WEEK IN REVIEW: Reporters’ notebook
While the Clark County School District Board of Trustees was “interviewing” interim superintendent candidates, a reporter decided to pass the time on Twitter, posting fake odds on who would win. He even tried to draw in Amanda Fulkerson, chief of communications for the school district, by suggesting she should start taking bets.
Fulkerson soon tweeted her own levelheaded take on the idea: “Media & community would frown upon gambling ring @ board meeting. I must advise against.”
JEFF MOSIER
During an hours-long hearing Friday in the years-long case involving a melee between the Hells Angels and the Mongols at a downtown wedding chapel, defense lawyer Jimmy Ornoz told District Judge Michael Villani, “I promise I’ll be brief.”
“Prove it,” replied someone in the courtroom, loudly enough for others to hear — and chuckle.
FRANCIS McCABE
It’s an issue that isn’t likely to come up during a City Council meeting, but Henderson mayoral candidate Jerry Sakura very definitely favors the legalization of marijuana for recreational use.
During a recent interview at his home, he recalled experimenting with the drug as a young man in Vietnam and smoking a joint three years ago in Atlantic City.
Then he whipped out a container to show his visitor his stock of “K2,” or synthetic marijuana.
“I’m 73 years old, and I’ve been smoking this stuff — controlled amounts — for two years,” he said.
CARRI GEER THEVENOT
Seth Shanahan is a senior biologist with the Southern Nevada Water Authority, so you can probably take his word for it when he says there aren’t any piranha living in the Las Vegas Wash.
But there are red-bellied pacu, a popular and basically harmless aquarium fish from South America that looks an awful lot like piranha.
The key difference, Shanahan said: Pacu have an overbite; piranha have an underbite.
“Of course, if there are piranha, you don’t want to go into the water to figure that out,” he said.
HENRY BREAN
