Sorted by date Results 26 - 50 of 54
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says he will not impose quotas on importing uranium, backing away from a possible trade confrontation and breaking with a Commerce Department assessment that America's use of foreign uranium raises national security concerns. The decision is unusual for Trump, who has pointed to national security concerns in calling for restrictions on foreign metal and autos in trade negotiations. It's also drawing rare criticism from Republicans in energy-rich states. Uranium is a vital component for the U.S. n...
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — A 150-year-old document that allowed Navajos to return to their homeland in the Four Corners region where Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado meet is destined for a permanent home at the tribe's museum. Navajos had been imprisoned at a desolate tract of land in eastern New Mexico before signing a treaty with the federal government in 1868. The United States signed hundreds of treaties with Native American tribes as acts of peace and friendship or to end wars, but the Navajos were unique in securing a return to t...
KAIBETO, Ariz. (AP) — Miranda Haskie sits amid the glow of candles at her kitchen table as the sun sinks into a deep blue horizon silhouetting juniper trees and a nearby mesa. Her husband, Jimmie Long, Jr., fishes for the wick to light a kerosene lamp as the couple and their 13-year-old son prepare to spend a final night without electricity. They're waiting for morning, when utility workers who recently installed four electric poles outside their double-wide house trailer will connect it to the power grid, meaning they will no longer be a...
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — In a remote, roadless Arizona canyon that is home to a small Native American tribe, there's a natural skepticism toward the internet. The telemedicine equipment that health care officials promised would work gathers dust. School children who have online homework struggle to get online. And streaming a web-based conference or taking classes remotely? Well, "that's a lot of luck you'd have to get," said Ophelia Watahomigie-Corliss, who sits on the Havasupai Tribal Council. Things started to change after a small company a...
ACOMA PUEBLO, N.M. (AP) — Native American leaders are banding together to pressure U.S. officials to ban oil and gas exploration around a sacred tribal site that features massive stone structures and other remnants of an ancient civilization but are facing the Trump administration's pro-drilling stance. Creating a formal buffer around Chaco Culture National Historical Park has been a long-running issue, but tribes are pushing for further protections as U.S. officials revamp the management plan for the area surrounding the world heritage site as...
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — One of the largest coal-fired power plants in the West will close this year as planned after a Navajo Nation company ended its long-shot bid Friday to acquire it. The Navajo Generating Station has operated for decades in northeastern Arizona near the Utah border, providing a hefty chunk of revenue to the Navajo Nation. Both the Navajo and the neighboring Hopi Tribe benefit from the Kayenta Mine, which feeds the 2,250-megawatt power plant, transporting the coal on a rail line. Navajo leaders asked the Navajo T...
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — Seven states that rely on a major waterway in the U.S. West have finished a yearslong effort to create a plan to protect the Colorado River amid a prolonged drought, the federal government declared Tuesday. U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman commended Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming for reaching a consensus on the Colorado River drought contingency plan. Now the states are seeking approval from Congress to implement it. "It is time for us to work with our congressional d...
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — The first female superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park resigned Thursday, less than three years after she took the helm of one of the country's most popular tourist destinations. Christine Lehnertz's resignation comes months after she was reassigned amid a federal investigation that cleared her of allegations of creating a hostile work environment and wasting park resources. In an email to Grand Canyon employees, Lehnertz said the past few months have been life-changing and she reassessed her priorities. "My e...
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — A federal law that gives preference to Native American families in foster care and adoption proceedings involving Native American children is facing the most significant legal challenge since it was enacted more than 40 years ago. A federal judge in Texas ruled the Indian Child Welfare Act is unconstitutional, saying it is racially motivated and violates the equal protection clause. More than 20 states have joined hundreds of tribes, advocacy groups and the federal agency overseeing Indian affairs in urging an appellate...
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — A California irrigation district with the highest-priority rights to water from a major Western river is using its power to demand federal funds to restore the state's largest lake, hoping to capitalize on one of its best opportunities yet to tackle a long-standing environmental and human health hazard. The Imperial Irrigation District wants $200 million for the Salton Sea, a massive, briny lake in the desert southeast of Los Angeles created when the Colorado River breached a dike in 1905 and flooded a dry lake bed. T...
FORT DEFIANCE, Ariz. (AP) — Jonathan Nez delivered a message of hope, resilience and change Tuesday in his inaugural address as president of the Navajo Nation, drawing from the tribe's history as a way to move forward. He and Vice President Myron Lizer took the oath of office before a large crowd at an indoor sports arena in Fort Defiance, near the tribal capital, that dwindled as the ceremony ran longer than scheduled. The two easily won November's general election to lead the tribe on the country's largest Native American reservation for t...
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — Fallout from the federal government shutdown is hurting Native Americans as dwindling funds hamper access to health care and other services. The pain is especially deep in tribal communities with high rates of poverty and unemployment, where one person often supports an extended family. The effects were being felt far and wide. In New Mexico, a lone police officer patrolled a Native American reservation larger in size than Houston on a shift that normally has three people, responding to multiple car wrecks during a s...
PRESCOTT, Ariz. (AP) — An award-winning Arizona newspaper publisher and his wife are locked in a bizarre divorce case that has morphed into something more: a journalism ethics saga. Joseph Soldwedel has accused wife Felice Soldwedel in a lawsuit of trying to kill him by poisoning him, and detailed the allegations in one of the small-town newspapers he owns, the 13,000-circulation Prescott Daily Courier. None of the three news stories in the paper named his wife. But the Courier ran an ad accusing her by name, with a photo of her, bordered w...
