On Tuesday last week Pima Animal Care Center took in 15 dogs who were surrendered by their owner after she was evicted. Today, PACC accepted 19 cats from another evicted homeowner.

Currently the shelter is caring for more than 600 animals and needs community help to foster or adopt incoming pets.

PACC is the county's only open-admission shelter and never turns away a pet in need, but large influxes of animals put a strain on the already full kennels.

If you would like to help these pets but can't commit to adopting, try fostering a pet. If you are interested in adopting a pet into your family, look online or visit them in person at 4000 N. Silverbell Road. PACC’s normal business hours are Monday through Friday, noon-7 p.m. or 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on the weekends.

Pima Animal Care Center is throwing a party to give thanks to the community for making their new buildings possible and supporting the lifesaving work they do.

Because of voters who approved proposition 415 in 2014, PACC now runs a modern animal care facility that saves many lives.

Party with the Pets will be on Dec. 2 to from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and will include behind the scenes tours every hour throughout the event, activities for kids, music, giveaways, adoptions specials, a dedication ceremony and more!

The dedication ceremony will take place from noon to 1 p.m. with speakers including PACC Director Kristen Auerbach, Pima County Board of Supervisors Chairman Richard Elías, County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry, Oro Valley Council member Rhonda Piña, Friends of PACC Chair Tammi Barrick and PACC advocate Laura O'Brien. There will also be a celebratory cake.

All day activities include a petting zoo with PACC puppies and kittens with farm animals from local rescue partners, glitter tattoos of a favorite animal, painting a river rock for PACC Rocks Project, making treats for the shelter pets, making enrichment toys for the pets, an interactive NRPR’s Urban Wildlife Exhibit to teach you how to coexist with wildlife in an urban setting, Canine Fun Camp, Dog Play Groups and Pima County Public Library Bookmobile where kids can get a free book and sign up to read to PACC cats.

The scheduled events, activities and demonstrations include PACC trivia for a chance to win prizes from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., shopping for Fido and Fifi at 1:45 p.m. where you have to get everything for your pet at the store without breaking the bank, Cat Clicker Training from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. to learn how to get your cat to give you a high-five and PACC Saved Me testimonials hourly to meet some of the “top save” pets and hear their story.

There will be information booths from PACC Volunteer, Animal Protection Services, Friends of PACC, PetSmart, Sheriff’s Department Crisis K-9's and Primavera Foundation. 

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Girl’s Night Out: Beer, Brunch Pairings & Karaoke. Girls just want to have fun! And to help out with this, the Brunch Babes continue their Babes and Brews series with a night out at the 1912 Brewing Co. The event will include a tour of the brew house, karaoke (which is new) and a brunch pairing flight with different brews to accompany the likes of a mini quiche, bacon, scones and more. And yes, you understand that correctly, brunch is happening at night. 5 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 28. 2045 N. Forbes Blvd. $28. Only 50 spots available. Details Here.

UA Studio Jazz Ensemble & Fred Fox Jazz Ensemble play The Music of Fred Sturm. Looking for a little musical inspiration? Head to the Fred Fox School of Music and watch UA students present the music of late arranger and composer Fred Sturm. The two hour long event will have you leaving the event speechless. Tickets range $5 to $10. 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Crowder Hall. 1017 N Olive Road. Details Here.

El Nacimiento. In the heart of the Sonoran Desert lies Tucson. In the heart of Tucson lies the Tucson Museum of Art. In the heart of the Tucson Museum of Art lies La Casa Cordova, the oldest adobe home in downtown Tucson and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In the heart of La Casa Cordova lies El Nacimiento, the largest and longest-running nativity scene in the Southwest. Artist Maria Luisa Tena put it up the 70s! It’s easy to spend hours checking out all of the nooks and crannies of the 800-piece set, which has the grandeur and feel of a Christmas tree. Tucson Museum of Art, 140 N. Main Ave. $12 adults, $10 seniors, $7 college students and free for kids 12 and under, veterans and museum members. Details Here.

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Events compiled by Brianna Lewis, Emily Dieckman, B.S. Eliot and Jeff Gardner.

The Trump administration has quietly resumed separating immigrant families at the border, in some cases using vague or unsubstantiated allegations of wrongdoing or minor violations against the parents, including charges of illegally re-entering the country, as justification.

Over the last three months, lawyers at Catholic Charities, which provides legal services to immigrant children in government custody in New York, have discovered at least 16 new separation cases. They say they have come across such instances by chance and via their own sleuthing after children were put into temporary foster care and shelters with little or no indication that they arrived at the border with their parents.

ProPublica stumbled upon one more case late last month after receiving a call from a distraught Salvadoran father who had been detained in South Texas, and whose 4-year-old son, Brayan, had literally been yanked from his grasp by a Customs and Border Protection agent after they crossed the border and asked for asylum. Julio, the father, asked to be identified only by his first name because he was fleeing gang violence and worried about the safety of relatives back home.

