WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama promised a new era of science and technology for the nation, telling the National Academy of Sciences on Monday that he wants to devote more funds to research and development.

America has fallen behind other countries in science, Obama said.

“I believe it is not in our character, American character, to follow — but to lead. And it is time for us to lead once again. I am here today to set this goal: we will devote more than 3 percent of our gross domestic product to research and development,” Obama said in a speech at the annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences.

That 3 percent would amount to about $420 billion.

“We will not just meet but we will exceed the level achieved at the height of the space race,” he said.

That pursuit of discovery a half century ago fueled the nation’s prosperity and success, Obama told the academy.

“The commitment I am making today will fuel our success for another 50 years,” he said. “This work begins with an historic commitment to basic science and applied research.”

And he set forth a wish list including solar cells as cheap as paint; green buildings that produce all the energy they consume; learning software as effective as a personal tutor; prosthetics so advanced that you could play the piano again and “an expansion of the frontiers of human knowledge about ourselves and world the around us.’

“We can do this,” Obama said to applause.

In recent years, he said, “scientific integrity has been undermined and scientific research politicized in an effort to advance predetermined ideological agendas.”

He then drew chuckles, commenting: “I want to be sure that facts are driving scientific decisions, not the other way around,” Obama said.

“At such a difficult moment, there are those who say we cannot afford to invest in science, that support for research is somehow a luxury at a moment defined by necessities. I fundamentally disagree,” Obama said.

“Science is more essential for our prosperity, our security, our health, our environment, and our quality of life than it has ever been,” he said.

Obama said he plans to double the budget of key science agencies over a decade, including the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy Office of Science and the National Institutes of Standards and Technology.

He also announced the launch of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. It is a new Department of Energy organization modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, that led in development of the Internet, stealth aircraft and other technological breakthroughs.

And he said the Energy Department and the National Science Foundation will offer programs and scholarships to encourage American students to pursue careers in science, engineering and business related to clean energy.

Africanized honeybees

SALT LAKE CITY – Africanized honey bees have been found for the first time in the Beehive State.

The bees, long the subject of lore as “killer bees,” were recently discovered in Utah’s Washington and Kane counties, the state Department of Agriculture said Wednesday.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture confirmed that seven hives — three in the wild and four managed by private beekeepers — contained Africanized bees. The hives have since been destroyed.

The bees in Utah do not appear to be widespread and no injuries to people or animals have been reported.

State and local officials have been anticipating the bees’ arrival since they showed up in Mesquite, Nev., in 1999, just a few miles from the Utah line.

“We’ve been saying not if but when for a long time,” said Larry Lewis, a spokesman for the state agriculture department.

The bees are the result of interbreeding between European honey bees and bees from Africa. They were inadvertently released in Brazil in the 1950s. They were first spotted in Texas in 1990 and have since been found in several other states, including California, Florida, Arizona and Nevada.

Although Africanized bees look like European honey bees, they tend to get irritated faster, respond with more firepower and stay mad longer than other bees, said Kirk Visscher, a professor at the University of California at Riverside, who has studied Africanized bees since 1985.

Their stings aren’t more powerful than other bees but they are more aggressive and swarm more often. “The danger is getting a large number of stings in a short period of time,” Visscher said.

Attacks on people and animals have happened, but are relatively rare, he said. Africanized bees have linked to the deaths of 14 people in the United States since 1990, Utah officials said.

“This discovery makes it imperative that we think differently about honey bees in our state,” Leonard Blackham, Utah commissioner of agriculture and food, said in a statement.

Local officials plan to ramp up education efforts for homeowners and others about how to keep homes and buildings bee-free and what to do if they encounter a disturbed hive.

“These bees don’t go out and intentionally look for people to sting. They’re just defending their hive,” Lewis said.

———

ON THE WEB

Utah Department of Agriculture: ag.utah.gov

A swarm of comets that smacked North America 12,900 years ago wiped out the wooly mammoth and early Native American cultures, according to a soil study released Thursday.

The report in the journal Science focuses on “nanodiamonds,” crystals tied to past comet impacts, at six sites continentwide, including Arizona, in a soil layer dated to the start of a 1,300-yearlong ice age.

Geologists and archaeologists have long argued about what caused the extinction of dozens of large North American “megafauna” species, such as saber-toothed cats and mammoths.

