Firearm waiting period and polling place ban to take effect next month - Albuquerque Journal, KUNM News
Two new laws aimed at curbing gun violence and intimidation in New Mexico are set to take effect next month.
As the Albuquerque Journal reports, a 7-day waiting period to purchase a firearm and a comprehensive ban on openly carrying guns in or around polling places during elections will become enforceable on May 15.
The laws are a direct result of January’s short, 30-day legislative session – where Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham outlined public safety initiatives as her top priority.
While only 2 firearm-related bills made it through the end, at least 10 gun safety or restriction bills were deemed “germane” or relevant by the governor to the 2024 session.
Both of the laws do not apply to licensed concealed carry permit holders.
Other high-profile efforts that died in the Roundhouse included a broad ban on “assault weapons” and to only allow purchases of automatic and semiautomatic weapons for adults at least 21 years old.
Shoplifter chased by police on horses in New Mexico, video shows — Associated Press
Police in Albuquerque had all the horsepower in this chase: A shoplifter was detained outside a Walgreens this month after trying to outrun a horse-mounted police officer.
Albuquerque police bodycam video shows a dark-brown horse trotting through a parking lot behind a man in black clothing.
The horse catches up to him within seconds.
"It wasn't me," the man yells as he leads the horse and police officer into the street, stopping traffic.
The man then finds himself surrounded when two more police officers on horses arrive at the scene, the video shows.
One of the officers dismounts from his horse and handcuffs the man, who has been charged with stealing $230 worth of merchandise from the Walgreens, according to the Albuquerque Police Department.
Court kills Holtec's nuclear waste license for New Mexico — KUNM News, Santa Fe New Mexican
A federal appeals court has revoked Holtec International’s license to temporarily store nuclear waste in southeast New Mexico.
The Santa Fe New Mexican reports a three-judge panel in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the Nuclear Regulatory Commission did not have the authority to grant the license in the first place.
The New Jersey-based company planned to build a temporary underground storage facility in Lea County. The original license was for 500 canisters of spent nuclear fuel, though the company said it planned to eventually store as many as 10,000 canisters, according to a press release.
A spokesperson for Holtec international said the company is likely to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme court.
In August of 2023 the same court vacated another NRC license for a proposed storage facility in Texas by Interim Storage Partners.
Ceremonial eagle ‘sacrifice’ at Valles Caldera draws criticism and Federal lawsuit - KUNM News, Santa Fe New Mexican
An eagle that was sacrificed last year as part of a Jemez Pueblo ceremony at the Valles Caldera National Preserve is now the center of a federal lawsuit that accuses officials of being too secretive and failing to address potential ecological impacts.
As the Santa Fe New Mexican reports, the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility is stepping up to argue that the eagle kill was unlawful, the federal government didn’t allow public comment, and failed to provide documents detailing the decision-making process.
Last fall, the National Park Service authorized the pueblo to kill one bald or golden eagle in a religious ritual.
In a “finding of no significant impact,” – the direct result of a legal process mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act – the Service writes the permit allows up to eight eagles to be taken, but was limiting it to one bird in this case.
According to an environmental assessment of eagle killings in the Valles Caldera by the Service, some tribes do prohibit eagle killings, while others see the capture and occasional killing of an eagle as a traditional religious practice.
Federal law does, in fact, allow Indian tribes to take eagles for religious purposes.
Extreme heat drives up food prices. Just how bad will it get? - Kate Yoder, Grist via Source New Mexico
Sometimes climate change appears where you least expect it — like the grocery store.
Sometimes climate change appears where you least expect it — like the grocery store. Food prices have climbed 25 percent over the past four years, and Americans have been shocked by the growing cost of staples like beef, sugar, and citrus.
While many factors, like supply chain disruptions and labor shortages, have contributed to this increase, extreme heat is already raising food prices, and it’s bound to get worse, according to a recent study published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment. The analysis found that heatflation could drive up food prices around the world by as much as 3 percentage points per year in just over a decade and by about 2 percentage points in North America. For overall inflation, extreme weather could lead to anywhere from a 0.3 to 1.2 percentage point increase each year depending on how many carbon emissions countries pump into the atmosphere.
