The recovery of the Eastern Pacific gray whale from the brink of extinction is the single greatest turnaround of a marine mammal population, and the whale’s myriad connections to human cultural conflicts are no less impressive in their scope. In New Times’ special project “Shades of Gray,” reporters from several…
Salt River Project and its subsidiary Papago Park Center each contributed $5,000 to the Arizona Cardinals’ successful Proposition 302 campaign fund less than two weeks before last November’s election, Maricopa County election records reveal.The contributions appear to have had a powerful impact. Soon after the election, the City of Tempe…
A meager settlement has been reached in a lawsuit alleging that chemical releases from the TRW airbag plant near Queen Creek have been poisoning neighbors, animals and vegetation.Plaintiffs had asked for medical monitoring, an injunction banning the plant from continuing to emit poisonous substances into the air and punitive damages…
A Whale of a Tale Spouting praise: I spent an hour or so enjoying your article on whales (“Survival,” David Holthouse, October 11). I want to compliment your story for being well-written and taking me to a place that I most likely will never visit. I was completely intrigued by…
A vase of plastic flowers rests on its side atop a tiny unmarked grave in Section 53 of Phoenix’s Greenwood Memory Lawn Cemetery. Valeria Rico Romero was 10 months old when she drowned in a bathtub in September 2000. Valeria’s 24-year-old mother says that, maybe someday, she’ll be able to…
The party’s over for Safari Media Inc., but the company keeps getting crashed by the Arizona Attorney General’s office.A Safari financial advisor indicted by the AG and accused of cheating nearly 1,200 investors out of $24 million became a fugitive last week after failing to surrender to Pima County lawmen…
Dr. Brian Finkel, the Phoenix abortion doctor now under criminal investigation for allegedly molesting several of his patients, has been suspended from practicing medicine.Citing a recent New Times article that detailed the allegations and Phoenix police reports, the Arizona Board of Osteopathic Examiners voted on October 13 to suspend the…
Jerry Ostwinkle’s battle to get his eagle back is over.In a decision that ends Ostwinkle’s nearly three-year struggle with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to regain his raptor, a federal judge has ruled that the eagle, Rex, and Ostwinkle’s falconry and eagle permits, will not be returned to him…
Half-Baked Tales Whale snit: Holy shit, a “special ongoing” series on whales (“Survival,” David Holthouse, October 11)! Say, while looking at maps of where whales actually are, did you happen to notice where Phoenix is? Hint: the middle of the desert. “Half-baked Howie” (Dempsey, October 11) reeks of a silly…
Contrary Views Thought police: Within a medium that tends to suck our intellects dry is a show that promotes informed free speech and a true respect for individual thought (“Crushing a Contrarian,” Jill Stewart, September 27). Yet even this freedom is shot down by the ignorant, emotionally driven American masses…
Arizona Republic restaurant critic Howard Seftel can dish it out but he can’t take it, and neither can his newspaper.Last week, I wrote about what I saw as extremely sloppy journalism — Seftel’s continued recycling of tired gags and one-liners. He wrote many of them for us, in the eight…
The recovery of the Eastern North Pacific gray whale from the brink of extinction is arguably the single greatest turnaround of an endangered species, and the whale’s myriad connections to human cultural conflicts are no less impressive in their scope. In New Times’ special project “Shades of Gray,” reporters from…
In a sleight of hand that would make Cardinals quarterback Jake Plummer proud, the Tourism and Sports Authority says if necessary it can tap all of the hotel and car rental taxes it collects to pay for stadium construction bonds before any funds flow to tourism, Cactus League and youth…
The streets of Rio Salado’s south bank are lined with sagging fences, steel girders and looming metal silos. Innards of defunct supermarkets, carcasses of abandoned cars and twisted strands of rebar huddle behind barbed wire. The odor of machine oil clings to the dusty air.But South Phoenix is on the…
It was Kieran Doyle’s 33rd birthday, and for once he was relaxed. Swigging beer and laughing it up with some friends at home, the burly Irishman allowed himself to forget for a while the stresses, strains and suspicions of his working life. He let his guard down. He should have…
Arizona Republic restaurant critic Howard Seftel has been around so long it’s tempting to characterize him as being here since Native American Indians settled the Sonoran Desert.We’ll pass, however, because Seftel has a lock on references to Hohokam Indians to describe anything that’s old. The Republic cleverly published The Rep’s…
The Phoenix Zoo is known for preserving wildlife, fostering environmental education and nurturing animal populations. For nearly 40 years, the privately funded facility has been a mainstay in Maricopa County’s tourism market. Its exhibits have garnered international recognition. And its mission has been supported by generous donations and volunteer support…
Updated October 5, 2001 Washington, D.C. — Florence Mahoney is a testament to the National Institute on Aging, an agency she helped create three decades ago.At 102 years old, Mahoney continues to receive America’s leading scientists, politicians and thinkers to her Georgetown home to discuss the important events of the…
Pressing Matters Media muzzle: I enjoyed your column (“Nine One One,” Kristi Dempsey, September 20). I have to put in my two cents, though. The U.S. media as a whole have studiously avoided touching on what is perhaps the greatest issue in this whole unhappy matter, that being, what has…
Los Angeles’ El Rey Theatre is nearly empty. Up a flight of rickety stairs, behind the locked door of a small, dirty dressing room, Jim Adkins desperately searches for a vein. An intense, pug-nosed youth — and lead singer of Mesa quartet Jimmy Eat World — he shivers while his…
On August 31, Arizona State Prison inmate Mark Koch finally got some good news. It happened more than five years after prison officials transferred him to a super-maximum unit in Florence, solely because he’s an alleged gangbanger. In a decision that is sending ripples through the criminal justice system, U.S…
How nauseating it has been, in the aftermath of the attacks by Muslim fanatics, to watch the first big defeat for freedom of thought and speech as tens of thousands of Americans demanded the head of Politically Incorrect host Bill Maher and came away with enough of Maher’s noggin to…
