KJZZ's Sun Up is a weekday morning podcast giving you the Arizona news you need to start your day. It is the biggest stories of the day from KJZZ News.
Transcript
ANNOUNCER: KJZZ's Sun Up is supported by Banner Health, Arizona's largest nonprofit healthcare system. Last year, Banner reinvested more than $1.1 billion in community health and charity care. Banner Health, nonprofit for Arizona. BannerHealth.com/nonprofitforAZ.
PHIL LATZMAN: This is KJZZ's Sun Up. It is your daily news update from here in Phoenix on our state and region. I'm Phil Latzman, your host for this podcast, a daily digest of Arizona news. As reported by our KJZZ News team, it is Monday, June 8th. Hope you had a great weekend. Let's kick off a fresh week with a check of the news. Well, a federal judge has scheduled oral arguments for June 26 on a Maricopa County request to end federal oversight of the Sheriff's Office. Matthew Casey has the latest.
MATTHEW CASEY: The sheriff's office has long been under watch of a court-appointed monitor, charged with overseeing major reforms stemming from a racial profiling lawsuit filed against longtime former sheriff, Joe Arpaio. Last year, members of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors called for this to end due to the cost to taxpayers. And in December, the county formally petitioned federal judge Murray Snow to stop oversight. Now Snow has scheduled a hearing on the request. He previously said all sides have to seek an end to oversight once the sheriff's office has complied with reforms for three years. Matthew Casey, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
PHIL LATZMAN: If you recently sped in front of one of the city of Phoenix's 17 photo safety cameras, you may be among the thousands of drivers who received a traffic citation. Ignacio Ventura has more.
IGNACIO VENTURA: The city of Phoenix says these cameras, which are placed along various roadways, have helped capture roughly 132,000 speeding events since May 31. So far, more than 17,000 traffic citations have been mailed out, and more than 13,000 legal notices have been generated. Officials with the city say the money collected from fines will be used to fund this program, as well as other projects within the city's Vision Zero safety program, which aims to reduce traffic fatalities and injuries. Ignacio Ventura, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
PHIL LATZMAN: Well, Gov. Katie Hobbs signed into law a bill that would regulate alternative nicotine products like vapes. The bill requires distributors to be authorized by the Department of Liquor Licenses. It also bans marketing vapes to minors or making them resemble cartoon characters or a game. Here's House Republican Teresa Martinez.
TERESA MARTINEZ: We had a vape that was in a slurpy cup that looked like a keychain, and it smelled like cherry. It was very tempting.
PHIL LATZMAN: The law also carries tougher penalties for selling vapes or other alternative nicotine products to those under the age of 21. Well, 17 high school teachers from all over the state spent a week at ASU learning more about the industry that's powering artificial intelligence. The program ended with a philosophical debate over the future of education, workforce, and human intelligence. Taylor Griffith has more.
TAYLOR GRIFFITH: Professor Aviral Shrivastava started his career designing electrical transistors. Today, he's training AI models and teaching ASU students quantum computing programming. Despite Intel and TSMC's huge presence in the state, he says few are familiar with semiconductors and what they enable.
AVIRAL SHRIVASTAVA: AI is doing miracles and almost every field, but we often don't connect it to semiconductors. So AI doesn't run in thin air, it runs on computer —
TAYLOR GRIFFITH: Shrivastava launched the AI and Semiconductor Summer Institute to help high school educators understand AI from the inside out. In a concluding panel, the program participants discussed how AI is disrupting learning for good and for worse, and which parts of AI hype to believe. Taylor Griffith, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
PHIL LATZMAN: Well, first of its kind, collaborative is looking to improve learning opportunities for women who are incarcerated at Estrella Jail, Maricopa County's only all-female jail. Kathy Ritchie reports.
DOMINIQUE ROE-SEPOWITZ: How do we work with people who don't leave their cell, and how do we...
KATHY RITCHIE: Dominique Roe-Sepowitz is leading one of the first gatherings of the Becoming Collaborative.
DOMINIQUE ROE-SEPOWITZ: It's a group of really smart, really thoughtful people who want to work with incarcerated women for the best reasons to make them feel heard and seen, to make them feel connected to the community that they're going to return to.
KATHY RITCHIE: Roe-Sepowitz is a professor in the school of social work at ASU and the director of the Office of Sex Trafficking Intervention Research. The collaborative was born from her work at Estrella Jail.
DOMINIQUE ROE-SEPOWITZ: I don't know of any other program like this in the country.
KATHY RITCHIE: Until now, there haven't been many programs or classes at the jail on topics like domestic violence, parenting or financial planning, in part because the average length of stay is nine days. Valentina Restrepo-Montoya leads Arizona Legal Women and Youth Services, or ALWAYS. Her organization will offer a course called Repairing the Future.
