Nevada Desert

As part of an effort to extend the military's "warrior culture" to unmanned planes, the Air Force is overhauling how it trains the crews that operate its rapidly growing fleet of Predators, Reapers and other remotely piloted aircraft. The changes in training will affect hundreds of personnel who fly the unmanned aircraft remotely over war zones from distant bases and control their powerful cameras and targeting systems. The effort is part of a move by the Air Force to put as much emphasis on drones as it does on traditional fighters and bombers, officials said.

Many Southern Californians who travel to the annual Burning Man event don't want to leave the experience behind on the dry lake bed in Nevada's Black Rock Desert. For those who can't get enough or are looking for a sampler, Saturday's L.A. Burning Man Decompression Arts & Music Festival, or L.A. Decom, offers a taste of the 19-year-old Burning Man festival -- without most of the nudity, swearing and transgressive performance that characterizes the Nevada event. Inspired by San Francisco's Decom festival, which aimed to make the transition between the playa and the "default world" a little less rough, L.A. Decom founder and producer Athena Demos staged the first event in 2002.

SLS Las Vegas , a trendy resort to be built on the grounds of the former Sahara, is scheduled to open in fall 2014 and promises to bring several Southern California clubs and restaurants to the Nevada desert. The former Sahara has been surrounded by chain link fencing since owners Sbe , whose chairman and chief executive is Sam Nazarian, closed the historic hotel about two years ago. The company is pumping $415 million into renovating the property, which has stood on the Strip since 1952.

This week, more than 60,000 souls will flock to the annual participatory-art festival of Burning Man. For first-time Burners, the weeklong "celebration of radical self-expression," which erects a weird, transient city in the Nevada desert, raises a host of issues. What to wear? What heat-resistant foodstuffs to pack? How do I find the giant three-dimensional Tetris blocks where my friends are camped? If the man registering me goes by Awesome Sauce and dresses as a bumblebee, do I really want to hang?

A nuclear weapon with a yield of less than 20 kilotons was triggered 1,000 feet beneath the Nevada desert Wednesday in the second announced U.S. test of the year. A spokesman for the Department of Energy said the test, code-named Tornero, was conducted at 8:45 a.m.. "No radiation leaked into the atmosphere, and the test was a success," the spokesman said. Six anti-nuclear activists picketed the gates of the Nevada Test Site on Wednesday.

Three dangerous inmates, exhausted from a 24-hour flight across the Nevada desert, surrendered early today after alert neighbors tipped police to their whereabouts. Officials at the Southern Desert Correctional Center said polygraph tests would be administered to three guards to determine if one of them was asleep when the escape took place late Sunday night.

An F-15 fighter jet crashed during training over the Nevada desert, killing one pilot and injuring another. The two-seater F-15D Eagle went down in the vast Nevada Test and Training Range north of Las Vegas, according to a statement released by Nellis Air Force Base officials. The second pilot was in stable condition at the base hospital. Both pilots were assigned to the 65th Aggressor Squadron, which simulates enemy forces in air combat training exercises.

A teenage boy who was riding in a van rear-ended by an alleged drunk driver in the Nevada desert lost his leg in the accident, relatives of the passengers said. The 15-year-old boy, identified only as Eddie, was in a Chevy Astro van with his mother, sister and four other people about 3 a.m. Saturday when it was rear-ended by a Dodge Durango on Interstate 15 north of Las Vegas. The boy's mother, Maria Cardenas, was driving and was critically injured. The boy's sister, 13-year-old Angela Sandoval, was killed.

The United States exploded two nuclear bombs within five days beneath the Nevada desert (on June 19 and June 23). Both tests had a force of approximately 20 kilotons (a total equivalent of 80 million pounds of TNT bursting underground). Less than 10 days later three earthquakes occurred in California and Nevada (June 28-29). This is not the first time that earthquakes have closely followed man-made underground explosions. Is it possible that subterranean nuclear testing helps to trigger earthquakes in an already delicate and sensitive area?

A Nevada man convicted of sexually assaulting a 2-year-old girl -- an attack that was videotaped -- will spend the rest of his life in prison. Clark County District Court Judge Jennifer Togliatti sentenced Chester Arthur Stiles to 21 terms of life in prison. Stiles, 38, was the object of a nationwide manhunt after a graphic videotape of the sexual assault surfaced in the Nevada desert. He was convicted in March of all 22 felonies against him, including sexual assault with a minor under 14, lewdness with a child under 14, and attempted sexual assault with a minor under 14.