By Reuters

A federal judge on Tuesday postponed a key hearing in a bondholder lawsuit against Caesars Entertainment Corp until next month after a last-minute court ruling granted the casino group a brief reprieve from the multi-billion dollar litigation.

Shares of Caesars had plummeted on Monday after a federal judge in Chicago ruled the company must face lawsuits seeking up to $11 billion.

That ruling had opened the door to the U.S. District Court hearing on Tuesday in New York. The bondholders had asked the judge to enter an order in their favor, and Caesars had warned an adverse ruling could force it into bankruptcy.

Caesars is the parent company of Harrah’s Lake Tahoe and Harveys.

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Invasive species, like the clams that were suffocated by mats at Emerald Bay, were not an issue 20 years ago. Photo/LTN file

By Benjamin Spillman, Reno Gazette-Journal

A visit by President Bill Clinton in 1997 is credited with pushing Lake Tahoe onto the national stage.

That visit, part of the first Tahoe Summit, rallied disparate interests from California and Nevada around the idea of Lake Tahoe as a singular political issue that crossed state lines and federal agencies.

When President Obama visits today he’ll see progress on water clarity and political unity that can be traced back to the original summit.

And there’s a chance that 20 years from today people will look back at Obama’s visit as another turning point in the lake’s perception on the national political stage. That’s because it coincides with crunch-time for reauthorization of the Lake Tahoe Restoration Act. The reauthorization, which has been floating around Congress in some form since 2009, would authorize $415 million in federal spending at Lake Tahoe.

It also calls for future presidents to aggregate federal spending on Lake Tahoe into a single line item in the executive budget. The change would mean that during future budget-making processes the President would see Lake Tahoe as a singular cause, similar to Florida’s Everglades, the Great Lakes or Long Island Sound.

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Ash from the Tahoe Queen blows into Lake Tahoe on Aug. 30. Photo/LTN

By Kathryn Reed

Ash and other debris were seen entering Lake Tahoe on Tuesday from the charred remains of the Tahoe Queen.

“They are getting a lot of ash in the lake. They are not containing what used to be chairs and tables,” a person who works in the area told Lake Tahoe News.

The work finally had to be halted on Aug. 30 because the wind was picking up in the late afternoon. Ash was being blown onto nearby boats as well.

A team is in place to handle the removal of items as well as take care of the lake. Still, soot is reaching the waters.

The paddle-wheeler caught fire earlier this month in what has been ruled a construction fire. Painters and welders were on the vessel that morning when the fire started. The final report from the U.S. Coast Guard is expected this fall.

“In part of their contract is cleaning the lake bottom around the Tahoe Queen, removing the glass and all those things that fell into the lake,” Tahoe Douglas Fire Marshal Eric Guevin told Lake Tahoe News.

The mitigation team hired by Aramark, the firm that owns the boat, must record what the lake floor looks like and have divers remove the foreign objects.

Guevin said some ash on the lake is not something to be concerned about.

“They pumped out all the fuel and all the fire water, and it was taken out of the basin,” Guevin said.

Nothing hazardous remains on the boat.

Another firm has been hired to close a hole on the bottom of the boat where work was being done to replace the hull. That was part of the necessary work ordered by the Coast Guard after the Queen twice hit a sand bar in 2014.

As for the future of the vessel, that will be up to Aramark.

“No new info or updates,” David Freireich with Aramark told Lake Tahoe News.

It’s possible the steel hulled-boat could to sit at the Zephyr Cove dock through the winter. Reports are people in the area would like to buy the remnants.

Crews extinguish a blaze near the state line on Aug. 30. Photo/USFS

With the afternoon wind picking up on the South Shore on Tuesday afternoon, firefighters made a full assault on a blaze behind Raley’s at the state line.

The fire was reported at 4:17pm Aug. 30.

Crews were able to keep it about one-tenth of an acre.

U.S. Forest Service investigators are still trying to determine the cause of the blaze.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

Those who don’t like Donald Trump were outside Harrah’s last week, while supporters sold out a fund-raising event. Photo Copyright 2016 Carolyn E. Wright

By John Wildermuth, San Francisco Chronicle

RENO — Politically, Nevada is the anti-California.

The GOP runs both houses of the Legislature. Brian Sandoval, the state’s popular governor, is a Republican. Just like California, one party holds every state constitutional office, only in Nevada, it’s the GOP that ran the table.

And in Nevada, there’s also an actual presidential race.

