Top News

The state of the state? Grim, judging from the drastic cuts proposed Thursday by Gov. Jim Gibbons.

In his annual speech on Nevada's condition, Gibbons unveiled a budget for the next two years that includes a 6 percent salary cut for state workers and deep reductions in higher education.

Of the $633 million Gibbons wants to slash from the state's general fund, 86 percent would come from education.

The proposal drew an angry response from the Democrats who control the state Legislature, who vowed to chart a new course.

Most observers predict the new course will involve balancing the state budget with a tax increase instead of cuts.

MONDAY

PATIENT KILLS DOCTOR

A doctor was gunned down in an exam room at her office by an 80-year-old patient who then turned the gun on himself.

Dr. Edna Makabenta, 49, was pronounced dead at the scene on Charleston Boulevard near Rancho Drive. Her killer, Eliseo Santos, died later.

Santos' motive was not known, but he did file a complaint against Makabenta and other doctors. An official for the Nevada Board of Medical Examiners said the complaint did not indicate Santos was a threat.

TUESDAY

DROWNING AT DAY CARE

A licensed day care at a North Las Vegas home was ordered to close after a 1-year-old boy drowned in the backyard pool.

A 3-year-old boy also fell into the pool but survived. The boys were not related.

According to regulators, the facility was approved to serve up to six children ages 12 and younger. WEDNESDAY

Flash, Bang, Lawsuit

A county jail inmate injured when a corrections officer detonated a flash-bang grenade in his cell filed a $3 million federal lawsuit.

According to the lawsuit, inmate Sergio Ramirez was stripped naked and kept in a cell for four days without medical care for his burns.

Clark County, the Metropolitan Police Department, nine corrections officers and medical providers are defendants.

In a police report, corrections officers said they used the grenade on Nov. 21 because Ramirez, serving a life sentence for murder, had threatened staff.

THURSDAY

OFFICERS ARRESTED

Two North Las Vegas police officers were arrested on allegations of misconduct during a December incident involving a casino patron.

Police said Mark Alan Miles and James F. Balelo, both 27, were booked on misdemeanor charges of filing a false report by a public officer. Miles, accused of striking a handcuffed man in the face, also faces a felony charge.

FRIDAY

'MIRACLE' HAS NELLIS TIE

The pilot who safely ditched his crippled jetliner Thursday in New York's Hudson River, saving all 155 people on board, got some of his flying experience at Nellis Air Force Base in the 1970s.

The biography of US Airways Capt. Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger lists his experience as an F-4 fighter pilot during the early years of Red Flag air combat training exercises at Nellis.

Nellis officials could offer no details about Sullenberger's stint at the base, but a spokesman said pilots there drill every day on "preparing for the unexpected."