By Howard Stutz, Las Vegas Review-Journal

Caesars Entertainment Corp. said late Friday it reached agreement with its largest lender group over the restructuring of the company’s bankrupt operating division.

In a statement, Caesars said the agreement allows the company to focus on gaining support from the last major debt holder group that has yet to agree on the restructuring plan for Caesars Entertainment Operating Co.

Caesars said the company now has support for the CEOC restructuring from both first lien bank lenders and first lien bondholders. The group represents $12 billion of CEOC’s debt

The restructuring is expected to trim almost $10 billion of debt from CEOC, which operates Caesars Palace, Caesars Atlantic City, Harrah’s Lake Tahoe, Harveys and other regional casinos.

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By Jenny Kane, Reno Gazette-Journal

Burners, beware. There’s a new sheriff in Pershing County, and he intends to crack down on crime at this year’s event in the Black Rock Desert.

“We don’t have the personnel to issue citations to 70,000 naked people on the playa, but we will be upholding the law to the best of our ability,” said Jerry Allen, a 39-year-old former deputy who replaced former Pershing County Sheriff Richard Machado in January.

“Burning Man brings nothing to Pershing County except for heartache,” Allen said.

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Before taking the stage Saturday night at the Silver Legacy in Reno, Johnny Mathis stopped by UNR, the site of his record-setting high jump.

The singer and entertainer returned to campus to reminisce about his record 6-feet-5½-inch high jump set in 1956. This was 2 inches shorter than the Olympic record. At the time he was attending San Francisco State on an athletic scholarship.

A San Francisco Chronicle article that year featured he and future NBA star Bill Russell, noting them as the top two high jumpers in the city of San Francisco. Mathis and Russell, who attended the University of San Francisco, would become close friends, and often traveled to college track and field meets together.

Ty Cobb, a university alumnus and former special assistant to Ronald Reagan, witnessed the achievement which took place in the former Mackay Stadium located in what is today Hilliard Plaza, the open area in front of the Mack Social Science building. In his chronicle of the Mathis-Nevada story, Cobb wrote: “As a young high school student, I used to enjoy going up to the old Mackay Stadium at the University of Nevada to watch track and field events. I recall in 1956 catching this young, relatively short student from San Francisco State set a new high jump record for the stadium. I couldn’t believe how someone so small in stature could jump that high.”

Mathis’ campus visit, was initiated by Cobb.

For Mathis, 1956 would prove to be a monumental year. Following his record jump, he was asked to try out for the 1956 U.S. Olympic team. At the same time Columbia Records requested Mathis – who had been singing in Bay Area clubs – travel to New York City to begin work on his first recording. He chose singing.

The 7-Eleven on Palisades Drive in Truckee is closed after an early morning fire caused damage to the building.

The fire was contained to the convenience store.

The cause of the Aug. 23 fire is under investigation.

All roads in the are are now open.

7-Eleven will be closed until the cleanup is done.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

By Michael Doyle, McClatchy Washington Bureau

The lawmakers convening Monday for a major Lake Tahoe conference confront a Capitol Hill conflict over how best to protect the much-beloved mountain region.

They differ over money, environmental laws, timber harvesting and more. For years, the unresolved differences have sunk efforts to renew the Lake Tahoe Restoration Act, first passed in 2000. Some hope this summit can help members of Congress finally start paddling in the same direction.

“I think the prospects are good,” Rep. John Garamendi, D-Walnut Grove, said Friday.

Competing sides will certainly be present at the 19th annual Lake Tahoe Summit at the Round Hill Pines Beach Resort. Governors, senators and congressmen from California and Nevada will attend, along with about 500 others, paying homage to the 191-square mile lake.

The federal legislators share some common ground, underscored by identical language in House and Senate bills that praise Tahoe as “one of the largest, deepest, and clearest fresh-water lakes in the world.” The two bills share a name: the Lake Tahoe Restoration Act of 2015.

Both bills are also cast as a follow-up to the original Lake Tahoe Restoration Act, which expired in 2010. That measure authorized $300 million in federal funds, which supported hundreds of specific Tahoe-related projects.

But in ways large and small, the bipartisan Senate version introduced July 9 and the House version introduced several weeks later by Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Garden Valley, veer dramatically.

The Senate bill covers more territory, costs more money and is in its ambitions closer to the original Lake Tahoe Restoration Act. It authorizes spending $415 million over 10 years on various Tahoe-related projects.

The House bill is more tightly focused on forest fuel reduction and invasive species, and it’s designed to pass muster with congressional conservatives. Added up, it authorizes only about one-fifth the amount of money provided by the Senate bill.

