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.
Barack Obama says he will be in Oxford, Miss., tonight, but as of early this morning John McCain remained adamant he would not participate in what would be the first presidential debate of the campaign unless Congress and the Bush administration reach consensus on a $700 billion financial industry bailout, ABC News reports.
Meanwhile, the network says, debate organizers remain at the ready, having invested $5 million to set up the event and accommodate the 3,000 journalists who have reportedly arrived in the home city of Ole Miss.
Vice President Dick Cheney cancelled today’s scheduled visit to Hobbs, also citing the nation’s financial negotiations as his reason for staying in Washington instead, the Las Cruces Sun-News reports.
Cheney had planned to visit New Mexico to attend a private fundraiser for congressional candidate Ed Tinsley.
Personnel from the Torrance County Detention Facility near Estancia will be interviewed next Tuesday in Washington, D.C. at a public hearing to determine why sexual victimization rates at that facility are highest in the nation among local jails, the Mountain View Telegraph reports.
A report released in June by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics found that the facility had an overall rate of sexual victimization at 13.4 percent, far higher than the national average of 3.2 percent. Those numbers included both willing and unwilling sexual activities, including unwanted touch. Personnel from other jails around the country will also be in Washington to testify.
Nearly all of the 110 miles of fencing to be constructed along the U.S.-Mexico border in West Texas and New Mexico has been contracted out at a cost of $220 million, the Sun-News also reports.
The Las Cruces paper says three miles of 15- to 18-foot-high fencing has been completed in Dona Ana County, while fence projects have started at Santa Teresa and in Luna County.
Sen. John Arthur Smith, D-Deming, a vocal skeptic of Gov. Bill Richardson’s spending proposals during a special legislative session in August, says he’s concerned the state’s budget surplus is disappearing and suggests that the executive branch consider placing a freeze on nonessential travel, new hires and contract expansions, the Albuquerque Journal reports.
“If you catch it early and hit the brakes, you can soften the blow,” Smith told the Journal after a meeting of the Legislative Finance Committee, of which Smith is chairman.
