Gallup Sun

SANTA FE — The state Human Services Department announced a new service Nov. 20.

New Mexican families can now access a portal to check their children’s eligibility for Pandemic-EBT benefits and update addresses

It can be reached through the Human Services Department’s online tool Yes NM (https://www.yes.state.nm.us/yesnm/home/index). The link has also been posted on the Public Education Department website.

Registration is not required to access the site, but the following information will be required to check a student’s eligibility for P-EBT benefits:

Student school identification number (assigned to student by school; if unsure of student ID number contact your students’...

Week ending Friday, November 20, 2020

Superbolts

Scientists have for the first time documented how often a rare breed of extreme lightning bolts can occur in the skies above Earth and how bright they are. These “superbolts” can be 1,000 times brighter and stretch hundreds of miles farther than their more common counterparts. Writing in the American Geophysical Union’s Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, Los Alamos researchers say roughly one-third of 1%, or 1 in every 300 lightning strikes, are superbolts. Recent research finds that these extreme flashes occur in rare, positively charged cloud-to-ground events rather than the more common negatively charged...

Or is this just a difference of opinion?

Durango, Colo. — The Department of Interior issued a Secretarial Order regarding the implementation of the Land and Water Conservation Fund and The Great American Outdoors Act Nov. 13.

Anna Peterson, Executive Director of The Mountain Pact, believes the Order adds a litany of new provisions that weaken the Act, such as:

Allowing state veto of federal public land protection projects;

Eliminating funding for Bureau of Land Management land acquisition; and

Restricting future LWCF funds from helping to create new units of public land

The Department of the Interior offers a different characterization of the Secretary’s Order 3388.

On its...

Addresses Indian Health Service in letter

U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., has sent a letter to Indian Health Service Director Rear Admiral Michael D. Weahkee condemning a recent decision to decrease essential services at the Acoma-Canoncito-Laguna (ACL) Hospital.

The Pueblo of Acoma has seen a spike in COVID-19 cases. Over a matter of weeks, cases on the Pueblo went from zero in September to 100 in early November. With the recent suspension of emergency services and inpatient care at ACL, the community must now drive one hour or longer to hospitals in Grants or Albuquerque that are already reaching capacity.

ACL’s benefit to the Pueblo of Acoma and the surrounding community...