Simply Scottsdale News Feeds

Former Phoenix Suns star Charles Barkley took a leave of absence Friday from TNT Sports following a charge of drunken driving.

Police caught a man they suspect defrauded nearly 70 people out of about $2.5 million in cash and property after a year of searching for him.

Like other Valley municipalities, Fountain Hills faces serious spending cuts that threaten its well-to-do lifestyle.

Paradise Valley has implemented a hiring freeze and most likely will have to lay off employees because of a decline in town revenues.

They await their place in the spotlight at the Barrett-Jackson auction, which starts this weekend.

A Carefree initiative asking voters if they want to elect their own mayor could face legal opposition if it passes, a town attorney said.

An estimated 80 percent of businesses do not re-open after a fire, Fountain Hills Fire Chief Scott LaGreca said.

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) -- Gov. Rod Blagojevich was impeached Friday by Illinois lawmakers furious that he turned state government into a "freak show," setting the stage for an unprecedented trial in the state Senate that could get him thrown out of office. The 114-1 vote in the Illinois House came exactly a month after Blagojevich's arrest on charges that included trying to sell President-elect Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat. The debate took less than 90 minutes, and not a single leg...

CHICAGO (AP) -- Authorities say five people were shot at a high school on Chicago's South Side....

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) -- The videotaped killing of an unarmed black man by a transit police officer here has inflamed long-running tensions between police and many African-American residents....

BALTIMORE (AP) -- Mayor Sheila Dixon was indicted Friday on charges that she accepted illegal gifts during her time as mayor and City Council president, including travel, fur coats and gift cards intended for the poor that she allegedly used instead for a holiday shopping spree....

CHICAGO (AP) -- U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin said Friday that Roland Burris should not be seated in the U.S. Senate because he has failed to get the secretary of state's signature on his appointment to replace President-elect Barack Obama in the chamber....

BOSTON (AP) -- A Boston Fire Department ladder truck coming down a hill plowed through an intersection Friday and crashed into a high-rise apartment building, killing one firefighter and seriously injuring a second....

STEVENSON, Ala. (AP) -- A retention pond at a Tennessee Valley Authority coal-burning power plant leaked waste into a northeast Alabama creek Friday, ramping up pressure on the utility that already is trying to clean up last month's major coal ash spill at a plant in Tennessee....

Speaking out two years after being embroiled in a gay sex scandal, former evangelical pastor Ted Haggard said Friday his sexual identity is complex and can't be put into "stereotypical boxes," but that his relationship with his wife is stronger than ever....

SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) -- Civil liberties and immigrant rights advocates expressed outrage over a Department of Justice rule that took effect Friday, mandating federal agencies to collect DNA samples from anyone who is arrested and foreigners detained by immigration authorities....

Behind the latest unemployment figures showing another 500,000-plus Americans lost their jobs is a sad truth: The deeper the recession becomes, the more it touches people whose livelihoods have never been threatened by dark financial times....