All Star Game boycott sought to protest Arizona law

The only Latino in the Senate urged Major League Baseball players on Monday to boycott the 2011 All-Star game in Arizona to protest the state’s tough new immigration law.”The Arizona law is offensive to Hispanics and all Americans because it codifies racial profiling into law by requiring police to question anyone who appears to be in the country illegally,” New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez wrote Michael Weiner, executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association.

Menendez, who chairs the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, is the only Latino in the 100-member chamber. In his letter, he noted more than 1 in 4 players are Latinos.Signed into law last month by Arizona Republican Governor Jan Brewer, the law requires state and local police, after making “lawful contact,” to check the immigration status of anyone they reasonably suspect is in the country illegally.The measure has prompted a number of calls for boycotts of businesses in the state, amid charges that it is unconstitutional and a mandate for racial profiling.

Representative Jose Serrano, a New York Democrat, and some Latino organizations have called upon MLB Commissioner Bud Selig to move the All-Star game, which is scheduled to be played in July 2011 in Phoenix, Arizona’s state capital. A Major League Baseball spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment.Calls for a sporting boycott of Arizona began soon after Brewer signed the bill into law on April 23. A group of protesters turned out to picket the Diamondbacks, the state’s Major League baseball team, at a game in Chicago.

The new law has reignited calls for Congress to overhaul the U.S. immigration system, and Menendez joined two fellow Senate Democrats last month in unveiling a “draft” plan.But lawmakers from both parties appear reluctant to tackle the emotional issue months before November’s congressional elections.

‘HUMILIATION AND HARASSMENT’

Almost two-thirds of Arizona voters and a majority of voters nationwide support the law, which backers say is needed to curb violence and crime stemming from illegal immigration in the Mexico border state.

In late April, Brewer signed changes to the law that she said made it “crystal clear” racial profiling was illegal. However, a recent poll of Hispanic voters in Arizona found that 85 percent felt that Latinos who are legal immigrants or U.S. citizens were likely to be stopped or questioned by police.In his letter, Menendez wrote that Latino players come to the United States legally “and should not be subjected to the humiliation and harassment that (the new law) would inflict” on them during their visit to the state for the All-Star game.”Imagine if your players and their families were subjected to interrogation by law enforcement, simply because they look a certain way,” the senator added.

Menendez said, “the Arizona law is an embarrassment to our country and a call to action to our communities to stand up against injustice.””For these reasons, I ask that you consider boycotting the All-Star Game in Arizona until SB1070 (the new law) is repealed, or the League decides to move the game to an alternate location,” Menendez wrote.(Reuters)

World Cup helps ESPN's expansion plans

NEW YORK ESPN marketers will fan out to bars in ethnic enclaves during World Cup matches to pass out schedules and posters, just one way the sports network is using the quadrennial event to build new audiences in both the U.S. and internationally.The network’s large presence of 300 staff members in South Africa for the soccer tournament could also be seen as a dry run to help a future Olympics bid.

Either ESPN, ESPN2 or corporate sister ABC is televising every one of the 64 scheduled matches in the first year the company has the American television rights to the tournament. ESPN leased rights to televise some games in 2006, covering some of the matches with announcing teams based in a Connecticut studio.

“We think it’s a chance to advance the notion that we are a global entity,” said John Skipper, the network’s executive vice president for content.One way to do that is to start at home. ESPN will promote itself heavily in areas where the network’s emphasis on American sports makes it less interesting to residents. The Greek enclave in Queens, N.Y., San Francisco’s Italian section, Boston’s Portuguese neighborhoods and Los Angeles’ Korean communities – all with fans keen on rooting on ancestral homelands – are among the areas that will get special attention.

Besides sending people to gathering places where the games are being watched, ESPN commissioned a South African artist to make posters honoring each of the participating countries, mixing historical and soccer themes. The U.S. poster, for example, commemorates George Washington crossing the Delaware, with soccer players standing in for his troops.