“This is the ‘smoking gun’ evidence for a massive impact event 12,900 years ago that triggered the (ice age) and the extinction of the megafauna,” says nuclear scientist Richard Firestone of the Lawrence Berkeley (Calif.) National Laboratory, who was not part of the study.

The time frame coincides with the abrupt halt in deposits of Native American “Clovis” artifacts.

Some scientists urge caution in evaluating the report.

Mineral build-up may indicate former shoreline

Three University of Arizona researchers have helped lend credence to the hypothesis that Mars once had oceans.

In a paper to be published in Planetary and Space Science, senior hydrology research specialist James Dohm, UA regents Professor Victor Baker and Professor William Boynton of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, write that mineral deposits near what appear to be shorelines show that the oceans existed more than 2 billion years ago.

“It’s consistent with this ocean potential – it doesn’t confirm it, necessarily,” Dohm said. “I think it’s a significant piece of the puzzle.”

By analyzing the soil above and below the “shoreline” with a gamma ray spectrometer, the team found different concentrations of thorium, potassium and iron above and below the shore.

Since high concentrations of those minerals are found at higher elevations on Mars but not in volcanic soil, the finding supports the theory that the soil was deposited by erosion and left in a large body of water, Dohm said.

Proving large bodies of water existed on the red planet is difficult for several reasons. On Earth, shore erosion is largely caused by tides, which are caused by the moon’s gravitational pull.

“On Mars you have smaller moons. You don’t have the tidal forces,” Dohm said, which makes it tough to see shorelines.

And because Mars is much colder than Earth, the oceans could have been covered in ice, which would block wave action that creates a distinctive look.

The scientists used the spectrometer aboard Odyssey, an orbiter that reached Mars in 2001 and will continue to send data at least through 2010.

The instrument allowed the team to “see” soil about a foot under the surface, which is often covered in volcanic dust that masks the deeper soil’s composition, Dohm said.

The research supports the theory that Mars had at least two oceans – one about 2 billion years ago the size of North America and an older one twice that size.

“This older body of water would have been about 3 1/2 billion years ago,” Dohm said.

The UA scientists were co-authors on the study, along with scientists from Italy, Spain, South Korea and Canada.

———

More on Mars

Tucson Citizen Mars page:

www.tucsoncitizen.com/mars

A multifaith prayer service to commemorate the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in New York and at the Pentagon will be held at 6 p.m. Sept. 11 at Temple Emanu-El, 225 N. Country Club Road.

The event will include a “fellowship dessert reception.”

“The measure of our character is in part the way in which we remember those who have died tragically,” said Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon, in a news release inviting the public.

Migrants line-up before being deported from the United States at the U.S.-Mexico border in Tijuana, Mexico, Tuesday, May 27, 2008.

TIJUANA, Mexico – The towering black gate opens silently to an alley with walls of corrugated metal. Scrawled in large white letters on one wall is: “The End.”

For those deported from the United States, the words are an unnecessary reminder. Nearly every hour of the day, guards unlock this gate that leads back into Mexico, clicking open the padlocks hung on each side, in each nation.

Every time the gate slams shut, it wipes out a dream, divides a family, ends a life lived in the shadows of the law.

On average, 700 Mexicans expelled from the United States walk through this gate daily, according to Mexican government figures. They include farmers, construction workers, prisoners, nannies, children, entire families.

A few steps from the gate, American tourists pose for photos in front of a stone relief. They are oblivious to the men, women and children sadly shuffling into a homeland many risked their lives to leave.

—

U.S. deportations have jumped by more than 60 percent over the past five years. Mexicans accounted for nearly two-thirds of those deportees, helping to roll back one of the biggest migrations of recent history. All along the border, shelters once full of people trying to cross into the United States are now home to thousands of deportees who sleep on mattresses strewn inches apart on cement floors.

In a week spent at the Tijuana gate, The Associated Press watched busload after busload of deportees arrive, some in a daze, still stunned over their sudden expulsion. Many stumbled over the Mexican official’s question, “Where are you from?” after spending decades in the United States.

The faces of those who stream through reflect how tough and far-reaching the U.S. crackdown on illegal immigration has become.

Among them are young people. There were more than 18,000 repatriations of children under 18 to Mexico this year, and in more than 10,000 cases they were alone, according to the Mexican government.

There are also criminals. The U.S. does not break down figures by country, but it has deported about 55,000 prisoners so far this year. One man walked through the gate in slippers with 80 cents in his pocket, after being picked up by police during a violent fight with his wife in their backyard.