In California, the RealClearPolitics average of polls has Democrat Hillary Clinton burying GOP nominee Donald Trump by 52 to 30 percentage points. But the former secretary of state holds just a three-point lead in Nevada, putting California’s eastern neighbor near the top of the fall battleground list.

The travel schedule of the two campaigns shows just how important Nevada and its six electoral votes are to the candidates, who need 270 nationwide to become president.

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Search and rescue teams retrieve a fallen hiker Aug. 30 at Eagle Falls. Photo/Provided

It took careful work from multiple agencies Tuesday morning to rescue a man from the Eagles Falls area.

Authorities were notified just after 7:30am Aug. 30 that someone had slipped and went over the cliff near the South Shore falls.

Search and rescue teams found the victim nearly 40 below trapped on a ledge.

“Rescuers provided care while rope systems were put together to move the victim a short distance,” El Dorado County sheriff’s Deputy Greg Almos told Lake Tahoe News.

A CHP helicopter than hoisted the victim out to an ambulance. The person, who’s name and hometown have not been released, was then taken to Renown Medical Center in Reno.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

By Seth A. Richardson, Reno Gazette-Journal

President Obama will make his first trip to Lake Tahoe on Wednesday, but he’s definitely not the first president to do so.

While a plethora of presidents have visited Truckee – once considered a battleground location in the presidential race – the lake, often admired for its beauty and referred to as The Jewel of the Sierra has played host to only a few presidents either before, during or after they were in office.

Obama’s visit to the Lake Tahoe Summit makes the first visit by a sitting president in 20 years and the eighth documented visit overall.

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Signs about a drug incident were posted in Tahoe City before law enforcement was called. Photo/LTN

By Kathryn Reed

Placer County sheriff’s deputies are trying to get to the bottom of an incident involving a 12-year-old who nearly died after ingesting water that reportedly had the drug molly in it.

Signs were placed along bike trails in Tahoe City asking people for information and to call A.W.A.R.E.

No one from A.W.A.R.E. returned a phone call.

The sheriff’s department was sent the same flyer and also has not received a call back. They also don’t know anything about this group. Nor is it known who put up the $10,000 reward money.

What alarms the sheriff’s department is that neither the parents nor the hospital called law enforcement. It is state law that a medical facility must notify officers when a crime may have been committed. A youth under the influence of anything is an indication a crime has occurred; it could just be having access to the substance, or being a user – intentionally or not.

“We found out who the child is. We spoke to the mother. Something happened, we don’t know what happened because nobody has been forthcoming,” Dena Erwin, sheriff’s spokeswoman, told Lake Tahoe News.

It has not been determined if a crime occurred or if the youth willingly ingested the drug. The hallucinogenic can cause serious damage to a body, especially to someone not fully grown. The condition of the child is not known.

“We haven’t confirmed it was MDMA because no one has given us blood results,” Irwin said.

Allison Williams with Renown Medical Center in Reno told Lake Tahoe News it is standard operating procedure to let Child Protective Services or another appropriate agency know of a case like this. She didn’t know why Placer deputies were not alerted.

“We are not sure where the disconnect was,” Williams said.

A South Shore man is an induced coma after being run over by his wife in their driveway.

Teresa Anderson, 58, told El Dorado County sheriff’s deputies that it was an accident.

Investigators are still trying to determine if it was intentional or an accident. Anderson was arrested that night, Aug. 26, on assault with a deadly weapon charge. She has since posted bail.

If her husband, Tim Anderson, does not survive, she could face other charges.

Anderson, 62, is a flooring contractor in Tahoe. He has not regained consciousness so deputies have not been able to get a statement from him. He is at Renown Medical Center in Reno.

— Lake Tahoe News staff report

By Daniel Rothberg, Las Vegas Sun

Beneath a purple glow, in a warehouse sharing the street with two indistinguishable strip malls, Kevin Biernacki is growing around 100 pounds of medical marijuana. The purpose of this facility, owned by The Grove, is no different than other cultivation sites in Nevada. Yet, the roughly 480 industrial lamps suspended over clusters of cannabis set this place apart.

Those energy-efficient lights allowed The Grove to slash its power bill. The decision to use LED lamps might seem unsexy at first, simply a marginal deduction on a complicated balance sheet. But it’s not. It is the type of business decision many experts believe can offer huge benefits in a growing market.

That’s because indoor cultivation centers, which use lamps to mimic the sun and air conditioning to keep temperatures hospitable, suck up power. NV Energy has projected that some cannabis-growing operations could use up to 5 megawatts at one time, enough energy to power about 3,000 homes.

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