Tired of waiting for action, Gov. Jan Brewer forced lawmakers back to the Capitol late Tuesday to approve her budget and Medicaid expansion.

After seeing her daughter, Delilah, graduate from preschool at the Foundation for Blind Children’s Chandler campus, one mother stood up and recited a poem for parents, staff and students on Thursday.

The weeklong detention of an American woman after Mexican authorities said they found 12 pounds of marijuana under her bus seat illustrates just one of the perils Americans face while traveling in Mexico.

Humanity's home planet hardly merits the name-check in "After Earth," M. Night Shyamalan's sci-fi survival tale whose shipwreck action could (with the exception of a scene where our hero scrawls a crude map over Lascaux-like cave paintings) take place on any old life-supporting globe in the cosmos. The disappointingly generic film, which strands a father and son (Will and Jaden Smith) on Earth a thousand years after a planet-wide evacuation, will leave genre audiences pining for the more Terra-centric conceits of "Oblivion," not to mention countless other future-set films that find novelty in making familiar surroundings threatening. Will Smith's presence, not just as co-star but as originator of the story, seems likely to carry box office receipts beyond the benchmark of Shyamalan's previous picture, the wretched "The Last Airbender," but those hoping for a franchise should navigate elsewhere.

Casseroles have never really had much of a place in my culinary repertoire. It's a time thing mostly. I'd rather sear something off in a few minutes than stand around while it slowly bakes.

The neon brights that peppered the 1980s are back, in fashion and décor. Highlighter hues and glow-in-the-dark tints provide a shot of adrenaline after a few seasons of mellow, mushroom-y color palettes.

There have been highs and lows from the 2012-2013 athletic year.

Authorities on Tuesday released nearly 600 photos that investigators took in the aftermath of the Tucson shooting rampage that killed six people and wounded former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 12 others.

Spring sprang, and now summer has set in.

After the high-profile shooting of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in 2010, Scott Rollefstad felt he had to do something to help keep other agents safe.

Valley Christian's Aria Ottmueller does not let her being blind stand in her way of pole vaulting on the school's track team. [Tim Hacker/East Valley Tribune]

Darkness can be paralyzing.