Kilmer on NM: If I Run, I'll Be the Next Governor

New Mexico chimps win reprieve

(NEWSER) - Some 186 elderly chimpanzees formerly used in invasive research have been given a temporary reprieve from more experiments. The National Institutes of Health, which had planned to transfer the chimps from their home at an NIH facility in New Mexico to a Texas research facility, has announced that the chimps will be allowed to remain in retirement while it carries out a two-year review of the need to use them in biomedical research, reports CNN . More»

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson will decide by year's end

(NEWSER) - One of Bill Richardson’s last acts as New Mexico governor could be pardoning Billy the Kid . He’s reviewing a petition to pardon the famed outlaw—killed in 1881 after reportedly killing 21 men—which is based on the claim that Governor Lew Walllace promised the Wild West folk hero a pardon in exchange for testifying at a murder trial. More»

He has referred to area's violence, alcoholism

(NEWSER) - Val Kilmer's neighbors in rural New Mexico say the actor is racist, AceShowbiz.com reports, and he'll have to convince local officials otherwise if he wants permission to rent out guesthouses on his ranch. Kilmer is expected to attend a public meeting in San Miguel County, NM, later this month to explain interviews in which he called the area the "homicide capital of the Southwest" and said he keeps a gun in his vehicle. More»

(AP) - New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and former members of his administration will not face charges in a yearlong pay-to-play investigation, a source tells the AP. A federal grand jury has been probing whether lucrative work on state bond deals was improperly awarded to a Richardson donor—derailing his nomination as Commerce secretary in the Obama administration. Top Justice Department officials made the call, says an insider: "It's over. There's nothing. It was killed in Washington." More»

(NEWSER) - The tentative thaw continues in North Korea relations. On the heels of Bill Clinton's trip, Bill Richardson hosted two high-ranking officials from the North today at the governor's mansion in New Mexico and declared that Pyongyang is sending a "positive vibration" about detente. “What I sense was, one, the temperature has really cooled down in the relationship,” Richardson told MSNBC. “I think the Clinton visit has helped a lot.” More»