indonesia, with the country having abundant thermal coal reserves and being the world’s third-largest producer. China, India, Japan and South Korea are among the top buyers of Indonesian coal.

Developed countries have promised to provide $22bn in financing through public and private funds to help the country wean itself off coal. However, progress with the distribution of funds has been slow.

Coal remains a lucrative business as prices have climbed in recent years. Indonesian coal producers saw record profits in 2022. In August, Glencore, the world’s largest publicly listed coal producer, dropped plans to spin off its coal business after investors pushed the company to keep coal for better returns.

While smaller coal groups can pivot to other sectors more easily, it would be a challenge for others in the industry, said Harum’s Gunara. “For some of our larger peers, it would be more difficult for them to diversify to new areas and transform their coal business into a minority contributor. It would take a much longer time.”

Fitch Ratings expects funding access to further narrow in the next three to five years. “Companies that adopt meaningful diversification strategies that go beyond thermal coal [will] achieve better funding access compared with those that maintain conservative financial profiles with no diversification plans,” the rating agency told the FT.

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ARUNDEL is an historic market town in West Sussex that’s home to an 950-year-old castle, riverside pubs and independent shops and boutiques.

And while we know that the fictional town in the Disney movie Frozen was inspired by the Austrian town of Hallstatt.. we’re going to go out on a limb and say there are an awful lot of similarities with this southern English location.

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For starters, Arendelle – the town in Frozen – sunds an awful lot like Arundel.

Secondly, the big focal point of Arundel is the imposing castle, much like in Frozen, where the castle is the home of the princesses Elsa and Anna.

Built by Roger de Montgomery in 1067, Arundel Castle is the historic home of the Duke of Norfolk, with it being occupied by that family line for more than 850 years

The castle is currently home to Edward William Fitzalan-Howard, 18th Duke of Norfolk and his wife Francesca Herbet.

Despite being a family home of the Duke of Norfolk, Arundel Castle has been the backdrop for huge blockbuster films like 2017’s Wonder Woman, starring Gal Gadot.

Helen Mirren also filmed the Madness of King George alongside Nigel Hawthorne in Arundel Castle.

Arundel Castle is open to the public, with the historic building being named the Historic Park & Garden of the Year in 2024.

Visitors can explore rooms like the Regency Library, the Baron’s Hall, the Drawing Room and several Victorian and Edwardian bedrooms.

There are also plenty of buildings located within the grounds of the castle, including Fitzalan Chapel, a Gatehouse and a Chapel.

Events also take place at Arundel Castle throughout the year like the Household Cavalry Exhibition, which showcases twelve large-scale portraits of the Household Cavalry by the photographic artist Ripley

Jousting shows and walking tours will take place throughout the castle in October.

Entry tickets to Arundel Castle cost £29 for a full-paying adult and £12 for children, with family tickets coming in at £70.

You can also get an excellent view of the castle if you choose to take the train to the town’s station, Arundel Castle.

The Arun Valley railway line runs right past the foot of the grounds.

There are plenty of other tourist attractions in the historic market, including Arundel Cathedral.

The Gothic cathedral is free to visit, with one of its most beautiful features considered to be the rose window that sits directly behind the organ gallery.

Arundel Town Centre is packed with independent shops like Kim’s Bookshop, Lavender House, and the Tea and Biscuit Club.

Another attraction is Arundel Lido, which has two outdoor swimming pools.

While the pools are heated from April to September, they become cold water swimming spots throughout the winter when the heat is turned off in the colder months.

Because Arundel is backed by the South Downs National Park, walking routes and hiking trails are another popular pastime in the area.

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One of those is the five-kilometre walk around Swanbourne Lake, which takes visitors past Hiorne Tower and back into Arundel Town Centre.

There’s also Arundel Park Walk that stretches for nine kilometres passing places like Monarch’s Way, the village of South Stoke and the River Arun.

Arundel isn’t short on pubs, with The Black Rabbit Pub highly-rated.

The riverside boozer offers views across the Wetlands towards Arundel Castle and serves a range of traditional grub like Sunday Roasts.

