Border
Obama campaign unveils Spanish-language radio ad
The hidden costs of a 'maquiladora'
Last week ground was broken on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez in what is set to be Mexico's largest 'maquiladora'. The Taiwanese manufacturing giant Foxconn started construction in Jeronimo, Chihuaha on a facility that will eventually span 500 acres with more than 1.2 million square feet of structures and employ 30,000 people. Foxconn is one of the largest manufacturers of computer components and electronics worldwide.
TODAY'S TOP STORIES: Bernalillo County Clerk sexual harassment suit settled
A lawsuit that exposed sexually charged working conditions in the Bernalillo County Clerk's Office has been settled for $80,000, The Albuquerque Journal writes today.
Work on a 40-foot-tall sculpture memorializing Mexican immigrants who risk their lives crossing the border illegally may be halted near Downtown Santa Fe after officials said it may pose a safety issue to passersby, according to The Santa Fe New Mexican.
Carlsbad residents aren't exactly rushing to get the new U.S. passport card that substitutes for a passport when crossing the border into Mexico, Canada and several other Western Hemisphere countries, The Carlsbad Current-Argus writes today.
NM jumps to No. 2 for immigration-crime prosecution, feds say.
The New Mexico district climbed in April to No. 2 on the list of per-capita prosecutions of immigration-related crimes by the U.S. Department of Justice.
With 217 prosecutions, the New Mexico U.S. Attorney’s Office trailed only the Southern California office in per-capita prosecutions in April 2008. A year earlier, New Mexico was fifth on the list, and it was also fifth five years ago. Following New Mexico in April 2008 were the west and southern districts of Texas, the Arizona district, the south Florida district and the east Arkansas district.
NYTimes: NM kid becomes El Gringo, and makes good in Mexico and here.
Shawn Kiehne, aka El Gringo, is apparently big with a certain demographic, not that I knew this fact until Sunday.
But according to The New York Times, he's gaining popularity among Mexican and Mexican-American audiences, a U.S.-born 30-something who sings in Spanish and plays his version of Norteno music, replete with all the accordions and 12-string bass guitars.
Here's another thing I didn't know: El Gringo is from Los Lunas, N.M.
Mexico Notebook: Should PEMEX, the 'people's oil,' be privatized?
A recent edition of Reforma, one of Mexico City's largest-circulation newspapers, had no fewer than four articles in its first four pages related to one of the the hottest news items in this nation: the proposal to privatize Mexico's national oil system, PEMEX. People go to the polls Sunday to decide. The vote comes 70 or so years after this nation nationalized oil to wrest control of Mexico's natural resource away from American companies in the late 1930s. Mexico is considering privatizing because, it says, it needs investment to further exploration, most notably in the Gulf of Mexico.
Mexico Notebook: Solar hot water for life
CHIHUAHUA CITY, Mexico -- "Free! Hot Water for Life," screams the billboard by the highway. In the near distance are the boxy-modern condos that spring up like hongos [mushrooms] around virtually every city in Mexico to accommodate their burgeoning populations.
No doubt the company selling this solar water heater -- in this case Signa Hogar -- would like to see a solar boiler atop each one.
Why don't we see signs like that in the States?
Obama tells audience he will make immigration his "top priority"
Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama touched on immigration at the League of United Latin American Citizens National Convention on Tuesday. But it was Barack Obama who perhaps made the biggest impression by promising to make immigration reform the "top priority" of his first year in office. McCain has recently backed away from his strongest efforts at comprehensive immigration reform.
TODAY'S TOP STORIES: Madrid to help Democrats draft platform
According to the AP, the Obama campaign and Democratic National Committee are expected to announce today that Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano will chair the Democratic Party's Platform Drafting Committee. Patricia Madrid, the former New Mexico Attorney General and congressional candidate, will be a co-chair, along with Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and former Discovery Communications President and CEO Judith McHale. Madrid was long a John Edwards supporter (which couldn't have pleased Richardson much) before he dropped out of the presidential race.
Speaking of the presidential campaigns, John McCain continues to court Hispanic voters today, as he delivers a speech to the League of United Latin American Citizens convention in Washington, D.C., according to excerpts of McCain's speech released beforehand, reported by CBS News' John Bentley.
