AAA Travel awarded two restaurants in Las Vegas their Four Diamond award: CUT by Wolfgang Puck at the Palazzo and Daniel Boulud Brasserie at the Wynn.

These two bring Las Vegas's total AAA Four Diamond award winning restaurants to 31, and there are 16 Four Diamond winning properties in Nevada. Nationally, no restaurants were added to AAA's Five Diamond list.

The nominations are in for the 2010 Nightclub & Bar Awards and Las Vegas has snagged 15 nominations in various Nightclub categories and two more in the Bar categories.

Both Rain and XS have been nominated for Mega-Club of the Year along with Pacha NYC and Stingaree in San Diego. While Lavo, Tao and Tryst are against The Avalon Hollywood and Opera in Atlanta for the Night Club of the Year award.

XS's second nomination is for New Club of the Year where it will faceoff against Infusion Lounge of San Fransisco, Playhouse Hollywood and Voyeur of West Hollywood. Blush Boutique Lounge is up for consideration as the Ultra-Lounge of the Year along with 32° Luxe Lounge in Philadelphia, Halo of Atlanta and Pink Monkey in Chicago.

On the DJ side of things, Paul Oakenfold and Z-Trip, both of Rain, are vying for Resident DJ against Danny Tenaglia of Pacha NYC and Roonie G of Opera, Atlanta. Finally there are two categories for promotions: Best Ongoing Promtion and Best Single Promotion - and Vegas represents in both categories!

For Best Ongoing Promotion Rain is nominated for Paul Oakenfold's Perfecto Vegas, while Hard Rock Las Vegas is up for Rehab and Tao is in for Worship Wednesdays. The only non-Vegas nominee is Toolroom Knights (that sounds like a terrible, terrible name) at Pacha NYC. For Single Promotion of the Year, Vegas got three of the four nominations with the Four Year Anniversary Party at Tao, Love Festival at the Palms and the Midsummer Night's Dream at the Palms. Only the Young & the Restless at Opera in Atlanta managed to snag a nomination.

It looks like the recent renovation of Cherry Nightclub at Red Rock wasn't enough as Las Vegas Weekly is reporting that the club has closed.

A representative of Red Rock said the property is "re-evaluating and exploring new concepts" when it comes to what to do about the space next. The club was known for it's South Beach feel but maybe that wasn't what visitors were looking for. I'm sure something new will take its place, but the question is: what?

World Series of Poker bracelet winner, Amir Vahedi passed away this weekend from complications involving diabetes.

Vahedi was well known for his 2006 WSOP win and being named Texas Hold'em Player of the Year in 2003. But what he is best known for out of poker circles as the professional who taught Ben Affleck how to play.

Vahedi was known for being an aggressive player that was famously quoted as saying "If you want to live, you can't be afraid to die."

Image credit: waldo483

Well this is just downright depressing and just shows how casinos in Vegas are a bunch of enablers.

Remember Tareq and Michaele Salah? They crashed a White House party and posted photos of them with Joe Biden on Facebook as a publicity stunt because for some ungodly reason they wanted to get their own TV show like Balloon Boy.

Well, they didn't get a show. Instead they're going to be guests of honor on January 16 at Pure in the Caesars Palace nightclub. Great, more people getting famous for being famous. How come they aren't in jail?

For the second year in a row, Smashing Time has won the World Series of Beer Pong and the $50,000 at the Flamingo! Congratulations to on Ron Hamilton and Michael "Pop" Popielarski! The 2nd place team, Since Sliced Bread, deserves some recognition too after playing an amazing tournament and missed being the champions by just one cup!

Ron and Pop beat out over 500 other teams for the championship title and aren't content with just two wins. The said they'll be back next year to claim the title once more!

A hidden secret about staying in Las Vegas has been the dreaded resort fee. Priceline recently got their feet put in hot water for it by the Consumerist when they didn't disclose the resort fee on bookings. Suddenly those bargains of hotel rooms being advertised for $25 a night seem much less appealing when a $15 a day resort fee is tacked on. But most customers weren't told about the fees until after they had checked in.

So Harrah's is fighting back and dropping resort fees. Instead of an all-inclusive add-on, Harrah's will begin charging a la carte for various services at the resort. Need internet? A few extra dollars. Want a newspaper delivered to your room everyday? You'll pay for it but you don't have to pay for that telephone you didn't use or the gym which you completely forgot about.

Now the question is will the parts end up costing more than the sum of the whole.

Travel and Leisure magazine has released their 500 World's Best Hotels of 2010 and Las Vegas scored a full 1% of the list with 5 hotels.

The five winners were: Four Seasons Hotel, Wynn, the Palazzo, Bellagio and the Venetian. Had the Encore been on the list, Steven Wynn would have cleaned up really well. But VegasDeluxe thinks it could be because the Encore is too new to be included, same with the Aria.

The Four Seasons scored the highest out of Las Vegas with a rating of 86.37, but even the Venetian, in 5th, ranked less than four points lower at 82.38.

On New Years Day, the 9th floor of the Stratosphere had to be evacuated after a fire broke out in one of the hotel's bathrooms. The guests had already checked out and evidently left some smoldering embers a trash can that ignited.

The alarm went off around 2 p.m. and firefighters discovered some towels were on fire so they did the most reasonable thing: filled a trash can with water and put them out.

Firefighters then said the fire was a result of careless smoking, because they needed a way to differentiate it from intentional-fire-starting-smoking.

Las Vegas is an interesting city. Half of it is glam and glitz but there is another side isn't nearly as appealing. The tourists don't necessarily know about it either but there's something going on under their feet. Literally.

With the economic situation still a problem for many people, more and more have been evicted from their homes and unable to find work. So they go the only place they can: underground. They aren't noticeable at first but the terrifying truth is Las Vegas has one of the highest homelessness rates per capita in the country. Last month over 14,000 people were homeless in the city.

An elaborate network of tunnels exists under the city. It was built to prevent flooding during the exceptionally rare rain and now it's become the home of a wide variety of people. Some are just down on the luck and out of a place to live, while others are actively struggling with drug addictions.