The network has equipped food trucks with a giant TV on the roof, passing out specialty foods from some of the participating countries in New York and Los Angeles, said Seth Ader, the network’s sports marketing senior director.Online and on ESPN Radio, the company will give fans the option of hearing broadcasts in different languages, including Chinese, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean and Portuguese.

In the U.S., Univision has the rights to Spanish-language broadcasts of the matches. Although ESPN can’t offer Spanish-language broadcasts of the matches, it is moving into the territory by offering 10 hours a day of studio-based Spanish content on its ESPN Deportes network.

Getting an identification as a destination for soccer fans “is a long-term business proposition for us,” Ader said. Showing the World Cup telecast can drum up interest in U.S.-based professional soccer, which ESPN has rights to televise. World Cup soccer is also expected to be a draw for ESPN’s mobile business, too.

Soccer is also key to ESPN’s efforts to expand in international markets. The network made a big move last year by purchasing the rights to show some games in England’s Barclays Premier League.”In order to get a foothold in a number of international markets, they need to get soccer content,” said David Joyce, an analyst for Miller Tabak & Co.

Having a home team helps ESPN but isn’t vital to success, the network’s executives believe. ESPN’s experience covering the European championship in 2008 was instructive: There was no U.S. team for which to root, but ethnic pockets of fans helped the network draw a strong audience, Ader said.

For ESPN, there’s another important audience that will be watching. Following NBC’s coverage of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, rights to future games are up for grabs, and ESPN is expected to be interested. A strong performance at the World Cup could show doubting Olympics officials that ESPN would be up to covering a large, multifaceted event.

“I never think of this as a dress rehearsal,” ESPN’s Skipper said. “We think this entity is special enough as itself to merit this sort of attention. If there were no such thing as the Olympics, we would do the same thing. Having said that, we do believe this will demonstrate to people what we can do with a big quadrennial event. That’s an ancillary benefit.” (AP)

BP say capturing more oil from blown is out well

Energy giant BP Plc said on Tuesday it had sharply increased the amount of oil it was capturing from its blown-out Gulf of Mexico well, but U.S. officials want to know exactly how much oil is still gushing out.The London-based company’s share price fell 6 percent in London trading after U.S. President Barack Obama said he wanted to know “whose ass to kick” over the massive spill.He told NBC News’ “Today” show that if BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward worked for him, he would have fired him by now over his response to the 50-day-old spill, the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.

BP already faces a criminal investigation and lawsuits over the April 20 explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that killed 11 workers and triggered the massive spill. Some 120 miles of U.S. coastline have been soiled in the disaster that threatens the Gulf Coast’s lucrative fishing industry.

The company said on Tuesday it had collected 14,800 barrels of oil on Monday, 33 percent higher than the amount collected on Sunday and the highest capture rate since it installed a new system to contain the oil spill last week.The latest attempt involves a containment cap placed on top of the gushing pipe on the ocean floor. The total amount of oil collected over four days was about 42,500 barrels, BP said.

“We continue to optimize production and make sure we can take much oil out of that stream as we can,” said Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the top U.S. official overseeing the cleanup effort, speaking at a briefing in Washington.Allen said on Monday neither BP nor the government knew just how much oil was gushing out of the well in the first place. “That’s the big unknown right now,” he told a White House briefing on Monday.

BP has given conservative estimates of the oil flow that have been ridiculed by scientists and U.S. lawmakers. Even the government’s much higher estimates of 12,000-19,000 barrels a day seemed on the low side after Allen said the company planned to double its collection of oil from the well to 20,000 bpd (840,000 gallons/3.18 million liters).BP and government officials have said a definitive solution will not come until August when a relief well is drilled.

