A coalition of Nevada businesses is launching a $50,000 ad campaign for a change in tax laws to force Amazon and other e-commerce firms to collect state sales taxes when they sell goods to Nevadans. The Retail Association of Nevada and the Nevada Resort Association says that’s costing Nevada about $16 million a year. Talk…

A Virginia and Truckee Railroad train has a starring role in the movie, “Water for Elephants.” The 90-ton steam engine No. 18 was shipped to Los Angeles to be used in the film about a circus train. No. 18 has been in 15 movies including “Young Tom Edison,” “The Last Stagecoach West,” and “Frontier Badmen.” It…

From about 7th grade on through high school I was stuck with a nickname that I didn’t like very much, “Kung Fu.” It came about after the television show of the same name and the fact that I had been taking martial art classes at the air base. After a year and a half of training, the…

U.S. authorities, relying on Pakistani intelligence, say the raid on the compound where Osama bin Laden was living wasn’t the first time the property was targeted in a search for a top al-Qaida figure. A senior Pakistani intelligence official says the Pakistanis staged a 2003 raid there in search of a man regarded as al-Qaida’s…

Jus’ days after the death of Osama bin Laden, President Barack Obama paid a visit to the place where al-Qaeda inflicted its greatest damage. The president placed a wreath at the outdoor memorial where the World Trade Center once stood, then met privately with about 60 relatives of those killed on Sept. 11, 2001. On…

Only a few months shy of the tenth anniversary of the 9-11 attacks on America, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is dead.  President Barack Obama announced from the White House that bin Laden was killed by a U.S.-led operation in a mansion outside the Pakistani capital of Islamabad and the al-Qaeda leader’s body is in…

Not every book I purchased from the libraries recent sale is a winner with me. While I really love my Doten Journal and the two Don Garate books on the Susanville-Reno connection – one tome – “Tahoe beneath the Surface” – is not so good. It’s written by Scott Lankford and is about “the hidden stories…

Somewhere in the back of my mind I sensed I might be walking into an ambush. But I also knew I had to face the five men at some point so I decided the sooner, the better. Normally I would have come up the back stairs of the barracks as the door to my room…

Superman has started a stink by declaring he intends to renounce his U.S. citizenship in a move aimed at giving him more global authority. He makes the decision in “Action Comics” No. 900. Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, who created the comicbook hero, must be spinning in their graves. It has caused anger among readers who liken the Man of Steel’s declaration…

For 25 years now, I have searched to find “The Journals of Alfred Doten,” a three-volume set, weighing in at roughly forty-pounds. They were edited by Walter Van Tilburg Clark and published by the University of Nevada Press. Each volume contains plates from engravings, photographs and maps and are bound in cloth with spines lettered in gilt.…