Raw Video: Lightning lights up Ariz. skies

The sky was glowing as thousands of lightning bolts fired across the Phoenix area early Tuesday morning.

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New Data Shows Disturbing Number of Repeat Drunk Drivers on America's Roadways

Nationally, an estimated two million drunk drivers with three or more convictions, including 400,000 drunk drivers with five-time or more convictions will share our roadways this holiday season. These figures are based on data reported to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) by 20 states and the District of Columbia and released today by Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). The report also includes data for three additional states provided by other sources.

MADD also released its annual state progress report today, which provides each state's drunk driving fatality statistics and available repeat offender data, and highlights efforts on ignition interlock laws as well as sobriety checkpoints.

"These staggering statistics of repeat drunk driving offenders show that law enforcement is doing its job by finding and arresting drunk drivers. Unfortunately, the criminal justice system's 'catch and release' approach to drunk driving remains a huge threat to public safety," says Laura Dean-Mooney, national president of MADD, whose husband, Mike Dean, was killed by a drunk driver just before Thanksgiving in 1991. "MADD's Campaign to Eliminate Drunk Driving calls for action in all 50 states to stop repeat offenses through comprehensive interlock legislation."

"To keep all motorists safe this holiday season we need to get drunk drivers off the roads and stop them from repeating their crimes," says NHTSA Acting Administrator David Kelly. "Through strong enforcement efforts and increased use of alcohol ignition interlock systems, we can stop repeat offenders from getting back behind the wheel." The National Transportation Safety Board today also called on states for stronger action on drunk driving.

The holiday season is a particularly deadly time on America's roadways. In 2007, nearly 1,500 people were killed in crashes involving a drunk driver from Thanksgiving through New Year's Day. During the holidays, MADD is ramping up its call for every state to introduce interlock laws that cover all convicted drunk drivers, including those facing their first convictions -- as Washington State did in 2007.

"Interlocks have been proven highly effective at reducing recidivism," says Gov. Chris Gregoire (D) of Washington State. "It is vital that we all work together to approve interlocks in every state to help save lives and prevent injuries from this violent and deadly crime."

Eight states including Washington State, New Mexico and Arizona have already approved interlocks for first-time convicted drunk drivers. MADD is launching an effort to introduce bills requiring ignition interlocks for all convicted drunk driving offenders in the remaining 42 states.

"New Mexico was the first state in the nation to mandate ignition interlocks for all convicted offenders. Along with mandatory ignition interlocks, we increased enforcement, public awareness and treatment. Since 2005 we've seen a 20 percent reduction in alcohol-involved fatalities; I am confident our increased efforts along with the mandatory interlock legislation played a large role in reducing fatalities in New Mexico," says Gov. Bill Richardson (D). "Based on New Mexico data, we estimate that in 2006 ignition interlocks prevented some 63,000 alcohol-involved driving events."

"Arizona has taken a strong stand against drunk driving," Gov. Janet Napolitano (D) says. "We have some of the strongest laws in the nation, including a mandatory one-year interlock on cars for the first offense. It is important we take these steps to ensure the safety of Arizonans."

The Robi family can't understand how the law can ignore repeat drunk driving convictions. Ironically, after years of enforcing the law as officers in the Los Angeles Police Department, they've also learned firsthand about multiple convictions. An April 27, 2007 drunk driving crash made them victims/survivors of a four-time repeat drunk driving offender, who injured daughter Jennifer, 12, and her mother, Kath.

"We need stronger laws," says Kath Robi. "The hammer needs to fall on these people. This is outrageous!" Jennifer has been in a cast from her hip to her chest for the past 18 months, to support her spinal injury. Kath, a retired LAPD officer, underwent several surgeries, memory loss, and the inability to walk or drive for months.

An alcohol ignition interlock is a breath test device linked to a vehicle's ignition system. When a convicted drunk driver starts their vehicle, he or she must first blow into the device. The vehicle will not start if the driver is violating probation by having alcohol in his/her system. If interlocks were required for all convicted drunk drivers in the United States, thousands of lives could be saved each year.

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Let Cameo Turn Your Pool Dream Into Reality

Have you thought it the height of luxury to design your own custom pool? Have you looked out into your yard and pictured just how you would want your pool to look? The shape? The features?

Cameo Pools are phoenix pool builders who can custom build a pool for your Arizona home. Cameo prides itself on its customer satisfaction, you they are willing to work with you to turn your dream into reality and meet your expectations. Cameo Pools builds 200-300 pools a year and has been in business for 30 years.

Does the thought of a custom pool excite you but not sure where to start? That's easy. Visit the Cameo Pools website and look over their Pool Gallery to get some ideas to get your creativity flowing. See what is possible in Arizona custom pools.