“I failed him,” said Julio, 27, sobbing uncontrollably. “Everything I had done to be a good father was destroyed in an instant.” Get Our Top Investigations Subscribe to the Big Story newsletter.

ProPublica tracked down Brayan, who has reddish-blond hair and an endearing lisp, at a temporary foster care agency in New York City, and reached out to the lawyer who represents him. Until that phone call, the lawyer, Jodi Ziesemer, a supervising attorney at Catholic Charities, had no idea that Brayan had been separated from his father. The chaos, she said, felt disturbingly like zero tolerance all over again.

“It’s so disheartening,” Ziesemer said “This was supposed to be a policy that ended.”

Officially it has. On June 20, President Donald Trump signed an executive order retreating from his so-called zero-tolerance immigration enforcement policy, which called on authorities to criminally prosecute adults caught illegally crossing the border and separate them from any children they brought with them. A week later, a federal judge, Dana M. Sabraw, issued an injunction against the separations and ordered the government to put the thousands of affected families back together.

Sabraw, however, exempted cases in which the safety of the child was at risk, and crucially, imposed no standards or oversight over those decisions. As a result, attorneys say, immigration officials — taking their cues from an administration that has made it clear it still believes family separations are an effective deterrent — are using whatever justification they can find, with or without substantiation, to deem immigrant parents unfit or unsafe.

“If the authorities have even the most specious evidence that a parent was a gang member, or had some kind of blemish on their record,” said Neha Desai, a senior attorney at the National Center for Youth Law, “anything they can come up with to say that the separation is for the health and welfare of the child, then they’ll separate them.”

In an email, a senior CBP official acknowledged that immigrant families are still being separated, but said the separations had “nothing to do with zero tolerance.” The official added that “this administration continues to comply with the law and separates adults and children when required for the safety and security of the child.” The official declined to say how many children have been taken from their parents for what was said to be their own protection.

Three high school students who were in summer internships with the UA Bioinformatics Laboratory will leave high school being published scientific authors.

Usually only college students and graduates have the opportunity to be co-authors in scientific published work, but Liam Wilson, Wesley Chiu and Minsu Pumarejo each were able to complete a summer data science internship in a bioinformatics lab in the Center for Biomedical Informatics and Biostatistics at the University of Arizona.

Dr. Yves Lussier, director of the Center for Biomedical Informatics and Biostatistics and associate director of informatics at the BIO5 Institute, taught the three high school students in the bioinformatics lab. In just 48 hours, the interns were mentored on how to analyze medical studies and cross-reference their findings.

Wesley Chiu is a senior at Basis Tucson North High School and initially had an interest in biology. After the internship, Chiu said he learned more about databases, querying and their connection to the real world application.

"We have don't a lot of programing in class, but this has really opened my eyes to the possibility of integrating programming to solving problems affecting humanity right now," Chiu said.

Though the internship, the three students participated in a four year computational biology project that analyzed 'junk DNA,' an area of the DNA that does not produce proteins and where diseases can derive from. These regions of the DNA are still not completely understood and account for 97 percent of the human genome.

UA researchers analyzed the shared molecular mechanisms between diseases and found 398 new links among approximately 16,000 potential combinations.

The continuous work of Dr. Li and Dr. Lussier in this study has the potential to contribute new solutions of preventive and treatment plans for diseases, lowering healthcare costs and can decrease mortality rates for patients.

Leah Crowder, a graduate of the University of Arizona, was selected as a Rhodes Scholar. She is just one of only 32 recipients chosen from the U.S. to attend Oxford University on a full scholarship.

Crowder graduated in May with a Bachelor of Arts in Middle-Eastern and North African Studies. She has been working in Turkey since she was a teenager helping people displaced by political and cultural conflict.

The Rhodes Scholarship comes from a British Charity to honor the will of Cecil J. Rhodes, a 19th-century business magnate and politician. The scholarship is given to those who have shown a commitment and dedication to a betterment of the world.

Intellect, character, leadership, commitment to service and awareness of inequity are some of the characteristics that Crowder was chosen for.

Crowder will head to Oxford in the fall to pursue her doctorate in international relations. She also recently received the UA 2018 Global Excellence Award in recognition of her contribution to the field of global education and service.

Learn more about Crowder here. 

Josh Pollack lined up a 45-yard field goal in the waning seconds of last Saturday’s Territorial Cup rivalry game against Arizona State with a shot at immorality. The fifth-year senior kicker, who made each of his first four attempts against the Sun Devils, needed to hit the long field goal to give Arizona its first win over their in-state rivals since 2016.

His attempt missed, sailing wide-right of the nearest goalpost, giving the visiting Sun Devils a 41-40 victory.

The loss was rather unfathomable for most of the day, with Arizona jumping out to 40-21 lead at the end of the third quarter. The one-point loss officially ended Arizona’s season, as their 5-7 regular season record is not bowl eligible.

First-year Wildcats coach Kevin Sumlin described his first season in Tucson as a work-in-progress, with a myriad of injuries stifling a promising campaign.