Though that might sound small, it’s actually “massive,” according to Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School. “That’s half of the Fed’s overall goal for inflation,” he said, referencing the Federal Reserve’s long-term aim of limiting it to 2 percent. The Labor Department recently reported that consumer prices climbed 3.2 percent over the past 12 months.
The link between heat and rising food prices is intuitive — if wheat starts withering and dying, you can bet flour is going to get more expensive. When Europe broiled in heat waves in 2022, it pushed up food prices that were already soaring due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (known as the breadbasket of Europe), researchers at the Europe Central Bank and Potsdam Institute in Germany found in the new study. Europe saw a record-breaking 9.2 percent inflation that year, and the summer heat alone, which hurt soy, sunflower, and maize harvests, might have been responsible for almost a full percentage point of that increase.
To figure out how climate change might drive inflation in the future, the researchers analyzed monthly price indices for goods across 121 countries over the past quarter-century. No place on the planet looks immune. Countries in North Africa and the Middle East, where hot temperatures already push the comfortable limits of some crops, are expected to see some of the biggest price shocks.
The study’s results were striking, Wagner said, but at the same time very believable. He thinks the calculations are probably on the conservative end of the spectrum: “I wouldn’t be surprised if follow-up studies actually came up with even higher numbers.”
It adds up to a troubling picture for the future affordability of food. “The coronavirus pandemic demonstrated how sensitive supply changes are to disruption and how that disruption can awaken inflation,” David A. Super, a professor of law and economics at Georgetown University Law Center, wrote in an email. “The disruptive effects of climate change are orders of magnitude greater than those of the pandemic and will cause economic dislocation on a far greater scale.”
The world began paying attention to the dynamic between climate change and higher prices, or “climateflation,” in March 2022, soon after Russia invaded Ukraine, when the German economist Isabel Schnabel coined the term in a speech warning that the world faced “a new age of energy inflation.” A few months later, Grist coined the term “heatflation” in an article about how blistering temperatures were driving up food prices.
The difference between the terms is akin to “global warming” vs. “climate change,” with one focused on hotter temperatures and the other on broader effects. Still, “heatflation” might be the more appropriate term, Wagner said, given that price effects from climate change appear to come mostly from extreme heat. The new study didn’t find a strong link between shifts in precipitation and inflation.
The research lends some credibility to the title of the landmark climate change bill that President Joe Biden signed in 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act. While it’s an open joke that the name was a marketing term meant to capitalize on Americans’ concerns about rising prices, it might be more fitting, in the end, than people expected. “We shouldn’t be making fun of the name Inflation Reduction Act, because in the long run, it is exactly the right term to use,” Wagner said.
Shoplifter chased by police on horses in New Mexico, video shows - Associated Press
Police in New Mexico had all the horsepower in this chase: A shoplifter was detained outside a Walgreens this month after trying to outrun a horse-mounted police officer.
Albuquerque police bodycam video shows a dark-brown horse trotting through a parking lot behind a man in black clothing.
The horse catches up to him within seconds.
"It wasn't me," the man yells as he leads the horse and police officer into the street, stopping traffic.
The man then finds himself surrounded when two more police officers on horses arrive at the scene, the video shows.
One of the officers dismounts from his horse and handcuffs the man, who has been charged with stealing $230 worth of merchandise from the Walgreens, according to the Albuquerque Police Department.
New trial denied for 'Rust' armorer convicted in fatal shooting of cinematographer by Alec Baldwin - By Susan Montoya Bryan, Associated Press
A New Mexico judge on Friday rejected an effort by a movie set armorer to challenge her conviction of involuntary manslaughter in the 2021 fatal shooting of a cinematographer by Alec Baldwin on the set of the Western film "Rust."
After hearing brief arguments during a virtual hearing, Santa Fe-based Judge Mary Marlowe Sommer said she would be staying the course and that armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed would remain in custody pending her sentencing in April.
Gutierrez-Reed was convicted by a jury in early March in the October 2021 shooting on the outskirts of Santa Fe, New Mexico, during a rehearsal. Baldwin was indicted by a grand jury in January and has pleaded not guilty to an involuntary manslaughter charge, with trial set for July.
Defense attorneys for Gutierrez-Reed had filed a request earlier this month for a new trial and urged the judge to release their client from jail as deliberations proceeded. Attorney Jason Bowles told the judge Friday that his client had no violations during the trial, takes care of her father and has been in counseling.
