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 New Mexico Business Weekly reports today on a surprising health care beat development: that Wal-Mart backs President Obama’s proposed health insurance mandate requiring large employers to offer health insurance for employees.
After a history of offering what many have described as meager benefits for many of its “associates,” Wal-Mart officials say they “are for shared responsibility.”
Meanwhile, the feds are apparently getting serious about gun running along the border. Immigration and Custom Enforcement and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives are teaming up to reduce gun smuggling, so reports the Alamogordo News. The two agencies have signed a memorandum of understanding in time for a summit to be held in Albuquerque regarding how law enforcement can better fight firearms trafficking.
And on to another kind of trafficking: the Farmington Daily-Times reports that the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office will be looking to train local law enforcement on all elements of human trafficking, involving “the use of force, fraud, or coercion to obtain some type of labor or commercial sex act.” Human trafficking is the second largest criminal industry worldwide behind drug dealing, and the fastest growing.
Lastly, solar power is coming to the Navajo Nation, according to the Gallup Independent. Albuquerque-based energy company Sacred Power Inc. has been given over a half of a million dollars from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to establish solar-powered electricity for homes in the sprawling Navajo Nation.
NMI’s Danielle Bauer contributed to this post.