Other pubs in Arundel include the Lamb Inn, the Red Lion and the Kings Arms.

Holidaymakers can book to stay overnight at the Norfolk Arms Hotel, a Georgian Coaching Inn was built over 200 years ago by the 10th Duke of Norfolk.

Stays start from £70 per person per room, based on two people sharing a room.

Arundel is an hour’s drive from Brighton.

Earlier this month, we revealed our favourite towns and villages to visit across the UK.

Another tiny village in the UK has been compared to a retro 1940s film set.

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BUTLER, Pa. — Donald Trump plans to return Saturday to the site where a gunman tried to assassinate him in July, as the former president sets aside what are now near-constant worries for his physical safety in order to fulfill a promise — “really an obligation,” he said recently — to the people of Butler, Pennsylvania.

“I’ll probably start off by saying, ‘As I was saying …’” the Republican presidential nominee has joked, in a bit of black humor about a speech cut short when a bullet struck Trump’s ear and he was whisked off stage — fist aloft — with blood dripping across his face.

Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, also will be on hand at the Butler Farm Show grounds, and billionaire Elon Musk said he will be speaking as the campaign elevates the headline-generating potential of his return with just 30 days to go in their tight campaign against Democratics Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. A billboard on the way into the rally said, “IN MUSK WE TRUST,” and showed his photo.

The Trump campaign predicted tens of thousands of people would the event, billed as a “tribute to the American spirit.” Area hotels, motels and inns were said to be full and some rallygoers arrived Friday.

Hundreds of people were lined up as the sun rose Saturday. A memorial for firefighter Corey Comperatore, who died as he shielded family members from gunfire, was set up in the bleachers, his fireman’s jacket set up on display surrounded by flowers. There was a very visible heightened security presence, with armed law enforcers in camouflage uniforms on roofs.

“President Trump looks forward to returning to Butler, Pennsylvania to honor the victims from that tragic day,” said Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt. “The willingness of Pennsylvanians to join President Trump in his return to Butler represents the strength and resiliency of the American people.”

Trump planned to use the 5 p.m. Eastern time event to remember Comperatore, a volunteer firefighter struck and killed at the July 13 rally, and to recognize the two other rallygoers injured, David Dutch and James Copenhaver. They and Trump were struck when 20-year-old shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, opened fire from an unsecured rooftop nearby before he was fatally shot by sharpshooters.

The building from which Crooks fired was completely obscured by tractor trailers, a large grassy perimeter and a fence. Most bleachers were now at the sides, rather than behind Trump.

How Crooks managed to outmaneuver law enforcement that day and scramble on top of a building within easy shooting distance of the ex-president is among many questions that remain unanswered about the worst Secret Service security failure in decades. Another is his motive.

Butler County District Attorney Rich Goldinger told WPXI-TV this week that “everyone is doubling down on their efforts to make sure this is done safely and correctly.”

Mike Slupe, the county sheriff, told the station he estimates the Secret Service, was deploying ”quadruple the assets” it did in July. The agency has undergone a painful reckoning over its handling of two attempts on Trump’s life.

Butler County, on the western edge of a coveted presidential swing state, is a Trump stronghold. He won the county with about 66% of the vote in both 2016 and 2020. About 57% of the county’s 139,000 registered voters are Republicans, compared with about 29% who are Democrats and 14% something else.

Chris Harpster, 30, of Tyrone, Pennsylvania, was accompanied by his girlfriend on Saturday as he returned to the scene. Of July 13, he said, “I was afraid” — as were his parents, watching at home, who texted him immediately after the shots rang out.

Heightened security measures were making him feel better now, as well as the presence of his girlfriend, a first-time rallygoer. Harpster said he will be a third-time Trump voter in November, based on the Republican nominee’s stances on immigration, guns, abortion and energy. Harpster said he hopes Pennsylvania will go Republican, particularly out of concern over gas and oil industry jobs.

Other townspeople were divided over the value of Trump’s return. Heidi Priest, a Butler resident who started a Facebook group supporting Harris, said Trump’s last visit fanned political tensions in the city.