OBAMA HITS BACK AT CRITICS

The spill has fouled wildlife refuges in Louisiana and barrier islands in Mississippi and Alabama and also sent tar balls ashore on northwest beaches of Florida, where the $60 billion-a-year tourism industry accounts for nearly 1 million jobs.One-third of the Gulf’s federal waters, or 78,000 square miles (200,000 square km), remains closed to fishing, and the toll of dead and injured birds and marine animals is climbing.U.S. weather forecasters gave their first confirmation that some of the oil leaking from BP’s well has lingered beneath the surface rather than rising to the surface. Undersea oil depletes the water’s oxygen content and threatens marine life like mussels, clams, crabs, eels, jellyfish and shrimp.

Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said at the Washington briefing: “NOAA is confirming the presence of very low concentrations of subsurface oil.”Obama, who faces growing criticism that he has appeared detached from the economic and ecological catastrophe hitting four U.S. Gulf states, sharpened his criticism of BP in the NBC interview and hit back at his critics.”I was down there a month ago, before most of these talking heads were even paying attention to the Gulf,” he said.

“And I don’t sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar; we talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick,” he added.Fadel Gheit, an analyst at Oppenheimer and Co, said it was “not a coincidence” that BP’s shares were down after Obama’s “kick ass” comment.

The European oils sector was down overall, however, on the back of lower oil prices due to economic worries. BP shares were trading down about 5 percent, against a drop of 2.13 percent in the STOXX Europe 600 Oil and Gas index at 1600 GMT.In New York, the company’s American depositary shares were down nearly 5 percent. BP shares have lost about a third of their value since the crisis erupted.

Away from the action in the Gulf, the political heat remained intense in Washington with yet another congressional hearing to bring BP and its peers under renewed scrutiny.The Senate Judiciary Committee was holding a hearing titled: “The Risky Business of Big Oil: Have Recent Court Decisions and Liability Caps Encouraged Irresponsible Corporate Behavior?”Democrats in Congress have been looking at lifting such caps.

The Senate hearing follows one in Chalmette, Louisiana, where two women who lost their husbands in the explosion that unleashed the crisis urged members of Congress to hold BP accountable.”I am asking you to please consider harsh punishments on companies who choose to ignore safety standards before other families are destroyed,” said Courtney Kemp, whose husband, Wyatt, was killed in the explosion.(Reuters)

Gov. Jan Brewer has removed the state's attorney general from defending Arizona's new immigration-enforcement law

PHOENIX Gov. Jan Brewer has removed the state’s attorney general from defending Arizona’s new immigration-enforcement law, accusing him of colluding with the U.S. Justice Department as it weighs whether to challenge the law in court.Brewer, a Republican, said she took action after state Attorney General Terry Goddard, a Democrat and her potential challenger for re-election, met Friday with Justice Department lawyers, who then met with her legal advisers.

Goddard, who has publicly stated he opposes the law but vowed to defend the state in court as its chief lawyer, said he told the Justice Department team “we need solutions from Washington, not more lawsuits.”Brewer expressed similar sentiments after her legal advisers met with the federal lawyers, vowing to defend the state to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary.

But she accused Goddard of a lack of resolve on immigration matters and called his meeting with the Justice Department team a “curious coordination.”The immigration law she signed gave her the power to coordinate the state’s legal defense because the Legislature saw a “lack of confidence” in Goddard’s willingness to defend the law, she said.

The U.S. attorney general, Eric Holder Jr., is nearing a decision on whether to challenge the law, which gives the state and local police broad authority to enforce federal immigration law. It allows the police to check the immigration status of people they suspect are illegal immigrants whom they have stopped for another reason.Holder has said he worries the law may intrude on federal immigration authority and lead to profiling. On Thursday he met with police chiefs who oppose the law as divisive and a detriment to getting immigrants to report crime and cooperate with criminal investigations.

Meanwhile, thousands from around the country marched to the state capital, Phoenix, on Saturday to protest the new law, set to become effective July 29.Opponents of the law suspended their boycott against Arizona and bused in protesters from around the country.Midtown Phoenix buzzed with protesters carrying signs and American flags. Dozens of police officers were on standby along the route of the five-mile march, and helicopters hovered overhead.

