I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
The U.S. House will vote on President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan today. The plan contains $700 million for New Mexico, the Albuquerque Journal reports. It would provide a “flood of aid to education” and would be “a tool for rewriting the social contract with the poor,” says the New York Times. But Democrats worry it “may fall short in its broader goal of transforming the American economy over the long term,” notes the Washington Post.
The Dona Ana County Commissioners have expressed unanimous support for a domestic partnership bill being heard at the Roundhouse today, says the Las Cruces Sun-News. “It’s a good thing to have for various reasons, for legal reasons, for medical reasons,” said County Commission Chairwoman Leticia Duarte-Benavidez. “Overall, it is fair to everybody.”
One man in Alamogordo is terrified that prisoners from Guantanamo Bay may be transferred to an Otero County immigrant detention center when Gitmo closes, according to the Alamogordo News. He’s been standing on an Alamogordo street corner holding a sign that says: “No Islamic jihadists from Guantanamo in Otero Country [sic]. Send them to Harry Reed [sic] in NV. These people are killers.”
The $2.7 billion fence along the border between the United States and Mexico is only 69 miles from completion, but it is possible the Obama administration may halt the progress of the controversial fence, the AP reports. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is not a big fan of the fence, half of which is in her home state of Arizona.
“Proposed legislative cuts target ethnic programs,” says a story in today’s Daily Lobo. The proposed cuts would completely eliminate legislative funding for Uuniversity of New Mexico programs such as African American Student Services; it would slash money for El Centro de la Raza by nearly 40 percent. “This is huge,” said Veronica Mendez-Cruz, director of El Centro de la Raza. “This will translate, for us, (into) drastically cutting services to our students, our community. It will mean possibly laying off two to three staff folks here because the funding I receive from the Legislature pretty much is everything that we do here.”
The U.S. Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement has given New Mexico $3.8 million to clean up abandoned coal mines near Lordsburg, T or C, Grants and Soccoro. Mining was begun in the area in 1876, but now the shafts are used only by owls, “miner’s cats” and javelinas. “We remain disappointed that the U.S. Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement restricts our ability to use the funds for reclamation of projects on uranium and other non-coal mines,” Bill Brancard of the New Mexico Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department told the Deming Headlight.
