Eileen Pace

San Antonio’s poet laureate is on her way this week to Bordeaux, France, to perform at the International Conference on Interlanguage.

Dr. Carmen Tafolla’s poetry has been heard in countries all over the world, but she said she was invited to the linguistic conference based on her mastery of code-switching. She says this is the natural progression of language, and it happens all the time:

A Lackland judge is hearing the case against a former Air Force instructor accused of rape.

Staff Sgt. Eddy Soto, formerly with the 323rd Training Squadron, pleaded guilty to five of the charges against him, including sexual assault, wrongful sexual contact, lying to officials, and having unprofessional relationships with trainees.

Soto’s court-martial opened in January with a request from the government to postpone the proceedings so it could bring in a cross-cultural expert. 

Scooter Store employees have plenty of questions about their furloughs late last week.

Scooter Store CEO Marty Landon reportedly sent out a blanket email at the end of the day last Friday that told all employees not to come back to work unless they received further instructions.

Employees were left dazed and confused, entering their spring break not knowing where their next paycheck would come from.

San Antonio Representative Mike Villarreal has filed a bill to bring transparency to licensing procedures for school teachers.

Right now teachers take a composite exam with several different parts – including all the core subjects – but as long as their overall score is passing, the teachers don’t have to pass all of those subjects to be certified to teach them.

San Antonio business leaders have returned home optimistic after a week-long lobbying trip to Washington.

Business leaders, along with officials from the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce and the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, target certain projects and issues every year as Congress starts looking at new legislation.

Unemployment figures released Friday had bad news and good news for Texas. 

The good news is that over the past year, unemployment in the state has declined almost a full percentage point and remains below the national rate of 7.9 percent for January.

The bad news is that unemployment rose slightly in Texas for the month of January to 6.3 percent; prior to January, the jobless rate had been declining for six months.

Two San Antonio  lawmakers have introduced companion bills at the State Capitol to facilitate the redevelopment of Hemisfair.

State law requires a public vote anytime park land is leased or sold to protect the park acreage from being reduced in size, but the Hemisfair master plan calls for establishing more park space than exists under its current configuration.