How is one high school rewarding students for good scores on standardized tests? What was seized by authorities in a raid? How happy is New Mexico? And the state bans which form of animal euthanasia?

Groundwater from Albuquerque’s aquifer lies less than 500 feet below Sandia Labs’ Mixed Waste Landfill.

Like a tar-black sludge, sticky and suffocating, the last eight years of American politics dripped over our faces, plugging eyes, noses, ears, mouths. As Bush-Cheney White House atrocities oozed into the public consciousness, we were numb, deaf, blind—unscandalized.

Albuquerque city councilors were in a laid-back mood when they trimmed their lengthy agenda to less than a handful of items during the Monday, April 6 meeting. Before getting any real work done, they heard public comments for a couple of hours. Many speakers focused on funding city parks, but there were also remarks from blue-collar city employees protesting the mayor’s belt-tightening request.

Drastic situations call for drastic solutions ... and, boy, is our situation drastic!

Our national appetite for fossil fuels has brought us to the brink of economic and environmental disaster. Continuing to import petroleum and natural gas will leave us extremely vulnerable to the market manipulations of foreign governments.

Yet we appear to have simultaneously begun an irreversible decline in our domestic production of those critical fuels. We need more and more energy, but we can’t fill even half of our demand through our own supplies.

While there are still eight candidates running for mayor, only three qualified for public financing. City Clerk Randy Autio said Richard "R.J." Berry, Mayor Martin Chavez and Richard Romero received their cash last week. Berry took in $319,000, Romero pocketed $297,000 and Mayor Martin Chavez qualified for more than $328,000 to spend on his as-yet-unannounced campaign. Autio explained the amount varies because seed money and in-kind contributions are subtracted from what candidates pull from city coffers.

Dateline: Bosnia—A desperate husband tried to kill his mother-in-law with an antitank missile launcher after claiming she turned his wife against him. The woman survived the missile strike—and a subsequent machine gun attack—with barely a scratch. Miroslav Miljici apparently wanted revenge against his mother-in-law for the breakup of his marriage. Miljici was sentenced to six years for attempted murder by a court in Doboj. In defense of his unsuccessful, high-caliber murder attempt, Miljici told the court he could no longer stand his mother-in-law’s nagging.

[Re: Letters, “A Crazy Little Thing Called Hate,” March 12-18] I must respectfully disagree with Virginia Stephenson's assessment of conservative Christians and their opposition to same-gender marriage and domestic partnership legislation.