A U.S. Border Patrol agent was shot and killed last night in Peck Canyon—the very area Leo W. Banks chronicled in his story three weeks ago, "Smugglers' Paradise."

Four people have been arrested, and a manhunt is on for a fifth suspect, according to the Nogales International (which, like the Tucson Weekly, is owned by Wick Communications):

A manhunt is under way for a suspect in last night's deadly shooting of a Border Patrol agent northwest of Nogales.

Authorities say they have arrested four suspects and are searching for another after Agent Brian A. Terry, 40, was shot and killed late Tuesday in the Peck Canyon area.

Ranchers along Ruby Road say they were advised by Border Patrol that the suspect may be headed in their direction as he tries to make his way toward the U.S.-Mexico border. The Nogales International witnessed a steady stream of Border Parol and Arizona Department of Public Safety vehicles patrolling the area between Interstate 19 and Pena Blanca Lake.

Sheriff Antonio Estrada said his office first received a call for assistance shortly after 11 p.m. last night.

"Border Patrol called our dispatch, reporting shots fired and requesting emergency medical services to meet with them at Peck Canyon and Circulo Sombrero," Estrada said.

The shooting happened near Forest Service Road 4197, he said. A statement from U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Terry was shot and killed after encountering a group of suspects in the area.

A restaurant called Rice House is the newest addition to the downtown dining scene, where nary a week passes without news of another restaurant opening.

Rice House serves standard Thai and Chinese food at 54 W. Congress St. It is owned by longtime Tucson restaurateur Jun Ting Lei.

We haven’t been down to check it out yet, but an employee says hours are 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., Monday through Saturday. Call 622-9557 for more information.

• Photograph courtesy of Microsoft

A lot has changed since the introduction of Xbox 360 in 2005 kick-started the “next” generation of home consoles.

Microsoft and Sony came out swinging with two powerhouse machines capable of full high-definition graphics, extended online and media capabilities—with a price tag to match.

Nintendo turned its back on traditional consoles and came out with the Wii: a small white box only capable of pushing out games at a measly 480p resolution with an easy to use motion controller.

Since its release, the Wii has become one of the fastest selling game consoles ever.

But now Nintendo isn’t the only player in the motion control game.

Sony’s PlayStation Move and Microsoft Kinect are now on the market and they’re both looking to dethrone the wiimote. Now that the big three all have compelling motion controllers to bring to the table, making that challenging decision on which console to purchase this holiday season has become even more difficult.

Well, that wasn't much of a break from negative campaign ads. Politico reports that Crossroads GPS is already targeting Democrat Gabrielle Giffords:

Crossroads GPS—the conservative group that carpet-bombed Democrats with a wave of attack ads during the 2010 midterm election—is about to launch its first offensive of the 2012 election cycle.

The organization is rolling out a $400,000 radio ad campaign this week in the districts of 12 House Democrats who won reelection by the slimmest of margins.

The ad campaign, which urges the Democrats to support a vote this week on the tax cut package, marks one of the first major advocacy efforts by an outside group since the Nov. 2 elections and provides a clear signal as to which incumbent Democrats are viewed as vulnerable by GOP strategists in 2012.

Among the Crossroads targets are five Democrats who barely survived the GOP wave in November— New York Rep. Tim Bishop, California Rep. Jim Costa, Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly, Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, and Kentucky Rep. Ben Chandler— all of whom were engaged in races so close that the outcome wasn’t know for days, and in some cases weeks, after Election Day.

Read the whole thing here.

BTW, we hear Republican Jesse Kelly, who lost by less than 2 percentage points last month, has not ruled out another run against Giffords and state Sen. Frank Antenori is also considering a run.

Bear in mind, too, that we don't have any idea how the districts will be redrawn.

When political pollster Stuart Rothenberg handed out his "End of the Year Awards,” he named Tucson’s own Rodney Glassman as a nominee in the “I’m Betting You Haven’t Seen the Last of Them” category alongside the likes of Delaware GOP Senate nominee Christine “I’m Not a Witch” McDonnell.

That’s a safe bet. Glassman, who gave up his seat on the Tucson City Council earlier this year in an unlikely bid to unseat U.S. Sen. John McCain, is already maneuvering to become the next chairman of the Arizona Democratic Party.

Arizona Democratic Party Chairman Don Bivens, a Phoenix attorney who has done a great job raising funds but not such a great job at winning elections, is considering calling it quits, if he can find the right person to take over the gig.

So far, Glassman is making a lot of phones in pursuit of the job, but Bivens doesn’t appear convinced that Rodney is the man to replace him.

Many party regulars are trying to convince Andrei Cherny, who raised more than $720,000 in his unsuccessful campaign for state treasurer, to jump into the race.

Cherny has demonstrated that he can raise big bucks, especially if he taps his connections to political bigshots like Bill Clinton and Al Gore. But so far, he’s been reluctant to commit to the race.