And there are women, with more than 40,000 repatriations since January – about 13 percent of all cases, according to the Mexican government. Sometimes the women are dropped off alone, at night. The U.S. Border Patrol in Washington says the safe repatriation of women is a major concern, but acknowledges there is no overall policy along the 2,000-mile border.

Mexico must now deal with a population that it has long ignored. And those returning must deal with Mexico, a land that for many now seems foreign. The challenge starts the day they walk through the gate the U.S. Border Patrol calls Whiskey II, military code for west of the port of entry.

—

Tuesday morning.

At 11:03 a.m., six teenagers – three girls, three boys – line up at the gate, accompanied by a Mexican Consulate official.

“Where are you from?” the Mexican immigration official asks each one after calling off their names.

Paola Riveras’ face is puffy and red from crying.

Three hours ago, the 16-year-old had jumped into the long line of Mexicans waiting to go to school, work or shop in California. When it was her turn to stop before the U.S. immigration agent, she panicked and kept walking.

He yelled “Stop!” three times. Finally, he stepped in front of her and told her to put her hands behind her head.

Riveras told him in Spanish that she had no visa and sobbed.

She says she only wanted to see her mom, who went illegally to Los Angeles when Riveras was 8 and left her with her father in Chimalhuacan, a slum outside Mexico City. When he died in December, her mother asked Riveras to come live with her. Now Riveras is not sure what she will do.

In the first six months of this year, 18,249 youths under 18 were sent back to Mexico by the U.S., according to the Mexican government. Those numbers may include youths detained more than once. U.S. immigration authorities say they do not keep figures on minors.

The teens are escorted to a Mexican government trailer where a psychologist and social worker help them call relatives. Some nap on bunk beds covered in Porky Pig and Donald Duck sheets. Others watch “Ice Age” on the TV.

After calling her aunt in Tijuana, Riveras wipes her nose and dries her tears with a tissue. She says she can’t go back to Chimalhuacan. She keeps thinking about the explosive fight when her dad’s family told her that her mom doesn’t want her, that she has formed another family in Los Angeles.

“I just want to study and be with my mom,” she says.

—

Wednesday morning.

The prisoners arrive at the gate chained together at 10:43 a.m., some still in gray prison pants and black slippers. Once released, they scramble for the pile of paper bags on the ground that contain their few belongings – a belt, diabetes medicine, a few coins.

A Mexican official checks off their names on a clipboard as they file into the country.

The men do not know what they will do next. Residents of the already violent city of Tijuana also wonder what will become of the ex-cons filling the city’s shelters.

Almost a third of the 278,000 people deported in 2007 were prisoners. Last year, the U.S. started speeding up the removal of prisoners and deported a record 95,000 after they served their sentences. The U.S. also has detained or deported 10,000 gang members since 2005.

Alejandro Fonseca was convicted on drug charges and deported last year. He now lives in Tijuana with his American wife and three U.S.-born children.

They have survived by eating at the Salvation Army shelter in a rough Tijuana neighborhood near the border. But his 13-year-old daughter has missed a year of school. She cannot go to school in Mexico because she does not speak Spanish.

Fonseca says the new life has been hard on his family, but has also forced him to give up his drug habit.

“A lot of guys try to run the same game that they ran over there, but they end up falling on their face,” says Fonseca as he waits for dinner at the shelter.

Fonseca is searching for work in the impoverished city, but even filling out an application is difficult. Fonseca has spent 30 of his 31 years in the United States, so English is his main language.

“You see, we know Spanish, but we don’t know the exact words, and when we try to explain to somebody something, they’re like ‘huh?’ ” he says.

—

Thursday morning.

Battling with crutches, Nestor Ortiz struggles to line up at the gate at 11:30 a.m. after being returned for the third time in 10 days.

Ortiz worked in the U.S. for a decade. Then a police officer pulled him over and found out he had no driver’s license, which he couldn’t get because he was illegal. The life he had created suddenly ended.

Desperate to be with his family again, he first walked across the desert in Arizona after paying a smuggler $3,000. The next time, he went in a car driven by an American resident. And then he scaled a 20-foot-high corrugated metal wall marking the border between Tijuana and San Ysidro and jumped from it.

He winces each time he moves the throbbing leg he crushed. Both his feet are swollen.

