It's no news to anyone that I disagree strongly with President Obama on just about any issue or policy position you can name.

Recently, my husband David ran onto a letter from his birth father, Lester. The absent father wrote it during his son’s 18th year. When an infant, divorce split my husband’s parents and Lester went his way – never to financially support his little red-headed boy or see him other than a time or two.

Imagine you are a 19-year-old Marine. You are riding in a Humvee with four other Marines — your friends — when an improvised explosive device (IED) explodes.

They were 12 ordinary citizens who didn't oppose the death penalty. But unlike spectators outside the courthouse who followed the case like a daytime soap opera and jumped to demand Jodi Arias' execution, the jurors faced a decision that was wrenching and real, with implications that could haunt them forever.

Jodi Arias asked jurors Tuesday to give her life in prison, saying she "lacked perspective" when she told a local reporter in an interview that she preferred execution to spending the rest of her days in jail.

A “Celebration of Life” service to honor respected educator and leader among state high school sports circles Art Wagner is scheduled for Monday night at 6 p.m. at the Higley Center for the Performing Arts in Gilbert.

The same jury that convicted Jodi Arias of murder one week ago took less than three hours Wednesday to determine that the former waitress is eligible for the death penalty in the stabbing death of her one-time lover.

The jury has rendered its verdict — Jodi Arias is guilty of first-degree murder — but the trial is far from finished.

The Jodi Arias murder trial has drawn international attention for its graphic tales of sex and lies. The following is a timeline of some of the key events in the case:

Preparing for a debut of his short film on Tuesday for friends, family and a panel of local cinematographers, Mountain Pointe High School senior Vincent Cota was putting the finishing touches on the piece after school this week.

The Norwegian directing team of Joachim Roenning and Espen Sandberg, whose biopic of World War II resistance fighter Max Manus was a huge hit on home turf, have turned to another native hero for "Kon-Tiki." One of the most-vaunted escapades of the 20th century, Thor Heyerdahl's 1947 Peru-to-Polynesia expedition by raft gets glossy big-screen treatment in this efficiently told action-adventure. Delivering visual drama and understated character study, sometimes in disappointingly formulaic fashion, the feature has its incisive moments but falls short as both epic and intimate portrait.

The interior is revamped and the menu is fresh, but the jokes are still funny as ever. The Tempe Improv is reopening April 19 with a new look and a new owner, but a familiar headliner — comedian and impressionist Frank Caliendo.

Jake McAdams earned his team-leading sixth win on the season as Desert Mountain's baseball team earned a 5-2 win against Mountain View on Wednesday to make the Wolves 22-3 on the season.

LONDON — After crocheting a colorful blanket, Joan Ferguson snuggled up under it one night and proudly thought: "This is one groovy blanket. I'm brilliant."

Words struggled to exit her throat: “They let us see him. I sat there, behind the curtains and sobbed and hugged my son’s leg. I pleaded, Oh God, Oh God! How can I live without him?” Ten years ago, this month, this East Valley mother buried her only son.

On Jan. 16, students from 14 Valley schools gathered at Gilbert’s Higley Center for the Performing Arts for the Building Bridges program to fight bullying in schools. In May of last year, Kyrene Altadeña Middle School students participated in the Bully Academy Webquest, an online course involving reading articles, watching videos about bullying and most importantly, talking about it. After all, this is about how young people learn to express their emotions. In November 2011, students from Chandler’s Tarwater Elementary School spent a day focused on kindness, respect, and friendship.

Being a young person is never easy. Add to that the challenge of a mental illness and life’s hurdles can become skyscrapers.

We learned in school about the inventors such as Edison and Bell who parlayed their inventions into fortunes, of the great capitalists of the Gilded Age such as Rockefeller and Carnegie and Morgan who took great risks on their way to becoming titans of industry.

Jodi Arias calmly tried to explain away her lies Monday as a prosecutor in her Arizona murder trial hammered her about not being honest with authorities, friends or family, even sending the victim's grandmother flowers after she killed him, all in an attempt to throw off suspicion and avoid being charged.

A woman charged with killing her lover testified Wednesday that she has no recollection of stabbing him, slitting his throat or even whether she shot him during a fight at his Arizona home nearly five years ago.

Police say a woman has died after falling several stories from a Tempe apartment balcony.

If "Side Effects" is indeed Steven Soderbergh's final film, as he's said it will be after toying with the notion of retirement for a couple of years now, then intriguingly it feels like he's coming full circle in some ways to the film that put him on the map: the trailblazing, 1989 indie "sex, lies and videotape."

A woman charged in the Arizona stabbing and shooting death of her lover resumed testimony Tuesday, recounting her troubled past and the numerous boyfriends who cheated on her as the defense works to seek sympathy from jurors.

MOUNT PROSPECT, Ill. — The four-legged member of the counseling team at the high school in suburban Chicago waits patiently, as a crush of students fills the hallways. Her tail wags with the first pat on the head, then another and another.