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Plane crash kills five in Nevada

RENO — A small plane crashed Saturday afternoon in a pasture in northern Nevada, killing all five people aboard, sheriff’s deputies said.

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A Las Vegas police officer was killed in a collision early Thursday morning while rushing to a domestic violence call.

Hualapai juvenile jail open

KINGMAN, Ariz. — A new juvenile detention center for members of northern Arizona’s Hualapai tribe will end a long-standing practice of sending wards to a juvenile jail in New Mexico.

Heart problems in Gans’ family

Entertainer Danny Gans had high blood pressure “for years” and a history of heart problems in his family, his manager said Saturday.

Pay for government workers in Nevada are straining budgets

Nevada taxpayers support fewer government employees than those of other states, but give them more pay and benefits than most. In a budget crisis, the Nevada Legislature is revisiting that arrangement.

Ace war pilot and former POW dies

Col. Harold E. Fischer, an ace fighter pilot whose high-profile captivity became a symbol of heightened tensions between the United States and China at the end of the Korean War, has died. He was 83.

The president and the high court

Last week Justice David Souter announced his intent to resign from the U.S. Supreme Court, giving President Barrack Obama his first opportunity to appoint a judge to the highest court in the land. In our constitutional system, the president has the power to nominate judicial officers, but U.S. senators review those nominations and may approve or disapprove of them. This check and balance is the process of “advice and consent.”

GOP leading with its noses

It does not make U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama a racist that he was heard many years ago quipping that he thought the Ku Klux Klan was all right until he found out there was pot-smoking in the membership.

Obama benefits from Bush surge in Iraq

Since the invasion of Iraq six years ago, more than 4,000 American servicemen and women have died in the line of duty. Every day, the mainstream media reminded the American people of the mounting casualties. During the presidential campaign, candidate Barack Obama sharply criticized the policies of the Bush administration. Such places as Ramadi and Fallujah became synonymous with anarchy, mayhem and death. Each passing month, tens and in the worst months hundreds of U.S. war-related deaths were recorded.

Conservative senator sipping tax hike Kool-Aid

Word on the street is that it’s not moderate Republican senators who are pushing aggressively for tax hikes in legislative negotiations right now, but a conservative Republican state senator who has signed the Taxpayer Protection Pledge and works for a construction association when not in session.

Budget deal looks like suicide pact

Lawmakers now have less than two weeks to pass a budget that includes tax increases if they want an opportunity to override Gov. Jim Gibbons’ promised veto. And whatever taxes are hiked, whatever services are cut, whatever compromise legislation is attached to the spending plan, the result will answer one of Nevada’s most consequential political questions: Just how powerful are the state’s public employee unions, anyway?

The audacity of trimming

President Barack Obama asked Congress Thursday to eliminate or trim 121 federal programs for a “savings” of $17 billion in the coming budget year — while crossing his fingers behind his back and failing to mention that he actually plans to shift that money into programs he likes better.

The smoldering issue of firefighter compensation

While the derelict Moulin Rouge was, again, going up in thick, white smoke on Wednesday afternoon — quite a visual spectacle, but hardly an all-hands-on-deck, women-and-children-first kind of event in the larger realm of breaking news — my phone rang and a caller suggested I look out the window and across the street.

School district priorities

The Legislature appears to have settled on the state’s public schools budget for 2009-11, and county districts have some tough choices to make.

Tonopah honors its beginnings with festive Jim Butler Days

A chance discovery of ore rich in silver in 1900 by Central Nevada rancher Jim Butler sparked a mining boom to rival the fabulous days of the Comstock Lode decades earlier in Virginia City. When word of Butler’s find got out, a boom started that drew Nevada out of a deep depression. Soon, a camp called Butler grew near the site of Jim Butler’s original strike near Tonopah Spring.

Honor means Scow to return as mentor to other parents

Though she had a major hand in shaping the education of the valley’s children for 12 years, a role she valued and respected, Mary Beth Scow does not consider her time as a school board trustee to be her most important role.

THE WATER COOLER

Here are a few things in news, entertainment and popular culture that we’ve been talking about lately.

‘Wolverine’ combines intriguing plot, fun action

“X-Men Origins: Wolverine,” released May 1, is a decent start to the summer movie season. A prequel to the other “X-Men” movies, it provides audiences with a nearly perfect explosion-to-emotion ratio.

OUTDOOR BRIEF

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