ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Environmentalists are challenging a court ruling over whether water from the Rio Grande is properly accounted for and being used in beneficial ways as it flows through New Mexico's most populated region.

They say the state's top water manager needs to do more to reduce use in the Middle Rio Grande Valley, but irrigation officials say they're already doing the best they can as years of drought have strained resources.

The Sept. 27 shooting near Las Cruces High School is still under investigation, but lapel camera video from the incident shows that Juan Angel Pinedo failed to obey officers’ commands and lunged toward his handgun the moment before officers discharged their weapons.

Pinedo, 32, who had an active warrant for his arrest from a shooting that occurred six days prior, was struck at least once by rounds fired by four Las Cruces Police Department officers. Pinedo was declared dead on the scene.

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Promising results are emerging from a pioneering drug treatment program in New Mexico in which police refer nonviolent drug users prior to arrest into comprehensive counseling and services.

An evaluation of a pilot program in Santa Fe was published Thursday that shows an initial decrease in the number of arrests among drug users diverted into the treatment program.

Las Cruces Crime Stoppers is offering a reward of up to $1,000 for information that helps identify the person or persons responsible for firing several rounds at an apartment building.

Shortly before midnight on Friday, Oct. 5, Las Cruces police responded to a shots-fired call at The Verge apartments, 320 E. Union Ave. Officers arrived to find that one of the apartment buildings was struck multiple times by gunfire. No injuries were reported.

Investigators believe the shooter was on foot and fled from The Verge toward a nearby mobile home park.

  SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Recently retired New Mexico state Rep. Larry Larranaga, a leading Republican voice in the budget process who led the state's transportation agency in the 1980s, has died. He was 80.

Larranaga died at home Tuesday from a rare degenerative brain disorder known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease that was diagnosed after the announcement of his retirement from the Legislature in August, daughter Pamela Thies said.

  SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Republican gubernatorial candidate and U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce owns two companies that actively lease oilfield equipment to undisclosed customers even as he campaigns to regulate a booming petroleum sector and expand an oil-dependent economy.

A spokesman for Pearce's campaign confirmed that the congressman's businesses, Trinity Industries and LFT, provide oilfield equipment rentals after The Associated Press found corporate registration documents that describe the activities.

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) — Officials at Los Alamos National Laboratory say they have completed the first shipment of waste from a key area at the lab to the federal government's underground nuclear waste repository since the dump resumed operations in early 2017.

An official with the U.S. Energy Department's Office of Environmental Management called the shipment a significant milestone for the cleanup effort at the northern New Mexico lab.