FORT COLLINS, Colo. -- A giant, silvery helium balloon floated away from a yard in Colorado with a 6-year-old boy believed to be aboard and slowly touched down in a field two hours later with the child nowhere in sight, setting off a frantic search that ended when the boy was found safe in the attic of the family's home.

From the moment Chuck Berry's “Maybelline” roared out of tinny radios in the mid-'50s, the best rock 'n' roll has been built on riffs, those catchy combinations of notes that announce a song's presence with authority.

A federal appeals court has barred the Bureau of Land Management from pushing through Bush-era changes in how the government oversees grazing on 160 million acres of public lands throughout the West, including nearly 12 million acres in Arizona.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - The Narragansett Indian Tribe bought a 31-acre lot in 1991, saying it would be used for "economic development" and housing for the elderly and poor.

NEW YORK - Sometimes it takes only a word, or just a few, to become immortalized in television history. The TV Land cable network has compiled a list of the 100 greatest catchphrases in TV, from the serious - Walter Cronkite's nightly signoff "And that's the way it is" - to the silly: "We are two wild and crazy guys!"

Plenty of baseball players have hit rock bottom on the unforgiving road to the major leagues.

HOUSTON - The last time the Diamondbacks rallied in such unlikely fashion against a dominant closer — well, you probably know that story.

Nature holds something for everyone, as the 48 photographs on display at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art remind us.

BEDFORD, Va. (AP) - On the eve of the 65th anniversary of D-Day, the foundation that runs the National D-Day Memorial is on the brink of financial ruin. Donations are down in the poor economy. The primary base of support - World War II veterans - is dying off. And the privately funded memorial is struggling to draw visitors because it's hundreds of miles from a major city.

Fears that Mesa is moving to annex state trust land in Pinal County have prompted Apache Junction Mayor Doug Coleman to attempt to grab some of the real estate for his city.

More than 1 million acres of government-owned land surrounding the Grand Canyon is off-limits to new mining claims until Dec. 20.

Members of churches of many Christian denominations from across the United States will be praying as the nation approaches Election Day, Nov. 6. The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) put together and culminated a massive pre-election prayer vigil to go until voters head to the polls election day.

Time hasn’t seemed to heal the wounds that a proposed freeway would inflict on the Ahwatukee Foothills. If anything, residents who would lose their homes or be close to the South Mountain Freeway’s path say their lives have grown worse since learning of the project last fall.

Time hasn’t seemed to heal the wounds that a proposed freeway would inflict on the Ahwatukee Foothills. If anything, residents who would lose their homes or be close to the South Mountain Freeway’s path say their lives have grown worse since learning of the project last fall.

Apache Junction is on the cusp of a major change, and city officials are not just going to sit back and watch it happen.

Our state is in deep financial straits. Cutting already reduced benefits to our schools, social entities, health care, prisons, roads, etc. will only worsen tough times for the beneficiaries of these services and sink our glorious state further into the bottom of an economic abyss.

The Chicago Cubs are scouting a growing number of locations across Mesa for a spring training complex, including along the light-rail line downtown.

Short takes from the Tribune Editorial Board

Pastor Richard Wilson: Let’s commit ourselves to God's will and way in 2010.

After graduating last year from Sunnyslope High School in Phoenix, Karina Ruiz was afraid to even apply for college out of fear of being deported.

Atruism of American politics is that a successful strategy for securing the nomination of one of the two major parties may be to excite the activists by veering to an ideological extreme, but that it takes a centrist to win general elections.

Instead of rejecting controversial expansion plans for downtown Scottsdale nightclub Devil’s Martini outright, the Scottsdale City Council voted Tuesday to table the proposal, to give owner Richard Geddes the opportunity to revise the plan.

WASHINGTON - Changing climate will mean increasing drought in the Southwest - a region where water already is in tight supply - according to a new study.

There’s a couple of items worth noting in CB Richard Ellis’ newly released report that predicts the Valley’s 2006 commercial real estate market. Here’s some highlights: