Print edition for February 14, 2007

Utah turns spigot off for Nevada: Utah lawmakers have, at least for now, pinched the straw that Southern Nevada water officials had hoped to use to syphon billions of gallons of rural underground water to sustain Las Vegas.

LOOKING IN ON: CARSON CITY: The Southern Nevada Water Authority is paying inflated prices to buy ranches for water rights in White Pine County that could result in Clark County residents being hit with big water bills, White Pine officials contend.

Letter: Government wastes a lot of money on pork: The government already has all the money it needs and more. What's needed is the proper allocation of funds. Government waste is nothing new. For example: A $10,000 award from the Nevada government for students who obtain slightly more than a B average. I've not heard of a more ridiculous misallocation of our tax money!

Finding amor made easier for Hispanics in valley: By Timothy Pratt; Ordering a burger in a foreign language is one thing, but wooing a lover?

Bad news mounts at public hospital: By Marshall Allen, Tony Cook; Lacy Thomas is gone, but he still is casting a shadow at University Medical Center, which announced Tuesday losses of $29 million in the first half of fiscal 2007 - twice the budgeted loss for the entire year.

Enrollment keeps passing projections: By Emily Richmond; Click here for a printable map.

FLASHPOINT for Feb 14, 2007: You have to give Gov. Jim Gibbons credit for innovation. No, I am not talking about midnight swearings-in . I speak of his policy of co-opting constitutional officers. Just this week, Gibbons appointed the wife of the secretary of state to a major board and another constitutional officer to head a major task force. This could be a pioneering method of bipartisanship, or of neutralizing the potential opposition. Yes, Secretary of State Ross Miller's wife, Lesley, is qualified to serve on the Transportation Services Authority and Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto is perfect to head the meth task force. But ...

Jeff Haney on getting on a poker reality show by playing hundreds of hours at the Palms: Yet players can qualify for such an event at the Palms from now through June 30, according to Palms poker manager Michael Vento.

Editorial: Alternatives to earmarks: While earmarks, authorized by congressional rules, are not intrinsically bad, they came to be perceived that way after many members of Congress, over the years, began slipping them into the federal budget without any review by their colleagues and often at the last minute.

Now it's all about the music: Jerry Fink, Las Vegas Sun; Who: Wayman Tisdale When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday

Letter: Honorable wars have inspirational photos: He seems to suggest that a nation's attitude about a war, and therefore history, is determined by the pictures it views. I believe it is the other way around. The pictures we end up viewing of a war are the result of the real or imagined reasons we use to send our troops into battle, and if the war was won or lost.

Editorial: Making a clean sweep: It was a stark departure from 2003, when the country music establishment and fans rebuffed the Texas-based group after lead singer Natalie Maines criticized President Bush during a concert that occurred just before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Letter: Nature's air conditioning being destroyed: All scientists studying climate change (2,000 worldwide) agree on the causes and consequences of global warming. The only dissenters are shills hired by air-polluting industries to create the delusion that global warming is controversial. The evidence for global warming is indisputable and overwhelming. I have space to cite only a little bit of this evidence, but it is available from a number of sources.

FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME: A basketball makes an unmistakable sound when bounced on asphalt. It's a high-pitched, echoing "ting." And on a weekday night at VoTech High School, that sound is followed by one akin to a muffled gong as a basketball fails to hit its mark and caroms off the metal backboard. First the "ting," then the "gong." And again, and again.