The Daily Rundown: October 21, 2026
🚕 Over the summer, the U.S. Department of Transportation approved Amazon’s autonomous vehicle company, Zoox, to roll out several thousand cars over the next few years across the country, including Las Vegas.
And if you’ve driven anywhere near the Strip in recent months, you’ve seen them. It’s basically a shiny box on wheels; more akin to a toaster than anything else.
So, what does this mean for Nevada’s roadways and drivers?
"They want to become not just something new for visitors," said Mick Akers, the transportation reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "They want it to be an everyday thing, like where you can hail a lift to your house and go down to an event on the Strip, or you want to go to Summerlin, but live in Henderson. They want to be able to have those connections. So they're working toward that [through] a scaled approach."
However, there's already growing concern that the self-driving taxis could put human taxi and rideshare drivers out of business.
"They are worried," said Akers. "They say, 'Hey, why are they approving some of these things when they know they're going to be taking jobs away from residents that live here in Southern Nevada?'"
Currently, the Nevada Transportation Authority has approved commercial permits allowing between 7,000 and 8,000 total self-driving taxis to operate in Clark County over the next year. Hear the full story with KNPR's Paul Boger here.
💧 The Colorado River's shrinking reservoirs have become a familiar sign of the West's water challenges. But a new study finds groundwater that helps sustain the river system is also disappearing, according to reporting by KUNR's Kaleb Roedel.
Researchers at Virginia Tech found the Upper Colorado River Basin lost an estimated 4.6 trillion gallons of groundwater during a severe three-year drought from 2020 to 2022. That's enough water to halfway fill Lake Powell, stretched along the Utah-Arizona border.
The losses were greater than those in the drier Lower Basin, according to the study published in Water Resources Research.
"In the Mountain West, groundwater is an important source of supply," said Esther Oyedele, who led the study. "So our study has been able to show that groundwater cannot simply just be treated as an unlimited backup anymore."
Using satellite data, researchers tracked groundwater changes across the Colorado River Basin from 2004 through 2023. They found losses have accelerated since 2019, with the typically wetter Upper Basin experiencing especially significant declines during the recent drought.
Increasingly dry conditions, rising temperatures and growing water demand are putting more pressure on underground supplies.
Susanna Werth, a Virginia Tech geosciences professor and study co-author, said the connection between groundwater and surface water means losses underground could also affect rivers and reservoirs.
"And that, of course, will have lots of consequences for farmers and water users," Werth said, "even if they don't pump groundwater."
The findings come as Western states grapple with new cuts to Colorado River water deliveries.
In August, the federal government announced reductions for Lower Basin states, including Arizona, California and Nevada, amid declining reservoir levels and disagreements over how to share the river's shrinking supply.
🦠 The Southern Nevada Health District has confirmed Clark County’s first case of clade I mpox in a resident, according to reporting by KNPR's Anne Davis. The Health District said the individual, who’s not been identified, did not have documented travel-related exposure.
However, officials did not confirm whether the patient acquired the illness locally. This comes amid a wider surge of mpox cases. The Health District has confirmed 11 clade II infections in Clark County since August.
Clade I is more severe, more virulent and has a higher fatality rate than clade II. Both variants spread through close, skin-to-skin contact with an infected person. Symptoms include flu-like feverishness and aches, as well as a blistering rash. Symptoms can last up to four weeks.
However, officials note that the vaccine, available at Health District clinics for eligible patients, protects against both clades.
🎭 Comedian Carrot Top returned to his Luxor residency show on Monday, Oct. 19, a little more than a month after his suicide attempt on Sept. 18. The 61-year-old performer took to the stage to a sold-out audience and a two-minute standing ovation, reported John Katsilometes from the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
He made a couple of jokes alluding to his attempt to end his life, and another referring to legal issues. He also repeatedly thanked his fans and family, with some of them in the audience. Born Scott Thompson, Carrot Top has been a Strip headliner since 1995, settling at Luxor back in 2005.
💿 Phoenix-based Zia Records is looking to expand its footprint in the Las Vegas Valley. According to the company’s website, the third Southern Nevada location will be located on the corner of Cheyenne and Martin Luther King Boulevard in North Las Vegas.
The store is expected to open this fall. In an interview with What Now Las Vegas, a company spokesperson called North Las Vegas “untapped territory for Zia” and said the future location was “heavily requested for years.”
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.
