PHOENIX, May 24 (Reuters) – Winds bringing a blast of damp Pacific Ocean air cut firefighters a break on Thursday as they battled to stamp out several dangerous forest and brush fires burning in five Southwestern U.S. states.

Blazes in rugged, mountainous areas of Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah have forced the evacuation of a few small towns and torched at least 170 square miles (440 square km) of forest, brush and grass since mid-month.

The Arizona fires were the first major blazes in the Grand Canyon state this year after a record 2011 fire season in which nearly 2,000 fires charred more than 1,500 square miles (3,900 square km), according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

More than 1,100 firefighters using aircraft and hand tools made progress toward containing the Southwest’s most dangerous conflagration, the so-called Gladiator Fire in Arizona.

That fire, which has torched more than 27 square miles (70 square km) of ponderosa pine and brush some 40 miles (64 km) north of Phoenix, was 30 percent contained on Thursday, up from 26 percent a day earlier.

“The winds we’ve gotten here in the last 24 hours have brought in some moisture from Baja (California),” said Dave Killebrew, a spokesman for the local fire incident team.

“Humidity reached up to as high as 50 percent in some areas of the fire, which is excellent … That means that the fuels won’t be nearly as volatile as they have been for the last few days when we’ve had relative humidity down as low as 3-5 percent,” he added.

PHOENIX (Reuters) – Arizona’s secretary of state has received information from Hawaii that verifies Barack Obama’s birth records, satisfying criteria to put the president on the November ballot in the state, his office said on Wednesday.

Ken Bennett, who is Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s campaign co-chairman in Arizona, made a request to authorities in Hawaii on March 30 on behalf of more than 4,000 constituents, his office said.

Bennett received verification on Tuesday of Obama’s birth from officials in Hawaii in lieu of a certified birth certificate, Bennett’s spokesman Matthew Roberts said.

“We never requested a birth certificate. What we requested was a verification from Hawaii that the information on the president’s birth certificate was accurate,” Roberts told Reuters.

“As far as we are concerned, the matter is closed,” he added.

Most Republican critics of Obama have given up pushing discredited, long-running allegations that he was not born in the United States.

Bennett said last week that, while he did not buy into the “birther belief,” he was attempting to confirm that Obama’s name can appear on Arizona’s presidential ballot,

PHOENIX (Reuters) – A U.S. federal judge sentenced a 61-year-old white supremacist to 40 years in jail on Tuesday for a racially motivated package bomb attack that injured a black city administrator in Arizona in 2004.

Dennis Mahon was found guilty in February of three explosives- and conspiracy-related charges stemming from the attack on Don Logan, then the head of the diversity office for the city of Scottsdale.

Mahon, who appeared for sentencing in shackles and an orange jumpsuit, was arrested along with his identical twin brother Daniel in 2009 at their home in Davis Junction, Illinois, following a five-year investigation.

Daniel Mahon was acquitted of a single charge of conspiracy to damage buildings and property by means of explosives, following a six-week trial in U.S. District Court in Phoenix.

Handing down the sentence on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge David G. Campbell called the bomb attack “an act of domestic terrorism” that aimed to promote an agenda of hate and racism.

Logan, head of Scottsdale’s Office of Diversity and Dialogue, suffered injuries to his hand when he opened the package bomb at his office. Another worker, Renita Linyard, was also injured in the blast.

“Everyone wants to lock me up forever, but I did not do this bombing,” Mahon said, protesting his innocence before sentencing. “What happened to Miss Linyard and Mr. Logan is terrible, but I can’t apologize for a crime I didn’t commit.”

PHOENIX (Reuters) – Fire crews gained a fragile upper hand against stubborn Arizona wildfires on Monday, but cautioned that tinder-dry conditions and high temperatures could jeopardize containment efforts in coming days.

Blazes in rugged, mountainous areas of Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado have forced the evacuation of several small towns and torched more than 65 square miles (168 square km) of forest, brush and grass in the U.S. Southwest.

The Arizona blazes were the first major wildfires in the Grand Canyon state this year after a record 2011 fire season in which nearly 2,000 fires consumed more than 1,500 square miles (3,900 square km), according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

More than 1,100 firefighters made progress against the most dangerous of the state’s blazes, the so-called Gladiator Fire, which has charred about 22 square miles (57 square kilometers) of ponderosa pine and brush some 40 miles north of Phoenix. It was 15 percent contained on Monday.

“We have chainsaw crews, we have people digging hand lines with shovels and rakes … we have aircraft dropping … retardant on the flames,” said Dan Bastion, a spokesman with the fire incident team.

