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Early voting in primary elections is already underway. One race set to be closely-contested is Albuquerque's District 15’s Democratic state senate seat where Heather Berghmans is running against incumbent Daniel Ivey-Soto. Whoever wins the seat will be up against Republican Craig Degenhardt in the general election.
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Climate change is having an impact on where many creatures live, including mosquitoes. That’s according to a new study from Los Alamos National Laboratory. The pesky insects are likely to become more common in New Mexico, just like a lot of the rest of the continent.
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Homelessness in New Mexico is on the rise and attorney and former state lawmaker Daymon Ely has a plan to address it in Albuquerque. His 60-page report laying out short and long-term goals has sparked plenty of debate in advocacy circles. KUNM’s Megan Kamerick talked with Ely on New Mexico in Focus, along with Jenny Metzler of Albuquerque Health Care for the Homeless and John Bulten of East Central Ministries.
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Among Native American communities, people go missing and experience violence at disproportionately high rates. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo) - the first Native cabinet secretary - has been working to implement the Not Invisible Act, which she helped pass as a Congresswoman in 2019. A commission traveled round the country hearing testimony from survivors, advocates, law enforcement and tribal leaders. It released a list of recommendations last November, and now the Departments of Justice and Interior have responded.
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Indigenous designers gathered at a glitzy party at the Governor's mansion. They say the appreciation of their work is long overdue.
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Maxeon Solar Technologies' planned factory in Albuquerque was set to break ground in the first quarter of 2024. That is now delayed until at least the second half of the year, as a process of negotiating a federal loan continues.
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Pro-Palestinian protestors on college campuses have taken up “Disclose and divest” as a rallying cry.The ask is for universities to stop sending money to entities that stand to profit from the war in Gaza, and to make more information about their finances public so it’s clear what those investments are.KUNM’s Megan Myscofski spoke with Ernesto Longa, a University of New Mexico law librarian who is helping to organize faculty and students calling for divestment. He says that there’s precedent at UNM for this.
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Faculty and staff and the University of New Mexico sent University of New Mexico President Garnett Stokes a letter Thursday rebuking the school administration’s response to student protests.The letter has over 200 signatures, with about 40 withheld names. It calls for the university administration to support free speech and urges the university to include encampments in its definition.
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A group of tribes that use Colorado River water sent a list of principles to the federal government amid contentious talks about how to share the shrinking supply.
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Whiskey Tender, by Deborah Jackson Taffa (Quechan and Laguna Puebo) tells her own story of growing up first on the Fort Yuma Indian Reservation and then in Farmington. The story of seeking to understand her own identity brings her, and her readers, to the wider tale of generations of trauma and erasure of Indigenous people at the hands of United States' policy.
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This week the New Mexico Supreme Court heard a case stemming from a lawsuit against Albuquerque Public Schools over the interactions of a high school teacher with a Native American student. That student, McKenzie Johnson, spoke with KUNM about that Halloween day in 2018. She says teacher Mary Eastin offered one student dog food, brandished a box cutter, then used scissors to cut another Native American student’s hair before calling Johnson, who is Navajo, a “bloody Indian.”
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Debate surrounding a program that gives private landowners a significant portion of the elk hunting opportunities in New Mexico is coming to a head with the publication of a report outlining why it’s so crucial for land conservation.