Wednesday, February 17, 2021
Tuesday, February 16, 2021
PHOENIX – In a downtown parking garage, a health care worker, dressed in protective gear, waits for cars to pull up for drive-thru HIV tests. Inside the building, volunteers assemble packages of at-home tests and condoms to be shipped across the state.
Elsewhere in metro Phoenix, a van travels to neighborhoods whose residents may face higher risk of infection to provide regular HIV testing, while doctors and case managers across the area respond to telehealth appointments by phone and Zoom.
Although face-to-face interactions have been the preferred method for testing and treating people for HIV and supporting them in vulnerable moments, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced local health care providers to get creative and adapt.
Such services as Zoom appointments, along with drive-thru, at-home and mobile testing, epitomize this new normal.
Dr. Ann Khalsa, an HIV specialist with more than 30 years of experience, has been part of the shift. She serves as medical director at Valleywise Community Health Center-McDowell, and spends most days on Zoom and phone calls with patients.
Khalsa said that amid COVID-19 – with so many people “hunkered down” and not prioritizing other medical needs – her clinic has seen a 30% decrease in people getting tested for HIV and linked to treatment.
However, some of the changes in delivery of care are helping, she added, and are likely here to stay.
Monday, February 15, 2021
Tempe police responded to a 911 call on Jan. 15, 2019, about a suspected burglary in an alley. Officer Joseph Jaen arrived to find Antonio Arce, sitting in a truck with a handgun.
Jaen called to Arce, 14, who turned and ran. “Let me see your hands!” Jaen yelled, but Arce continued running, and Jaen shot and killed him.
In body camera footage taken minutes after the shots, Jaen can be heard saying “It’s a (expletive deleted) toy gun.” It was, indeed, an airsoft replica of a Colt 1911 pistol, with its orange tip still intact.
“That’s supposed to alert the public, as well as the police, to the fact that this is not a real gun,” said Daniel Ortega Jr., a lawyer for Arce’s family. Airsoft guns use springs or compressed air to fire nonlethal plastic projectiles.
The family sued Tempe, later settling for $2 million. Jaen was granted accidental disability retirement in January. He did not face charges from the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.
Friday, February 12, 2021
A Tucson brother and sister have been arrested after evidence surfaced of the duo participating in the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol.
Felicia and Cory Konold were listed on a criminal complaint filed by the FBI for their participation in the riot that resulted in five deaths as insurrectionists invaded the Capitol in attempts to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election results.
Rioters broke into the Capitol at about 2 p.m., tearing down protective barriers, breaking windows and assaulting Capitol police.
In a Snapchat video, Felicia Konold of Tucson was seen brandishing a two-sided coin associated with the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group known for supporting white nationalism, according to a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court on Feb. 10.
The video showed Felicia saying she had been "recruited into a f****** chapter from Kansas City” and that she’s "with them now."
The complaint said the Tucson woman was also seen in publicly available video marching with a group of known Proud Boy affiliates along Constitution Avenue chanting "F*** Antifa!" and "Whose streets? Our streets!"
At the Capitol, Felicia and her brother Cory were observed at the front of a crowd that advanced toward the pedestrian entrance shortly before 1 p.m., confronting police and eventually toppling metal barriers and moving toward the building.
After the insurrectionists overwhelmed the police line guarding the front plaza of Capitol, the brother and sister were at the front of the crowd where Felicia was seen putting a black helmet previously worn by another defendant on Cory’s head, the complaint describes.
Footage from inside the Capitol revealed Felicia attempting to hold up a metal barrier that was lowering to block off the entrance to tunnels underneath the building with her brother standing behind her.
In addition to video proof, the duo was identified at the Capitol riots through cell-site records, including a call made to Cory tracked from Felicia’s phone on Jan. 6.
In the Snapchat account affiliated with Felicia, the complaint says she recorded a “selfie-style” video saying “I never could have imagined having that much of an influence on the events that unfolded today…Dude, people were willing to follow.”
In the criminal complaint, the Konolds are included in a group of five that stormed the Capitol building and face federal charges of conspiracy, civil disorder, obstruction of an official proceeding, knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds.
PHOENIX – A U.S.-Mexico partnership could aid the long-term recovery of the endangered Mexican wolf, a subspecies of the North American gray wolf, and its eventual removal from the U.S. endangered species list, according to a new study.
In a peer-reviewed study published Jan. 21, researchers from several universities in Mexico, the University of Arizona and wildlife officials found that a suitable habitat exists in the southwestern U.S. and the Occidental and Oriental ranges of the Sierra Madre in northern Mexico where Mexican wolves can be restored to their “historical ecological role” in the wild.
The Mexican wolf population – formerly known as the Mexican gray wolf and found in parts of Arizona, New Mexico and northern Mexico – was nearly exterminated from the wild in the early 1970s, and Arizona wildlife officials agree that recovery of this “keystone species” requires coordination.
In 1998, the first four Mexican wolves were reintroduced into the Arizona wild through a cooperative effort with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the New Mexico Game and Fish Department and the U.S. Forest Service. Today, Arizona has nearly 20 times that number of wolves living in the wild, and dozens more roam across the state line in New Mexico.
“Let’s look at the overall program, not just the U.S. program, not just the Arizona program,” said Jim deVos, assistant director for wildlife management at the Arizona Game & Fish Department. “Let’s look at the true recovery of the Mexican wolf and reestablish it as a component of biodiversity.”
To determine suitable habitat, the study combined data from multiple algorithms to calculate potential risk-factors, prey populations and environmental variables, which the scientists and wildlife officials called an improvement on simpler earlier attempts.
Thursday, February 11, 2021
WASHINGTON – As the Senate began debate Tuesday on a historic second impeachment of former President Donald Trump, a recent poll shows that more than half of Arizona Republicans believe Trump was the rightful winner of the November election
The poll, taken by OH Predictive Insights shortly before President Joe Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration, found that 60% of all Arizona voters are confident Biden won, but 20% of independents and 54% of registered Republicans believe Trump is “the rightful winner” of the election.
“Honestly, I was quite surprised, like eyes-fell-out-of-my-head, to see it in Arizona, where I think we have a pretty advanced election system compared to most other states,” said Mike Noble, chief of research and a managing partner at OH Predictive Insights.
But 26% of registered Arizona voters believe Trump should still be president and another 14% were not sure who won, according to the OH Predictive Insights poll. The online survey of 1,022 registered Arizona voters was taken from Jan. 11-18 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3%.
The results were sharply defined by party affiliation. While 93% of Democrats believe Biden won, the number dropped to 63% among independents and fell to just 27% for Republicans, with the rest either unsure or certain that Trump won. A full 54% of GOP voters declared Trump the rightful winner.
Wednesday, February 10, 2021