Supporters of the law expected to draw thousands to a rally of their own later Saturday at a baseball stadium in suburban Tempe, encouraging like-minded Americans to “buycott” Arizona by planning vacations in the state.Some opponents of the law have encouraged people to cancel conventions in the state and avoid doing business with Arizona-based companies, hoping the economic pressure forces lawmakers to repeal the law.But Alfredo Gutierrez, chairman of the boycott committee of Hispanic civil-rights group Somos America, said the boycott doesn’t apply to people coming to resist the law. Opponents said they secured warehouse space for people to sleep on cots instead of staying in hotels.

“The point was to be here for this march to show support for these folks, then we’re out,” said Jose Vargas, a union representative for New York City teachers. “We’re not spending a dime here.”Supporters of the law sought to counteract the economic damage of boycotts by bringing supporters into the state.

“Arizona, we feel, is America’s Alamo in the fight against illegal and dangerous entry into the United States,” said Gina Loudon of St. Louis, who is organizing the “buycott.””Our border guards and all of Arizona law enforcement are the undermanned, undergunned, taxed-to-the-limit front-line defenders trying to hold back the invasion,” she said.

Opponents of Arizona immigration law march on state Capitol, supporters plan evening rally

PHOENIX Thousands of people from around the country marched to the Arizona state Capitol on Saturday to protest the state’s tough new crackdown on illegal immigration.Opponents of the law suspended their boycott against Arizona and bused in protesters from around the country. Organizers said the demonstration could bring in as many as 50,000 people.Midtown Phoenix buzzed with protesters carrying signs and American flags. Dozens of police officers were on standby along the route of the five-mile march, and helicopters hovered overhead.

Protesters braved temperatures that were forecast to reach 95 degrees by mid-afternoon. Some used umbrellas or cardboard signs to protect their faces from the sun. Volunteers handed out water bottles from the beds of pickup trucks, and organizers set up three water stations along the route.Supporters of the law expect to draw thousands to a rally of their own Saturday evening at a baseball stadium in suburban Tempe, encouraging like-minded Americans to “buycott” Arizona by planning vacations in the state.

Critics of the law, set to take effect July 29, say it unfairly targets Hispanics and could lead to racial profiling. Its supporters say Arizona is trying to enforce immigration laws because the federal government has failed to do so.The law requires that police conducting traffic stops or questioning people about possible legal violations ask them about their immigration status if there is “reasonable suspicion” that they’re in the country illegally.

Supporters of the law insist racial profiling will not be tolerated, but civil rights leaders worry that officers will still rely on assumptions that illegal immigrants are Hispanic.Luis Jimenez, a 33-year-old college professor who lives in South Hadley, Mass., said the law will force police officers to spend much of their time on immigration violations instead of patrolling neighborhoods or dealing with violent crime.

The law also makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally or to impede traffic while hiring day laborers, regardless of the worker’s immigration status.”You’re saying to the cop: ‘Go pick up that day laborer. Don’t worry about that guy committing crimes,'” said Jimenez, a naturalized citizen from Mexico who grew up in Phoenix.

Alfonso Martinez, a 38-year-old Phoenix carpenter and father of three children who are American citizens, said he’s been living illegally in the United States for 21 years while trying to get legal status.”If they stop me and they find my status, who’s going to feed my kids? Who’s going to keep working hard for them?” he said, keeping a careful eye on his 6-year-old daughter as his wife pushed their 4-year-old girl in a stroller. Their 13-year-old son walked ahead of them.

Some opponents of the law have encouraged people to cancel conventions in the state and avoid doing business with Arizona-based companies, hoping the economic pressure forces lawmakers to repeal the law.But Alfredo Gutierrez, chairman of the boycott committee of Hispanic civil rights group Somos America, said the boycott doesn’t apply to people coming to resist the law. Opponents said they secured warehouse space for people to sleep on cots instead of staying in hotels.

