Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS -- Dana Lofland took advantage of a closing birdie and a late collapse by Beth Daniel to take her first professional victory by two strokes in the $450,000 event.Lofland, on the strength of a 24-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole and two bogeys over the final three holes by Daniel, earned $67,500 to push her season earnings to $138,205."I thought I had to make it to win," Lofland said of the finishing putt that gave her a final-round 71 and 54-hole score of 212, 4-under par for the tournament at the Desert Inn course.

Las Vegas! 181 dancers will be winnowed down to 20 over eight rounds in four days. Judges will be Lil C, Debbie Allen, Adam Shankman, Tyce Diorio, Mary Murphy, and Nigel Lythgoe. First up they're all doing solos and they could be cut immediately if their solo doesn't pass muster. Hampton "Exorcist" Williams is up first and he's moving Shankman to tears within the first 20 seconds, Tyce within the first 30. I think he's a safe bet to go forward.   After the first ten solos, Nigel calls them back up for the first cut - girls we've not met before named Jennifer and Brianna.

Roughly translated, Las Vegas, according to our server, means "the suburbs. " The Las Vegas in Nevada pretty much started out that way, as a stopover and R&R locale for the folks working on the Boulder Dam. Our local Las Vegas is also in the 'burbs. In Jessup, on Route 1, just south of Route 175, next to a Burger King. Indeed, you can't get much more "modern" suburban than locating your eatery in a strip center. Co-owner, manager, cook and all-around general factotum Tomas Cruz, a native of San Salvador, opened this 70-seat, south-of-the-border themed restaurant in April 2009.

The building binge in Las Vegas is coming to fruition, with two mega-playgrounds having opened last month and another, the 5,000-room MGM Grand Hotel, Casino and Theme Park, set to debut Dec. 18.Luxor Las Vegas, a 30-story pyramid fronted by an obelisk and a sphinx larger than Egypt's, opened Oct. 15. Treasure Island, a casino with a buccaneer theme park, opened Oct. 26.Other new entries this year are Grand Slam Canyon, a 5-acre amusement park at Circus Circus,...

LAS VEGAS, Nev. -- In a city not known for nuances, former Mayor Jan Jones called a visitor's attention to a portentous one. A hotel going up on the Strip will, she says, have minibars in the rooms. If your reaction is "so what?" you are not in a Las Vegas frame of mind.Thousands of U.S. hotels have in-room minibars, but most Las Vegas hotels do not, because they do not want guests loitering in their rooms, they want them in the casinos. Ms. Jones, whose successor in City Hall is a lawyer for Mafia figures -- Viva Las Vegas!

LAS VEGAS - In the spotlessly clean, chrome-plated kitchen that serves Le Cirque, chef Marc Poidevin pulls out a plastic container from a top shelf to reveal his prize. Inside is a dirty and gnarled bit of fungus the size of a jumbo potato and it sends the native Frenchman into a swoon. "That is the biggest truffle harvested this season," he says, gently cradling his earthy, aromatic 1-pound white truffle recently shipped to him from Italy. "A customer has already offered me $1,600, but I said no. It stays here."

LAS VEGAS -- Warren Beatty has brought stylish gangster Bugsy Siegel back to life in "Bugsy," a movie about the ex-hood's dream of starting "a gambling Garden of Eden in the desert." But even Bugsy would have trouble recognizing the gambling mecca he launched in 1946.For further information on Las Vegas, call (702) 735-3611.

USAir will begin daily non-stop service between Baltimore-Washington International Airport and Las Vegas Jan. 8."Las Vegas is a very, very popular destination, and hardly rTC anyone is going there" from BWI, USAir spokesman David Shipley said. "Baltimore being one of our biggest hubs, we can collect a lot of people at Baltimore and put them through to Vegas."USAir flies to Las Vegas from Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and West Coast airports, Mr. Shipley said. A BWI official said America West offers direct BWI-Las Vegas service and that American Airlines serves Las Vegas via connecting flights.

Q: Besides casinos, what are the sights in Las Vegas, Nev.?A: Perhaps the most popular attraction that doesn't involve gambling is the Hoover Dam, about 30 minutes south of Las Vegas.Tours start at 9 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. and are given every day except Christmas; admission is $1. The dam has formed Lake Mead, where fishing and boating are available. Lake Mead National Recreation Area: (702) 293-8367. Red Rock Canyon, 15 miles west of the city, has sandstone formations in the desert.At the Guinness World of Records Museum, aside from life-size models of the world's tallest man and the world's smallest woman, and so on, there is a display devoted to the history and attractions of Las Vegas.

LAS VEGAS -- Gail Sacco pulled green grapes, bread, lunch meat and, in the blazing desert heat, bottles of water from a cardboard box. A dozen homeless people rose from shady spots in the surrounding city park and snatched the handouts from Sacco. With that act of giving, Sacco, an advocate for the homeless, scoffed at a city ordinance that goes into effect today making it illegal to offer so much as a biscuit to a poor person in a city park. Las Vegas, where the homeless population has doubled in the past decade to about 12,000 in and around the city, joins several other cities across the country that have adopted or considered ordinances limiting the distribution of charitable meals in parks.