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Video Interview: Mars Phoenix Lander Ready For Liftoff

Deborah Bass, the deputy project scientist on the mission, talks about the Mars Phoenix Scout Lander's trip to find evidence of past life on the Red Planet. The lander was built by Lockheed Martin. The University of Arizona is leading the mission.

The Phoenix Mars Lander will claw into the icy soil of the Martian northern plains. The robot will investigate whether frozen water near the surface might periodically melt enough to sustain a livable environment for microbes.

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Retire In Style With a Phoenix Condo

You've worked hard all of your life. You're looking for the perfect location to resettle to spend your best years in leisure and enjoyment.

How about life in one of the Phoenix Condos?

The capital city of Arizona, Phoenix has a lot to offer, from its climate, Native American heritage, sports and excellent museums. Long one of the premier U.S. resort areas, four and five star resorts and restaurants are the rule rather than the exception in many areas around the city.

And a condo is certainly the way to go for a carefree lifestyle.

CondoCompany.com is the top searched condominium dedicated site on the Internet, receiving thousands of unique visitors daily all looking to buy sell or rent condos.

Their The CondoList program allows various types of people such as Realtors, owners, and developers to list condos for sale in Phoenix. This allows potential buyers searching for Phoenix condos to find the contact information of the listing agent or owner of each condo, bypassing any middlemen.

CondoCompany.com offers the ease to search Phoenix condos by neighborhood and area of the city, so you know right where you're buying.

Right now, they're listing a two bedroom, one bath condo for just $159,000! Talk about ease of living.

Visit CondoCompany.com to start retirement in style.


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The Site For Arizona Vacations

Whether your destination is Phoenix, Scottsdale, Flagstaff, Tuscon, Sedona or even the Grand Canyon, when it comes to Arizona Vacations, Azcentral.com has you covered.

Visit them to run down Arizona's Top 50 places. And Boot Hill? Tombstone's Boothill Graveyard, filled with the remains of the bad guys and good guys of the Old West, still holds considerable historical significance. Azcentral.com tells the tales.

The advantage of Azcentral.com is that you can do all this reading and then on the same site book your entire trip with a mouse click.

The site is working with Alliance Reservation Systems of Phoenix to improve the site’s hotel-booking interface. The new booking engine will allow consumers to filter hotel searches by price class, brand, amenities, and proximity to landmarks or street addresses, and will plot the search results on Google maps. It also will allow the Web staff to incorporate links to specific properties within stories that may mention them.

“Our travel site is one of the most comprehensive sources of information about Arizona, and we want our hotel booking engine to be as robust as the content,” says Mike Coleman, vice president of digital media at Phoenix Newspapers, Inc., the parent company of azcentral.com. “We’ve had good results with Alliance’s current booking engine but we anticipate a better user experience with the new one and more reservations as a result.”

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Apprehensions Down 30 Percent Along Southern Border

Apprehensions through the end of the second quarter are down 30 percent compared to the sameperiod during the previous fiscal year, continuing a trend in the overall decline of border apprehensions between ports of entry, according to the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency.

From Oct. 1 through March 31, CBP Border Patrol agents made 418,184 arrests along the US southern border compared to 594,142 apprehensions during the same period last year, with all southern bordersectors experiencing declines in apprehensions. The Del Rio, Texas and Yuma, Ariz., sectors experienced the greatest declines, with a decrease of 68 percent in Yuma (24,726 apprehensions) and a decrease of 57 percent in Del Rio (12,151 apprehensions), CBP says.

Apprehensions of other than Mexico nationals declined 55 percent along the southern border, which totaled 25,269 through the second quarter 2007. The decrease in other-than-Mexican apprehensions reduces the time agents spend transporting and processing and increases time spent patrolling the border, the agency adds.

Under the Secure Border Initiative, CBP continues to strengthen border security efforts through the deployment and integration of tactical infrastructure, proven technology and additional personnel. Other significant efforts include the expansion of expedited removal, thedeployment of National Guard personnel through Operation Jump Start, targeted operations within the sectors and strong federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement partnerships, CBP says.

Additionally, Border Patrol agents have seized more than 1 million pounds of marijuana (a 31 percent increase) and 7,275 pounds of cocaine (a122 percent increase) compared to same period in fiscal year 2006. Agents in the Tucson, Ariz., sector accounted for nearly 50 percent of the southern border marijuana seizures with 498,815 pounds and the Rio GrandeValley, Texas, sector accounted for 55 percent of the cocaine seizures with4,021 pounds, CBP says. The total combined estimated value of the narcotics seizedalong the southern border is more than $1.03 billion, it adds.

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Feds Fund Research on 'Economically Important Plants'

Scientists will find improved ways of studying the structure, function and evolution of the genomes of economically important plants, thanks to $14 million in new awards from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF).

