New Mexico
Agri-Nature Center in Los Ranchos serving as model for expansion in Corrales
NEW MEXICO (KRQE) – The Larry P. Abraham Agri-Nature Center in Los Ranchos was created to be a space for the community to share agricultural resources and learn. Now, Corrales wants in on the action.
“The Agri-Nature Center provides a lot for the community and provides valuable agricultural education, demonstration of agricultural techniques that work well in our environment in our climate, and helps support local businesses at the same time,” Agri-Nature Center Agricultural Program Director William Carleton said.
The center focuses on home-grown foods, sustainable farming, regenerative agriculture through food preservation, and education through hands-on learning. With programs like animal husbandry, water conservation, research into new agricultural technology, and growers’ markets.
“They have all these workshops, land set aside for certain type of gardens, agricultural activities, cooking, and we don’t currently have something like that here in Corrales,” Dean Sherer said with the Corrales Historical Society.
The goal is to educate people and get them involved in more sustainable practices of agriculture to promote more agricultural activities.
Both the Agri-Nature Center and the people in Corrales believe that if they can expand by adding more of these centers in the state, they can become hubs for more and more New Mexicans to get involved in and learn from. “The Agri-Nature Center serves the residents of Los Ranchos, but also people throughout the metro area and beyond,” Carleton said. “This past year, we served 46 different zip codes in New Mexico at our workshops and events.”
Two of their programs in particular have been so popular, they’re looking to expand them. Such as a community garden started this year. This is one of the programs Corrales is looking to replicate in its own community.
“There’s been so much positive feedback with the community garden, and the idea would be to expand plots,” Carleton said. “Right now we have 30, which filled up this year.”
Another popular program they’re looking to expand is a demonstration kitchen, which up until now has only been used for workshops. Going forward, they want to make the equipment available for people to use. Such as freeze-drying foods.
“I see it as a community resource for learning how important agriculture is for us in New Mexico, and if we can sustain it in a better way, if we can learn new techniques to help our gardens grow better and larger,” Sherer said.
U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds perform annual Daytona 500 flyover
The USAF Thunderbirds flew over Daytona International Speedway before The Great American Race on Sunday, Feb. 15, 2026.
A retired U.S. Air Force general who once commanded a research division at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, has gone missing in New Mexico.
This is what we know.
McCasland commanded Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base
The Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office has issued a Silver Alert for Maj. Gen. William Neil McCasland, 68, who has been missing since last week, Newsweek reports. He was last seen on Feb. 27 in Albuquerque. McCasland is 5 feet 11 inches tall and weighs about 160 pounds. He has white hair and blue eyes, and he has unspecified medical issues, per the sheriff’s office, which is worried about his safety.
McCasland was the commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, according to his Air Force biography. He managed a $2.2 billion science and technology program as well as $2.2 billion in additional customer-funded research and development. He joined Wright-Patterson in 2011 and retired in 2013.
He was commissioned in 1979 after graduating from the U.S. Air Force Academy with a Bachelor of Science degree in astronautical engineering. He has served in a wide variety of space research, acquisition and operations roles within the Air Force and the National Reconnaissance Office.
McCasland mentioned in WikiLeaks release in connection to UFOs
McCasland was described as a key adviser on UFO-related projects by Tom DeLonge, UFO researcher and guitarist for Blink-182, Newsweek reports. The general’s name appears in the 2016 WikiLeaks email release from John Podesta, then Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager.
In emails to Podesta, DeLonge said he’s been working with McCasland for months and that the general was aware of the materials DeLonge was probing because McCasland has been “in charge of the laboratory at Wright‑Patterson Air Force Base where the Roswell wreckage was shipped,” per Newsweek.
However, there is no official record of DeLonge’s claims, and McCasland has neither confirmed nor denied it.
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base home to UFO project
The Dayton Air Force base was home to Project Blue Book in the 1950s and 60s, according to “The Air Force Investigation into UFOs” published by Ohio State University.
