News

Ever wanted to sail above the curve of blue Earth in a spaceship? Now you can — though it’ll cost you $95,000. Phoenix-based RocketShip Tours announced today it would begin offering suborbital flights in 2010 through a partnership with the builder of the Lynx vehicle (pictured at left). The cool-looking,…

newspaper stories from the early 2000s, Maricopa County finally took action against shady county supervisor Don Stapley. A grand jury has  indicted Stapley on 118 criminal counts, alleging he failed to publicly disclose land deals and other business activities going back to when he was first elected in 1994. The charges include perjury, forgery, false…

  Beautiful Fossil Creek just northwest of Payson was given the status of “Outstanding Arizona Water” today by state officials, mandating that government must protect it from harm. In a 3-1 vote, the Governor’s Regulatory Review Council approved new state water quality standards that protect both Fossil Creek and the…

Jenna Stradling — the 18-year-old stepdaughter of murder defendant Doug Grant (the smiling guy in the photo) and a key prosecution witness in the high-profile case — finally finished testifying a few hours ago after several tense days on the stand. The Brigham Young University freshman withstood a grueling cross-examination by Grant…

  The Goldwater Institute has released a harsh critique of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his office — concluding that the office “falls seriously short in all three of the core components of its mission” and calling for policy reform. Among other things, the Phoenix-based libertarian think tank calls for the incoming…

A post in this blog about the fake snowfall each night at Tempe Marketplace received the following comment: My family ended up coughing our way out of the mall along with others trying to flee the snowy scene. Not sure it’s exactly “safe” to breathe so I’m wondering what the other…

Outgoing State Senate President Tim Bee’s says he decided to move the media out of offices in the senate building they’ve inhabited since the 70s because reorganizing offices is “normal.” In a statement to New Times (reprinted below), which blogged about the relocation yesterday, the Republican senator from Tucson doesn’t…

 To be kind, we’re not awfully huge fans of the Arizona Republic around here. But we do admit to a camaraderie with some of the hard-working folks over there who’re currently wondering if they’re going to have a job come Christmas.  Word from inside the newsroom is that the latest round of layoffs is…

A self-published book author who spent the last four years living as a hermit in a southeastern Arizona fire lookout has won a prestigious  international literary award.Glynn E. Thompson’s book, The Raving Eunuch Monks, sold 500 copies by word of mouth alone after he published it last year, according to…

Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s attorney, Michelle Iafrate, has doled out still another installment of jail video footage to New Times, and again it doesn’t show how an inmate wound up dead in the custody of sheriff’s detention officers. It’s the third release in a contentious public records battle that began in July,…

Betsy Schneider is back. This summer, Schneider (a photography professor at Arizona State University) showed her work at The Kitchenette, a small photo collective on Roosevelt Row. An entire wall of the gallery was devoted to dozens of images of Schneider’s daughter Madeleine, in various states of undress over the…

Scottsdale’s Motor Mile to get large used car lot Sick puppies thrown out with trash…

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: Valley Fever:Cindy McCain’s Acquaintance, Dino Castelli, Denies Affair Rumor; Files Court Order Against…

Tempe used car salesman Dino Castelli tells New Times today that a National Enquirer article claiming he and Cindy McCain are having an affair is “all bullshit.” As covered in this blog last month, the infamous weekly gossip rag claims Castelli and the senator’s wife can be seen smooching in a low-res…

State Senate President Tim Bee told capitol reporters last week to vacate offices in the state senate building that they’ve worked in since the 1970s. As first reported on Friday by the Arizona Republic’s capitol reporter, Matthew Benson, Bee sent an eviction letter (reprinted below) to Howard Fischer, the capitol’s one-man news wire service. Laura…

[jump]   Dear Friend, This morning I was proud to accept an offer from President-elect Barack Obama to become Secretary of the United States Department of Homeland Security. I believe that when called upon to serve – particularly at such a critical time in the history of our country -…

New Times first reported two weeks ago that the speed cameras being placed abundantly throughout town by the Arizona Department of Public Safety were being “vandalized” with — gasp — Post-It notes. Scofflaw activists hope placing the sticky notes on camera lenses will bring attention to their cause and allow at least a few speeding motorists to…

Barack Obama has named Arizona’s governor Janet Napolitano as the nation’s Homeland Security secretary. This is Janet’s biggest spotlight ever, and the country is being hit with a flurry of news stories about her. Obama made it official this morning during a news conference in Chicago. According to an Associated Press article just…

Hard to believe we’re breathing this soup, isn’t it?  Apart from that disturbing detail, the brown haze lingering below the summit of 2,704-foot Camelback Mountain looked almost pretty near sunset on Sunday evening. The skyscrapers of downtown can barely be seen through the opaque cloud, but winter thermal inversion keeps…