Category: State News

PHOENIX (AP) – State Rep. Athena Salman will resign her seat in the Arizona Legislature at the end of the month to take up a top position at an abortion rights group, she announced Wednesday on social media. Salman will become the director of Arizona campaigns for the state chapter of Reproductive Freedom For All, a nonprofit political action and advocacy organization formerly known as NARAL Pro-Choice America. “When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, I committed to do everything in my power to restore abortion rights in the United States of America,” Salman said in a statement. “The…

PHOENIX (AP) – State Rep. Athena Salman will resign her seat in the Arizona Legislature at the end of the month to take up a top position at an abortion rights group, she announced Wednesday on social media. Salman will become the director of Arizona campaigns for the state chapter of Reproductive Freedom For All, a nonprofit political action and advocacy organization formerly known as NARAL Pro-Choice America. “When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, I committed to do everything in my power to restore abortion rights in the United States of America,” Salman said in a statement. “The…

PHOENIX (AP) – With his gap-tooth smile, hip-hop routines and volunteer work for a food charity, Roosevelt White III was well known in the downtown Phoenix tent city known as “The Zone.” But like many homeless people, White suffered from diabetes and cardiovascular disease. He died unexpectedly one sweltering September day at age 36. Thousands of people like White who died this year without a permanent home are being memorialized on Thursday in communities from Cape Cod, Massachusetts to La Crosse, Wisconsin, to Riverside, California. Established in 1990, the increasingly popular Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day is observed with prayers, candles,…

PHOENIX (AP) – With his gap-tooth smile, hip-hop routines and volunteer work for a food charity, Roosevelt White III was well known in the downtown Phoenix tent city known as “The Zone.” But like many homeless people, White suffered from diabetes and cardiovascular disease. He died unexpectedly one sweltering September day at age 36. Thousands of people like White who died this year without a permanent home are being memorialized on Thursday in communities from Cape Cod, Massachusetts to La Crosse, Wisconsin, to Riverside, California. Established in 1990, the increasingly popular Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day is observed with prayers, candles,…

Arizona State Parks and Trails invites visitors to the parks on New Year’s Day for its annual First Day Hikes. The events are part of a national collaboration in all 50 state park systems that began three decades ago to kick off the new year in a healthy and exciting way. Several Arizona state parks will host First Day Hikes on Monday, January 1, 2024. During the hike, park rangers, naturalists, and volunteer guides will share information about Arizona’s plants, wildlife, natural resources, regional history, and recreational opportunities. The distance and rigor of the hikes vary from park to park,…

In 2022, when the southeastern Arizona community of Willcox confronted state regulations that would’ve halted new groundwater irrigation in the largely agricultural area, voters and special interest groups mobilized to defeat the ballot measure by almost two to one. They acknowledged that, as in other rural areas of the state, more groundwater was being pumped out of the Willcox Basin than was naturally refilled, and they agreed something should be done about that overdrafting. But bringing the area under the state’s existing rules, as the measure proposed to do, wouldn’t give the rural community enough control to guide development in…