Today's News

Valley Meat Company in Roswell has become the focal point for arguments over horse over-population in the same way ants become the focal points of bored boys with magnifying glasses. There’s more heat than light.

In the back-and-forth chatter, I’m hearing a lot of arguments that don’t hold water. And, even if the determined Rick De Los Santos manages to open his plant, it doesn’t solve all of our horse problems. 

The most ironic argument against a slaughterhouse for unwanted horses is that the noble animal is a western icon, a star in the Taming of the West. Somebody needs to read more history. To pioneers, the army and Indian tribes, horses were transportation. When a horse was used up, it was eaten: Meat’s meat.  

Has anyone ever told you New Mexico is the most corrupt state in the nation? I’ve heard it for years, including from an FBI agent, who investigated our financial corruption mess. 

Since I was a kid, I remember hearing that some powerful New Mexican, maybe Dennis Chavez, as saying that if you want to get a degree in political corruption, go to Chicago. If you want to get a Master’s Degree, go to Louisiana. But if you want a doctorate, go to New Mexico. 

If you ask people from the East Coast, they’ll probably tell you that New York and New Jersey are the most corrupt states. It just depends on where you’re from. 

Los Alamos National Laboratory has announced that for the first time, irradiated uranium fuel has been recycled and reused for molybdenum-99 (Mo-99) production, with virtually no losses in Mo-99 yields or uranium recovery.

This demonstrates the viability of the separation process, as well as the potential for environmentally- and cost-friendly fuel recycling. Medical isotope production technology has advanced significantly now that scientists have made key advances in separating Mo-99 from an irradiated, low-enriched uranium (LEU) solution.

Low-Enriched Uranium as a Source of Mo-99

Technetium-99m (Tc-99m) is the most commonly used medical isotope today, accounting for about 50,000 medical imaging procedures daily in the United States. Tc-99m is derived from the parent isotope Mo-99, predominantly produced from the fission of uranium-235 in highly enriched uranium targets (HEU) in aging foreign reactors. The North American supply of Tc-99m was severely disrupted when the Chalk River nuclear reactor in Canada experienced an outage several years ago.

Say what you want about former Los Alamos resident Elizabeth Bateman, she was really good at her job; and that job was allegedly fooling people into believing she had cancer.

According to an arrest warrant obtained from the Steamboat Springs, Colo. Police Department, Bateman, 34, went to great lengths trying to convince people she had cancer, including such details as shaving her head, taking saline solution injections and using a wheelchair and an oxygen tank as visual props to convince people.  

Bateman first came to the attention of Steamboat Springs Police when a former friend, Michelle Beck, and an anonymous tip alerted police that Bateman was now using her fake battle with cancer to scam people out of thousands of dollars through a charity she set up called “Friends Through the Fight.”