Mexican immigration officials help the cabinet finisher from La Habra, Calif., into the back room of their office.

He still has not had a chance to take off his bracelet from Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego, where he woke up this morning, three days after doctors put in a metal plate that runs from his hip to his ankle.

“What can I do? I don’t know anyone here,” says Ortiz, 39.

An ambulance pulls up to the Mexican Migration Institute’s office. Paramedics warn if he does not keep the swelling down, he risks losing his foot.

“They shouldn’t have deported you so soon after your surgery,” the paramedic tells him.

The divorced father phones his two sons in California.

“I’m not coming back,” he says, choked up as he talks to his 17-year-old son by phone from Tijuana’s Salvation Army shelter. “I can’t walk. Both my feet are in bad shape.”

He asks Juan to consider moving to his hometown of Tlalnepantla, on the edge of Mexico City.

The conversation turns tense. Juan has lived in the United States since he was 7 and doesn’t want to leave his friends.

“I think you should not be alone over there,” Ortiz says, sighing. “Finish high school and then you can come here. At least here you have your grandparents, your cousins. Over there, what do you have?”

Ortiz breathes in deeply, holds his brow and reels in his overwhelming grief.

He tells his other son, 23-year-old Nestor, to cancel his father’s gym membership, put the Chevrolet Suburban in his name and take Juan to live with him.

“Be good, son,” he says. “Keep working, be careful and keep your chin up.”

Around 9:30 p.m. Thursday, six women and a 7-year-old girl arrive at the gate. Migrant activists have repeatedly urged the United States not to deport women and children at night along the violent Mexican border.

Dominga Bejar, 37, stops after walking through the gate blasted by floodlights. She needs a place to stay and is nervous about grabbing a taxi by herself.

“It’s really dangerous here,” she says. “I’m really scared to go outside.”

Blanca Villasenor, who runs a Mexican border shelter, says women are continually dropped off after 9 p.m.

“They deport them at any hour, at 10 p.m., at midnight, and in some cases they wind up in the street or they sleep in the offices of Mexican immigration agents,” she says.

Julius Alatorre, an officer for the San Diego border control, says the policy is “to try our best not to bring women or juveniles after dark,” but sometimes the women want to go back immediately. The private security firm Wackenhut Corp. transports most of those returned to Mexico, he says. Wackenhut did not respond to requests for comment.

Bejar says she hasn’t seen her American-born 15-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter in Montclair, Calif., since she left them with her husband to attend her father’s funeral in January in Colima. Now she is determined to get back to Montclair, where she has lived for 16 years.

“I’m going to cross,” she says defiantly after being caught with a fake passport. “I don’t know how, but I’m going to make it.”

A volunteer with the Casa de Migrante standing at the gate offers her and several deported men a ride to the Tijuana shelter.

—

Friday morning.

Ten-year-old Edgar from the Pacific coast state of Michoacan stands at the gate and stares ahead with big brown, panic-stricken eyes. Clutching a Sponge Bob Square Pants comic book – a gift from the Mexican consulate official – he tries to fight back tears. He wants to know where his mom is.

Edgar hasn’t seen her since she dropped him off the previous day at a female smuggler’s house in Tijuana. They spent the night practicing saying his fake name and answering other basic questions in English.

They got in line at the port of entry around 8 a.m. The smuggler told U.S. officials she was his mom and was taking him to school in San Ysidro. They showed a real visa with Edgar’s photo on it.

Edgar didn’t flinch and said his name perfectly: Manuel Flores. But then the official asked for his teacher’s name, and his grandmother’s. Edgar stammered. The official asked them to step aside, and then he detained them.

Maria Guadalupe Rios, coordinator of child protection services in Baja California, says parents no longer want to return to Mexico to visit their children for fear they will not be able to get back across the fortified border. So they are increasingly forcing their children to come live with them illegally in the United States.

If a child is returned to Mexico several times, child protection services takes the child into custody temporarily and talks to the family.

“It’s a humiliating experience,” she says. “It’s a noble thing that they want the family to be reunited, but they are exposing them to danger.”

Edgar says his younger siblings recently made it and are with his dad in California. His mom is waiting for him to get across before sneaking in herself. But he’s afraid to try again.

“I just want to go back (to Michoacan) with my mom,” he says after a social worker contacts his mother.

As Edgar peers from the window of a Mexican government trailer, guards from both countries shut the gate once again – silently closing the door on the American lives of one set of deportees before the next busload arrives.