“For the last eight years, Tahoe legislation has been introduced in the Senate and has not moved off the Senate floor,” McClintock said when he offered his package. “We have carefully crafted this bill to fit within the budget parameters set by Congress.”

McClintock’s chairmanship of the House Federal Lands Subcommittee gives him particular sway over Tahoe legislation, the topic of a July 14 hearing. Michael Brown, chief of the North Lake Tahoe Fire Protection District, testified that McClintock’s proposal would “significantly help” forest fire prevention efforts.

Meanwhile, Leslie Weldon, deputy chief of the Forest Service, cautioned that “we have concerns with a number of provisions.”

The House bill, for instance, would exempt forest fuel reduction projects from National Environmental Policy Act requirements. It would also subject forest management protests within the 150,000-acre Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit to mandatory arbitration, which could not be blocked by a judge’s restraining order or preliminary injunction.

“What we’re hoping is that, as we work through the process, the two bills will become more closely aligned,” Julie Regan, external affairs chief for the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, said Friday.

Garamendi opposes some of the House provisions, which track broader conservative policies concerning public lands, but nonetheless sees the glass as half-full.

“The fact that McClintock is prepared to engage is significant,” Garamendi said. “His bill may be less than optimal, but it’s nonetheless on the right track.”

Still, in a sign of conflict to come, McClintock at the July 14 hearing criticized the “excessive costs” of bills that focus on improving Lake Tahoe’s clarity.

The Senate bill, meanwhile, has at least some wind in its sails by virtue of its strong support by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, whose retirement next year could make the Lake Tahoe legislation his final legacy. If both House and Senate pass their bills, differences would have to be worked out in a conference that would test everyone’s willpower, flexibility and deal-making prowess.

The bomb blast at Harveys in 1980. Photo/FBI 

Thirty-five years ago this week — Aug. 27, 1980 — an extortionist’s bomb exploded inside Harveys Resort Hotel at Stateline.

This view from the California side of the state line is a frame from the FBI documentary just seconds before the 1980 explosion.

The FBI ultimately arrested John Birges of Clovis as the mastermind. Birges tried to extort $3 million but plans went awry and a robot detonated the bomb during an attempt to disable it. The entire area had been evacuated. No one was injured. The explosion hollowed-out a five story cavern inside the hotel, from the basement up to the fifth floor.

Two years later, the rebuilt hotel had a grand opening. One of the invited attendees is said to have been John Birges. Later, by the time of his arrest, Birges had completed building another bomb, supposedly intended for the Transamerica building in San Francisco. Birges died in a Nevada prison on Aug. 28, 1996, exactly 16 years and one day after the Harveys bomb exploded.

Click on this link to view a fascinating six-minute documentary by an FBI special agent.

The rebuilt hotel-casino looks completely different. It is the largest hotel at Lake Tahoe. Photo/Bill Kingman

— Bill Kingman

Marley Reel and Mike Miller with their screen printer. Photos/Terra Breedan

By Terra Breeden

MEYERS – A spider-like machine sits in the middle of the garage with its arms jutting into the small space.

“Careful that thing is hot,” says Marley Reel, co-owner of Rise Designs.

The sizzling screen printer dominates the room. Reel squeezes past the machine and tries to avoid tripping over the pair of boisterous dogs bounding about his feet.

“Yep. This is where the magic happens,” Reel’s partner, Mike Miller, says proudly.

This is the office-store-studio of Rise Designs.

Rise Designs’ creations are inspired by nature.

Located in Meyers, Rise Designs is a graphic design and clothing company that was founded by Miller and Reel in 2007. Specializing in hats, T-shirts, and sweat shirts as well as logo and event poster designs, Rise has become increasingly successful in Lake Tahoe as its bold prints and strong design work has gained recognition around the lake.

“All of these designs are hand painted,” Miller said as he gestured at the canvases and trucker hats stacked around the garage.

Dripping with bright colors, paintings of mountains, rivers, snowboarders and mountain bikers line the walls. The vibrant artwork depicts scenes from Lake Tahoe. All of the outdoor activities and natural beauty of Lake Tahoe is portrayed on the paintings.

“Our stuff stems from nature, that’s our thing,” Reel said. “We are Tahoe guys and we like nature, it’s all about being outside and enjoying the outdoors.”

Almost all of the designs are motivated by the landscape of Lake Tahoe.

“We get out. We hike, we bike, we snowboard, and that brings us to the outdoors which is where we get our inspiration for our artwork,” Miller said.

Before founding Rise Designs, Reel was a graphic design student from Vermont and Miller hailed from Southern California, graduating from Arizona State University with a degree in industrial design. The two met at Sierra-at-Tahoe where they worked in the season pass office.

