Arizona

On an uninviting swatch of arid desert, marked by sagebrush and mesquite trees just east of the California border, the winds of war blew together the fates of two beleaguered peoples. In a now familiar tale, 120,000 Japanese Americans were removed from the West Coast and relocated to internment camps after Japan's 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent U.S. entry into World War II. But in a little known piece of that history, the U.S.

Rep. Rick Renzi, a three-term Republican from Arizona, was charged in a federal indictment unsealed Friday with multiple counts of wrongdoing, including using his official position to promote a land deal that secretly brought millions to him and a business partner. The indictment, handed up by a federal grand jury in Tucson late Thursday and revealed by Justice Department officials at a news conference Friday, charges Renzi with 35 counts, including extortion, money laundering and fraud.

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to rule on whether police officers are free to search a parked vehicle whenever they arrest a driver or a passenger. Prosecutors, including Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, asked the high court to set "a clear, bright-line rule" that permits officers to search a vehicle whenever an arrest is made, even if the handcuffed person has been taken away.

A U.S. Border Patrol agent was threatened with a rock when he fatally shot an illegal immigrant, his defense attorney told a federal jury Wednesday, but a prosecutor contended that the man did not provoke the attack. "The victim was surrendering, going down on his knees, was hit from behind . . . and shot through the heart while surrendering," special prosecutor Grant Woods told jurors during opening statements in the agent's trial.

A federal appeals court Thursday refused to block a controversial Arizona law that shuts down businesses for knowingly hiring illegal immigrants. The action by the three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco clears the way for the statute to be enforced beginning Saturday. In a brief order, the judges said that business and immigrant rights groups had not shown an adequate need for delaying enforcement of the law. After the measure went into effect Jan.

As it has become the favorite entry point for undocumented migrants trying to sneak into the United States, Arizona has become a laboratory for whether a state can single-handedly combat illegal immigration. In recent years it has barred illegal immigrants from receiving government services, from winning punitive damages in lawsuits and from posting bail for serious crimes. A new state law shuts down businesses that hire illegal workers.

One of two men charged in a series of random slayings that terrorized the Phoenix area in 2005 and 2006 pleaded guilty Friday to first-degree murder. The move does not guarantee that Samuel Dieteman, 32, will be spared a death sentence, which prosecutors said they still intend to pursue. However, Dieteman's agreement to testify against his alleged partner, Dale Hausner, will be taken into account when a jury considers his penalty.

Sen. John McCain championed legislation that will let an Arizona rancher trade remote grassland and ponderosa pine forest here for acres of valuable federally owned property that is ready for development, a land swap that now stands to directly benefit one of his top presidential campaign fundraisers.

When John McCain arrived in the Valley of the Sun nearly three decades ago, he was weighed down with enough negatives to sink most budding politicians. Some Arizonans dismissed him as a carpetbagger shopping for an available House seat -- and a future in Washington politics. Others were annoyed that he had left the wife who waited valiantly for his return from a Hanoi prison, and that he had then married a much younger bride.

Two men were arrested late Saturday in connection with the killing of a NASA engineer and three other people last week, Los Angeles County sheriffs said Sunday. Jae Hwan Shim, 39, of Palmdale and Steve Kwon, 37, were taken into custody in Douglas, Ariz., said Sheriff's Deputy Derrick Thompson. They are suspected of taking part in the killing of Joseph Ciganek, who worked for the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, as well as a woman and two children June 23 in an Antelope Valley home.