“Whenever you see people supporting him and getting excited about him being here, it scares the people who don’t want to see him reelected,” she said.

Terri Palmquist came from Bakersfield, California, and said her 18-year old daughter tried to dissuade her. “I just figure we need to not let fear control us. That’s what the other side wants is fear. If fear controls us, we lose,” she said.

She said she was not worried about her own safety.

“Honesty, I believe God’s got Trump, for some reason. I do. So we’re rooting for him.”

But Trump needs to drive up voter turnout in conservative strongholds like Butler County, an overwhelmingly white, rural-suburban community, if he wants to win Pennsylvania in November. Harris, too, has targeted her campaign efforts at Pennsylvania, rallying there repeatedly as part of her aggressive outreach in critical swing states.

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The other week, an economist at the University of Chicago named Chris Blattman posted 10 pieces of advice on X about how to email a professor or another senior member of the professional classes.

A greeting consisting of, “Hi!” is inadvisable, he said, as are emojis, emoticons and an abundance of exclamation marks. I especially liked his tip to use capital letters and punctuation, “otherwise we will lol at yr sad attempts”. Quite so.

But another thing about his guidance that got my attention was the response it sparked from another professor about how arcane professional email etiquette can be.

“I got yelled at multiple times at Cravath for not listing the partners’ names in order of seniority on emails,” wrote Berkeley Law School’s Andrew Baker. “Gotta know the rules.” 

This sounded quite something, even for a place as redoubtable as Cravath, which has represented some of the best known names in US business in its illustrious 205-year history.

When I called Baker to investigate further he said he was not technically yelled at while working as a summer associate at Cravath about eight years ago. 

But senior associates had made it clear that, when emailing multiple attorneys at the firm, it was “a bad look” not to list their names in order of seniority. 

I asked Cravath if this message was ever formally conveyed to new joiners at the firm and whether it was still in place, but sadly heard nothing back.

Still, Baker is not the only person to report being admonished for not taking seniority into account when emailing legal firm colleagues.

This strikes me as a low point in corporate life. It is hard to imagine why such fussy hierarchic protocols make any sort of sense.

Saying that, I am inclined to defend other forms of office pettiness about name ordering on the grounds that a lot of white collar office work is poorly measured and recognised.

In the absence of quantitative signs of performance, the urge for recognition can make people obsess about what appear to be deeply trivial signs of success.

I say this as someone who has witnessed blistering quarrels, and the occasional tears, about the order of bylines on stories written by multiple journalists.

Readers may not give a fig who has written what, let alone the order in which names appear. But reporters and their bosses know the first byline generally goes to whoever is deemed to have done the most work, which means the order of names is far from piffling.

Journalism is by no means the only occupation where such things matter.

The order of authors’ names on academic papers is so critical that entire academic papers have been devoted to the topic.

Economists pay a lot of attention to this because, unlike those in other fields, their names traditionally appear in alphabetical order.

The research shows that people with second names starting with a letter early in the alphabet are likely to get more citations than those whose names come later, as well as fancier jobs.

One 2006 paper that analysed data from the top 35 US economics departments said having an earlier surname meant you were more likely to get tenure at a top 10 department, become a fellow of the Econometric Society and receive a Nobel Prize. It also boosted your chances of receiving the John Bates Clark Medal awarded to an American economist under the age of 40 — and named after a man I note has two enviably early-alphabet names.

No wonder there’s a fightback against alphabetical discrimination.

Two North American economists, Debraj Ray and Arthur Robson, argued in a 2017 paper that it would be fairer to choose name order randomly, perhaps by flipping a coin, and make it clear this has been done by inserting the symbol ⓡ between authors’ names.

Ray tells me several journals have published papers using the symbol and the influential American Economic Association of professional economists has a page explaining random name ordering on its website, with a link to a tool authors can use to do the randomising.

Ray says use of the symbol is growing, especially among younger authors who work in larger teams.

That makes sense in a world where global collaboration is increasingly common and while the ethos may never catch on in upscale law firm email practices, I suspect it probably should. 

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