The Daily Rundown: October 29, 2026
🚆 The high-speed rail line meant to connect Las Vegas to Southern California won’t open in time for the 2028 LA Olympics. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that Brightline West lacks the funding to continue the project because the Federal Railroad Administration has refused to release federal money.
In fall 2025, the company applied for a loan from a federal credit assistance program to secure $6 billion in funding. With the delay, the earliest the project could be completed was moved from 2028 to 2029.
The project previously received a $3 billion federal grant and sold $2.5 billion in private activity bonds from Nevada and California. Brightline West says the rest of the funding comes from a mix of private equity and debt.
🎰 Nevada casinos reported more than $1.25 billion in gaming win in September. That’s down less than one-tenth of a percent compared with the same month a year ago. In Southern Nevada, casinos along the Strip, North Las Vegas and Mesquite were the only ones to post gains.
However, Northern Nevada was mostly positive, with only Reno and North Lake Tahoe reporting losses. The more than $1.25 billion in gaming win equates to a little more than $81 million in tax revenue for the state. That’s more than 6% less than what the state generated during the same period last year.
Overall, casino revenue is up more than 1.5% for the current fiscal year, which began in July.
☀️ The Moapa Band of Paiutes made history as the first reservation in the U.S. to host a solar farm in Indian Country. Its utility-scale solar farm can generate enough energy to power up to 111,000 homes. That’s thanks in part to Southern Nevada's environment, which has roughly 300 days of sunny skies a year, an attractive statistic for Arevon Energy Inc. CEO Justin Johnson.
“I'm not an oil and gas guy, and I never want to be, but this is like the Permian Basin for solar,” he said.
Now, a decade since the Moapa Southern Paiute Solar Project began generating roughly 250 megawatts, tribal members and Arevon staff gathered in the Moapa Big Hall to celebrate having a more diverse economy on the reservation.
A decade ago, the Moapa Valley looked different. Just a couple miles east of where everyone gathered for the celebration stood the Reid Gardner Generating Station. It was a coal-burning power plant co-owned by NV Energy.
Vickie Simmons, a former tribal chairman, knew how dangerous it was to live near a coal-burning power plant for the community and its workers. Hear the full story by KNPR's Jimmy Romo here.
🏥 Intermountain Health leadership, local elected officials and pediatric advocates have broken ground on the state’s first standalone children’s hospital, according to reporting by KNPR's Anne Davis.
The groundbreaking marks the official start of construction on the $1 billion facility. The future hospital, located in the southwestern corner of Las Vegas, will offer pediatric intensive and trauma care, cancer services, surgical care and orthopedics.
Gov. Joe Lombardo, who spoke at the ceremony, said the 180-bed facility will help Nevada families stay in state to receive treatment.
“The real measures of this project won't be with the groundbreaking, which we are doing today, the building, or the headlines. It will be about the family that no longer has to leave Nevada to get their child the care they need.”
Intermountain Health held the groundbreaking ceremony just days after venture capitalist Ben Horowitz and his wife, Felicia, announced a $150 million donation to the new hospital. According to Intermountain Health estimates, about 20,000 Nevada children must leave the state each year for specialized care. The hospital is projected to open in 2030.
📚 Sitting in a semicircle around their teacher, Gerri Kimble, students at Hoover High School near Birmingham, Alabama, ponder a high schooler dilemma: What to do with their part-time job paychecks. These teens say they're buying loaded teas, filling the gas tank — and investing.
"I put it in index funds, like S&P and then QQQ and VOO," says junior Darshan Parmar. Kimble asks if his parents do the actual investing. Parmar says he does it himself.
One student puts 70% in his Roth IRA. Another contributes to a 401(k). A third says he invests directly in stocks.
These students are among the first in the country to take a newly created Advanced Placement Business with Personal Finance course. The class is offered for the first time this year at more than 1,500 high schools across the country.
AP courses are college-level classes offered in high school. Enrolled students can take an exam in order to earn college credit. Typically, these credits are for canonical subjects like English, history and chemistry.
Students at Hoover High School's AP business class, however, get lessons on management and finances. They learn about the outside factors that can make or break a business — political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal.
The class is designed to appeal to students who might be drawn to a more practical curriculum than a more theoretical subject such as AP economics, which was already and still is offered at high schools like this one.
Read the full story by NPR's Stephan Bisaha here.
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.
