Hundreds of hot air balloons are launched over Albuquerque as part of annual nine-day festival
Hundreds of hot air balloons launched into the skies over Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the US on Saturday for the first time in two years, as the city’s balloon fiesta returned after a pause due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Yoda, Smokey the Bear and the Creamland Cow were some of the notable balloons that took flight in the mass ascension that kicked off the 49th annual festival.
Continue reading...Ancient tracks found in New Mexico are believed to be between 21,000 and 23,000 years old, study says
New scientific research conducted by archaeologists has uncovered what they believe are the oldest known human footprints in North America.
Research done at the White Sands national park in New Mexico discovered the ancient footprints, with researchers estimating that the tracks were between 21,000 and 23,000 years old, reported Science.
Continue reading...Indigenous women in North and Central America are coming together to share ancestral knowledge of amaranth, a plant booming in popularity as a health food
Just over 10 years ago, a small group of Indigenous Guatemalan farmers visited Beata Tsosie-Peña’s stucco home in northern New Mexico. In the arid heat, the visitors, mostly Maya Achì women from the forested Guatemalan town of Rabinal, showed Tsosie-Peña how to plant the offering they had brought with them: amaranth seeds.
Back then, Tsosie-Peña had just recently come interested in environmental justice amid frustration at the ecological challenges facing her native Santa Clara Pueblo – an Indigenous North American community just outside the New Mexico town of Española, which is downwind from the nuclear facilities that built the atomic bomb. Tsosie-Peña had begun studying permaculture and other Indigenous agricultural techniques. Today, she coordinates the environmental health and justice program at Tewa Women United, where she maintains a hillside public garden that’s home to the descendants of those first amaranth seeds she was given more than a decade ago.
Continue reading...Four dead at the scene and one dies in hospital after balloon blown into power lines by wind catches fire
Five people died after a hot air balloon hit power lines in New Mexico’s largest city on Saturday, police said.
The crash happened around 7am on Albuquerque’s west side, police spokesman Gilbert Gallegos said. No identities were immediately released but fire officials said three males, including the pilot, and two females died.
Continue reading...City leaders hope big news could bring a tourism surge as the town grapples with the pandemic economy
On the eve of the release of the Pentagon’s highly anticipated report on unidentified aerial phenomena, life here in one of the world’s UFO hotspots was exceedingly normal.
Downtown’s alien souvenir shops and the International UFO Museum welcomed a steady stream of visitors escaping their pandemic malaise on Thursday as coronavirus restrictions continued to loosen in New Mexico.
Continue reading...Manuel Gonzales, a New Mexico sheriff who is running for mayor of Albuquerque, was interrupted at a campaign event by a flying drone with a sex toy attached to it. A man tried to grab the item, swinging his fist and calling Gonzeles a tyrant.
The campaign group for Gonzales said the Democrat was unharmed and 'will not be intimidated'
Continue reading...Sean Lannon is accused of killing a man he says abused him in childhood and is a person of interest in four other deaths
A man accused of killing a New Jersey man he says sexually abused him in childhood, and who is a person of interest in the deaths of his ex-wife and three other people in New Mexico, claims to be responsible for 16 deaths in all, prosecutors said.
Sean Lannon, 47, said he was responsible for the killings in New Jersey and New Mexico and claimed he had killed “11 other individuals”, NJ.com quoted Alec Gutierrez, an assistant prosecutor in Gloucester county, as saying at a detention hearing on Friday.
Continue reading...Kurt Markus began his career shooting cowboys in Montana. A new exhibition shows how he trained his lens on boxers, fashion models and nudes, too
Continue reading...A man was shot after a scuffle broke out when demonstrators tried to remove a bronze sculpture of a Spanish conquistador outside a museum in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A group of armed men had tried to protect the statue of Juan de Oñate. The injured man was in a critical but stable condition, police said.
Authorities later announced the monument would be removed until the next step could be determined
Continue reading...Catholic priest Arthur Perrault convicted of ‘long-term’ abuse of altar boy in New Mexico in 1990s
A former Roman Catholic priest who fled to Morocco before he was returned to the United States and convicted of sexually abusing an altar boy in New Mexico in the 1990s, has been sentenced to 30 years in prison.
The US district judge, Martha Vazquez, imposed the sentence on Arthur Perrault, 81, a onetime Air Force chaplain and colonel.
Continue reading...New Mexico tops the list, followed by California, Arizona, Colorado and Nebraska as problem could intensify with global heating
A handful of US states – including New Mexico and California – are facing significant strains on their water supplies that will only intensify with global heating, according to new rankings.
Related: Extreme water stress affects a quarter of the world's population, say experts
Continue reading...Murray Gell-Mann, the Nobel-winning physicist who brought order to the universe by helping discover and classify subatomic particles, has died. He was 89.
Related: Video: Murray Gell-Mann on ditching what 'everybody knows'
Continue reading...Larry Mitchell Hopkins accused of illegal weapons possession after videos apparently showed men stopping migrants in New Mexico
A member of an armed rightwing militia group accused of illegally detaining migrants at the US-Mexico border has been arrested, officials said on Saturday.
Related: Videos appear to show armed militia detaining migrants at US-Mexico border
Continue reading...Nicole García Aguilar was granted asylum in October but was held another seven months while Ice appealed
A Honduran transgender woman who was detained in a US immigration facility for seven months despite being granted asylum has been released after a legal challenge.
Nicole García Aguilar was freed from the Cibola County detention facility in New Mexico on Wednesday night, a week after lawyers filed a habeas corpus writ challenging her unjustified and prolonged detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).
Continue reading...Winter storm ‘expected to create havoc’ as it moves from western US across the middle of the country
A massive winter storm hit the US Rockies and plains on Friday then punched east, with snow set to assault a 1,800-mile (1,609 km) corridor through the weekend, creating transportation “havoc” in the middle of the country.
The system started as rain from Mexico and turned to snow as it met icy air. Up to 18in (45cm) of snow were expected in the Sangre de Cristo mountains south of Denver, according to the National Weather Service.
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