State, Mescaleros sign gaming deal
Gov. Bill Richardson on Tuesday signed a gaming compact with the Mescalero Apache Tribe, formally ending years of litigation over gambling on the southern New Mexico reservation.
Mescalero President Mark Chino and Attorney General Patricia Madrid this spring agreed on a settlement that ended a long-standing feud over the tribe's objections to the state's Indian-gambling compacts and their revenue-sharing requirements.
The Mescaleros have agreed to pay $25 million in back payments.
The compact also calls for the tribe to share with the state 8 percent of revenues from its Casino Apache in southern New Mexico.
"While the state and the Mescalero Apache Tribe have had our differences, I believe our shared goal of a strong economy in New Mexico and our mutual respect for each other's sovereignty has brought us together instead of further apart," Richardson said Tuesday.
The gaming compact will be sent to the Interior Department for approval.
The deal leaves Pojoaque Pueblo as the only New Mexico tribe that hasn't signed a compact with the state.
Reports: Roberts pregnant with twins
LOS ANGELES -- Oscar-winning actress Julia Roberts is pregnant with twins, according to magazine reports.
People magazine reported Monday that Roberts' spokeswoman, Marcy Engelman, said the
Pretty Woman star was due to give birth to twins early next year.
US Weekly said Roberts, 36, has been pregnant for about nine weeks with twins. Star magazine, citing unidentified sources, said the twins were a boy and a girl.
Roberts, who won the best-actress Oscar in 2001 for Erin Brockovich, married cinematographer Daniel Moder, 35, in July 2002 at her home in New Mexico. The twins would be the first children for Roberts.
Engelman told
People magazine that twins run in Roberts' family, with her great-grandmother and a pair of cousins born as twins.
Explosion rocks St. James Hotel
CIMARRON -- A propane leak under the historic St. James Hotel caused a small explosion Tuesday that blew out three or four windows and buffeted four people in the lobby, police said.
The explosion occurred shortly after 10 a.m. when a pilot flame apparently ignited propane that had accumulated under the hotel, Police Chief Steve Boyce said.
"There was a family in the lobby. They had a couple of small kids," Boyce said.
The children were knocked down by the blast and were taken to Miners' Colfax Hospital in Raton for treatment, but there were "no blood or burns," Boyce said. And the parents were not injured.
The hotel was closed for the remainder of the day, Boyce said.
Hotel workers could not be reached for comment.
The St. James, built in 1873 by a French chef named Henri Lambert, is claimed to have been the site of 26 killings -- and has bullet holes in its dining-room ceiling. The hotel is also purported to be haunted.
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