Arizona

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — An activist was quickly acquitted Wednesday on charges he illegally harbored two Central American immigrants at a southern Arizona camp operated by a humanitarian group.

The verdict by a jury in U.S. District Court came after jurors deliberated for about two hours in what was the second trial for Scott Warren. A mistrial was declared last June after a jury deadlocked on harboring charges.

Warren was stoic after the verdict was read. “The government failed in its attempt to criminalize basic human kindness,” Warren said outside of court.

USA (AP) --- The National Transportation Safety Board on Tuesday condemned the lack of state and federal regulation for testing autonomous vehicles before finding that a distracted human safety driver was the main cause of a fatal 2018 Arizona crash involving an Uber vehicle.

The board criticized the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the government’s road safety agency, for failing to lead in regulating tests on public roads. But it also said states need to adopt their own regulations.

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — A judge banned an Arizona border activist charged with harboring immigrants from mentioning President Donald Trump during his retrial, which began Tuesday.

U.S. District Court Judge Raner Collins granted a motion by prosecutors to bar the mention of the president during the second trial of Scott Warren, just before opening statements began. His first trial ended with a deadlocked jury last June.

“There should be no politics in this case. I’m not going to allow it,” Collins said.

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — An 18-vehicle caravan carrying about 100 members of an offshoot Mormon community leaving their homes after a violent attack in Mexico arrived in Arizona on Saturday.

The families came nearly a week after the attack Monday in which nine women and children were killed by what authorities said were hit men from drug cartels.

On Saturday, families went in and out of a gas station in Douglas near the port of entry as the sun began to set, the Arizona Daily Star reported .

ALONG THE BLACK MESA AND LAKE POWELL RAILROAD, Ariz. (AP) — Ron Little nestles into a familiar seat aboard a train locomotive and slides the window open, leaning out to get a better view of dozens of rail cars that stretch for a mile behind and the landscape he knows so well.

PHOENIX (AP) — An elected official in Arizona was suspended Monday after he was charged with running a human smuggling scheme that brought pregnant women from the Marshall Islands to the U.S. to give birth and then paid them to give up their children for adoption.

Leaders in Arizona’s most populous county suspended Assessor Paul Petersen without pay for 120 days. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors doesn’t have the power to permanently remove him from his office, which determines the value of properties for tax purposes in Phoenix and its suburbs.

CASA GRANDE, Ariz. (AP) — While President Donald Trump plays defense on impeachment in Washington, Republicans are taking the fight to Democrats in the states.

Dozens of shouting and flag-waving Trump supporters gathered Tuesday at the Casa Grande field office of Democratic Rep. Tom O’Halleran, who has signaled support for an impeachment inquiry, to protest Democratic efforts to remove the president from office.

PHOENIX (AP) — An Arizona elected official ran a human smuggling scheme that promised pregnant women thousands of dollars to lure them from a Pacific Island nation to the U.S., where they were crammed into houses to wait to give birth, sometimes with little to no prenatal care, prosecutors allege.

Paul Petersen, the Republican assessor of Arizona’s most populous county, was charged in Utah, Arizona and Arkansas with counts including human smuggling, sale of a child, fraud, forgery and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

PHOENIX (AP) — A 20-year-old student at Arizona State University broke the news that a key State Department official who was involved in talks between President Donald Trump and the Ukrainian government had stepped down from his post.

Andrew Howard, a managing editor of The State Press student newspaper, reported Friday evening that Kurt D. Volker stepped down from his role as the State Department’s special envoy for Ukraine.

“I’m not sure any of us thought it would just be this big scoop,” Howard told The Associated Press. “It’s just incredible.”

YUMA, Ariz. (AP) — On a dirt road past rows of date trees, just feet from a dry section of Colorado River, a small construction crew is putting up a towering border wall that the government hopes will reduce — for good — the flow of immigrants who cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.