Resources to be developed include genomic sequences, genetic markers, maps and expressed sequence collections. These are much-needed tools for researchers working in areas as diverse as genome evolution and plant breeding.

Awardees will address scientific questions including the role of polyploidy in genome evolution, the genomic basis of speciation, and the relationships between cultivated plants and their weedy relatives.

"If the Plant Genome Research Program has been making the bricks that build a conceptual framework for the genomes of economically important crop plants, these projects will provide the mortar," says James Collins, NSF assistant director for biological sciences. "The impact of genomics in evolutionary, ecological and population studies of crop plants will be far-reaching."

Many crop plants have large, complex genomes that in some cases are "polyploid" -- containing multiple genomes. Polyploidy is widespread in plants and animals, and can lead to dramatic changes in gene content and genome organization that are only just beginning to be understood.
A project led by researchers at Iowa State University will develop sequence and map resources to study polyploidy in cotton, while researchers at the University of Missouri will look at the impact of polyploidy on plant form in Brassica species, which includes plants such as canola and Brussels sprouts. Other projects at the University of Georgia and the University of Arizona will develop sequence resources to study genome organization in wheat and rice.

The outcomes from these projects will allow researchers to understand how extra copies of genes function in these plants, and how genomes from different sources can work together in a single plant.

The ever-growing collection of genome sequences is shedding light on the variation between individuals within a species. For example, in a forest of trees or a field of corn, there may be many versions of a particular gene, each with minor sequence differences. These sequence differences can sometimes have dramatic effects on growth and development.

Projects based at the University of California at Davis and Cornell University will catalog variants in pine trees and in maize, respectively, to allow researchers to link genetic variation with changes in gene function. This information could have applications in plant breeding.
More than half of the world's most cultivated crops have relatives that are invasive weeds, competing with the crop for nutrients and water and leading to reduced yields.

One example is red rice, a weedy form of rice that reduces the yields of cultivated rice by as much as 80 percent and contaminating harvests with its small red-coated grains. A project led by researchers at Washington University St. Louis will examine the regions of the red rice genome associated with weediness to find out whether it originated from the domesticated crop or if it was introduced as a weed from Asia.

A related project led by investigators at Michigan State University will investigate differences in gene expression in weedy and cultivated radishes to uncover which genes are associated with invasiveness.The outcomes of these projects could lead to a great understanding of how plants become weedy and invasive, and yield possible avenues for better selective control of weeds, scientists believe.

"The outcomes of this new program will tie together studies of the evolution of gene structure, function and regulation across the whole plant kingdom," says Collins.

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U.S. Border Patrol Says Drop In Apprehensions Sign of Progress

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Border Patrol first quarter apprehensions are down 26 percent compared to last year along the southwest border, an indication that the Border Patrol is becoming better equipped to respond to and resolve border security threats between the ports of entry, the agency says.

During the period that began October 1, Border Patrol agents made 158,818 apprehensions along the southern U.S. border compared to 207,197 apprehensions during the same period last year, with all southern border sectors experiencing declines in apprehensions, the agency says.

The Del Rio, Texas and Yuma, Ariz. sectors experienced the greatest declines, both with a decrease of 63 percent with 4,370 and 9,320 apprehensions respectively. The number of other- than-Mexican alien apprehensions dropped 58 percent along the southern border, which totaled 12,942 through the first quarter 2007. The decrease in other-than-Mexican apprehensions reduces the time agents spend transporting and processing and increases their time spent patrollingthe border, the agency says.

Under the Secure Border Initiative, CBP continues to enhance border security through a comprehensive approach of implementing innovative programs to include the expansion of expedited removal, Operation Streamline and Operation Jump Start as well as hiring additional Border Patrol agents, up to 6,000 by the end of 2008. The continued use of cutting-edge technology, tactical infrastructure and CBP's increased ability to detain other-than-Mexicans, further augments the border security mission, CBP says.

"We are seeing positive results," says Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar. "These programs continue to enable our frontline agents to be moreeffective in our border security mission."

Additionally, Border Patrol agents have seized more than 468,879 poundsof marijuana (a 26 percent increase) and nearly 2,934 pounds of cocaine (a96 percent increase) compared to the first quarter of fiscal year 2006. Agents in the Tucson, Ariz. sector accounted for 46 percent of the southernborder marijuana seizures with 216,970 pounds and the Rio Grande Valley sector accounted for 50 percent of the cocaine seizures with 127,046 pounds. The combined estimated value of the narcotics is nearly $474 million, CBP says.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection is the border agency within the Department of Homeland Security charged with the management, controland protection of U.S. borders at and between the official ports of entry. CBP is charged with keeping terrorists and terrorist weapons out ofthe country while enforcing hundreds of U.S. laws.

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