LAS VEGAS (AP) Ä Want a Vegas wedding for your Valentine? Take a number.
Couples planning to wed Tuesday cooled their heels for up to an hour Monday waiting for marriage licenses.
''We've got a line clear down the street,'' said Janet Kuhn, who works in the county clerk's office.
Vegas has long been a marriage mecca with its tradition of celebrity nuptials, and no waiting period or blood test.
The marriage license bureau was open from 8 a.m. Friday until midnight Sunday, then opened again Monday morning to accommodate the rush to the altar.
A total of 1,335 couples got licenses by midnight Sunday, a few hundred shy of the 1,836 couples licensed in the same period a year ago.
Gordon Gust, proprietor of three wedding chapels, said business was down because of the calendar (Valentine's Day fell on a Monday last year), and because there are now 35 wedding chapels in the city. mid
MESA (AP) Ä A 71-year-old woman recovering from a hysterectomy allegedly pulled a gun from a knapsack brought by her husband and opened fire in a hospital Monday, wounding two men, authorities said.
The patient, identified as Jean Dooley, emptied a six-chamber revolver outside a nurses' station in the general surgery area of Valley Lutheran Hospital about 3 p.m., said Sgt. Earle Lloyd of the Mesa Police Department. She was subdued by unarmed security guards and was undergoing psychiatric evaluation at the scene.
''Anything would be purely speculative at this time,'' Lloyd said of the motive for the shooting.
A male nurse who was wounded in the arm and back appeared to be in stable condition, Lloyd said. The other victim, an ambulance employee, was shot in the abdomen and undergoing surgery Monday.
One of the victims was taken to another hospital by helicopter because the 172-bed hospital was full.
The shooting occurred on the fifth floor of the seven-story building. Fifty-two patients, including Dooley, were being cared for on the floor.
It was not immediately clear when Dooley had undergone surgery.
Police were questioning Dooley's husband, Roy, 73, Lloyd said.