Category Archives: Arizona

Mark Kelly on Senate win in Arizona: ‘Tonight is about getting to work’ – video

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Mark Kelly, the Democrat and former astronaut, focused on bipartisanship in a speech shortly before he was declared the winner of the Senate race in Arizona. 'I’m confident that when all the votes are counted, we’re going to be successful in this mission,’ Kelly told supporters. ‘The work starts now.’

The retired US navy captain, who ran his campaign by playing up his outsider status in politics, said: 'Our state doesn't need a Democrat senator or a Republican senator. We need an Arizona senator. There is nothing we can't achieve if we work together'

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Go west: Trump and Biden take campaign to Arizona and Nevada

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Donald Trump was headed for Nevada on Saturday, aiming to erode poll leads enjoyed by Joe Biden there and in Arizona, another key state, as the 3 November presidential election draws near.

Related: Trump in Fox News interview to accuse Biden of taking drugs

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‘It’s not the same’: How Trump and Covid devastated an Arizona border town

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Nogales residents say the city is struggling amid the pandemic and after years of Trump painting the area as a ‘war zone’

When Francis Glad was a child growing up in Nogales, Arizona, the US-Mexico border near her home was nothing like it is now. “It was more like a neighbor fence, like you have at your house,” she remembers. “It was very symbiotic. Just people coming back and forth.”

But today, a towering 30ft border wall, made of dizzying steel bollards, slices through the Nogales sister cities.

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Calls for nationwide sickout as Arizona school district cancels reopening

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Arizona public school district forced to abandon plans after more than 100 teachers and staff members called in sick

An Arizona public school district was forced to cancel its plans to reopen on Monday after more than 100 teachers and other staff members called in sick.

“We have received an overwhelming response from staff indicating that they do not feel safe returning to classrooms with students,” Gregory Wyman, district superintendent, said in a statement on Friday.

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Border agents discover ‘most sophisticated tunnel in US history’ in Arizona – video

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US border officials claim an incomplete tunnel found stretching from Mexico to Arizona could be the most sophisticated in US history. The tunnel runs from San Luis Río Colorado, Mexico, to San Luis, Arizona, where it stops short of reaching the surface. It is 3ft wide and 4ft high (1 x 1.3 metres). Smugglers have been using tunnels to move drugs and people across the border for decades

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Notorious former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio loses bid to win back seat

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Known for launching immigration crackdowns, the former sheriff lost the Republican primary to his former aide Jerry Sheridan

Joe Arpaio, the former Arizona sheriff notorious for his abusive policing and hardline anti-immigration tactics, has lost his bid to win back the post he held for 24 years.

An early Donald Trump supporter and proponent of the racist theory that Barack Obama was not born in the US, Arpaio lost the Republican primary for Maricopa county sheriff to a former aide, Jerry Sheridan. Sheridan will face off against Democrat Paul Penzone in the November elections.

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‘Most sophisticated tunnel in US history’ discovered between Mexico and Arizona

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Although it’s not clear exactly what the structure was intended for, it had ventilation, a rail system and extensive reinforcement

An incomplete tunnel found stretching from Mexico to Arizona appears to be “the most sophisticated tunnel in US history”, authorities said.

The tunnel, intended for smuggling, ran from a neighborhood in San Luis Río Colorado, Mexico, to San Luis, Arizona, where it stopped short of reaching the surface. It was built in an area that’s not conducive to tunnels because of the terrain, and it had a ventilation system, water lines, electrical wiring, a rail system and extensive reinforcement, federal officials say.

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‘We’re fighting a ghost’: six months on, coronavirus victories remain fragile

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Governments are at a nebulous stage: past the initial shocks but still without a clear end in sight

Nobody is clapping any more. Six months since Covid-19 registered as an urgent threat, and one country after another spiralled into lockdown, the nightly outpourings of solidarity with essential workers have petered out.

Governments behind which people rallied earlier in the outbreak are again facing criticism and scorn. Panic at the scenarios that filled imaginations in those first weeks – of millions of imminent deaths, medical systems buckling and food supplies running scarce – has largely abated.

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Democratic congressman issues blistering attack on Republicans after Covid-19 diagnosis

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Raúl Grijalva condemns colleagues for failing to take crisis seriously as they ‘strut around the Capitol with no mask’

A Democratic congressman diagnosed as positive for the coronavirus has condemned Republican politicians for their carelessness around Congress and blamed them for spreading the virus.

The Arizona Democrat Raúl Grijalva tested positive for the coronavirus, it was revealed on Saturday, and has immediately quarantined, though he is asymptomatic and feeling well, his office said. But Grijalva issued a fiery condemnation of Republicans and their behavior around the halls of Congress.

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Daughter speaks out after her father dies of Covid-19: ‘It was preventable’

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Lina Washington calls for stricter rules in Arizona as cases rise, challenging the governor’s response to the pandemic

As her father lay dying in a hospital bed in Arizona, after testing positive for Covid-19, Lina Washington pleaded with him to keep fighting.

