Arts Marketplace is the location for the final Kim Fox fundraiser for her food sabbatical trek (from Paris to Lithuania) we told you about in the Tucson Weekly. Tomorrow, from 5 to 7:30 p.m., there will be wine and some good eats, and we understand some amazing locally made goat cheese. Kim told The Range she needs to still purchase final camping gear and bike equipment. There will be a raffle, and one top prize - three of Kim's own chickens. If you love the eggs the gals already produce, well get to Arts Marketplace and be that person that walks around with a glass of wine in one hand and rows of raffle tickets down to the floor in the other hand (you know who I am talking about). Arts Marketplace is at 40 W. Broadway, between Church and Stone. Enter from Jackson Street. Want more info, call 882-3988.

Maybe this is just what we need right now: Soundtrack for a Revolution playing at the Loft tonight, 3233 E. Speedway Blvd., 7:30 p.m.

NASA has given up hope that the Phoenix Mars Lander will transmit any new signals after being buried under Martian ice. Daniel Stolte of University Communications tells us:

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has ended operations after repeated attempts to contact the spacecraft were unsuccessful. A new image transmitted by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, or MRO, shows signs of severe ice damage to the lander's solar panels.

An image of Phoenix taken this month by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE, camera on MRO suggests the lander no longer casts shadows the way it did during its working lifetime.

"The latest HiRISE image appears to show that a solar panel of the Phoenix lander has collapsed," said University of Arizona planetary scientist Alfred McEwen, who is the principal investigator of the HiRISE camera project.

According to McEwen, it gets so cold during the Martian winter that carbon dioxide, which accounts for 95 percent of the planet's atmosphere, forms a frost blanket up to one or more feet thick

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords held up the Tucson Weekly issue containing the story about murdered Douglas rancher Robert Krentz at a Washington D.C. press conference held yesterday to announce the deployment of 1,200 National Guard troops to the border .

It's not the first time the Weekly has been used in Giffords' fight to get Washington to increase security along the border. She gave another copy of that issue of the Weekly to U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano earlier this month and asked her to show it to President Obama to illustrate the state of affairs in the border region.

The Wall Street Journal reports on more troubles for the Minerals Management Service in Louisiana:

Employees of a federal agency that regulates offshore drilling—including some whose duties included inspecting offshore oil rigs—accepted sporting-event tickets, meals, and other gifts from oil and natural-gas companies and used government computers to view pornography, according to a new report by the Interior Department's inspector general.

The report—published Tuesday on the inspector general's website—describes a culture in which inspectors assigned to the Lake Charles, La., office of the Minerals Management Service have moved with "ease" between jobs in industry and government, drawing on relationships that formed "well before they took their jobs" with the agency.

Although the report says that "all of the conduct" examined in the report is "dated" and occurred prior to 2007, its publication comes at a sensitive time, with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar scheduled to testify before Congress Wednesday on his plan to restructure the agency following the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. The accident led to the deaths of 11 workers and to the spillage of thousands of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico each day.

Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, responds:

“The Inspector General report released today highlights the ongoing failures of the Minerals Management Service, which is riddled with illegal drug use, bribery, and, worst of all, falsification of inspection reports crucial to ensuring the safe operation of drill rigs in our waters.

“MMS safety inspectors taking drugs on oil platforms is bad enough, but falsifying reports and allowing the industry to ghostwrite their inspections is completely outrageous.

“The report further exposes the revolving door with the oil

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords tells us that 1,200 National Guard troops will be deployed on the Arizona-Mexico border:

U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords today is announcing that the White House has finally agreed to her repeated requests to deploy National Guard troops to the U.S. border with Mexico.

“The White House is doing the right thing,” said Giffords, who called for the Guard’s deployment immediately after the March 27 murder of Cochise County rancher Rob Krentz. “Arizona(n)’s know that more boots on the ground means a safer and more secure border. Washington heard our message.”

Later today, President Obama will authorize the deployment of up to 1,200 National Guard troops to southwest border. He also will request that $500 million be included in

The Center for Biological Diversity wants endangered-species protection for Atlantic bluefin tuna, who spawn in the Gulf of Mexico.

Here's today's release:

The Center for Biological Diversity filed a formal scientific petition today to protect Atlantic bluefin tuna under the Endangered Species Act. Overfishing has erased more than 80 percent of the bluefin tuna in the North Atlantic compared to what the population would be without fishing pressures. Now the Gulf oil disaster threatens to devastate the western Atlantic bluefin population as millions of gallons of oil gush into the tuna’s habitat during spawning season. The oil will have devastating effects on eggs and larvae floating in the sheen, and will even harm adult tunas breathing oil into their gills. Also, heavy use of dispersants threatens

Heeeee's back! Former state lawmaker John Kromko, last seen trying to defeat the one-cent temporary sales tax that voters approved last week, has filed to run for an Arizona House of Representatives seat in Legislative District 27.

Kromko lost a bid for a House seat in LD 27 in 2008 and ended up getting indicted because prosecutors charged that he had forged signatures on his nominating petitions. Kromko tells us the case is still alive while prosecutors appeal a ruling as to whether the charges need to be reviewed by a grand jury.

It's a crowded race in LD 27, which includes the university area and Tucson's west side. Incumbent Democrats Olivia Cajero-Bedford and Phil Lopes have both hit their term limits, leaving more than a half-dozen other Democrats to seek the office. Besides Kromko, you've got Bob Gilby, Sami Hamed, Dustin Curtis Cox, John Martin Bernal, Sally Ann Gonzales, Eric Carbajal Bustamante and Macario Saldate.

More in this week's print edition...

Sure, they do good cover, like the Talking Heads (above) from the Great Cover-Up, but Seashell Radio is best wild and free, with Fen, Courtney, Esme and Cassie doing their own thing. Tonight they play at Preen, 210 N. Fourth Ave., 7 p.m.; no cover.

Admission is free, but you still have to get tickets to see the season finale of LOST at the Loft, 3233 E Speedway Blvd. Word is there are "some" tickets left, limit two per person. Doors open at 5 p.m.; the LOST recap broadcast starts at 6 p.m., and the LOST series finale starts at 8 p.m. According to the Loft website there will be food and drink specials, trivia games, giveaways and "more!," but nothing about a Locke look-a-like contest or prizes for those who show up with machetes dressed as the others.