"She hasn't done anything wrong. She's not a danger or a flight risk," he said.
The judge responded: "Keep in mind there was a death that the jury determined was caused by her so I'm not releasing her."
Involuntary manslaughter carries a sentence of up to 18 months in prison and a $5,000 fine. Gutierrez-Reed is being held at the Santa Fe County Adult Detention Facility.
In court filings, defense attorneys asserted that the jury instructions in the case could confuse jurors and lead to a nonunanimous verdict. Similar objections to the jury instructions were rejected at trial, but Bowles on Friday brought up a new ruling from the New Mexico Supreme Court in an unrelated case that addressed situations when jurors have two or more specific acts to consider when deliberating a charge.
In the case of Gutierrez-Reed, he explained that one act was loading a live round in the gun used on set and the other was the accusation that she did not perform an adequate safety check of the firearm. He was unsuccessful in his argument that jurors should have had separate instructions for each act.
Gutierrez-Reed could be sentenced as soon as April 15 under current scheduling orders.
Baldwin was pointing a gun at cinematographer Halyna Hutchins when the revolver went off, killing Hutchins and wounding director Joel Souza.
Baldwin has maintained that he pulled back the gun's hammer, but not the trigger. Testimony by an independent gun expert during Gutierrez-Reed's trial cast doubt on Baldwin's account that his gun went off without pulling the trigger.
Prosecutors blamed Gutierrez-Reed for unwittingly bringing live ammunition onto the set of "Rust" where it was expressly prohibited. They also said she failed to follow basic gun safety protocols.
"Rust" assistant director and safety coordinator Dave Halls last year pleaded no contest to negligent handling of a firearm and completed a sentence of six months unsupervised probation.
Family says they got carbon monoxide poisoning from short-term rental – KUNM News, Santa Fe New Mexican
A family traveling through Santa Fe says they got carbon monoxide poisoning while staying in a vacation rental, according to the Santa Fe New Mexican.
The rental had no carbon monoxide detector. Santa Fe only requires that short-term rentals have smoke detectors.
The lawsuit says that the entire family became ill, including two children. The family says that they took their baby to the hospital after finding them unresponsive and covered in vomit.
The family is now suing the owners of the rental, who claim there was no carbon monoxide leak, but that the family was instead suffering from altitude sickness.
The city requires owners of short-term rentals to renew their permits yearly, and a city official told the New Mexican that the permit for this property had lapsed in 2022.
Typo could stop Senate campaign before it starts — KUNM News,City Desk ABQ
The state senate campaign for Democrat Cindy Nava may be over before it even started.
As the City Desk ABQ reports a lawsuit prepared last week asks a judge to invalidate more than 250 signatures of local voters nominating Nava to the District 9 State Senate seat.
The issue involves a technical error on the petition forms Nava used to qualify for the ballot. Nava lives in the town of Bernalillo which is in Sandoval County, but her paperwork listed her residence as being in Bernalillo County.
Nava’s campaign manager said it is “unfortunate (Nava’s) opponents are seeking to disenfranchise the will of these voters by filing this challenge.”
The lawsuit was prepared by Audrey Trujillo, a Corrales Republican candidate for the same district seat Nava is seeking to represent, and two high-profile local Democrats.
If the lawsuit is successful the only democrat remaining on the Ballot to face Trujillo will be Heather Balas, as the incumbent has stated she will not be seeking re-election.
Uranium is being mined near the Grand Canyon as prices soar and the US pushes for more nuclear power - By Susan Montoya Bryan, Associated Press
The largest uranium producer in the United States is ramping up work just south of Grand Canyon National Park on a long-contested project that comes as global instability and growing demand drive uranium prices higher.
The Biden administration and dozens of other countries have pledged to triple the capacity of nuclear power worldwide in their battle against climate change, and policy changes are being adopted by some to lessen Russia's influence over the supply chain.
But as the U.S. pursues its nuclear power potential, environmentalists and Native American leaders remain fearful of the consequences for communities near mining and milling sites in the West and are demanding more regulatory oversight.
The new mining at Pinyon Plain Mine near the Grand Canyon is happening within the boundaries of the Baaj Nwaavjo I'tah Kukv National Monument that was designated in August by President Joe Biden. The work was allowed to move forward since Energy Fuels Inc. had valid existing rights.