VALENTINA RESTREPO-MONTOYA: And we walk through different options in criminal history repair, we call them the different doors that you might be able to open.
KATHY RITCHIE: Like filing a petition to seal or clear arrest or conviction records. Some of the groups will head to Estrella this week. Kathy Ritchie, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
PHIL LATZMAN: Well, some of the best places to see the night sky in the Milky Way are in our region. And as the Mountain West News Bureau's Rachel Cohen reports, states are getting creative to attract people who want to travel to see the stars.
RACHEL COHEN: More than 80 places in the Mountain West are certified as good places to see the night sky with the nonprofit DarkSky. The certification requires communities to reduce light pollution, but it also helps market these destinations to potential travelers. That's what Colorado is hoping to cash in on with its new stargazing trail. Colorado Tourism Office Director Tim Wolfe says it's a new map that helps visitors find the state's dark places and appreciate its natural beauty.
TIM WOLF: Being able to see and experience things as they were before changes in those environments.
RACHEL COHEN: Flagstaff, Arizona was the first ever dark sky community. Utah has the highest concentration globally, and Idaho is home to the only dark sky reserve in the U.S. For the Mountain West News Bureau, I'm Rachel Cohen.
PHIL LATZMAN: The San Carlos Lake closed on Friday due to health and safety hazard caused by dead fish. Some activities like fishing are prohibited until further notice. Here's Ignacio Ventura once more with that.
IGNACIO VENTURA: The lake is one of the largest lakes in the state and is located in east-central Arizona. The San Carlos Recreation and Wildlife Department says drought conditions combined with water releases from the Coolidge Dam cause the sudden death of a large number of fish. The agency says it will monitor conditions and provide updates when they become available. Those who choose to enter the lake area or attempt to fish face health risks. The department is asking people to avoid the area. Ignacio Ventura, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
PHIL LATZMAN: Arizona State University has launched a system to measure and categorize dust storm severity in the Phoenix area. Greg Hahne reports.
GREG HAHNE: The Phoenix dust storm scale will use atmospheric data to rank storm severity primarily on dust concentration. It also ranks different subcategories like wind speed and the area covered by a storm. It categorizes severity similarly to the hurricane scale with Category 5 being the most severe. The online dashboard is based on a study published late last year in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. ASU Professor Ryan Heintzman is a study co-author.
RYAN HEINTZMAN: It's kind of a way to to help raise awareness for the general public in terms of just, you know, what these dust events are, some of the the concerns and safety associated with dust.
GREG HAHNE: Heintzman says the scale will also provide meteorologists a way to study broader dust storm patterns. Greg Hahne, KJZZ News, Phoenix.
PHIL LATZMAN: A new exhibit at the Mesa Historical Museum showcases the origin story of Falcon Field Airport and its role in training World War II Royal Air Force cadets. Jocelyn Condon is with the Arizona Aviation Historical Group. She says with bad weather and bombings, the cadets could not safely train in England.
JOCELYN CONDON: The United States wanted to help, but didn't want to get involved. So actually, Falcon Field opened in early June of 1941.
PHIL LATZMAN: The US joined the war following the attack on Pearl Harbor that December. For the museum exhibit, British cadet descendants helped the historical group collect photos, medals, plane parts, uniforms, and stories. The nonprofit Valley Leadership debuted the chatbot Mia in 2024 as a way for people to connect with food and clothing services via text or online chat. With the first time this year, Mia can now connect users to more than 200 cooling stations and hydration stations. Stephen Flaaen with the Valley Leadership says Mia is different from traditional artificial intelligence.
STEPHEN FLAAEN: It's a much more focused, constructed conversation. We're very intentional about making sure Mia has correct, verified resources.
PHIL LATZMAN: The service is a partnership with Maricopa County Department of Public Health, which operates the 211 heat relief and human services helpline. In sports, Gabriel Moreno hit a two-run homer, Michael Soroka seven effective innings, a D-backs avoid a series sweep with a 5-1 win over the Washington Nationals yesterday, Chase Field. D-backs' bats came to life after losing the first two games by a combined score of 20 to 2. Arizona hits the road to begin a series in Miami tomorrow. Meanwhile, the Diamondbacks signed outfielder Max Kepler, who is still serving an 80-game suspension for testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs. Terms of the deal were not announced. The 33-year-old Kepler will not be able to report to the team until June 25th, when his suspension ends. And that does it for this edition of KJZZ's Sun Up, Arizona's morning news podcast this Monday, June the 8th. I'm Phil Latzman, thanks so much for listening, and we'll do this all again tomorrow. Talk to you then.