“The point was to be here for this march to show support for these folks, then we’re out,” said Jose Vargas, a union representative for New York City teachers. “We’re not spending a dime here.”Supporters of the law sought to counteract the economic damage of boycotts by bringing supporters into the state.”Arizona, we feel, is America’s Alamo in the fight against illegal and dangerous entry into the United States,” said Gina Loudon of St. Louis, who is organizing the “buycott.”

“Our border guards and all of Arizona law enforcement are the undermanned, under-gunned, taxed-to-the-limit front-line defenders trying to hold back the invasion,” she said.In San Francisco, groups planned to protest at the Arizona Diamondbacks’ game against the Giants Saturday night. (AP)

Firefox 4 promises to let users better control relationships with websites

NEW YORK  The next version of the Firefox browser, set for release by the end of the year, will pare down the software’s menus and certain user options while giving Web surfers more control over privacy. Firefox 4 promises to let users better control relationships with websites by describing more simply what information is gathered by cookies, which are files that store data on website visits.

In Firefox’s current version, determining which websites are peering into users’ Internet habits is a complex process involving many menus and submenus. With the change, users will be able to see from a single menu what information websites are gathering. Users will then have the option of deciding which cookies to allow and which to disable. But Mozilla, the browser’s creator, will also take away some user controls to make Firefox sleeker. That means taking out buttons and menus that Mozilla says few people use anyway. Mozilla says the change won’t just make websites load faster, it will make them feel faster. “The simpler an interface looks, the faster it will seem,” Mike Beltzner, Firefox director of development, said in a video presentation posted to its website this week. Firefox said the browser will be made more stable, by requiring fewer add-on programs for additional functionality.

The program will use the new Web programming language, HTML5, which will allow videos and other multimedia content to play in the browser without needing companion software such as Adobe System Inc.’s Flash. Firefox is second to Microsoft Corp.’s market-dominant Internet Explorer browser in usage. Microsoft is also working on an update. Internet Explorer 9, Microsoft’s latest browser offering, will also support HTML5. An early version is already out for testing.(AP)

Chief Jack Harris criticizes immigration law

The police chief of Arizona’s largest city said on Friday the state’s controversial new crackdown on illegal immigrants would likely create more problems than it solved for local law enforcement.U.S.The remarks by Phoenix Police Chief Jack Harris came as U.S. Senate Democrats vowed to push ahead with their uphill bid to pass legislation this year overhauling the nation’s immigration laws, saying the furor in Arizona has given them a lift despite a lack of support from Republicans.

Arizona’s week-old law calls for state and local police to check the immigration status of anyone they suspect is in the United States illegally. It has outraged Latinos, civil rights activists and organized labor.With polls showing the crackdown has broad public support in Arizona and nationwide, Harris said at a news conference he understood Americans’ frustration over illegal immigration.

But he criticized the new law as unlikely to solve problems caused by any of the estimated 10.8 million people who are in the United States illegally.”I don’t really believe that this law is going to do what the vast majority of Americans and Arizonans want, and that is to fix the immigration problem,” he said. “This law … adds new problems for local law enforcement.”

Harris said asking officers to determine immigration status during an investigation would interfere with their primary job and “instead tells us to become immigration officers and enforce routine immigration laws that I don’t believe we have the authority to enforce.”The chief said his force already had 10 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in its violent crime unit and that the law provided no additional enforcement tools.

“We have the tools that we need to enforce the laws in this state, to reduce property crime and reduce violent crime, to go after criminals that are responsible for human smuggling,” and other border-related crimes,” Harris said.Republican backers say the law is needed to curb crime in the desert state, which is home to some 460,000 illegal immigrants and is a furiously trafficked corridor for drug and migrant smugglers from Mexico.Phoenix, the state capital and a clearing house for unauthorized immigrants and drugs headed to cities across the United States, has recently averaged one drug-related kidnapping nearly every day.

