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LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) — It was the summer of 1945 when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan, killing thousands of people as waves of destructive energy obliterated two cites. It was a decisive move that helped bring about the end of World War II, but survivors and the generations that followed were left to grapple with sickness from radiation exposure. At the time, U.S. President Harry Truman called it "the greatest scientific gamble in history," saying the rain of ruin from the air would usher in a new concept of force and power. W...
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — The weeklong heat wave that baked most of the U.S. Southwest in temperatures well into triple digits is on its last legs, but forecasters are still urging people to be cautious as there will be little relief from the warm weather until monsoon thunderstorms begin to kick in, likely in July. A slight easing of temperatures is expected through the weekend, with Phoenix and Las Vegas falling short of besting any new records. Still, an excessive heat warning continues through Saturday in Las Vegas, where it's never been hot...
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) — Los Alamos was the perfect spot for the U.S. government's top-secret Manhattan Project. Almost overnight, the ranching enclave on a remote plateau in northern New Mexico was transformed into a makeshift home for scientists, engineers and young soldiers racing to develop the world's first atomic bomb. Dirt roads were hastily built and temporary housing came in the form of huts and tents as the outpost's population ballooned. The community is facing growing pains again, 80 years later, as Los Alamos National Laboratory t... Full story
TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES, N.M. (AP) — Virgin Galactic rocketed to the edge of space with its first tourists Thursday, a former British Olympian who bought his ticket 18 years ago and a mother-daughter duo from the Caribbean. The space plane glided back to a runway landing at Spaceport America in the New Mexico desert, after a brief flight that gave passengers a few minutes of weightlessness. This first private customer flight had been delayed for years; its success means Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic can now start offering monthly rides, j...
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — The Southwestern U.S. is bracing for another week of blistering temperatures, with forecasters on Monday extending an excessive heat warning through the weekend for Arizona's most populated area, and alerting residents in parts of Nevada and New Mexico to stay indoors. The metro Phoenix area is on track to tie or to break a record set in the summer of 1974 for the most consecutive days with the high temperature at or above 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 Celsius). Even the morning low temperatures are tying historic r... Full story
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — The weapons supervisor on the film set where Alec Baldwin shot and killed a cinematographer was drinking and smoking marijuana in the evenings during the filming of "Rust," prosecutors are alleging, saying she was likely hungover when she loaded a live bullet into the revolver that the actor used. They leveled the accusations Friday in response to a motion filed last month by Hannah Gutierrez-Reed's attorneys that seeks to dismiss her involuntary manslaughter charge. The prosecutors accused her of having a history of r...
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Officers found Tony Peralta sitting on a curb not far from a convenience store where he borrowed a cell phone to call 911 and confess to the 2008 killing of his former landlord. Sweating and taking puffs from his cigarette, he told them he's tired of covering it up, tired of living with the lie and tired of being overwhelmed by guilt. He agreed to take the officers to where he buried the body before standing up and volunteering to be cuffed. Police in the southeastern New Mexico community of Roswell released the 911 r...
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Videos released Thursday of this week's deadly rampage in northwest New Mexico recorded a voice said to be the shooter urging police to "kill me" and officers rushing toward the 18-year-old gunman before fatally shooting him outside a church. "He is yelling on the Ring footage, 'Come kill me,'" Farmington Police Chief Steve Hebbe said of Beau Wilson, the high school senior who authorities say killed three older women during the attack. "He's making a stand, he has opportunities to run off, he does not use those o...
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Native Americans whose relatives have gone missing or been killed wore red on Friday, a color synonymous with raising awareness about the disproportionate number of Indigenous people who have been victims of violence. Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples Awareness Day is held on May 5 — the birthday of Hanna Harris, who was only 21 when she was slain on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation in Montana. Countless more Indigenous people have gone missing since her body was found nearly a decade ago. Advocates des...
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Monday signed legislation to provide free school meals to all students regardless of family income, as New Mexico and several other states look to fill the gap left by lapsed federal pandemic-era benefit programs and address the strain to family budgets caused by food prices. The bill cleared the Legislature during the recent 60-day session, with lawmakers setting aside more than $22 million in the state budget to help pay for the program. Additional money will be used to improve school k...
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Endangered Mexican gray wolves are making more strides, as more breeding pairs and pups have been documented since reintroduction efforts began in the southwestern U.S. more than two decades ago, federal wildlife managers said Tuesday. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released the results of its annual survey in New Mexico and Arizona, saying this is the first time the population has topped 200 and the seventh straight year that the numbers have trended upward. In all, at least 241 of the predators were counted, m...
TO'HAJIILEE, N.M. (AP) — A school tucked into the sandstone cliffs and juniper-dotted mesas of central New Mexico is fortified on one side by a wall of sandbags and an earthen berm. On the other side, melting snow puddles along the edges of classrooms. Inside, caulking, paint and metal plates hide the cracks that have formed over decades in the block walls. With each rainstorm, the nearly century-old To'Hajiilee Community School on the fringes of the Navajo Nation sinks further into the ground. The layers of bandages won't have to hold much l...
