From Australia to England, vendors from around the world are gathering in Tucson for the United States’ largest mineral and gem show. The main event, the 59th Annual Tucson Gem and Mineral Show, starts on February 14 and runs until February 17 but is preceded by two week’s worth of independent shows throughout the city.

For an event that started off as a single, free show in 1955, the Gem Show quickly grew an international reputation. “For seven years we were the only show in town, then in 1962 there was the first satellite show,” said Gloria Quigg, publicity chair for the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show.

Since the show’s initial premiere and quick growth in popularity, the excitement around the show has drawn thousands of independent vendors and promoters to Tucson. More than 3,000 vendors have unique minerals, gems, fossils, rocks, beads and jewelry for sale at nearly 40 individual shows throughout the city.

Reggio Emilia is an alternative approach to early childhood education that is gathering more and more attention in Arizona.

The program allows children to see their value in their learning community. The philosophy hit the United States about 12 to 15 years ago, and has grown in schools since then.

The North American Reggio Emilia Alliance (NAREA) is an organization that promotes the spread of the Reggio philosophy throughout education facilities across the nation.

NAREA held its fourth winter conference in Tucson last weekend at the Tucson Marriot University Park Hotel. Tucson Children’s Project, the University of Arizona and Head Start Children Parent Centers hosted the conference.

“Tucson is unique,” said Reggio educator Andrea Buttrick. “Unique in the way we've supported each other in collaborating and growing.”

This uniqueness ties into the winter conference in Tucson, titled “Walls into Bridges: Transforming Challenges into Opportunities.” It focused on turning the challenges the Reggio philosophy faces in Tucson into occasions in which educators can put this philosophy into practice.

Charity events have been going on for years, but with new interactive runs the events have become more about the entertainment than the speed of the race.

With runs like the Color Run, Mud Run, and The Bubble Run, participants nationally are focusing more on the adventure, than the charity. And that spirit has come to Arizona.

They jut into sunny skies—an American flag, a Dairy Queen billboard and a yellow Shell—one by one beckoning the weary traveler to take Exit 219 for Picacho Peak Road. Take a break from the high speeds and sudden break lights, they say. Interstate 10 will be here after you gas up, get a soft-serve cone, and experience the quirk hidden beneath billboards.

I-10, the descendant of territorial trails and country-crossing railroads, speeds through the southern half of Arizona. Its lane lines, faded by decades of sunshine, stretch from California to New Mexico and through Arizona’s largest cities, Phoenix and Tucson. Just beyond the off ramps, oddities forgotten by most entice the treasure-hunter, history buff and strange family on vacation.

Sandra Rodríguez Nieto and Rocío Gallegos Rodríguez are two of many reporters in Ciudad Juárez that weren’t prepared to cover what was known as one of the most dangerous places in the world for a journalist.

There have been more than 70 media workers killed in Mexico since 1994, according to data from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Among those murdered were two of Rodriguez and Gallegos co-workers at El Diario de Juárez - reporter Armando Rodríguez Carreón and photographer Luis Carlos Santiago Orozco.

The Department of Homeland Security has agreed to the Government Accountability Office’s new strategic recommendations. Barber and other public officials gave Arizona residents a brief overview of the GAO report in Douglas and Tucson earlier this week.

High above Hollywood, the Griffith Observatory received scores of phone calls. Why were there so many stars? What was that shimmering grey cloud stretching out from the horizon? Did the strange sky cause the quake?

In the midst of tragedy, Angelenos were treated to a sight normally unseen from a bright city: the Milky Way. It takes a dark sky to see the band of starlight emanating from billions of stars near the center of our own galaxy, a view that has gradually disappeared under the glare of electrically-lit progress.

In Arizona, where space sciences are worth an estimated $250 million annually, bright skies are a serious threat to astronomical research. Cities like Tucson have adopted lighting ordinances to protect the industry, but as urban sprawl increases, bad lighting affects more than stargazing scientists. Energy is wasted. Wildlife is threatened. Human health is impacted.

TODOS SANTOS CUCHUMATÁN, GUATEMALA – There’s a new road to Todos Santos.

It used to be an uncomfortable daytrip from the departmental capital of Huehuetenango to this one-street town, tucked between mountains in northwestern Guatemala. The highway is mostly paved now, and those 17 miles of switchbacks climbing 10,000 feet only take an hour or two.

Those mountains protected Todos Santos and kept it nearly impermeable to the outside influences that caused other Mayan groups to lose their language and customs dating back to Spanish colonization. Separated by those 17 miles, Todos Santos was once a world away.

Today, Todos Santos is looking more like the rest of the world.

Chanting demands for justice and a thorough investigation, roughly 30 friends, relatives and supporters of the slain 16-year-old Nogales, Sonora, resident José Antonio Elena Rodriguez marched to the Sonoran side of the downtown port-of-entry Saturday morning.

José Antonio was killed the evening of Oct. 10 in a Border Patrol shooting that is still under investigation on both sides of the border.

The march ended a few blocks west, at the site of José Antonio’s death, near the corner of Internacional and Ingenieros. Standing just feet away from that corner, anger comes easily to Araceli Rodriguez, the young man’s mother.

“They’ve taken a piece of my heart. It’s where they buried him,” she said. “No one is going to return my son to me. No one can give me back the hugs I gave him, the kisses, his voice or his smile.”

Read the rest of the story at the Tucson Weekly.