mexico

That crazy-looking flute in the above picture? Chances are it was a weapon in Mexico's drug war.

Or parts of it were, at least. Now those pieces make up one of 50 working musical instruments engineered from confiscated Mexican revolvers, shotguns, and machine guns that were once scheduled for public destruction.

Mexico City-based artist Pedro Reyes conceived of the project, titled "Imagine," as a statement on widespread gun violence in the country. … Read more

A very odd flock of birds landed in Albuquerque, N.M., this past week. There wasn't a feather in sight as four winged creatures sat on bare branches, flashing their eyes and lifting their wings. These art objects are fashioned entirely from recycled phone parts.

Escape, an installation piece by U.K. artists Neil Mendoza and Anthony Goh, turns unremarkable phone scrap into curious and engaging little birds. Each bird contains an Arduino controller.

When hooked up to the cell network in Europe, the birds can take and make phone calls. Here in New Mexico, they are reprogrammed to react to the proximity of people approaching them. … Read more

SAN YSIDRO, Calif.--They were hidden in the gas tank -- 17 tightly-wrapped packages of marijuana weighing in at 38.44 pounds.

The car was nondescript, a green 1999 Mazda 626. The driver was a male 50-year-old Mexican national, a resident of Tijuana who had presumably been hoping to make it into California without being stopped.

Instead, the man got caught with the massive haul of pot, snared by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers here at the world's busiest border crossing using several tools in their arsenal -- some high-tech, some very low-tech -- to find … Read more

TUCSON, Ariz.--It's summer in the Southwest, and there may not be a hotter border anywhere in the United States. For one thing, the mercury is easily over a hundred every day. And then there's the steady flow of organized smugglers trying to sneak themselves and their substantial cargo -- of migrants and/or drugs -- across Mexico's long desert frontier with Arizona.

There are nine U.S. Border Patrol sectors stretching across America's southwestern frontier. And back in 2000, the agency was snagging more than 2,000 people a day for crossing illegally into its … Read more

What would you do for free Wi-Fi? Mexican Internet provider Terra has teamed up with ad agency DDB to offer free Wi-Fi in public parks to dog owners who clean up after their pets.

As seen in the absurd promo vid below, owners who deposit poop in the special bins in 10 parks in Mexico City will be rewarded with free Wi-Fi, broadcast through routers shaped like doggy bones.

The more you add, the more minutes you and everyone else gets. The bins seem to have a simple scale to weigh the poop, so they would likely still work if people put rocks or trash in them instead. … Read more

When Spaceport America makes international news, it's often in conjunction with names like "Richard Branson," "Virgin Galactic," and "Ashton Kutcher." That celebrity shine is hard to ignore, but it's not the only thing happening at the spaceport.

Virgin Galactic has already sold 520 tickets for its suborbital space tourism flights, expected to start in late 2013. I'm standing in front of the epically named Virgin Galactic Gateway to Space. It's a massive building that blends into the New Mexico desert from one side and reflects Spaceport America's 10,000-foot runway from the other.

A uniquely New Mexico venture I'm a part owner of the spaceport that is sprouting up out of the Jornada del Muerto (remember the Trinity Site location). As a tax-paying New Mexican, some of my state dues have gone to the $209 million price tag for this facility's first two phases of construction.… Read more

SUNSPOT, N.M.--Back in 1950, an order was placed for a grain bin from the Sears Catalog. That bin was delivered up to the far reaches of the Sacramento Mountains in New Mexico, and after some modifications, it became the first solar telescope in Sunspot.

Sunspot may be the geekiest town in America. It's an unincorporated community full of scientists and support staff for the National Solar Observatory. The road leading into town is State Highway 6563, named for a hydrogen emission line wavelength used in stellar astronomy. … Read more

ALAMOGORDO, N.M.--A flat plaque in cement on the ground in front of the flagpoles at the New Mexico Museum of Space History marks the final resting place for Ham the Astrochimp. I've brought flowers to spruce the place up a little bit, but it still looks very plain. This isn't quite what I expected. I thought the grave of a space pioneer might have a little more flair.

Earning a real name Ham's name is an acronym for "Holloman Aeromedical," the lab where he and other space chimps were trained. He didn't earn a real name until he successfully returned from orbit. Before that, he was Chimp Number 65.… Read more

SOCORRO, N.M.--Roswell gets all the glory. It has a UFO festival, a UFO museum, and a prominent place in the national mindset. Roswell happened back in 1947, but it wasn't really popularized until the late 1970s.

Before Roswell got famous, Socorro, N.M., made national news in 1964 after a very peculiar incident on an April evening.

Socrorro gets its own UFO Police officer Lonnie Zamora was chasing a speeding car near the outskirts of town when he turned off to investigate a loud roaring sound and a flame in the sky. What he initially thought was a car turned over in an arroyo turned out to be what he described as a shiny whitish object, shaped like an "O" with legs. … Read more