The Western Union Co. said Wednesday it is considering whether to appeal a court ruling on the authority of Arizona prosecutors to seize some money transfers to Mexico.

This comes after the Arizona Court of Appeals on Tuesday knocked down a lower-court decision forbidding Arizona law enforcement from seizing Western Union money transfers and data while investigating human-smuggling operations.

The ruling grants state investigators jurisdiction to sift through and seize certain electronic transactions from most U.S. states to Sonora.

It allows detectives to expand an Arizona investigation that resulted in the seizure of $17 million in what the state said was smugglers’ fees.

That effort has over the past few years put a serious dent in suspected smugglers’ use of Western Union in Arizona. Smugglers adjusted by routing their payments outside the state. They have targeted businesses that facilitate smuggling such as travel agencies, used-car dealers and money-wire stores.

Western Union, based in Englewood, Colo., said it was concerned by the ruling and was investigating opportunities to contest the decision, including an appeal.

Waits will get longer and Mexican visitors will arrive in fewer numbers until the U.S. improves its seven ports of entry along the Arizona-Mexico border.

That’s what a University of Arizona study released Friday by the Arizona-Mexico Commission concluded as it showed a drop in the number of people crossing into the U.S. Wait times average 45 minutes and regularly extend to two hours.

The commission tackles cross-border issues and operates out of Gov. Janet Napolitano’s office and includes Mexican officials and citizens.

The report attributes the delays primarily to increased security at U.S. entry ports since 9/11 and to old, inadequate port facilities. Fixing the state’s seven ports of entry would cost about $500 million and would move people through more quickly, the study said.

Vehicular traffic dropped 20 percent from 2002 to 2007, with 4 million fewer people driving across the border, the commission found.

However, 2 million more people walked across.

“It is concerning that we are crossing 2 million less people and our border wait times are longer than they have ever been,” said Luis Ramirez, a Nogales border expert advising the commission. “People don’t just come in to Nogales. They may go to the Grand Canyon, or go to a ballgame in Phoenix or shop in Tucson.”

The traffic slowdown from Mexico to Arizona happened as the peso’s value gained 10 percent against the dollar, Ramirez said.

In Texas, where border crossings are larger than those in Arizona, wealthy Mexicans are investing in the Rio Grande Valley but similar investments are not happening in southern Arizona, he said.

Carmen De Andrade, 72, lives in Nogales, Son., and goes grocery shopping in Nogales, Ariz.

“I watch for the lines to look somewhat reasonable, which is usually an hour, and then drive across,” she said. “I used to go across all the time but now I only go shopping three or four times a month.”

De Andrade said the waiting time can be more than three hours.

“The lines are horrible most of the time, and not only for the cars. A few months ago it took me an hour to walk through just to have coffee with my friend,” she said.

By Blake Morlock, Fernanda Echavarri

WASHINGTON – The federal government will tell 7,000 businesses next week that they are considered high risk-terrorist targets because they house large amounts of chemicals.

The sites – which range from major chemical plants to universities, food processing centers and hospitals – will need to complete a vulnerability assessment so the government can decide how to regulate their security measures in the future.

U.S. intelligence officials say terrorist organizations, including al-Qaida, favor chemical attack methods because of the severe consequences they can inflict.

PHOENIX – Legislators on Wednesday sent Gov. Janet Napolitano a bill to make Arizona the latest state to refuse to implement new “Real ID” security standards mandated by the federal government for driver’s licenses.

House approval of the bill (HB2677) on a 51-1 vote with no debate Wednesday completed legislative action on the bill. It was approved, 21-7, by the Senate on May 6.

What happens next with the bill is unclear because Napolitano hasn’t indicated whether she’ll sign or veto it.

The bill would have no immediate impact even if it becomes law because Arizona has already received a federal extension on Real ID compliance to 2009.

However, its passage is clearly trouble for Napolitano’s own proposal for an enhanced “3-in-1″ driver’s license. She needs legislative authorization for that. A bill to provide that approval was introduced but not heard during the current session.

At least eight other states have enacted legislation refusing to implement the Real ID law, which was enacted in 2005 military spending legislation and proposed in response to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

It requires all states to bring their driver’s licenses under a national standard and to link their record-keeping systems.

Implementation of the law would require the public to show Real ID-compliant driver’s licenses or other identification in order to enter federal buildings or board airplanes.