When they hung up, Washington scrolled through Instagram. She saw stories of friends and former classmates drinking and socializing at crowded bars and clubs, even as coronavirus infections rose exponentially across the state. Yet there they were, smiling, maskless, as if the threat had disappeared and life returned to normal.

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Deadly heat is killing Americans: climate death toll rises after a decade of federal inaction

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Heat now causes more deaths than hurricanes, tornadoes or floods in most years, creating a new public health threat. An investigation reveals why the CDC’s prevention efforts have faltered

This story is co-published with Columbia Journalism Investigations, the Center for Public Integrity and Covering Climate Now. Read the full investigation here.

Charlie Rhodes lived alone on a tree-sparse street with sunburned lawns just outside Phoenix, Arizona. At 61, the army veteran’s main connection to the world was Facebook; often, he posted several times a day. But as a heatwave blanketed the region in June 2016 – leading to temperatures among the highest ever recorded – his posts stopped. Three weeks later, a pile of unopened mail outside his door prompted a call to police.

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Arizona: three injured in shooting near shopping complex

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Suspect was taken into custody safely, officer said, while one injured person was taken to a hospital

Three people were injured, one of them critically, in a shooting near a popular shopping and entertainment district west of Phoenix, Arizona, on Wednesday, police said.

The suspect was taken into custody safely, Glendale officer Tiffany Ngalula said in a televised briefing. The most seriously injured person was taken to a hospital, and the two others were expected to survive.

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Mexican border town uses ‘sanitizing tunnels’ to disinfect US visitors from Covid-19

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Authorities in Nogales, Sonora, are hoping to reduce chances of bringing the virus over from Arizona, one of the states most affected

Fears of foreigners bringing infectious disease into the country. Enhanced border checkpoints. And the use of disinfectant spray to sanitize human beings.

These aren’t notes from one of Donald Trump’s freewheeling press conferences. The United States’ troubled response to the coronavirus pandemic is such that the Mexican border city of Nogales, Sonora, has set up “sanitizing tunnels” to disinfect people leaving the US through Nogales, Arizona.

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US supreme court blocks lawsuit by family of Mexican boy slain at border

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Ruling marks the second involving cross-border incidents preventing cases by foreign nationals in US federal courts

The US supreme court has thrown out a lower court’s ruling that had let the family of a slain 16-year-old Mexican boy pursue a civil rights lawsuit against a US border patrol agent who shot the teenager from across the border in Arizona.

The justices took the action in light of their ruling last Tuesday in a similar case in which they decided on a 5-4 vote to bar a lawsuit against another border patrol agent for fatally shooting a 15-year-old Mexican boy from across the border in Texas.

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Trump tweets praise for under-fire Mexican restaurant – but gets city wrong

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  • Sammy’s owner pictured at rally in ‘Latinos Love Trump’ hat
  • President promises visit when in Phoenix but grill near Tucson

The owners of a Tucson-area Mexican restaurant are fending off social media attacks after appearing in the VIP area at a Trump rally in Phoenix last month.

The Arizona Daily Star reported that a Facebook group posted a screenshot image from the rally that showed Sammy’s Mexican Grill co-owner Betty Rivas standing behind Trump, wearing a red cowboy hat emblazoned with “Latinos Love Trump”.

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Two people struck by gunfire during US New Year’s Eve celebrations

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  • Three-year-old wounded by backyard gunfire in Phoenix
  • 61-year-old woman killed by stray bullet in Houston

A three-year-old boy was shot and wounded in Phoenix and a 61-year-old woman was shot and killed in Houston as people celebrated the New Year, authorities said.

Related: Headless torso found in cave identified as murderer who escaped jail in 1916

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Nuclear missile bunker: yours for less than $400k

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Decommissioned nuclear silo accessed 40ft staircase leading underground was once home to US’s largest intercontinental ballistic missile ever deployed

One local newspaper described the sales listing, with calculated understatement, as a “mid-century fixer-upper”: an underground bunker built to withstand a nuclear attack, and to house the fire power to retaliate.

The decommissioned nuclear silo in southern Arizona was once home to the Titan II, the largest intercontinental ballistic missile deployed by the US Air Force.

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Jury deadlocks over activist who gave migrants food and shelter

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Scott Daniel Warren faced up to 20 years in prison in a case aid groups said would have wide implications on their work

A US jury could not reach a verdict Tuesday against a border activist who, defense attorneys say, was simply being kind by providing two migrants with water, food and lodging when he was arrested in early 2018.

Scott Daniel Warren, a 36-year-old college geography instructor, was charged with conspiracy to transport and harbor migrants in a trial that humanitarian aid groups said would have wide implications on their work. He faced up to 20 years in prison.

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Sir Philip Green charged in US over claims he touched pilates instructor

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Arizona authorities accuse Arcadia mogul of repeatedly touching instructor inappropriately – claims Green denies

Sir Philip Green has been charged with four counts of misdemeanour assault in the US after a pilates instructor alleged he repeatedly touched her inappropriately, Arizona authorities have said.

Lauren Deakin, a deputy county attorney in Pima county, said Green had been formally charged with four counts of “knowingly touching another person with the intent to injure, insult or provoke”.

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