News

Arizona State University’s award-winning, full-color Research magazine will publish its last issue in March — another apparent victim of cost-cutting in the face of economic troubles. “We have been told to re-invent ourselves,” says Conrad Storad, the ASU employee who started the magazine in 1986 with graphic designer Michael Hagelberg…

Everywhere from Facebook to corporate boardrooms across town, speculation about what will happen with now-Governor Janet Napolitano — and when — is fast and furious. Here’s some early-morning water cooler talk: The money is on Napolitano taking the dog of a job (who’s going to succeed in that position?!) and…

Initial reports of less-than-stellar voter turnout in the November 4 election brought cries of frustration from some officials: “It’s extremely disappointing to me,” Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell told the East Valley Tribune. “We work very hard for this. I think it went smoothly, but I just would have liked…

We were listening to a sports-radio roundtable recently, and the panelists were picking their faves to win the NBA title. Boston again. Good bet. San Antonio. Yeah, but only if Manu Ginobli gets healthy and back to full speed. New Orleans. With Chris Paul in charge, check. Here’s where it…

Jenna Stradling, the daughter of alleged victim Faylene Grant, returns to the witness stand later this morning as testimony continues in the wacky and tragic Doug Grant murder case. Stradling, an 18-year-old student at Brigham Young University, faced a barrage of questions from prosecutor Juan Martinez and defense attorney A…

Remember when folks were whining about light rail construction? (Okay, some of us still are.) The Repub reports this morning that a group of local residents and business owners are complaining loudly about project — specifically, that it’s not coming soon enough to their neighborhoods. This could be a case…

I recently received the biography of Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Woods. While reading about his friendship with Jimi Hendrix, Ronnie described him as part-black, Cherokee, and Mexican. I’ve always read about Jimi’s grandmother being Cherokee, but this was the first I read about him being Mexican. I Googled Hendrix’s name…

LAWYER JOKE I was a private investor in the movie, and I recall the description of the investment in the prospectus indicated rather clearly that I was investing in a movie, not a titty bar in Scottsdale (“Sylvia Nobel and the Case of the Missing Movie,” Sarah Fenske, November 13)…

Kevin Bacon, move over! Jason Rose — the big-haired, bigger-mouthed, Republican 30-something king of AZ P.R. — is really the one with the connections. He’s represented everyone from Andrew Thomas to Ballet Arizona, and his favorite parlor trick is getting his clients to pimp one another. (Who can forget Joe…

Juan Mendoza Farias was handcuffed and alone in a jail cell when guards opened the hatch on his cell door and fired more than a dozen paintball-like pepper balls at him. Then they fired Taser electrical stun guns — more than a dozen times, by one guard’s account — into…

We understand that in the 24-hour news cycle it can be difficult to keep up. Worry not! We have the solution. Check back on Valley Fever every evening for highlights from each of New Times’ blogs. Today’s entries follow: Janet Napolitano Named as Obama’s Top Pick for Head of Homeland…

Governor Napolitano’s apparently Barack Obama’s top choice for chief of the Homeland Security department, leaving her the choice of advancing her career or staying in Arizona to stop her political enemies from running amok in her absence. Republican Secretary of State Jan Brewer would automatically become governor if Napolitano exits…

View Larger Map A Sun City resident who wanted to honor the country’s veterans persuaded the Arizona State Board on Geographic and Historic Names to slap a handle on a nameless Phoenix peak and (voila!) Veterans Mountain is born. It’s a sweet and sentimental idea, and Air Force veteran Lanny…

So things are really bad with the Arizona economy. So bad, in fact, that Janet Napolitano has set up a Web site to solicit ideas on how the state government can save money. Unfortunately for us, those ideas aren’t online for public consumption. (We can only imagine just how many…

Jurors and a packed courtroom heard riveting, often heartbreaking, testimony today as the prosecution opened its first-degree murder case against former Phoenix Suns nutritionist Doug Grant. Actually, Jenna Stradling, who is alleged murder victim Faylene Grant’s 18-year-old daughter, is on the stand at the moment in downtown Phoenix, undergoing cross-examination…

Maybe she wrote the softball questions herself. It is also no stretch to imagine that either her boss or someone doing the bidding of her boss wrote them.

By Ray Stern Remember what Sheriff Joe Arpaio said last month after a federal judge found Maricopa County jail conditions to be inadequate? He called the changes ordered by the judge to be “minor” and that he’s “always committed to improving the jail system wherever possible.” Now it looks like…

Limbaugh blathered on November 10 about the outrageous ban in the Arizona judicial system on perceived derogatory terms referring to immigrants. Problem was, no such ban had been decreed.

Republican Jan Brewer, now the secretary of state, would automatically become governor for the remainder of Napolitano’s term — until 2010 — if Janet stepped down.

President-Elect Barack Obama is showing his social savvy in the Digital Age. As reported in The Washington Post last week, Obama not only put his weekly Democratic address on YouTube last Saturday, but plans to regularly post online Q&A videos and interviews both at his Web site, change.gov, and on the popular video Web site, YouTube. The next step, say political observers and YouTube head of news and politics, Steve Grove, is an Internet video version of the “fireside chats” first popularized on radio by President Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1933 to 1944.