New Mexico Launches STEM Challenge For High School Students – Associated Press
New Mexico is asking its high school students to take up the gauntlet as part of an academic challenge that aims to answer one question: How will you use science and technology to help with national security?
Los Alamos National Laboratory came up with the question and will be partnering with teachers and businesses as the students use what they learn in the classroom next semester to formulate their answers.
At stake are stipends for teachers, extra state funding and cash awards and academic letters for students who make the cut for the special science teams.
Bill McCamley, head of the state labor department, announced the challenge yesterday while in Albuquerque. He says it comes as the state begins working with new science standards that focus more on real-world problem-solving.
Billionaire's New Mexico Ranch Linked To Investigation- Associated Press
At the center of Jeffrey Epstein's secluded New Mexico ranch sits a sprawling residence the financier built decades ago — complete with plans for a 4,000-square-foot courtyard, a living room roughly the size of the average American home and a nearby private airplane runway.
Known as the Zorro Ranch, the high-desert property is now tied to an investigation that the state attorney general's office says it has opened into Epstein with plans to forward findings to federal authorities in New York.
Epstein, who pleaded not guilty this week to federal sex trafficking charges in New York, has not faced criminal charges in New Mexico. But the scandal surrounding him has still sent a jolt through the state as it comes under scrutiny for laws that allowed him to avoid registering as a sex offender following a guilty plea a decade ago in Florida.
"New Mexico continues to lag behind the rest of the country in strengthening outdated and weak laws that fail to protect our children from abuse," Attorney General, Hector Balderas said in an emailed statement to The Associated Press. "This is a huge black eye for our state."
Police Say 5 Texans Died In Fiery NM Crash – Associated Press
Four oilfield workers from Texas and the driver of a tractor-trailer rig are dead following a fiery head-on crash on a New Mexico road in the heart of what has become the busiest oil and gas region in the United States.
New Mexico State Police say the crash happened Thursday morning when the driver of a pickup truck carrying three passengers crossed the center line into eastbound traffic and collided with a tractor-trailer rig, police said.
Both vehicles caught fire after the crash. The four workers in the pickup truck and the semi driver were all declared dead at the scene.
It's unclear what caused the pickup truck to cross lanes, but Officer Ray Wilson said yesterday that alcohol does not appear to have been a factor.
The crash comes as local government officials and some state lawmakers have pushed for more funding to improve roads throughout New Mexico's share of the Permian Basin given the significant increase in traffic as a result of the ongoing oil boom.