Regional

By KRWG News

Texas – A federal judge has dismissed a federal lawsuit that claimed undergraduate admissions policies at the University of Texas at Austin violate the Constitution and federal law.

U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks ruled Monday that UT's use of race and ethnicity as factors in admissions is constitutionally acceptable.

The lawsuit was filed last year by two white students whose applications had been rejected.

In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed universities to use race as one of many decision-making factors.

By KRWG News

El Paso – An unusual bulge around a man's waistline yielded nearly 2 pounds of crystal methamphetamine during a search at an El Paso border crossing.

Customs and Border Protection officers at the Ysleta crossing discovered two tape-wrapped food containers with the drugs.

Port director William Molaski says an officer had identified the pedestrian as someone who needed additional scrutiny.

The suspect, from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, was taken into custody following the search Friday.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.

By KRWG News

New Mexico – Engineers at a NASA research center in California are putting the finishing touches on the Orion crew test module that will be used early next year at White Sands Missile Range.

The Orion is the capsule being designed to take people back to the moon.

The tests are aimed at Orion's launch-abort system, which will whisk astronauts and the capsule to safety in case of a problem on the launch pad, such as a fire, or during the climb to orbit.

Tests will be conducted without anyone inside the capsule.

By KRWG News

New Mexico – Dozens of new homes are crumbling in Shiprock as the Navajo Nation continues its probe into a $9 million construction project gone awry.

Shiprock officials and representatives of the Navajo Housing Authority met this week to discuss an abandoned 91-home construction project that began nearly three years ago.

About 50 homes were built. They stand empty, vandalized and deteriorating near the existing Navajo Housing Authority community.

By KRWG News

New Mexico – A Hobbs woman has been sentenced to life in prison in the death of her 8-month-old daughter.

State District Judge Don Maddox sentenced 33-year-old Adriana Cabezuela on Monday.

She was convicted in July of abandonment or abuse of a child resulting in death in the June 2007 death of Mariana Barraza.

Such a conviction carries an automatic life sentence.

Emergency personnel had been called to Cabezuela's home because the baby was having trouble breathing. The baby died on the way to the hospital.

By KRWG News

Las Cruces – Every Monday on Morning Edition at 7:51, Fred Martino speaks with Las Cruces Sun News Business Editor Brook Stockberger.

By KRWG News

New Mexico – Lieutenant Governor Diane Denish says the W. K. Kellogg Foundation has given New Mexico a $400,000 grant to support early childhood education.

Denish says the grant will be used to establish the New Mexico Early Childhood Partnership.

The partnership between her office and the United Way of Santa Fe County will develop expanded public financing strategies for early childhood development in the state.

Denish says the partnership will work to find permanent funding for early childhood programs.

By KRWG News

Las Cruces – These are exciting times for freshman students at New Mexico State University.

Students are starting to move-in as the school's largest freshman class in history, along with their families and friends, hustled to unload belongings in their new dwellings Sunday.

University Director of Housing and Residential Life Julie Weber said the school's dormitories are "beyond full" as more than 2,240 freshmen enrolled at NMSU last week.

The school had to assign two to three freshmen to each dorm room.

By Marco Grajeda

Las Cruces, NM – A statewide advocacy organization is urging lawmakers to consider ways of raising revenue and not rely exclusively on spending cuts when fixing the budget. As KRWG's Marco Grajeda reports, a recent revenue forecast revealed the state's budget dipped another 400-million this fiscal year.

By KRWG News

Las Cruces – A jury in Las Cruces, N.M., has convicted a former Sunland Park municipal court judge of three counts of election fraud.

The jury returned the verdict against Horacio Favela after deliberating for less than three hours on Friday afternoon.

Evidence at the weeklong trial showed that Favela voted in both El Paso, Texas, and Dona Ana, N.N., counties in the November 2004 election. He was living in El Paso but ran for the judgeship in Dona Ana County and voted in both elections.

By KRWG News

New Mexico – Police say they've solved the murder of a 74-year-old Farmington woman whose body was found bound and gagged in her home 20 years ago.

Farmington police Sgt. Robert Perez says detectives arrested 46-year-old Jimmie Lee on Thursday and charged him with murder and kidnapping for the 1989 death of Thelma Kline.

Perez says a cold-case unit reviewing old crimes sent evidence to the state police crime lab for analysis. The crime lab matched a DNA sample to Lee, an inmate at the state prison in Grants.

By KRWG News

El Paso – El Paso police have identified the woman who was killed in a wreck and named the suspect facing charges in her death.

Thirty-one-year-old Emiliano Villanueva was arrested and charged with suspicion of intoxicated manslaughter. His bond was set at $50,000 but it was not immediately known whether he had an attorney.

Police said 79-year-old Arline Yonack was killed in Friday's wreck. Police said Villanueva ran a red light and drove into the passenger side of the car Yonack was riding in.

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Information from:

By KRWG News

New Mexico – Federal highway officials have ordered the state to demolish an illegal billboard owned by New Mexico House Speaker Ben Lujan by the end of next week.

By Melissa Aguilera

Las Cruces, NM – New Mexico State Auditor Hector Balderas announced recently that a northern New Mexico School District employee may have embezzled close 3.4 million dollars from the school's budget; and as KRWG's Melissa Aguilera reports, Balderas is now urging school districts to check their books often.

By KRWG News

Las Cruces – From NMSU:
U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu will be one of the keynote speakers at New Mexico State University's and honorary co-chairman Congressman Harry Teague's initiative to explore America's energy future at a two-day conference titled "Re-Energize America: Policy, Practice and Possibility for America's Future" Aug. 31 to Sept. 1 at NMSU's Corbett Center Ballrooms.