At one time, the community of Gilbert had a great reputation. It had great schools and a proud economic future that led to Gilbert being one of the best communities to live in in the United States.

Screening the film adaptation of George Orwell’s “1984” isn’t exactly the most festive way to celebrate one’s upcoming birthday, but after reading the Tribune’s “Nerdvana” column’s recommending it this coming Friday, I couldn’t help but reserve a seat.

Mesa schools would have powerful pepper spray canisters available to front office staff if the district’s chief safety officer can make it happen.

ALBANY, N.Y. — 

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court suggested Tuesday it could find a way out of the case over California's ban on same-sex marriage without issuing a major national ruling on whether America's gays have a right to marry.

Short-term memory is a hard thing to expect over the course of a five-day tournament.

All-Tribune First Team

Republicans who control the Arizona Senate pushed through a bill Monday allowing designated teachers, administrators or other employees in rural schools to carry a handgun and allowing retired police officers who work in schools statewide to carry guns.

Immediately following the December shooting at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School, aggressive debates on school security, mental health, gun safety and the national conscience as a whole began to dot the U.S. political and media landscapes.

HARTFORD, Conn. — Indian casinos brushed off weak consumer spending in a sluggish U.S. economic recovery to post a modest increase in revenue in 2011, an industry study reported Wednesday.

When tragic stories of mass killing emerge, like the Sandy Hook Elementary school in Connecticut, the effects on weapons sales and legislation are well-publicized by news organizations and pundits, but there are other weapons-themed businesses like VIP Airsoft in Gilbert.

After tinkering around awhile, St. Mary's put its foot down and held up another trophy.

Attorney General Tom Horne and an Arizona Republican lawmaker are pushing a plan to let principals, teachers and janitors at public schools carry guns.

A Mesa native was awarded the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard & Intermediate Maintenance Facility Junior Sailor of the Year award.

Safety at Mesa schools could be improved by adding fencing, replacing chainlink fences with wrought iron fences and relocating offices to the exteriors of campus, the district’s security director told the governing board Tuesday night.

WASHINGTON — Uncompromising and politically emboldened, President Barack Obama urged a deeply divided Congress Tuesday night to embrace his plans to use government money to create jobs and strengthen the nation's middle class. He declared Republican ideas for reducing the deficit "even worse" than the unpalatable deals Washington had to stomach during his first term.

Just one day after schools in Tempe were put into lockdown, Mesa’s Dobson High School was partially evacuated Friday following a bomb threat.

If "Side Effects" is indeed Steven Soderbergh's final film, as he's said it will be after toying with the notion of retirement for a couple of years now, then intriguingly it feels like he's coming full circle in some ways to the film that put him on the map: the trailblazing, 1989 indie "sex, lies and videotape."

The Mountain Pointe football program is headed to Nevada to open the season.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — There may have been a time when Puerto Rico was a cheap getaway but those days are long gone. Puerto Rico is heavily dependent on imported goods and fuel and that's reflected in prices from a taxi ride from the airport to the mojito at your hotel. And it is, after all, the Caribbean, where tourists should expect eye-popping bills in season. A six-star hotel that opened recently in Dorado, east of San Juan, advertised rates starting at $1,500 a night, ranging up to nearly $5,000. There are, of course, cheaper options. There are also things to do that don't cost anything at all. Here are five of them:

PHOENIX -- A Senate panel set the stage Wednesday for a confrontation between state and federal law enforcement over gun laws.

The tragic shooting of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., felt particularly personal to many students and teachers, including fourth-grade teacher Jaime Hunt at Higley Unified School District’s Cortina Elementary School in Queen Creek.

The recorded officer interrogation of a Mesa teen who threatened to kill people at her high school has been obtained by ABC 15.