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A 39-year-old felon who overwhelmingly lost a bid for the New Mexico statehouse as a Republican paid for four men to shoot at Democratic lawmakers' homes in recent months, including one house where a 10-year-old girl was asleep, police said. The case against Solomon Peña, who had posted photos of himself online with Donald Trump campaign material, is one of dozens across the United States where people have threatened, and in some cases attempted to carry out, violence against members of Congress, school board me...
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — In the six years since he resettled in the United States from Afghanistan, the primary suspect in the slayings of four Muslim men in Albuquerque has been arrested several times for domestic violence and captured on camera slashing the tires of a woman's car, according to police and court records. The lengthy pattern of violence — which began not long after Muhammad Syed arrived in the states — has shocked members of the city's small, close-knit Muslim community, some of whom knew him from the local mosque and who initi...
LAS VEGAS, N.M. (AP) — Weather conditions described as potentially historic were on tap for New Mexico on Saturday and for the next several days as over 1,400 firefighters and a fleet of airplanes and helicopters worked feverishly to bolster lines around the largest fire burning in the U.S. Many families already have been left homeless and thousands of residents have evacuated due to flames that have charred large swaths of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in northeastern New Mexico. Residents on the fringes of the shifting fire front were holdin...
LAS VEGAS, N.M. (AP) — Wind-whipped flames raced across more of New Mexico's pine-covered mountainsides on Monday, closing in on a town of 13,000 people where some residents hurried to pack their cars with belongings, others hustled to clear brush from around their homes, and police were called in to help evacuate the state's psychiatric hospital. Firefighting crews battled on several fronts to keep the fire, the largest burning in the U.S., from pushing into more populated areas as it fed on the state's drought-parched landscape. The fire h...
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — The federal government has finished another environmental review of a proposed transmission line that will carry wind-generated electricity from rural New Mexico to big cities in the West and similar reviews are planned for two more projects that would span parts of Utah and Nevada, the U.S. Interior Department announced Thursday. The regulatory steps came a day after the Biden administration announced a $2.5 billion initiative to make the nation's power grid more effective at withstanding catastrophic disasters c...
Firefighters are battling a wind-driven blaze that has burned at least 150 homes, barns and other structures in a mountain community in drought-stricken New Mexico. The blaze on the northeastern side of Ruidoso was fueled by winds between 50 and 90 mph when it was sparked Tuesday. Close to 4,000 residents were displaced by early evacuations, and village officials announced Wednesday afternoon that residents were being forced to leave a more populated area after the flames jumped a road. Meanwhile, crews in Colorado were fighting two grass...
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Investigators said Wednesday that there was "some complacency" in how weapons were handled on the movie set where Alec Baldwin accidentally shot and killed a cinematographer and wounded another person, but it's too soon to determine whether charges will be filed. Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza noted that 500 rounds of ammunition — a mix of blanks, dummy rounds and live rounds — were found while searching the set of the Western "Rust." "Obviously I think the industry has had a record recently of being safe. I think...
Safety standards developed by film studios and labor unions are the primary protection for actors and film crews when a scene calls for using prop guns. The industry-wide guidance is clear: "Blanks can kill. Treat all firearms as if they are loaded." Shootings nevertheless have killed and injured people while cameras rolled, including the cinematographer who died and the director who was wounded this week when no one realized a prop gun fired by actor Alec Baldwin during the filming of "Rust" carried live rounds that are far more dangerous...
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — An assistant director unwittingly handed Alec Baldwin a loaded weapon and told him it was safe to use in the moments before the actor fatally shot a cinematographer, court records released Friday show. "Cold gun," the assistant director announced, according to a search warrant filed in a Santa Fe court. Instead, the gun was loaded with live rounds, and when Baldwin pulled the trigger Thursday on the set of a Western, he killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. Director Joel Souza, who was standing behind her, was w...
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — It's only a few days into the new school year, but New Mexico's largest district is reeling from a shooting that left one student dead and landed another in custody. The gunfire at Washington Middle School during the lunch hour Friday marked the second shooting in Albuquerque in less than 24 hours. With the city on pace to shatter its homicide record this year, top state officials said they were heartbroken by what they described as a scourge. "These tragedies should never occur. That they do tells us there is more w...
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — U.S. wildlife managers on Wednesday proposed federal protections for the lesser prairie chicken, saying its habitat across five states is in danger of becoming more fragmented and the effects of climate change and drought are expected to take a further toll on the species in the future. Once listed as a threatened species, the chicken's habitat spans parts of New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas -- including a portion of the oil-rich Permian Basin. Environmentalists have been pushing to reinstate federal p...
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Some shared agonizing stories of frustration and loss. Others prayed and performed ceremonies. All called for action. Across the U.S. on Wednesday, family members, advocates and government leaders commemorated a day of awareness for the crises of violence against Indigenous women and children. They met at virtual events, vigils and rallies at state capitols and raised their voices on social media. In Washington, a gathering hosted by U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and other federal officials started with a p... Full story
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A Virgin Galactic test flight Saturday ended prematurely as the spacecraft's rocket motor failed to ignite and it then glided down safely to its landing site in southern New Mexico. The spacecraft's engine is supposed to ignite moments after the craft is released from a special carrier jet, sending it in a near-vertical climb toward the edge of space. "The ignition sequence for the rocket motor did not complete. Vehicle and crew are in great shape," Virgin Galactic said in a brief statement on Twitter. "We have several...
