Rio and Dublin, Norway and Normandy, are popular tourist destinations. They are also locations of “legislative leaders study tours” taken by a leader of Nevada’s Assembly last year.

The trips, paid for by outside groups, were among those reported by Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager in a financial disclosure statement required under Nevada law.

Yeager, a Las Vegas Democrat, disclosed about $15,500 in expenses for sponsored travel outside the U.S. in 2023, as well as $11,000 in sponsored travel within the country.

“These working trips are never funded by taxpayer dollars, obviously,” Yeager wrote in an email to the Review-Journal.

The National Conference of State Legislatures sponsored legislative leaders study tours to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Bayeux in Normandy, France; Dublin, Ireland; and Mexico City, Mexico. The State Legislative Leaders Foundation sponsored a study tour to Oslo, Norway, according to Yeager’s disclosure statement.

“National nonprofit, non-partisan groups such as NCSL and SLLF support state legislators with leadership development seminars as well as information sessions and legislative updates from around the country,” Yeager wrote.

NCSL’s mission includes advancing the effectiveness of legislatures and fostering interstate cooperation, according to its website. SLLF is dedicated to professional development for current and future state legislative leaders, it states.

The speaker reported trips in the United States for training, meetings and summits sponsored by the aforementioned groups as well as by the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. The locations included Washington, D.C., Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Salt Lake City and Newport, Rhode Island.

Yeager also disclosed $12,100 in expenses for tickets, food and beverage related to a Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee fundraiser in Las Vegas. The DLCC works to elect Democrats to state legislatures.

Asked for specifics on the fundraiser, he said it was in connection with the 2023 Formula 1 race.

“As an unpaid member of its national board, I attended a DLCC fundraiser in Las Vegas around last year’s F1 race,” he wrote. “F1 tickets have a high retail face value, no question about it, and I disclosed that value to maintain transparency. The race was, and remains, an event important to Las Vegas’ local economy.”

He also disclosed $1,500 in expenses for a leaders in technology program sponsored by the Consumer Technology Association. The trade group owns and produces the CES trade show.

Yeager and his counterpart in the Nevada Senate – Senate Majority Leader Nicole Cannizzaro, D-Las Vegas – were both re-elected earlier this month.

Cannizzaro disclosed $9,100 in expenses for tickets, food and beverage for the DLCC fundraiser. She also reported $2,200 in expenses for a summit in Vail, Colorado, sponsored by the DLCC

She reported accepting gifts of $2,900 in tickets to events and non-profit dinners, including $1,600 in tickets from Allegiant Stadium to two unspecified events.

In October, the ethics commission required training for the executive director and staff of the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District in connection with accepting free Super Bowl tickets. An ethics commissioner also urged government officials not to accept tickets to sporting events offered in Las Vegas.

Among the leaders across the aisle in the Nevada Legislature, Sen. Robin Titus, R-Wellington reported $500 in sponsored travel to attend the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education annual meeting in Phoenix. She was named the Senate minority leader in January when state Sen. Heidi Seevers Gansert, R-Reno, stepped down from the post.

Gansert and Assembly Minority Leader P.K. O’Neill, R-Carson City, reported no sponsored meetings, events, travel or gifts.

The Review-Journal has reported on the disclosed gifts and sponsored travel of Nevada’s constitutional officers, Clark County commissioners, Las Vegas City Council members, and Henderson City Council members.

Contact Mary Hynes at mhynes@reviewjournal.com or at 702-383-0336. Follow @MaryHynes1 on X. Hynes is a member of the Review-Journal’s investigative team, focusing on reporting that holds leaders and agencies accountable and exposes wrongdoing.

LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — During the Formula 1 race, the Nevada National Guard will be activated throughout Clark County to help boost security and emergency responses.

From Nov. 20-24, up to 80 soldiers and airmen will be deployed in various locations in Clark County, such as the Las Vegas Strip and two area hospitals.

“The activation underlines our ongoing partnership between the Nevada National Guard and local emergency response agencies, showcasing their commitment to public safety and effective collaboration to ensure a safe, largescale sporting event such as the Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix,” said Col. Kyle Cerfoglio, Nevada National Guard Joint Staff Director.

This is the second year the Guard has been called upon to support our first responders in Clark County.

This year’s race is expected to bring close to 300,000 people to the valley.

WATCH | A closer look at this week’s road closures and detours for the Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix

Closer look at this week’s road closures for the Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix

After nearly disappearing for good, Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frogs are once again hopping happily around California’s alpine lakes.

Scientists are celebrating the comeback of the amphibians (Rana sierrae) in Yosemite National Park. Though they’re still endangered, Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frogs have made a “remarkably successful” recovery from the deadly amphibian chytrid fungus, researchers report this month in the journal Nature Communications.

“The lakes are alive again, completely transformed,” says study co-author Roland Knapp, a biologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, to USA Today’s Elizabeth Weise. “You literally can look down the shoreline and see 50 frogs on one side and 50 on the other and in the water you see 100 to 1,000 tadpoles. It’s a completely different lake.”

Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frogs are small creatures measuring 1.5 to 3.75 inches long, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. They live high in California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range, at elevations between 4,500 and 12,000 feet above sea level. The frogs inhabit marshes, ponds, lakes and streams, where they feast on bugs and other amphibians. They also serve as a source of food for birds, snakes, coyotes and bears.

Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frogs tend to have yellowish-orange bellies and dark, splotchy backs, but their coloring can vary widely—from greenish-brown to gray to red. They don’t have vocal sacks, so instead the frogs grind their teeth together underwater when trying to attract mates in the spring.

The frogs were once abundant throughout the Sierra Nevada. But, after the arrival of European settlers in the mid-19th century during the California gold rush, their numbers began to dwindle.

In addition to gold, miners also discovered more than 1,500 alpine lakes in California. The lakes were beautiful, but they were lacking in fish—so the miners began stocking them. The introduction of non-native species—including rainbow trout, grayling and Atlantic salmon—decimated the Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frogs.

Stocking ended in the 1990s, but even without help from humans, the non-native fish continued to reproduce and thrive. Then, in the early 2000s, the few surviving frogs in the Sierra Nevada faced yet another threat: the amphibian chytrid fungus.

The highly contagious fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis) causes chytridiomycosis, an infectious skin disease that has caused mass die-offs and extinctions among amphibians around the world. In 2014, with their populations crashing, Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frogs were added to the endangered species list.

But then scientists noticed something peculiar: In some places, Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog numbers were increasing. It appeared that at least some of the small creatures—particularly those living in lakes without any non-native fish—had developed a resistance to the fungus.

“The frogs that survive better have certain variations in their genomes,” says Erica Bree Rosenblum, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, to ScienceNews’ Martin J. Kernan. “Since they’re the ones surviving, they’re passing their genes down, and over time the whole population is changing toward having these more favorable genetic mutations.”

Researchers decided to implement an ambitious plan to save the species. Starting in 2006, they began gathering up the fungus-resistant survivors and re-introducing them to other alpine lakes without fish.

Now, nearly two decades later, scientists say their plan worked. These Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog populations are now mostly self-sustaining and have “a low probability of extinction over 50 years,” they write in the paper. They hope the successful reintroduction of Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frogs might serve as a source of inspiration for scientists working to save other species battling new diseases.

“These frogs have somehow figured out how to exist, even thrive in the face of this pathogen,” Knapp tells the San Francisco Chronicle’s Kurtis Alexander. “When I saw these frog populations recovering on their own, that was the first time in 15 years working on this species that I felt a glimmer of hope.”