The Capitol Mall Association is raffling off two renovated homes in Phoenix.  The tickets are only $20 each (or six for $100).

Of the 314,000 jobs lost during the recession, Arizona has recouped only 78,000 of those positions.  ASU economist LeeMcPheters estimates that it could take five years to create the additional 235,000 jobs needed to get back to pre-recession levels.  Read more…

losangelesimmigrationlawattorney.com:  According to this post:

In a very interesting case out of the state of Illinois, a young man is currently being held in an immigration detention center as a fugitive despite his insistence that he has sought to secure citizenship through the proper legal channels.

Eugene P., 28, was originally born in Nigeria, where he was part of the Ogoni tribe, who are well known for their protests against petroleum drilling in their region of the country in the 1990s.

It is rumored that in response to these protests, oil companies enlisted the assistance of the Nigerian military. This in turn, created an extremely chaotic and dangerous environment that Eugene P. sought to flee.

He is currently appealing the detention as his deadline for the appeal of his green card had not expired when he was taken into custody.  Eugene also married a woman while living in the United States – three days prior to being arrested and detained by an ICE worker.

huffingtonpost.com: According to this slideshow, the top ten celebrity divorce settlements come with the rather dubious honor of the owing spouse funding such settlements as $100 million dollars (Tiger Woods).  We suspect, but cannot prove, that most celebrities’ divorces do not play out as publicly as commoners’ because many celebrities hire attorneys and experts to negotiate behind the scenes and reach an out-of-court resolution.  This dynamic strongly resembles collaborative law, an out-of court dispute resolution process in which the parties hire attorneys, divorce coaches, neutral financial experts and child development experts.  Several attorneys in Phoenix are specially trained to practice in this area.  Collaborative law saves families time, money and the uncertainty of court proceedings.  It also typically results in a resolution that both parties may not love, but at least they can live with it.  It certainly beats spending $100 million on a divorce settlement.