With a deep inhale and wide smile, Jordan Beck let out the worst-kept secret in Arizona high school softball, and came as close as anyone wearing black and red to acknowledging the history that’s been made on the east end of Brown Road.

A new statewide survey suggests that if Arizonans were asked about it today, it's more likely that gay couples would be able to marry here.

It’s not often art lovers get to see a work in progress let alone contribute to it, but Arizona Opera gives fans the opportunity to do just that this weekend when they present the first reading of “Riders of the Purple Sage” — an original opera based on Zane Grey’s western novel, set on the Arizona-Utah border.

The list ranked cities based on factors like their number of Walmart and gun stores.

The jury has rendered its verdict — Jodi Arias is guilty of first-degree murder — but the trial is far from finished.

Jodi Arias was convicted of first-degree murder Wednesday in the gruesome killing of her one-time boyfriend in Arizona after a four-month trial that captured headlines with lurid tales of sex, lies, religion and a salacious relationship that ended in a blood bath.

A jury of eight men and four women have found Jodi Arias' guilty of first degree-murder. Jurors had several options as they considered four months of testimony and evidence in the case: first-degree murder, second-degree murder, manslaughter or acquittal.

The Jodi Arias murder trial has drawn international attention for its graphic tales of sex and lies. The following is a timeline of some of the key events in the case:

Which one would be more hypocritical:

Looking for a fresh way to liven up your garden walls? Think plants, not paintings.

“The richest American company Apple is going to borrow billions & billions to run the company, probably from themselves because you don’t have to pay taxes on borrowed money. While a venter worries about the homeless defecating and urinating in Mesa. When is congress going to stop these wealthy corporations from defecating and urinating on America.”

Any chance of cities or counties conducting future gun-buyback programs is about to evaporate.

A prosecutor on Thursday portrayed Jodi Arias as a manipulative liar who stalked her ex-boyfriend and killed him in grisly fashion before courting the media spotlight in her sensational murder case.

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Jeff Flake’s vote against expanded background checks on gun sales earlier this month caused his approval ratings to drop, making him one of the “most unpopular” U.S. senators, a new poll says.

“I don’t know why everyone is complaining that the Gilbert school board cut salaries, eliminated the teachers’ voices from negotiations, and secured all the power of decision making for themselves. After all, this strategy has worked very successfully in Communist Russia, Nazi Germany, and... and... oh wait... maybe there IS a problem here!”

I just spent some time running numbers. The most successful gun control law in the U.S. was passed in Kennesaw, Ga., in 1982. The crime rate dropped 89 percent in the city, compared to the modest 10 percent drop state-wide, it has stayed at the same low level. If you are going to look at gun laws, shouldn’t you take the most successful one into account? Well, maybe not in Marietta, Ga., it is illegal to spit from a car or a bus, but perfectly legal to spit from a truck. Couldn’t find out how that’s working out.

I now believe, because of what happened in Missouri recently, that expanded background checks are simply a federal back-door universal gun registration perpetrated by the Obama administration. I am totally opposed to it.

“When is the City of Mesa going to do something about the homeless downtown? They defecate and urinate in doorways of business and walking downtown is not a pleasant experience. It used to be a nice place, but that has changed.”

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.

It is now being reported the Boston bombing suspect was unnecessarily ‘Mirandized’ in the midst of the FBI interrogations from which the FBI was obtaining important intelligence re present and future terrorist activities. The question now is; did the attorney general’s Boston representative jump the gun by rushing a Federal Magistrate and lawyers to the suspects hospital room to ‘file a criminal complaint’ and ‘Mirandized’? By doing so it placed the suspect into civil proceedings which we find out is not a necessary decision at this time. It has effectively limited further FBI interrogation(s).

It ended soon after it began, this revolution. Not with a bang, or even a whimper. The soldiers, unsure of their cause, simply left the battlefield. As the sun set on the retreating army, the sun also set on the vision of a shining city on a hill, which remains darkened to this day.

A Chandler man convicted of manslaughter in the fatal shooting of his girlfriend has been sentenced to 21 years in prison.

"Mud" has the feel of a classic, although it's perhaps not enthralling enough to be one. The third and most elaborate feature to date from writer-director Jeff Nichols seems to have been adapted from a novel that doesn't exist -- something by James Lee Burke, perhaps, or Cormac McCarthy, or some other specialist in frequently violent tales about the challenges to masculinity and the forging of new identities that face rural people who belong to a sprawling modern world -- who might be hanging out in a supermarket parking lot one moment and falling into a creek full of deadly cottonmouths the next.