Low impact with zero risk to groundwater is how Energy Fuels spokesman Curtis Moore describes the project.
The mine will cover 17 acres (6.8 hectares) and operate for just a few years, producing at least 2 million pounds (about 907,000 kilograms) of uranium — enough to power the state of Arizona for at least a year with carbon-free electricity, he said.
"As the global outlook for clean, carbon-free nuclear energy strengthens and the U.S. moves away from Russian uranium supply, the demand for domestically sourced uranium is growing," Moore said.
Energy Fuels, which also is prepping two more mines in Colorado and Wyoming, was awarded a contract in 2022 to sell $18.5 million in uranium concentrates to the U.S. government to help establish the nation's strategic reserve for when supplies might be disrupted.
Amid the growing appetite for uranium, a coalition of Native Americans testified before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in late February, asking the panel to pressure the U.S. government to overhaul outdated mining laws and prevent further exploitation of marginalized communities.
Carletta Tilousi, who served for years on the Havasupai Tribal Council, said she and others have written countless letters to state and federal agencies and have sat through hours of meetings with regulators and lawmakers. Her tribe's reservation lies in a gorge off the Grand Canyon.
"We have been diligently participating in consultation processes," she said. "They hear our voices. There's no response."
Numerous legal challenges aimed at stopping the Pinyon Plain Mine repeatedly have been rejected by the courts, and top officials in the Biden administration are reticent to weigh in beyond speaking generally about efforts to improve consultation with Native American tribes.
It's just the latest battle over energy development and sacred lands, as tribes in Nevada and Arizona are fighting the federal government over the mining of lithium and the siting of renewable energy transmission lines.
The Havasupai are concerned mining could affect water supplies, wildlife, plants and geology throughout the Colorado Plateau, and the Colorado River flowing through the Grand Canyon and its tributaries are vital to millions of people across the West.
For the Havasupai, their water comes from aquifers deep below the mine.
The Pinyon Plain Mine, formerly known as the Canyon Mine, was permitted in 1984. With existing rights, it was grandfathered into legal operation despite a 20-year moratorium placed on uranium mining in the Grand Canyon region by the Obama administration in 2012.
The U.S. Forest Service in 2012 reaffirmed an environmental impact statement that had been prepared for the mine years earlier, and state regulators signed off on air and aquifer protection permitting within the last two years.
"We work extremely hard to do our work at the highest standards," Moore said. "And it's upsetting that we're vilified like we are. The things we're doing are backed by science and the regulators."
The regional aquifers feeding the springs at the bottom of the Grand Canyon are deep — around 1,000 feet (304 meters) below the mine — and separated by nearly impenetrable rock, Moore said.
State regulators also have said the area's geology is expected to provide an element of natural protection against water from the site migrating toward the Grand Canyon.
Still, environmentalists say the mine raises bigger questions about the Biden administration's willingness to adopt favorable nuclear power policies.
Using nuclear power to reach emissions goals is a hard sell in the western U.S. From the Navajo Nation to Ute Mountain Ute and Oglala Lakota homelands, tribal communities have deep-seated distrust of uranium companies and the federal government as abandoned mines and related contamination have yet to be cleaned up.
Taylor McKinnon, the Center for Biological Diversity's Southwest director, said allowing mining near the Grand Canyon "makes a mockery of the administration's environmental justice rhetoric."
"It's literally a black eye for the Biden administration," he said.
Teracita Keyanna with the Red Water Pond Road Community Association got choked up while testifying before the human rights commission in Washington, D.C., saying federal regulators proposed keeping onsite soil contaminated by past operations in New Mexico rather than removing it.
"It's really unfair that we have to deal with this and my children have to deal with this and later on, my grandchildren have to deal with this," she said. "Why is the government just feeling like we're disposable. We're not."
In Congress, some lawmakers who come from communities blighted by past contamination are digging in their heels.
Congresswoman Cori Bush of Missouri said during a congressional meeting in January that lawmakers can't talk about expanding nuclear energy in the U.S. without first dealing with the effects that nuclear waste has had on minority communities. In Bush's district in St. Louis, waste was left behind from the uranium refining required by the top-secret Manhattan Project.
"We have a responsibility to both fix — and learn from — our mistakes," she said, "before we risk subjecting any other communities to the same exposure."