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — A video released by the U.S. Forest Service shows how a gender reveal event led to a costly wildfire in southern Arizona that forced about 200 people out of their homes. The information gleaned from the video isn't new, but it's the first public visual of how quickly the tall, dry grass on state land near Green Valley went up in flames after an off-duty U.S. Border Patrol agent fired a rifle at a homemade target. The rectangular target with a diamond checkered design marked with "boy" or "girl" explodes, sending a b...
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — Jon Rios traces his ancestry to the Pima people of Arizona, but he has no tribal enrollment card and lives hundreds of miles away in Colorado. He has no interest in meeting any federally imposed requirements to prove his connection to a tribe. If anyone asks, he says he's Native American. "I'm a little bit like Elizabeth Warren. I have my ancestral lineage," Rios said, referring to his affiliation with the Pima, also known as Akimel O'odham. The clash between the Massachusetts Democratic senator and President Donald T...
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — With snowfall dwindling at the Grand Canyon's North Rim, tourism promoters see an opportunity to stretch out the visiting season at the less popular side of the canyon so more people experience it and spend money in the region. The canyon's North Rim is fully open less than half of the year and isn't as easy to get to as the South Rim, which attracts 90 percent of the canyon's annual 6.25 million visitors. The North Rim has equally stunning views but is more serene, with cooler temperatures and far fewer tour buses. T...
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — Hundreds of tourists who booked coveted overnight trips on tribal land deep in a gorge off the Grand Canyon will have to reschedule after heavy flooding forced evacuations and shut down the area for at least a week. Abbie Fink, a spokeswoman for the Havasupai Tribe, said 300 people had reservations for either the campground or the lodge in the next several days. Crews were assessing the damage Friday to determine when it's safe for visitors to return. "Every day it's closed, it's another set of people impacted by it," sh...
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — The retrial of a former Northern Arizona University student charged in a fatal shooting in 2015 was delayed Thursday for a fourth time, frustrating surviving victims and their families. A jury in Steven Jones' first trial deadlocked on murder and aggravated assault charges, and he had been scheduled for a retrial in July. However, Coconino County Superior Court Judge Dan Slayton granted a request from two of his attorneys to push back the date but didn't immediately set a new one. Jones remains free during the p...
CAMERON, Ariz. (AP) — Off a northern Arizona highway surrounded by pastel-colored desert is one of the starkest examples of drought's grip on the American Southwest: Dozens of dead horses surrounded by cracked earth, swirling dust and a ribbon of water that couldn't quench their thirst. Flesh exposed and in various stages of decomposition, the carcasses form a circle around a dry watering hole sunken in the landscape. It's clear this isn't the first time the animals have struggled. Skeletal remain are scattered on the fringes and in an a...
PARKS, Ariz. (AP) — Students in Patrick Brown's sixth-grade science class grab laptops from cubby holes for a lesson on water data. Type in "High Adventure Science," he tells them, writing the words on the whiteboard. He then quizzes the 10 students sitting in metal chairs with worn cushions on porosity, permeability and salinity. One student interjects and says "I saw your son today." At the small grade school tucked into the ponderosa pine forest about 20 miles (32.1 kilometers) west of Flagstaff, most everyone knows each other. The Maine C...
PHOENIX (AP) — The Hopi Tribe and coal mining groups on Tuesday sued the operator of an Arizona aqueduct system to try and keep a coal-fired power plant running beyond 2019. The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court by the tribe, the United Mine Workers of America and Peabody Energy contends the Central Arizona Water Conservation District is obligated under federal law to buy power from Navajo Generating Station near Page. The 2,250-megawatt plant is set to close next year and the prospects of new ownership depend on finding someone to purchase...
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — Stephen C. has been taught only math and English at a U.S.-run elementary school for Native American children deep in a gorge off the Grand Canyon. Teachers have left midyear, and he repeatedly faces suspension and arrest for behavior his attorneys say is linked to a disability stemming from traumatic experiences. The 12-year-old is among children from Arizona's remote and impoverished Havasupai reservation who are a step closer to their push for systematic reform of the U.S. agency that oversees tribal education, allegi...
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — Crews are drilling at the bottom of the Grand Canyon to test the idea of shifting the area where water is drawn to serve millions of people at the national park's popular South Rim. The park's water supply comes from a natural spring that flows through 12.5 miles (20 kilometers) of pipeline. But the 1960s aluminum pipeline to the South Rim twists and turns around trails and through rocky terrain, frequently breaking and leaking. Each repair costs an average of $25,000. Instead of pulling water from Roaring Springs, o...
Cleveland native Josh Hunt is not a fan of baseball. But he's showed up at Progressive Field where the Indians play for the past couple of years to protest the team name and its mascot, Chief Wahoo — confronted with fans in headdresses and face paint, some playing small drums. "Being Native American myself, it's a reminder that our city and our society doesn't see me as a human being," he said. "It would prefer to portray me as a racist stereotype, a bloodthirsty savage." The protests have been happening since at least the 1970s, and this week...
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — A man charged with a deadly shooting at Northern Arizona University has settled a negligence lawsuit against him and his parents. Steven Jones has said he acted in self-defense when he fatally shot 20-year-old Colin Brough and wounded three others on the Flagstaff campus in 2015. Prosecutors said Jones was the aggressor. Nicholas Piring, Kyle Zientek and Nicholas Prato were wounded. None of the victims was armed. The lawsuit filed on behalf of Brough's parents, Piring and Prato alleged that Jones was immature, prone t...
