The City of Mesa is celebrating Global Youth Service Day by hosting an athletic shoe drive for kids 9 a.m. to noon Saturday, April 27 at Mountain View High School.

Mark was on the verge of losing it. A deadline was approaching for an important client and the success of the project was hinging on his teams activities.

Camp Paz, hosted by Arizona-based nonprofit Stepping Stones of Hope, is planned for the weekend of April 27 at Whispering Hope Ranch in Payson. The weekend-long overnight camp is designed for grieving children ages 6 to 17 and their families.

Rick McConnell didn’t intend to spend the last 28 years coaching boys basketball at Dobson.

The vice president and general manager of Intel’s Fab/Sort manufacturing site in Chandler said in a speech last week that the company’s vision through the end of the decade is to “create and extend computing technology to connect and enrich the lives of every person on Earth.”

Perhaps Rod Livdahl (letter of 3/20) should review his Econ 101 textbook before he presents his next lesson on the subject. “Trickle Down” and “Trickle Up” are not economic terms. They are political terms, coined by Liberals to mock and distort serious economic discussion. There is no authentic “Trickle Down” school of thought that proposed the enrichment of the wealthy by government action in order to allow some of that wealth to somehow dribble down to the masses. “Trickle Up” appears to be an advanced term invented by Mr. Livdahl.

Comparing her directly to Judas, the head of the Maricopa County Republican Committee blasted Gov. Jan Brewer on Wednesday for her bid to expand the state’s Medicaid program.

Arizona State University is getting experimental.

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis is the first ever from the Americas, an austere Jesuit intellectual who modernized Argentina's conservative Catholic church.

Karma is a domestic short-haired buff and white large male kitty.

I have a new favorite word. “Despite.”

We learned in school about the inventors such as Edison and Bell who parlayed their inventions into fortunes, of the great capitalists of the Gilded Age such as Rockefeller and Carnegie and Morgan who took great risks on their way to becoming titans of industry.

State lawmakers are pushing ahead with new hurdles in the path of Arizonans who want to propose their own laws and constitutional amendments.

WEST CHESTER, Pa. — In 11 years of teaching, ditching students' desk chairs in favor of yoga balls is one of the best decisions Robbi Giuliano thinks she ever made.

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.

Mesa leaders are asking residents to head online to lend their thoughts on the city’s transportation outlook — input Mayor Scott Smith says is invaluable to creating a plan for the future that suits changing philosophies.

It's true we tend to better remember things that happened most recently, but it's unlikely anyone who witnessed Saturday night's 66-65 final in double overtime saw a better basketball game in the past several years than what Corona del Sol and Mountain Pointe took to two overtimes before the Aztecs won in fitting fashion for this night.

Mountain Pointe had the right guy with the ball. It was the right shot from 10 feet away. It was in the basket.

Doug Parker has no problem donning rapper Psy's light blue tuxedo for Halloween and performing his own version of Gangnam Style before hundreds of employees. The CEO of US Airways even let a video of his dance get posted to YouTube. He's outspoken, confident, and persistent, and he is very close to being put in charge of the world's largest airline.

Editor’s note: This piece is a follow-up to a pair of 2012 Tribune stories on the fight for life by Broxton Taylor of Gilbert, who died in April 2012 of complications from Batten Disease. Find those stories at evtnow.com/run4broxton and evtnow.com/broxtonlegacy. The second “Run for Broxton” fundraising event is scheduled for Sunday. For more details, visit runforbroxton.com. A longer version of this piece -- the author's original scientific journal article -- can be found at the link below.

In his best-selling book "Outliers", author Malcolm Gladwell examines the relationship between elite Canadian hockey players and the disproportionate likelihood of their birthdays coming in January, February or March.

The FairTax is an idea whose time has come. Congress — both House and Senate, Republicans and Democrats — has demonstrated time after time the inability to restrain itself with the public purse. Congress simply can’t govern effectively as long as the income tax is in place. Even the “fiscal crises” legislation passed by the current congress added $74 billion MORE to the deficit; all to favor special interest groups. In order to save America, congress must be denied the instrument of its folly: the income tax. A solution has been filed away in a drawer somewhere by the congress for over 10 years. It’s called The FairTax. It’s neither a Republican nor democrat idea but truly an American idea!

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Las Vegas is getting ready for the year of the snake. The casino capital celebrates Chinese New Year — also known as lunar new year — in a big way, with feasts, exhibits, performances and other events at outdoor festivals and at casino-resorts like Bellagio and The Venetian.

A handful of Mesa Unified School District campuses could be converted next school year — one to house special needs programs and one to test creative education methods — under a plan proposed this week.