TODAY'S TOP STORIES: Rapidly rising fuel costs hurt school district
Like the rest of us, school officials in Gallup are looking for solutions to rising fuel costs, with one idea being a four day school week if state government doesn't pony up extra fuel dollars.
Saying the "violence continues," the Las Cruces Sun-News yesterday reported a grisly list of murders in Juarez over last weekend. But babies are being born also, this time on the Bridge of Americas.
Charges against a KOB photographer who was arrested for refusing to obey a police officer have been dismissed by a judge, and the officer has been suspended by the Albuquerque Police Department.
Swinging for Latinos
As New Mexico emerges as a key swing state, the two parties are increasingly focusing on the state's Latino voters as a key demographic. It’s not unusual for Democrats to win big statewide with New Mexico Latinos. But George Bush received about 40 percent of the Latino vote nationally in 2004, and maybe 37 percent in New Mexico. The big question now is was 2004 was a flash in the pan?
Immigration raids assailed by mayors
A resolution by Mayor David Coss of Santa Fe calling for a change in the way ICE conducts workplace raids of immigrants has been passed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Miami.
The mayor, who has been an outspoken advocate for tolerance of immigrants, reportedly shepherded the resolution first through the mayor's Criminal and Social Justice standing committee. It was then passed by the entire conference.
TODAY'S TOP STORIES: It's confirmed. Mountain lion killed man.
It’s been confirmed that a mountain lion killed a man who’s body was found near his home last week in southwestern New Mexico. This is only the second killing in New Mexico of a human by a mountain lion in modern history, with the first being the 1974 death of a young boy in Arroyo Seco, just north of Taos. Rick Winslow, a Game and Fish large carnivore biologist, told Rene Romo of the Albuquerque Journal that such killings by mountain lions are uncommon, but that “Attacks by wildlife may become more frequent as our growing population expands into the urban-wildland interface.’’
John Fleck reports for the Albuquerque Journal that most of Albuquerque didn’t curtail driving by much in April when gas prices were rapidly rising.
Steve Terrell writes for the Santa Fe New Mexican that Steve Pearce is “demanding” that Tom Udall debate him pronto on energy issues, but is being put off by the Udall campaign until the fall.
The head of the El Paso sector DEA told Jose Medina of the Las Cruces Sun-News that a drug cartel hit list with names of Americans north of the border may just be a rumor. “Nobody has substantiated it.
TODAY'S TOP STORIES: Hit list raises concern
Not surprisingly, a report of a Mexican drug cartel hit list was the most e-mailed story for the Las Cruces Sun News this morning. The Luna County Sheriff would not divulge the names of the 15 to 20 people on the list, but they are said to be current or former residents of Doña Ana, Luna and El Paso counties and from as far away as Albuquerque, among other locations, the Sun News reports.
Meanwhile, Thomason Hospital in El Paso is back to normal after nearly two weeks in lockdown to protect a Mexican police official and his deputy assistant, both of whom had been brought in for treatment of gunshot wounds, the paper reports. The officers suffered the gunshot wounds in Nuevo Casas Grandes, about 150 miles southwest of El Paso in Chihuahua state.
Northern New Mexico community leaders attending a briefing and rare tour at Los Alamos National Laboratory this week were assured "we're going to be here for a while," the Los Alamos Monitor reports.
TODAY'S TOP STORIES: Are acts of kindness a bribe?
State Rep. Debbie Rodella likes to practice "random acts of kindness," and apparently spent money from her re-election campaign to do it, the Albuquerque Journal is reporting.
One three occasions, Rodella, D-Ohkay Owingeh, gave constituents $100 to help cover funeral costs, reporter Raam Wong writes in todays editions.
Elsewhere around the state, New Mexico Law enforcement agencies cracking down on DWI this summer are finding more than drunks at area sobriety checkpoints. The Santa Fe New Mexican reports today that at a checkpoint last week near Santa Fe, 16 Mexican citizens were detained as they tried to pass in a Ford F150 pickup.
Speaking of immigration issues, the Las Cruces Sun-News reports today that a steel and concrete fence erected on the U.S.- Mexico border around parts of Sundland Park isn't doing much to keep illegal immigrants out of the U.S.
TODAY'S TOP STORIES
Two Texas women were seriously wounded by gunfire while driving in Juarez, and a Chihuahua state investigator became the fourth police officer killed in three days, as the death toll from drug violence in this border city rose to 410 for the year, the Las Cruces Sun-News.
