Las Vegas Nv

The painter was the first artist to move to the downtown corner. His neighbors included a strip club, the Little White Wedding Chapel, a Thai barbecue joint and red neon heralding the Tod Motor Motel. Others might have shunned the gritty storefront near Las Vegas' embryonic arts district, but here, Ezequiel Lee Orona could grasp a decades-old dream for $900 a month.

The Dubai developer building an $8.6-billion complex on the Las Vegas Strip with casino company MGM Mirage Inc. is suing MGM Mirage because it's worried about the project's viability. Dubai World subsidiary Infinity World claims in a lawsuit filed Monday in Delaware Chancery Court that MGM Mirage's statements about its financial condition put the project at risk.

Within 90 days, this city founded on risk-taking is supposed to break ground on one of its biggest cultural gambles to date: the $475-million Smith Center for the Performing Arts. The ground-breaking is taking place at a challenging time for Las Vegas' biggest cultural institutions, which have been buffeted by the recession. Most notably, the Las Vegas Art Museum closed last month.

In a city that is usually impossible to shock, the savaging of Roy Horn on Oct. 3, 2003, onstage and in front of a live audience at the Mirage, created one of those rare moments where all locals can say where they were when they heard the news. Steve Wynn, who spent millions to have the theater at the Mirage customized for the "Siegfried & Roy" show, remembered his first reaction in an interview this week: "I could not believe one of Roy's cats attacked him."

A 9-year-old Arizona boy accused of shooting his father and another man to death at their rural home pleaded guilty Thursday to one count of negligent homicide, a development that will spare the beleaguered town of St. Johns a highly publicized trial. The November slayings drew international attention to the town of 4,000 after a police video was released in which the boy, clad in pajama pants, appeared to confess to shooting his father, Vincent Romero, and family friend Timothy Romans with a .

At the upscale Joyful House restaurant in Las Vegas' Chinatown, it used to be common for tourists or convention-goers from Japan, Hong Kong and China to drop $300 apiece on a seafood feast. But there is a lot less joy in the dining room today. The big spenders have disappeared. Business during the usually robust Chinese New Year was off 35% from 2008, said manager Stanley Ma. The restaurant has reduced employees' hours and whittled bills for tour groups.

Survivors of a tour bus crash that killed seven people in Arizona last week told investigators that the driver might have been distracted before the accident, a state official said Monday. Three survivors of Friday's crash near Hoover Dam have been interviewed, Arizona Department of Public Safety spokesman Lt. James Warriner said. Investigators have been unable to speak to the driver, Han Dong, 48, of Rosemead, because of his injuries.

It was only a matter of time before the strip clubs and cabbies went to war. Las Vegas' fortunes, which have fallen along with the nation's, can be measured in shorter lines at the airport, sparse crowds at the roulette tables and lighter traffic on Interstate 15. But the recession has also strained the "green handshake" culture, where businesses trade cash and favors for recommendations from doormen, concierges, limo drivers and cabbies.

In revenue-strapped Nevada, where foreclosed homes dot suburban streets and poker tables sit empty, it's come to this: A state legislator wants to talk about legalizing -- and taxing -- prostitution in Reno and Las Vegas. "It's almost de facto legal. It's running unregulated," said state Sen. Bob Coffin, a Democrat who chairs the Senate Taxation Committee. He also said legalization would better protect sex workers.

Pope Gregory I first identified the Seven Deadly Sins -- and suitable punishments for their commission -- around AD 600, 1,400 years before Las Vegas would earn the moniker Sin City. But the nickname is certainly fitting. Today, no one who practices gluttony amid the mountains of food at the famous buffets is forced to eat rats or toads. Nor is someone indulging in lust smothered in fire and brimstone.