Nevada leaders want to help you stay in your home and right now you can take advantage of resources to make sure that happens. Have you been having problems with your home? Share your stories here.

 Tim Russert, host of NBC’s “Meet the Press” and its Washington bureau chief collapsed and died at work Friday after suffering an apparent heart attack. He was 58. You can share your memories of him here.

 Gov. Jim Gibbons, who wants a divorce from first lady Dawn Gibbons, used his state-owned cell phone to send more than 860 text messages in one month last year to a woman he describes as a longtime friend. His wife has accused him of having a girlfriend. This very public couple is having a very public divorce. What do you think about it all? Does it affect how you think of Gibbons as Nevada’s governor?

Hot temperatures bring out creepy crawlers. But some were here already. Do you have any war stories about insect infestations in your home?

Governor Jim Gibbons’ divorce has become a full blown scandal. First Lady Dawn Gibbons has accused her husband of having an affair with a married woman. She wants the court to open up the proceedings, which the governor had sealed.

At a news conference Wednesday, the governor snapped at reporters who asked about the first lady’s accusations. Gibbons says a response he had published earlier this week to an Elko newspaper is his final word on the divorce.

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I am always running across the misuse of the word “firestorm” in news copy, and when I get a chance, I change it.

A firestorm is a real phenomenon, not a “controversy” or an “argument”, but a terrible destructive force of nature that is actually extremely rare.

Just finished a riveting book entitled “Firestorm in Peshtigo”, by Denise Gess and William Lutz. It describes the worst fire in American history.. possibly in North American history. It happened the same day as the Great Chicago Fire, October 8, 1871, and although it has been forgotten by popular history, it was much, much worse. Unimaginably so. The number of dead remains and always will remain undetermined, but it’s between 1500 and 2000. The fire destroyed the lumber and farming community of Peshtigo, Wisconsin, and burned through a billion (with a “b”) trees. The fire area stretched from Green Bay, north to Peshtigo and Marinette, and east across the bay to Door County. The authors build up to the fateful date with a thoroughly researched account of weather conditions and human enterprise, whose combined effect was disastrous. The United States did not yet have a Weather Service, but a remarkable man named Increase Lapham was a scientist in the field of meteorology, and he tried to warn of the coming danger. In the weeks leading up to the firestorm, the lumber business was booming (the trees in that area then were enormous pine trees, a few stories tall, and as much as ten feet in diameter. They’re all gone.. cut down or burned down.). a railroad was being built, and farmers were suffering through a drought. Small fires popped up and were put out all over the region in the weeks before October 8, and Lapham could see the potential for an uncontrollable wildfire, given the “right” weather conditions. Few listened and almost no one prepared. When the wind and the heat and the dryness cooked up a wicked meteorological stew, flames swept through the Wisconsin countryside, picking up speed until the fire and wind began to feed on themselves, and a TORNADO of FLAME roared down on the villages of Pestigo and Williamsonville. It was a firestorm. People could not escape, and were incinerated where they stood.

The message I came away with, is that bureaucrats and politicians risk all our lives and futures when they do not heed and pass along to the public the warnings of diligent scientists. The lives of hundreds could have been saved, had the fledgling weather bureau been more alert to Mr. Lapham’s calculations.

PAULA DILWORTH FRANCIS May 22, 2008

The Southern Nevada Health District has linked the hepatitis C virus back to one person, on one day, for at least half of the confirmed cases.

This entire investigation started at the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada on Shadow Lane. Seven of the eight confirmed acute cases of hepatitis linked to unsafe medical practices came from the clinic. There is now a criminal, federal investigation and a health district investigation.

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The animal mutilation mystery has been around for a long time, but after more than 10,000 cases reported in nearly every state, answers are still hard to come by. Nevada ranchers have been victimized by the mystery surgeons for more than 30 years, although the majority of cases are never reported at all.

We may not hear about mutilation cases very often, but they happen all the time. The latest incident was reported in Saskatchewan two days ago. We’ve had them all over Nevada, although, for the most part, ranchers would rather bury the evidence than make a report to anyone.

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There’s no doubt sex sells in Las Vegas, but you expect to see ads for adult films in the back of a magazine — not splashed across the I-15. But a Las Vegas-based company has done just that, taking their advertising out of the seedy underbelly of the city. For more of this story, click here. Tell us what you think of this company’s advertising on billboards for the next big porn star.

Nevada Congressman Dean Heller has introduced a bill that would require all voter ballots to be printed in English only.

A provision to the Voting Rights Act requires cities and counties to provide bilingual ballots if 5-percent of the voting citizens speak little English. But Heller’s bill seeks to repeal that rule.

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