While the Bush administration says the law will hinder terrorists, illegal immigrants and other wrongdoers, Real ID faces criticism from states and others because of the federal mandate, costs to states and privacy concerns.

The Arizona bill’s sponsor, Republican Rep. Judy Burgess of Skull Valley, said it represents “a Real ID tea party at the statehouse.”

Burges said she’s particularly concerned that database connections could ease identity theft.

“What happens is the database would be shared clear across the United States and we would be subject to the weakest link in other states,” she said.

States that have rejected the Real ID act, some with conditions, include Idaho, New Hampshire, Montana, South Carolina, Tennessee, Washington, Oklahoma and Maine. Minnesota’s governor vetoed a prohibition bill on April 25.

The National Conference of State Legislatures’ president, state Rep. Donna Stone of Delaware, told a U.S. Senate subcommittee in April that the Real ID law should be repealed and replaced with a negotiated rulemaking process that would include state lawmakers.

Napolitano on Dec. 6 signed an agreement with U.S. Homeland Security Michael Chertoff on development of an alternative 3-in-1 driver’s license with enhanced security features that could also be used to cross borders and verify employment eligibility.

Key Arizona legislators vowed to fight the proposal, calling it a step toward compliance with Real ID and an infringement on the Legislature’s policy-making role.

Napolitano calls the deal with Chertoff a realistic and appropriate means to do employment eligibility checks and meet tough new federal ID requirements to enter the United States from Canada and Mexico.

As described by Napolitano, Arizonans could either get the 3-in-1 license or the current license.

Rep. Bill Konopnicki, R-Safford, cast the only Arizona House vote against the bill on Wednesday, saying later that he favored authorization for the 3-in-1 license instead.

Real ID “could change dramatically next year – it has to,” Konopnicki said. “But we have to be able to board airplanes.”

PHOENIX — An Arizona state legislator wants U.S. Sen. John McCain to give credence to suspicions that demolition explosives were planted in the World Trade Center and another building, causing their destruction on Sept. 11, 2001.

Republican Sen. Karen Johnson of Mesa urges McCain to meet with individuals who have concluded that impacts of hijacked jets and subsequent fires did not cause the buildings’ destruction.

Johnson says in a letter to McCain she has spoken with the individuals and agrees with their conclusions.

A Senate aide to McCain did not immediately respond to requests for comment late Tuesday.

Gov. Janet Napolitano says a class-action lawsuit filed in Texas challenging construction of a fences along the U.S.-Mexican border illustrates the difficulty of sealing off the border.

The suit filed by Texas mayors and business leaders alleges Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff hoodwinked landowners into waiving their property rights for construction of the fence.

Napolitano says that it’s easy to talk about building all along the border but that the complexities involved with private property and other factors surface once it actually begins.

The Texas coalition is seeking an injunction to block work on the fence.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (left) delivers a speech as Jose Reyes Baeza, governor of the Mexican state of Chihuahua, looks on during a meeting in Chihuahua Wednesday. Richardson and Baeza talked about border security and immigration. In background, a picture depicting former Mexico's President Benito Juarez.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said Wednesday that he has seen an improvement in security along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Problems remain, but increased policing by state and federal authorities has significantly helped, said Richardson, a former U.N. ambassador and former Democratic presidential candidate.

“In my opinion, there has been a dramatic improvement in the last two months,” Richardson told reporters in the Mexican border state of Chihuahua, across from New Mexico, where he met with Chihuahua Gov. Jesus Reyes Baeza.

Richardson said he would ask U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza to reevaluate a travel alert, issued by the U.S. State Department in April, that warned U.S. citizens of rising violence in northern Mexico but stopped short of suggesting that Americans avoid traveling in the region.

The alert reflected an increase in drug-related homicides, shootouts, kidnappings and car thefts near the border, particularly in the cities of Tijuana, Chihuahua and Ciudad Juarez.

Ciudad Juarez Mayor Jose Reyes Ferris, who also met with Richardson, said Mexican federal officials will evaluate all 1,700 police officers in his city, to weed out those with ties to organized crime.

More than 200 people have been killed so far this year in Ciudad Juarez, a city of 1.3 million across from El Paso, Texas that is home base for the Juarez cartel.

A wave of organized crime and drug-related violence has shaken Mexico in recent years, killing more than 2,500 people in 2007 alone. President Felipe Calderon sent more than 20,000 troops and federal agents to areas plagued by drug violence, including Chihuahua City and Ciudad Juarez.