POLICE DIVIDED

Revealing stark divisions among police in the Phoenix valley over immigration, an Arizona sheriff known for cracking down hard on undocumented migrants continued a two-day immigration and crime sweep in the west of the city on Friday afternoon.Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s “crime suppression” drives have led to allegations of racial profiling. Deputies stopped and arrested at least 63 people for minor offenses who could not prove they were in Arizona legally since the operation began on Thursday.In Washington, Democrats have been accused of playing election-year politics by proposing a comprehensive immigration overhaul that critics insist has little chance of success.

The Senate draft proposal, quickly endorsed by President Barack Obama, includes calls for bolstered border security, new sanctions on U.S. employers who hire illegal immigrants and high-tech identification cards that all U.S. workers would be required to carry.Senate Democrats appear to lack support from their Republican colleagues, however, and time is running out for legislative action before the November congressional election.

Republican Orrin Hatch, a member of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee, said Americans did not trust Washington to solve the illegal immigration problem.”Law-abiding immigrants, ranchers, farmers and families have no confidence that Washington can stop the drug traffickers, gangs and even those low-enough to traffic human beings from illegally coming into the United States,” Hatch said late on Thursday.”Instead of fixing our broken borders, Washington politicos are playing a cynical game of introducing so-called immigration reform that I fear will turn into nothing more than amnesty,” Hatch said.

The uproar unleashed by the Arizona law has galvanized Latinos and is expected to translate into higher turnout at annual May Day rallies in more than 70 cities nationwide on Saturday.Organizers say the crowds on the streets, from Los Angeles to New York, could be the biggest since 2006, when hundreds of thousands of marchers urged former President George W. Bush to overhaul federal immigration laws.(Reuters)

After immigration law and now Arizona will faces boycott calls

PHOENIX Civil rights leaders are urging organizations to cancel their conventions in Arizona. Baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks are encountering protesters on the road. And the AriZona iced tea company wants everyone to know that its drinks are made in New York.Arizona is facing a backlash over its new law cracking on illegal immigrants, with opponents pushing for a tourism boycott like the one that was used to punish the state 20 years ago over its refusal to honor the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. with a holiday.”The goal is to as quickly as possible bring to a shocking stop the economy of Arizona,” former state Sen. Alfredo Gutierrez said Friday as a coalition called Boycott Arizona announced its formation.

The outcry has grown steadily in the week since Republican Gov. Jan Brewer signed the nation’s toughest law against illegal immigration. The measure makes it a crime under state law to be in the country illegally, and directs local police to question people about their immigration status and demand to see their documents if there is reason to suspect they are illegal.Many in Arizona support the law amid growing anger over the federal government’s failure to secure the border. The state has become a major gateway for drug smuggling and human trafficking from Mexico.

Critics say the law will lead to racial profiling and other abuses, and they are giving Arizona a public relations beating over the issue.Groups have called on people not to fly Tempe-based US Airways, rent trucks from Phoenix-based U-Haul or go to Suns and Diamondbacks games. A New York congressman and others are urging major league baseball to move the 2011 All Star Game out of Phoenix.

The Major League Baseball players’ union opposes the new law, issuing a statement Friday expressing concern it could have a negative impact on hundreds of ballplayers and their families. The union will consider taking “additional steps” if the law goes into effect this summer.The cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles have talked of cutting off deals with the state and its businesses.Phoenix is vying for the 2012 Republican National Convention, and at least one mayor has called on political leaders to choose a different city.

About 40 immigrant rights activists gathered outside Wrigley Field in Chicago on Thursday, chanting, “Boycott Arizona” as the Diamondbacks opened a series against the Cubs. A small plane pulling a banner criticizing the law circled the stadium.Civil rights leaders from the Rev. Al Sharpton to Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa have pushed for a boycott.Turning the tables on the state, the Mexican government warned citizens to use extreme caution when visiting Arizona.With all things Arizona now under attack, the AriZona Beverage Co. evidently feared business would suffer. The iced tea company tweeted: “AriZona is and always has been a NY based company! (BORN IN BKLYN ’92)”

Fifteen million people visit Arizona each year for vacations, conventions and sporting events such as the Fiesta Bowl, pro golf tournaments and baseball spring training. The state tourism office estimated that conventions and other travel and tourist spending in Arizona brought in $18.5 billion in 2008.Some companies said the call for a boycott has had no noticeable effect, although Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., said he has heard of six events being canceled. One of the groups to pull out is the American Immigration Lawyers Association, which canceled a fall conference to be held at a Scottsdale resort.

