NEWS

A combined city-state-federal raid on a San Antonio apartment complex said to be under the "control" of the notorious Tren de Aragua gang yielded 20 arrests and detentions on Saturday, including "confirmed" members of the Venezuelan gang, police said.  

The pre-dawn raid was a joint operation carried out by more than 150 officers of the San Antonio Police Department, Texas Department of Public Safety, FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, ATF, and the Texas Anti (more…)

Authored by Allan Stein via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Weekends bring a brief respite and slower pace to the Los Alamos townsite in New Mexico, the birthplace of the atomic bomb nearly 80 years ago.

Illustration by The Epoch Times, Allan Stein/The Epoch Times, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Public Domain

Silent mountains thick with Ponderosa pine surround the town where some of the nation’s best-kept military secrets reside.

The urban sidewalks are empty, except for the occasional tourist or dog walker, and many of the shops, restaurants, and office buildings are closed.

There’s no traffic on the road from Trinity Drive to Oppenheimer Drive.

But, it’s just a matter of time before Los Alamos townsite jumps back into action.

“You will see it on Monday,” said one resident, who lives in White Rock, 10 miles from the greenscaped Los Alamos urban center.

Sure enough, on Monday morning, Los Alamos townsite roars back to life as commuters arrive by the thousands. The population nearly doubles in this “census-designated place” of 13,460.

Cars line up at security checkpoints to enter the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), the county’s biggest employer and the reason for the sudden increase in population.

Employees clear the first barriers, then move through more checkpoints to get to their jobs four days a week.

Many drove from residential areas across Los Alamos County (population 19,187) and as far away as Albuquerque, 96 miles south, and the state capital of Sante Fe, about 35 miles north.

There has always been a housing shortage in the county, local officials say, but the pressures are growing as LANL reaches peak employment at around 19,000. The lab hopes to begin offering round-the-clock shifts in 2025.

The Los Alamos Affordable Housing Plan approved in August said the “acute” housing shortage hurts the local economy and limits housing to those who can afford it.

The study also found that in 2021, nearly 55 percent of the LANL workforce lived outside the county.

“Over 9,300 people commuted in for work, and only 21.8 percent, or 2,200 people, commuted out of the county while living here,” the study said.

‘One Horse Town’

“We’re a one horse town. Everything the lab does affects everybody,” said local realtor Chris Ortega, owner/broker of ReMax Los Alamos.

“The hiring has increased demand. There are fewer houses on the market than there were five or six years ago,” Ortega told The Epoch Times.

“People are coming and going all the time. Half of the lab lives here in Los Alamos. The other half lives off the hill somewhere—Santa Fe, Espanola, Albuquerque.”

In 2022, there were 8,149 households, 5,229 with families, in Los Alamos County. They were usually made up of two or three people per household and had an average income of $135,801.

A U.S. Postal Service official distributes letters to residents in a shelter near the fire affected area in Los Alamos on May 13, 2000. (Bottom Left) Facilities used to store low-level radioactive waste at the Los Alamos National Laboratory on May 13, 2000.

“Based on employment (more…)

Authored by Todd Hayen via off-guardian.org,

This title is intentionally a play on the pro-gun faction’s slogan “Guns Don’t Kill People, People Kill People.” At a certain time before my social awakening, I was appalled by all of the gun violence in the US and elsewhere and therefore believed restricting gun sales and use (through more stringent registration regulations) might be a good (more…)