Rancher charged with animal cruelty
SANTA FE (AP) - A northwestern New Mexico rancher is charged with extreme animal cruelty for the deaths of more than 100 head of cattle.
State Livestock Board deputy director Cliff Mascarenas said he's seen large numbers of cattle die because of extreme weather.
"I've never seen anything of this nature," Mascarenas said Friday.
Colfax County rancher Mike T. Apodaca contends that the cattle died after they fell into a frozen lake.
"He denies all the charges filed by the New Mexico Livestock Board," said Ernest Padilla of Santa Fe, Apodaca's attorney.
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In a court document, Padilla contends that Livestock Board member Bill Sauble, who has a ranch near Apodaca's, interfered in "normal investigative procedures."
State Livestock Inspector Joe Jackson said Sauble called "as a concerned rancher" after the situation was brought to his attention.
String of Santa Fe art thefts continues
SANTA FE (AP) - Three hand-woven blankets are the latest items to be stolen from a Santa Fe art gallery.
The blankets were taken from the Medicine Man Gallery on Thursday, the same day a task force of law enforcement agencies and the state Department of Cultural Affairs met to come up with a strategy to stop the rash of thefts.
Santa Fe police reported that a burglar broke into the Medicine Man Gallery sometime during the night by smashing a small window in the back of the gallery and grabbing the blankets.
Gallery owner Mark Sublette said the blankets were made in New Mexico and are worth $9,000.
Sublette said the gallery has 24-hour surveillance and the burglary was recorded.
Dog dancing gaining national popularity
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - The music swells and Annie Schlaff and her yellow Lab Danny slip into a lively cha-cha-cha.
Across the room, straight-faced trainers reveal the finer points of dancing with dogs to about 50 attentive owners here for the second annual International Canine Freestyle Conference.
Despite Danny's obvious talents, it's not quite like waltzing ol' Brown-Eyes across the Roseland Ballroom. The event organizer, the World Canine Freestyle Organization, calls it a "choreographed musical program" of animal and owner - a mixture of obedience, timing, music and sometimes costumes.
It has thousands of fans, and it's growing.
Groups started, independently of each other, in England and Canada in 1989 and spread to the United States and Japan. Organizers figure there are some 9,000 adherents so far, maybe half of them in the United States.
It is judged, there is a hierarchy, and competition can be brisk.
Confederate submarine, crew finally put to rest
CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) - Thousands of men in Confederate gray and Union blue and women in black hoop skirts and veils escorted the crew of the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley, the first sub in history to sink an enemy warship, to their final resting place Saturday.
In what has been called the last Confederate funeral, the coffins of the crew members, draped in Confederate flags, were first taken to Charleston's Battery and placed in a semicircle, a wreath set in front of each.
Then, a column of the uniformed re-enactors stretching a mile and half took the crew of the Hunley, which sank outside Charleston Harbor, to their final resting place in Magnolia Cemetery, about five miles north. It took the column more than an hour to file into the cemetery.