“We knew that the governor had this bill sitting on her desk,” spokesman George Tzamaras said. “Literally, minutes after she signed it the board of governors convened a conference call, and by an almost unanimous vote the association decided to pull that meeting.”The prospect of a boycott unnerves Arizona tourism officials.”We’re worried about keeping every convention and meeting here in Phoenix. It’s an economic driver here in the state; it provides hundreds of thousands of jobs and a good economic boost to the state,” said Doug MacKenzie, spokesman for the Greater Phoenix Convention & Visitors Bureau.MacKenzie said he has heard of five or six event cancellations, adding, “I think it’s misguided to bring the tourism industry into the crosshairs of this political issue.”

In 1990, Arizona voters’ rejection of a King holiday set off a cascade of cancellations of conventions and other events. The NFL pulled the 1993 Super Bowl from the Phoenix suburb of Tempe. The NBA told the Phoenix Suns not to bother putting in a bid for the All-Star game.By the time voters finally passed a holiday bill two years later, estimates of lost convention business in the Phoenix area alone topped $190 million.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who surprised many by reversing course and supporting the new immigration law, said the latest furor and the King dustup are completely different.”One was about honoring a civil rights hero who a majority of Americans held in extremely high esteem,” he said. “The other is about an issue of national security and the security of our citizens, where we have broken borders and are literally overwhelmed with both human smuggling and drugs.”

The governor’s spokesman, Paul Senseman, said boycotts are a foolish response when opponents can mount a legal challenge or try to repeal the law in a referendum.”A boycott is not only the least effective but the most discriminatory and harmful method to utilize when there are other methods in our democratic process that are readily available,” he said.(AP)

AriZona Iced Tea released a statement saying their headquarters is in New York, not Arizona

WOODBURY, N.Y., April 29 The manufacturers of AriZona Iced Tea released a statement saying their headquarters is in New York, not Arizona, to head off boycott talk.Don Vultaggio, founder of the beverage company, released a statement Wednesday asking people not to project their anger about Arizona’s new law — which gives police the right to demand citizenship papers from anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant — onto his company, the New York Daily News reported Thursday.

“AriZona Beverages proudly traces its origins back to New York,” Vultaggio said. “In 1992, two hardworking guys from Brooklyn with a dream created AriZona Iced Tea.””Since then … we have remained loyal to our family-run business based in New York. For the last 16 years, our headquarters have remained on Long Island,” he said.

Comedian George Lopez joked on Twitter this week that he “went to buy an AriZona Iced Tea — they asked me for my documentation. So I bought HORCHATA instead!”Company officials replied on Twitter Thursday: “We’re BIG fans! Just wanted to let you know that AriZona is and always has been a NY company and would (heart) to send you some tea!”(UPI)

Crude oil prices climbed to more than $85 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange

NEW YORK, April 29  Crude oil prices climbed to more than $85 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, as concern over Greek debt abated Thursday.The International Monetary Fund agreed to increase the size of loans to Greece by $100 billion to $160 billion, The New York Times reported. European markets rebounded.

Concern over Greece going into default has shaken markets for months on fears the euro would decline in value.June delivery crude oil gained $2.35 to $85.57 per barrel. Heating oil prices for June added 0.0347 cents to $2.2889 per gallon. Reformulated gasoline blendstock prices for June added 0.345 cents to $2.3675 per gallon. Henry Hub natural gas prices for June lost 0.356 cents to $3.992 per million British thermal units.At the pump, the national average price for unleaded gasoline was $2.877 per gallon Thursday, up from Tuesday’s $2.869, AAA said.(UPI)