“We want to be better and we had a lot of moving parts this year,” Sumlin said. “The constants this year were our two linebackers, our walk-on center and J.J. (Taylor)… We also had the guys out at receiver that played well. As a coach you look back and are always looking to be better."

The Wildcats led for most of the day, with junior quarterback Khaliil Tate connecting with senior receivers Tony Ellison and Shawn Poindexter for passing touchdowns in the game’s opening half.
The home side tacked on two more scores in the third quarter; running back Gary Brightwell dashed 35 yards for the team’s first touchdown of the second half.

Ellison followed that up with his second score of the game, snagging an 8-yard pass from Tate to give the Wildcats a 19-point lead in the waning minutes of the third.

Things shifted in the final quarter, however, with ASU kicker Brandon Ruiz hitting two field goals, and ASU QB Manny Wilkins scoring on an 11-yard rush.

Perhaps the biggest mistake of the game came in the fourth quarter, when sophomore running back Taylor, who rushed for a game-high 144 yards, fumbled deep inside Arizona territory.

The Sun Devils pounced on the ball, scoring a touchdown on the game’s next play to take the lead with just over three minutes remaining.

Sophomore linebacker Colin Schooler attributed much of the team’s fate to bad luck, while taking responsibility for the defense’s inability to prevent a fourth quarter ASU comeback.

“It’s college football; anything can happen at any moment,” Schooler said. “We need to take care of the ball better on both sides, obviously. There were two balls on the ground that the defense could have gotten this game that we didn’t, and if we get those, that’s a huge momentum swing.”

The Wildcats took over possession on their final drive and marched methodically downfield, gaining 54 yards on 15 plays. The team was able to get the ball inside the Sun Devil 30-yard line with under a minute to play, but opted to play it safe, running the ball up the middle to give Pollack an optimal kicking spot.

Unfortunately for Sumlin’s squad, Pollack’s try drifted off-course shortly after it left his right kicking foot, giving the Sun Devils a 41-40 victory in Tucson.

Sumlin summed up the day’s disappointing finish in his postgame comments, attributing much of it to the Wildcats’ consecutive turnovers in the fourth quarter.

“The biggest issue was the two turnovers on our side of the 50,” Sumlin said. “With that and the time that we used to go the length of the field, the two turnovers on our side of the field cost us. You’re not strategizing to turn it over twice on your side of the 50.”

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Jon Simon’s Jazz Piano. Sometimes, when a person is so fantastic at what they do that it makes you jealous, it helps to think about the things they might be bad at. Beyonce probably isn’t that great of a cook, for example. Maybe Usain Bolt is really bad at math, or something. Unfortunately, when it comes to composer and pianist Jon Simon, it is difficult for us, the average Joes of the world, to find solace. Not only has he performed all over the world, been voted one of Moment Magazine’s Top 10 Jewish Instrumental Performers and studied music composition under the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer William Bolcom, but he also has an MBA from Harvard and graduated summa cum laude with his bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering. Plus, he’s a family man, with a wife and three kids. This man does it all. Come see him play at this night of music and three-course dining hosted by the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona. 5 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 27. The Buttes at Reflections, 98090 N. Oracle Road. $45. Details Here.

ArtNow! With Pablo Rasgado. In case you’re unfamiliar, ArtNow! at MOCA is a laid-back lecture series that gives you a chance to hear from artists about the work they create and how they do it. Rasgado just completed a five-week residency at MOCA, and will be talking about that along with the interventions he does in urban spaces and architectural settings. This is a guy who’s constantly discovering new mediums and techniques, and who likes to combine areas as disparate as archeology, restoration, linguistics and chemistry. He has a particular interest in the potential held in inactive spaces in cities. Did we mention there’s snacks? 6 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 27. Tucson Museum of Contemporary Art, 265 S. Church Ave. $10 for nonmembers, free for members. Details Here.

King Lear starring Ian McKellen. Chichester Festival Theatre’s recent production gave Shakespeare’s classic new life by bringing Sir Ian McKellen onstage. (That’s possibly the most British sentence I’ve ever written.) Now, you can see one of McKellen’s greatest stage performances on-screen at The Loft. 11 a.m. Tuesday, Nov. 27, and 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 29. 3233 E. Speedway Blvd. $15. Details Here.

S.Y.STEM Coalition Cooks. Come for a night of food, fun and science. Local chefs will be presenting the science behind their favorite dishes while giving you a taste. All proceeds will help S.Y.STEM Coalition bring free and low-cost educational programming to Tucson youth, in a night featuring music, a silent auction and fun activities for families. 5:30 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 27. 2325 West Sunset Road. $12 Details Here.


Send Us Your Photos:
If you go to any of the events listed above, snap a quick pic and message it to us for a chance to be featured on our social media sites! Find us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram @tucsonweekly.

Events compiled by Brianna Lewis, Emily Dieckman, B.S. Eliot and Jeff Gardner.