I'm not in the mall often, but when I walk past Spencer Gifts these days, I'm usually just amazed by how much Twilight stuff they can jam into a window—but apparently there's a darker side to the store that I just wasn't aware of, if a location in Illinois is any indication:

About $22,000 in "sexually explicit" merchandise, including sex toys and love dolls, was seized from Spencer's Gifts at Orland Square Mall — and a teenage clerk was arrested — after a store manager told police his bosses wouldn't let him hide the wares from minors.

Following a mall shopper's complaint to police about seeing "various sexual aids and other sexually explicit merchandise" on display at Spencer's, an Orland Park police officer visited the store on Dec. 1. Inside, the officer saw the sex toys, inflatable love dolls, lubricants, gels, sado-masochistic products and sex-themed Christmas merchandise, according to police....

On Dec. 3, a 17-year-old and 15-year-old working under cover for the police went to the store and bought a sex toy and a "bondage fantasy" item which depicted a woman in ankle and wrist cuffs, police said. The minors were not asked for identification before the sale, according to the police....

The cashier who sold the items, a 19-year-old Bridgeview woman, was charged with distribution of harmful materials and taken into custody. The woman said she did not receive any training regarding the sale of sexually explicit material, Sgt. Scott Malmborg said.

I was a little stunned by how much I enjoyed Seashell Radio's take on the Phil Collins catalog at the Great Cover-Up on Saturday night. Not because of Seashell Radio, who get better every time I see them, but because I really dislike Phil Collins.

Thankfully, they did a great job of picking tracks from his extensively tedious soft rock catalog, including "Something Happened on the Way to Heaven" and excluding "Another Day in Paradise." Keyboardist Cassie Van Gelder took the lead for "Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)," which is a nice song when Phil isn't singing it, apparently.

Today's announcement of the Golden Globe nominees reminds me how far behind I am on seeing movies this year. After all, I'm still trying to get around to seeing The Social Network, much to my own personal disappointment, and I'm not entirely sure if The King's Speech has even screened in town yet. Not that a clever edited montage of all the times birthday candles were blown out in movies this year really helps anyone contextualize the year in film, but the work YouTube user "genrocks" put into piecing 270 movies into one cohesive video is still astounding, even if it does regrettably remind me that the Bruce Willis/Tracy Morgan buddy comedy Cop Out exists.

A blog at the food website Epicurious has speculated on what food trends will be big in 2011—and fortunately for Scorpion-selling stalwart Kon Tiki, tiki-bar cocktails made the list:

What's old is new again, not just in fashion but also in cocktails. Polynesian-style drinks, those multi-ingredient fruit juice and rum concoctions adorned with flowers and umbrellas, will be the quaffs of choice in 2011. Though you may be tempted to think this trend is yet another stylish symptom of the current craze for anything '60s-retro or Mad Men-inspired, the "new" tiki cocktails' roots go back even farther. Dale DeGroff, author of The Essential Cocktail and The Craft of the Cocktail and founding president of the Museum of the American Cocktail, told Epicurious, "the revival of the tiki trend, ironically, is closer to the classic tropical period right after Prohibition pioneered by Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt (a.k.a. Don the Beachcomber). The tiki movement today is coming from the craft bartending community, using fresh ingredients and attempting to find the original recipes. Julie Reiner's sophisticated take on tropical cocktails at Lani Kai in New York City is a perfect example."

The rest of the list? Food halls, Korean cuisine, macarons (not to be confused with macaroons), "meatless Mondays," foraging, pop-up restaurants, sweet potatoes, urban wineries and paprika cousin "Pimentón de La Vera."

With all the back and forth regarding Wikileaks and Julian Assange's London arrest, Naomi Wolf gets to the heart of the issue with a Huffington Post piece that you can read here.

This is far from a feverish projection: if you study the history of closing societies, as I have, you see that every closing society creates a kind of 'third rail' of material, with legislation that proliferates around it. The goal of the legislation is to call those who criticize the government 'spies', 'traitors', enemies of the state' and so on. Always the issue of national security is invoked as the reason for this proliferating legislation. The outcome? A hydra that breeds fear. Under similar laws in Germany in the early thirties, it became a form of 'espionage' and 'treason' to criticize the Nazi party, to listen to British radio programs, to joke about the fuhrer, or to read cartoons that mocked the government. Communist Russia in the 30's, East Germany in the 50's, and China today all use parallel legislation to call criticism of the government — or whistleblowing — 'espionage' and 'treason', and 'legally' imprison or even execute journalists, editors, and human rights activists accordingly.

I call on all American citizens to rise up and insist on repeal of the Espionage Act immediately. We have little time to waste. The Assange assault is theater of a particularly deadly kind, and America will not recover from the use of the Espionage Act as a cudgel to threaten journalists, editors and news outlets with. I call on major funders of Feinstein's and Lieberman's campaigns to put their donations in escrow accounts and notify the staffers of those Senators that the funds willonly be released if they drop their traitorous invocation of the Espionage Act. I call on all Americans to understand once for all: this is not about Julian Assange. This, my fellow citizens, is about you.