“Meeting up with Marley was key for us to develop our business and sustain ourselves in town,” Miller said. “We couldn’t really work at a resort for the rest of our lives, but we love it here.”

Reel said, “So, I approached Mike and was like, hey we should do some artwork together.”

The rest was proverbial history as the two founded the company Rise Designs. They started the business with a couple of sweat shirts printed with their designs by a local screen printing company. Right afterward, the company that printed the shirts went out of business and put their screen printer up for sale.

A water color by Mike Miller.

“Marley and I were like, hey this is an opportunity – we are going to buy this screen printing setup,” Miller said.

It wasn’t an easy task starting a business from scratch. Neither Miller nor Reel had ever run a business before and they had to learn how to do everything one step at a time.

“There is no off-button,” Reel said. “You are always working on it and thinking about it. It’s just the two of us. If we aren’t doing it, nothing is happening. We have to keep moving forward.”

But all of the hard work is paying off. Since 2007, Rise Designs has become a successful clothing company that specializes in outdoor adventure clothing and graphic design.

Rise Designs clothing is carried in many stores throughout Lake Tahoe including Gaialicious, Sports LTD, Tahoe Rock and Ride, and the visitors centers in Incline Village and Tahoe City. They also do graphic design work for local companies. They have designed beer labels for Cold Water Brewery, hats for the Humane Society, and worked with the League to Save Lake Tahoe.

“When we first started we used to extend or arms to businesses for projects,” Reel said. “But these days, companies call us because they know our design work.”

Although Rise Designs now has hundreds of clients and participates in events all around the lake, the two still maintain their creative roots.

“We are both artists,” Miller said. “I have been asked ‘what do you want to do with your life’ and I want to be drawing, I want to sustain my lifestyle, and I want to be a Tahoe resident. I want to live the life that I choose.”

The next step toward fulfilling that goal is for Rise Designs is to move to a bigger workspace, the garage is too crowded for their growing business. Reel and Miller want to keep the company based in Meyers.

“Meyers is a big part of what we do and where we came from,” Reel said. “It’s a great community here.”

Reel and Miller also have tons of ideas for new Rise Designs products.

“We really love doing hats,” Miller said. “There are so many different designs we can do and they are so much fun.”

But they don’t want to confine themselves to one type of clothing.

“Our goal is to put our designs on all types of products,” Miller said. “And who knows what that might be in the future, it might even be watches or socks.”

The only thing certain is that Reel and Miller have a strong partnership and a love for their art; it’s what has been the driving force behind Rise Designs since the beginning.

“You have to have passion in what you do,” Reel said. “If you do it because you love it, not for money or other reasons, your passion will take you there.”

Publisher’s note: This editorial is from BloombergNews on Aug. 19, 2015.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed new restrictions on methane emissions are a reasonable imposition on the oil and gas industry. Whether they’re adequate to help fight climate change is another question, and the answer depends on what the government does next.

Under the proposed rules, new or modified oil and gas wells would have to use pumps and compressors that better capture methane, and companies would have to work harder to find and fix leaks — cutting the sector’s methane emissions by 20 to 30 percent. That would be about halfway toward the Obama administration’s goal of pushing methane emissions from the oil and gas industry down 40 to 45 percent below their 2012 levels by 2025.

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A Carson High School student died Saturday of an apparent drowning at Sand Harbor.

The name of the 15-year-old is not being released pending notification of next of kin. The exact cause of death will be determined by an autopsy.

“It was an in the water accident,” Bob Harmon, spokesman for Washoe County Sheriff’s Office, told Lake Tahoe News.

The Carson City teen was not on a boat and foul play is not suspected. Harmon did not have any other details.

First responders arrived at the Incline Village beach just before noon Aug. 22 after a call came in of a youth in distress.

He was transported to Renown Medical Center in Reno where he died.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

By Perri Klass, New York Times

A little more than a year ago, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a policy statement saying that all pediatric primary care should include literacy promotion, starting at birth.

That means pediatricians taking care of infants and toddlers should routinely be advising parents about how important it is to read to even very young children. The policy statement, which I wrote with physician Pamela C. High, included a review of the extensive research on the links between growing up with books and reading aloud, and later language development and school success.

But while we know that reading to a young child is associated with good outcomes, there is only limited understanding of what the mechanism might be. Two new studies examine the unexpectedly complex interactions that happen when you put a small child on your lap and open a picture book.

This month, the journal Pediatrics published a study that used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study brain activity in 3-to 5-year-old children as they listened to age-appropriate stories. The researchers found differences in brain activation according to how much the children had been read to at home.

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