Parents were camped out in front of Albuquerque schools early Friday morning in an attempt to save hundreds of dollars on summer child care by securing their children spots in summer recreation programs, KOAT Channel 7 reports.
Meanwhile, the city of Albuquerque and Bernalillo County report a shortage of lifeguards, delaying opening of some pools, according to the Albuquerque Journal.
A hundred head of longhorn cattle were to be herded through the city of Roswell Friday as the kick-off event to Old Chisum Days, the Roswell Daily Record reports.
The Las Cruces paper also reports that former Gov. Garrey Carruthers is one of five candidates being considered in a closed session this morning by the New Mexico State University Board of Regents as replacement for NMSU President Mike Martin.
A ghost story involving a severed arm, based partly in fact, is luring trespassers to an abandoned amusement park nicknamed "Tragic Landing" in East El Paso County, according to another story in the Sun-News.
A meadow jumping mouse native to New Mexico -- and the only mammal known to have 18 teeth -- is at the center of a controversy between ranchers, farmers and the state Department of Game and Fish, the Santa Fe New Mexican reports.
Dunn wins endorsement of man some call toughest sheriff in U.S.
Albuquerque — You've probably heard of America's Toughest Sheriff, Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz.
The man the Arizona Republic calls "a powder keg of public bravado" has garnered heaps of publicity for his unusual techniques. He moved 2,000 inmates into a tent city in the Arizona desert and re-instituted chain gangs for men, women and juveniles. He feeds his inmates the cheapest food in the country: two meals per day that cost an average of 15 cents each. He has the inmates' sheets, towels, socks and underwear dyed pink.
On Thursday Arpaio endorsed rancher Aubrey Dunn in the Republican primary race in the second congressional district.
TODAY'S TOP STORIES: World Class Exhibit Center at Expo New Mexico
Gov. Bill Richardson on Thursday proposed creating "world-class" exhibit center on the Expo New Mexico fairgrounds in the heart of Albuquerque to replace Tingley Coliseum and the Downs racetrack, the latter of which is moving operations to Moriarty, the Albuquerque Journal reports.
A 21-year-old Mexican national was airlifted from the Mexican port of entry of Columbus, N.M. to a hospital in Las Cruces after apparently being tortured in what a Luna County Sheriff said appears to be related to the ongoing war between Mexican drug cartels, according to the Deming Headlight.
At least nine men were shot dead and the ankle of a 7-year-old girl was nearly severed in continued violence Wednesday night and Thursday in the Mexican border city of Juarez, the Las Cruces Sun News reports.
The Santa Fe New Mexican says the Jemez Mountains could be the "canary in the coal mine" in terms of climate change, citing a report that says the mountain range had the greatest average increase in temperature and drop in moisture since the 1970s in the state -- changes that likely contributed to the 2000 Cerro Grande fire.
A Navajo code talker who used his native language to confuse America's enemies during World War II died on Memorial Day, the Gallup Independent reports.
Guv in Mexico Thursday for talks
Gov. Bill Richardson will travel to Mexico City on Thursday to participate in a wide-ranging discussion between governors of U.S. border states and their Mexican counterparts, the governor's office announced Wednesday.
The governors from both sides of the border also will meet with Mexican President Calderón Hinojosa, and his cabinet secretaries, to discuss key issues, incuding border security and immigration.
TODAY'S TOP STORIES: Illegals' fine
A top executive at a Roswell aircraft painting company and his firm, Dean Baldwin Painting, have agreed to pay a combined total of $550,000 imposed by a federal court in Albuquerque and the U.S. Department of Labor for knowingly employing and accepting falsified documents from illegal immigrants, the Roswell Daily Record reports.
On a split vote, the Public Regulation Commission gave electric utility PNM the $63 million in increases the company said it needed over the next year, which, when coupled with a 6.4 percent increase approved last month, will raise customers' electric bills by about 15.4 percent, the Albuquerque Journal reports.
Student members of the Clovis High School yearbook staff are on the defense after being criticized by a Christian group for running profiles and pictures of gay student couples, the Clovis News Journal reports.
The Los Alamos Monitor reports that the birthplace of the atomic bomb continues to lead the nation in its per-capita population of affluent Americans, according to a Nielsen study released this week.