The Arizona Senate approved a bill Tuesday that would prohibit Arizona’s participation in new federal security standards program for driver’s licenses.

The 21-7 vote sends the proposal to the House, which had approved a milder version of the bill in March but will now consider a key change made by the Senate.

The House version would prohibit the state’s participation in the REAL ID program without the approval of the Legislature. The Senate made it a flat prohibition.

The REAL ID law requires all states to bring their driver’s licenses under a national standard and to link their record-keeping systems. It draws criticism because of the costs. Other criticism centers on the federal mandate and whether it would be effective.

National Guardsmen weld a section of wall being erected along the U.S.-Mexico border in the San Luis area south of Yuma. A soon-to-end program that rotates National Guardsmen along the border enabled 500 Border Patrol agents to return to active patrol work, officials said.

A program that rotated thousands of National Guardsmen along the Mexican border to augment U.S. Border Patrol agents will end in four months, despite calls by at least one border governor to extend the Guard’s mission.

Operation Jump Start began in mid-2006, deploying up to 6,000 troops at a time during the first 12 months in nonenforcement roles that freed Border Patrol agents for front-line duty.

Through January, the National Guard Bureau spent more than $1 billion on the program – nearly $212 million in fiscal 2006, $687 million in fiscal 2007 and $136 million during the first four months of fiscal 2008.

The Guardsmen built roads and fences, maintained equipment, provided aviation support and monitored cameras.

They spent months at border outposts, calling in Border Patrol agents to capture illegal immigrants and drug runners spotted entering the country.

Jump Start was designed as a stopgap to give the Border Patrol additional help while the agency ramped up its numbers.

The Border Patrol had just under 12,000 agents when the program began, and President Bush said at the time that another 6,000 would be hired over the next two years.

The Border Patrol has hired only about half that many and has 15,550 agents, although the agency says it hopes to reach the goal by the end of this calendar year.

“We have a really aggressive recruiting campaign going on,” said Lloyd Easterling, a Border Patrol spokesman in Washington. “We’re committed to hitting that 18,000, no doubt.”

Bush said when he announced the program that the troop numbers would be cut in half after the first year, and the military followed through.

Since last July, an average of 3,000 troops have been deployed in the four Southwest border states, though numbers fluctuate daily.

As of mid-March, there were 2,842 deployed, including 1,063 in Arizona and 1,779 in Texas, New Mexico and California.

The mission will wind down to a July 15 finish, though some Guard personnel will remain to finish up paperwork and account for equipment.

Border Patrol and National Guard officials hailed the National Guard’s performance and contributions as a resounding success.

“Being a short-term bridge, it helped us get staffed up,” Easterling said. “It’s been fantastic.”

Easterling said the Guard presence enabled 500 agents to return to active patrolling.

“If you ask anybody from the National Guard or Customs and Border Protection, they would all tell you that this has been a huge success as far as freeing up CBP for the ‘back to the borders’ aspect of the mission,” said 1st Lt. Amanda Straub, a spokeswoman at National Guard Bureau headquarters in Washington.

The Guard helped in the arrests of 140,000 illegal immigrants and seized more than 143 tons of drugs, mostly marijuana, Easterling said.

Military engineers built 111 miles of border fencing and more than 18 miles of new all-weather roads, while maintaining or improving more than 570 miles of existing roads.

Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano wants the soldiers to stay.

The Democratic governor wrote a letter this month to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, urging him to “reconsider the drawdown of Operation Jump Start, and instead retain National Guard personnel strength in numbers necessary to maintain the hard-won improvements in operational control of the international border.”

She said ongoing problems with a high-tech “virtual fence” on the border mean it won’t be operational before 2011, and keeping the military on the border until then is clearly needed.

Chertoff’s spokesman said the Border Patrol hopes to have 18,000 agents by the end of 2008 and has asked Congress to approve funding for an additional 2,000.

He said the government is sticking with the drawdown plan.

“We’ve been abundantly clear since Day One about the intent and timeline for Operation Jump Start,” spokesman Russell Knocke said.

National Guard support on the border will continue, with units using border duty as part of their training.

“We will be down there,” Lt. Gen. H Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said recently. “Operation Jump Start will end, but it doesn’t mean the Guard’s support for the Border Patrol and counter-narcotics . . . along the Southwest border will not continue.”