Ranchers, Navajos and enviros sue BLM

Every 10 years or so, the U.S. Department of Interior reviews our nation's natural resource management policies, and then officials determine things like how many drilling and mining permits will be issued to private industries.

Legislature offers compromise bill to clarify new water utility authority

Following all the controversy surrounding the new Bernalillo County-Albuquerque Water Utility Authority, it appears the state Legislature has resolved to modify the bill that created the new, third government agency in 2003, instead of granting the wish of Mayor Martin Chavez, who wanted the water board dissolved.

Singeli Agnew

Sandwiched between the Super Bowl and New Mexico's Democratic Presidential Caucus, playing opposite Bush's Budget of Ballooning Baloney, and going head-to-head with Punxsutawney Phil, the Feb. 2 City Ccouncil meeting adjourned in less than two hours.

Local coverage ignores elderly outrage

I'm told that very few (if any) of the congressmen and women who voted on it had even read the full 681 densely packaged pages of mind-numbing prose that made up the latest Medicare Reform legislation when they acted on it last Fall.

Undermining the planned growth strategy

I may be the only who feels this way, but the most offensive part of the Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake Super Bowl fandango (which overshadowed the event's "family-friendly" advertisements for beer, erectile dysfunction and flatulence) was Timerblake's apparent belief that he's some sort of hip-hop gangsta from the hood representing his homies. Watching Timberlake (of suburban Memphis) crotch-grab his way around the stage you got the sense that his ’tude is about as natural as the silicone in Jackson's breasts. A few years ago, Timberlake was singing high tenor for the Mouseketeer Club but overnight (did Mickey "dis" him on the mean streets of the Magic Kingdom?) he's acting like he's got the same street cred as Dr. Dre, Eminen and 50 Cent.

Dateline: South Africa—A retired surgeon and his brother were killed in Polokwane last Friday when their homemade hyperbaric chamber exploded. Dr. Paul Eloff, 76, was undergoing treatment for poor blood circulation inside the pressurized oxygen chamber located in his brother's back yard. Eloff's brother Gerhard, 66, was standing near the heavy steel cylinder with his 27-year-old son Georg when the device exploded. The blast ripped open the steel wall of the cylinder, which was between four and six inches thick, and shattered windows on surrounding houses. Dr. Eloff's remains were found about 30 feet away from the chamber. Its hatch lay about 50 feet away. Georg escaped with only minor injuries, but the elderly brothers were killed instantly. “The remains were taken away in plastic bags. It was horrific,” neighbor Marieta Herselman told South Africa's Sunday Times. “It was like scraping leaves together in your garden and putting them in plastic bags.” A police spokesman confirmed that the chamber was a “homemade thing and they didn't have a license for it.” Hyperbaric treatment was originally developed to treat deep-sea divers for “the bends.” It is now used for a variety of ailments including carbon monoxide poisoning, anemia, bone infections and burns.

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