During that time, it logged some 12,618 UFO sightings, with 701 of those remaining “unidentified.” The U.S. government created the project because of Cold War-era security concerns and Americans’ obsession with aliens.
Though the alleged sex trafficking on Jeffrey Epstein’s Caribbean island, Little Saint James, has dominated the national discourse recently, another Epstein property has largely stayed out of the news — but perhaps not for long. A ranch outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, that belonged to the disgraced financier has been the subject of on-and-off investigations, and many are now reexamining what role the ranch may have played in Epstein’s crimes.
What is the ranch in question?
Epstein first purchased the ranch in 1993, and it made his seven-story Manhattan penthouse “look like a shack,” he said to Vanity Fair in 2003. Recently released photos by the Department of Justice “provide a look inside the tightly guarded gates” of the compound, said the Santa Fe New Mexican, including images that “show Epstein and others posing” throughout the ranch. In addition to the main house, Zorro Ranch also had a “three-bedroom lodge and off-the-grid log cabin as well as a 4,400-foot airstrip with an aircraft hangar and helipad.”
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Why is the ranch being investigated?
Given the isolated nature of Zorro Ranch, there are numerous allegations about “what role the secluded spot played in sexual abuse or sex trafficking of underage girls and young women,” said The Associated Press. Several of Epstein’s public victims have claimed they were trafficked at the ranch, but “New Mexico leaders say there has never been a thorough investigation of the criminal activity that may have occurred” on the property, said the Times.
There was previously a minimal investigation into the ranch, which was “taken over by federal prosecutors in 2019, and then apparently fizzled, according to New Mexico officials and recently unsealed records,” said the Times. However, unlike Epstein’s other properties, federal agents “did not appear to have ever searched Zorro Ranch,” according to a report from The Guardian. Officials were “paying attention to Paris, Little Saint James, New York and Miami, but they didn’t pay attention to Zorro Ranch,” Eddy Aragon, an Albuquerque radio D.J. and Epstein researcher, told the Times.
Following public pressure related to Epstein, New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez recently “ordered that the criminal investigation into allegations of illegal activity at Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch be reopened,” the New Mexico Department of Justice said in a press release. But since Epstein’s 2019 death, the ranch has come under new ownership, meaning an investigation may not be simple.
After the most recent batch of Epstein documents was released, the “claims in the documents have proved impossible to ignore,” said the Times. Most notable is a 2019 email alleging that in the “hills outside the Zorro, two foreign girls were buried on orders of Jeffrey and Madam G,” the latter apparently referencing Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. “Both died by strangulation during rough, fetish sex.” The sender of the email was “redacted by the DOJ,” said CNN. It is “not clear that those allegations have been investigated by law enforcement.”
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Polls are now open in Rio Rancho where voters are set to elect a new mayor and decide several key measures Tuesday.
RIO RANCHO, N.M. — Rio Rancho voters are set to elect a new mayor and decide several key measures Tuesday in one of New Mexico’s fastest growing cities.
Voters will make their way to one of the 14 voting centers open Tuesday to decide which person will become mayor, replacing Gregg Hull. These six candidates are running:
Like Albuquerque, Rio Rancho candidates need to earn 50% of the votes to win. Otherwise, the top two candidates will go to a runoff election.
Regardless of who wins, this will be the first time Rio Rancho voters will elect a new mayor in over a decade. Their priorities include addressing crime and how fast the city is growing, as well as improving infrastructure and government transparency, especially as the site of a new Project Ranger missile project.
The only other race with multiple candidates is the District 5 city council seat. Incumbent Karissa Culbreath faces a challenge from Calvin Ducane Ward.
Voters will also decide the fate of three general obligation bonds:
- $12 million to road projects
- $4.3 million to public safety facility projects
- $1.2 million to public quality of life projects
- e.g., renovating the Esther Bone Memorial Library
The polls will stay open until 7 p.m.
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