Today's News

Those new to Los Alamos are welcome to a special event … Discover Los Alamos, Friday night at the Bradbury Science Museum.
The multi-agency collaboration was designed to provide an opportunity for new community members to have a taste of what Los Alamos has to offer in the way of low and no cost activities.
“Since I didn’t bring a family with me I was keen to meet people and make friends,” Marcus Weigand said. “This event would help me to find clubs and societies where I could get to know new people. In addition, it might allow me to start a new hobby that I hadn’t pursued in the past.”
Weingand is a post-doctorate in masters of public administration and computerized maintenance management system.
The Bradbury staff, along with Los Alamos National Laboratory members and Assets In Action have rallied community programs to provide handouts and answer questions about things to keep those new to Los Alamos on the hill and heartily occupied with activities.
The event will be an open house style that takes place from 5 to
8 p.m. that residents can visit before heading over to Ashley Pond before the summer concert.

Our legislature is about process. Analogies to producing products, such as writing a computer program, making furniture, or creating and serving a restaurant meal don’t work. That figures.
The legislature is a big committee consisting of somewhat smaller, but still sizeable committees — the 70-member House and the 42-member Senate. The two chambers in turn break into smaller committees with overlapping membership. Party membership creates two other committees overlaying everything else.
“The Legislature’s primary job (is) development of the state’s budget,” the Legislative Council Service reminds us in “Highlights 2013,” its policy summary of what is properly called the 51st Legislature, First Session, 2013. The 2013 session was limited to 60 days. Any topic could be considered.
A session of the legislature has two other functions, both outside the scope of the LCS summary.
First, the session provides a forum for focusing public attention on the issues of the day. The issues may be substantive, such as gay marriage, or silly, such as the Senate Rules Committee not voting to confirm (or dump) Hanna Skandera as Secretary of the Department of Public Education.

Former Los Alamos High School athletes Laura Wendelberger and Brady Stokes both cracked the top 10 in the multi-discipline events during the Great Southwest Track and Field Classic this weekend.
The region-wide GSW meet was run in Albuquerque at the UNM Track and Field Complex.
Wendelberger finished ninth in the heptathlon event, racking up 3,768 points in the seven-event contest, while Stokes finished 10th in the decathlon, earning 4,960 points in 10 events. Both Stokes and Wendelberger graduated from LAHS this spring.
The top local finisher at the GSW meet was Chelsea Chalacombe. Chalacombe, who finished third in the Class 4A high jump competition in May, tied for seventh place overall in the high jump this weekend, clearing 5 feet, 4-3/4 inches.
Other Hilltopper athletes taking part included Amanda Mercer in the girls 3200 meters (10th, 12:27.67), Amy Neal in the pole vault (10th, 10-5 1/2), Sean Reardon in the boys 3200 (11th, 9:56.21) and Orion Staples in the boys 2000 meter steeplechase (16th, 6:56.73), an event that isn’t done in New Mexico prep competition.
Also in the decathlon, Simon Heath finished 13th, grabbing 4,539 points.

Former U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson collected nearly half a million dollars in questionable payments from four federally funded nuclear labs after she left office, the Energy Department's inspector general says in a new report.

Wilson failed to provide documentation for the work she did to earn $20,000 a month from the Los Alamos and Sandia national labs in New Mexico from January 2009 to March 2011, the report said. Officials at the Nevada Test Site and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee acknowledged there "were no deliverables" associated with $30,000 the two labs paid Wilson. Sandia had Wilson lobby for more defense dollars, an apparent violation of her contract, the report said.

In total, nearly $450,000 in questionable payments were identified, the bulk from Los Alamos and Sandia.

In a statement, LANL defended Wilson and her work.

“LANS, LLC has reimbursed the government approximately $195,000 in potentially unallowable costs related to the consulting arrangement with Heather Wilson,” the statement said.