The Daily Rundown - July 23th, 2026
🏗️ The Clark County Commission approved plans for a new resort on the south end of the Las Vegas Strip, across from Mandalay Bay on July 22nd.
The plans for the new 752-room hotel-casino include a heart-shaped hotel tower covered with a heart-shaped LED screen, a covered pedestrian plaza similar to downtown's Fremont Street Experience, and a midair restaurant that incorporates the leftover towers.
The 12-acre site was purchased by developer Eli Applebaum for $70 million in April, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Currently, the only thing on the land is two giant concrete columns — the remains of the never-finished SkyVue observation wheel project.
🏢 The Henderson City Council has rejected a proposed 180-day moratorium on data center construction.
Officials said during a City Council meeting on July 22nd, that they instead want to update local municipal codes. Future facilities will require individual development agreements negotiated with the city.
City leaders view permanent code changes as a superior long-term approach compared to temporary pauses. Currently, there are no pending data center applications in Henderson.
According to the Nevada Independent, local residents expressed strong disappointment with the decision. During public comment, community members voiced concerns including high energy consumption, noise pollution and water usage.
💧 The Interior Department says new rules for managing the Colorado River will come next week — after years of negotiation, according to reporting by the Mountain West News Bureau's Alex Hager. The agency brought seven Western governors together this week for a last-minute round of talks.
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs met with governors from the other states that use water from the Colorado River. It may have been an attempt to break a deadlock between those states, which can't agree about how to divide the shrinking water supply going forward.
It's unclear if the meeting yielded any progress. A spokeswoman for Hobbs declined to comment, but in a post on social media, the governor said she remains committed to ongoing negotiations while steadfast in calling on Arizona's upstream counterparts to share the pain of shortages.
The plan coming out next week is expected to deal big cuts to the water supply for cities in the Valley.
🏀 WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert discussed what more can be done to protect players from online harassment during a virtual meeting with the players' union executive committee and the union's Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee.
The call Tuesday night came at the union's request.
Players have been sharing threats and harassment they've received on social media over the last few weeks.
Chelsea Gray of the Las Vegas Aces posted a message she received from a man that included a racial slur.
The man was tracked down and fired from his job at Hilton Grand Vacations.
Mechanisms for accountability for harassment discussed included involvement with team security, the league, social media companies and law enforcement.
🎬 Desert Companion's Josh Bell gives his take on a story that starts right here in the glitz of the Las Vegas Strip. In the new Apple TV+ series Lucky, the title character's latest troubles begin with a situation straight out of The Hangover: On the roof of Caesars Palace, Lucky Armstrong (Anya Taylor-Joy) celebrates with her husband, Cary (Drew Starkey), after stealing millions from some very dangerous people.
Lucky and Cary raise a champagne toast to their future, but Lucky doesn't realize that her drink has been drugged. When she wakes up the next day, groggy and disoriented, both Cary and the money are gone, and she has to piece together what happened, all while being chased by both the FBI and the people she stole from.
Taylor-Joy brings determination and empathy to her portrayal of Lucky, and she has a strong father-daughter dynamic with Timothy Olyphant as Lucky's con-artist dad. Still, there's not much below the surface of this solid but familiar crime drama, which begins strikingly in the glittering lights of Las Vegas before building to a generic final showdown. Maybe Lucky can head back where she belongs in the second season.
Part of these stories are taken from KNPR's daily newscast segment. To hear more daily updates like these, tune in to 88.9 KNPR FM.