“We’re making progress. The containment figures are inching up slowly, but today will be a challenging (day) … because we have the potential for severe fire behavior because of the conditions,” he said.

The blaze, which has cast a pall of grayish smoke over the northeast Phoenix valley over the past week, torched four buildings and forced the evacuation of about 350 residents of the old mining town of Crown King and three other tiny communities nearby.

By Tim Gaynor

(Reuters) – Arizona’s secretary of state said Friday he had asked officials in Hawaii to verify that Barack Obama was born in their state in order for the president’s name to appear on the November ballot in Arizona.

Ken Bennett, who is Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s campaign co-chairman in Arizona, said he made the request on behalf of a constituent.

Earlier this year, hardline Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio announced that an investigation by his office had found that Obama’s birth certificate was a forgery.

Most Republican critics of Obama have given up pushing widely discredited long-running allegations that he was not born in the United States.

Bennett said he is attempting to confirm that Obama’s name can appear on Arizona’s presidential ballot, the Arizona Republic newspaper said.

While confirming on Friday that he had made the request, Bennett said he did not buy into the “birther” belief.

PHOENIX (Reuters) – Workers digging the foundations for a new office of an Arizona sheriff accused of discriminating against Latinos have unearthed the graves of early city founders, some of whom could have been immigrants from Mexico, officials said.

Construction workers for Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s new office came across lines or depressions in the dirt last week that officials believed were a “minicemetery.”

“When we found the lines of depressions in the ground … we stopped work on that area and we called in archaeological and anthropological experts to help us excavate the areas,” Maricopa County spokeswoman Cari Gerchick said.

“We have removed all of the caskets, and we are working to see if we can find any descendants of the people who were buried,” she said, adding that workers were trying to ensure the remains were treated with “dignity and respect and extreme care.”

Arpaio, who styles himself “America’s toughest sheriff,” is known for his controversial sweeps cracking down on illegal immigrants across the metro Phoenix area.

Last week, the U.S. Justice Department sued Arpaio, saying he and his office intentionally engaged in racial profiling and unlawful arrest of Latinos in violation of their constitutional rights – a charge Arpaio said he will fight.

Flagging what he described as an irony, an expert with a local historical association said up to half the graves found at the site could have been of Mexican settlers.

PHOENIX (Reuters) – Crews battled to contain wind-whipped Arizona wildfires on Wednesday that have raced across 27 square miles of parched ponderosa forest, brush and grassland, consuming several buildings and threatening a small town, authorities said.

The Sunflower Fire, the largest of at least four blazes in central and eastern Arizona, has burned nearly 19 square miles (49 square kilometers) in the Tonto National Forest, about 40 miles north of Phoenix, a fire response team handling the blaze said. It was just 7 percent contained.

The blazes were the first major wildfires in Arizona this year, after a record 2011 fire season in which nearly 2,000 recorded blazes together swallowed more than 1,500 square miles according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

The fires left a translucent veil of gray smoke over the northeast Phoenix valley, blocking view of nearby highlands where the blazes were burning.

About 350 residents of Crown King in central Arizona remained under evacuation after the human-caused Gladiator Fire burned 3 square miles (8 square miles) of ponderosa pine, brush and chaparral in the Prescott National Forest and destroyed several buildings.

Fanned by strong winds and dry weather, the Gladiator Fire also threatened homes in the Horsethief Basin area, forest service campgrounds, lookout towers and power lines in the area, the fire incident team said. It was 5 percent contained, and expected to grow on Wednesday.

“Fire behavior is expected to be extreme … Forecasted drier weather and associated strong winds may continue to complicate suppression efforts,” the team said in a statement.

PHOENIX (Reuters) – Arizona’s top court issued a stay of execution on Tuesday for death row inmate Samuel Villegas Lopez, a day before he was scheduled to die by lethal injection, to address claims that he had been denied a chance at a fair clemency hearing.

Villegas Lopez was sentenced to death for raping 59-year-old Estafana Holmes and stabbing her to death in a violent, drawn-out assault at her Phoenix apartment in 1986.

The Arizona Supreme Court rescheduled his execution for June 27 so that attorneys could address claims that he was denied a fair clemency hearing because some members of the state clemency board had not received a mandated four-week training course.

“We conclude that the interests of justice are best served by staying the pending execution and forthwith issuing … a new warrant of execution, for June 27,” the court said in its ruling.

“The period between now and the new execution date will allow training of new board members and a clemency hearing to be subsequently held by the board,” it added.

He had been due to die by lethal injection at 10 a.m. on Wednesday morning, at the state prison in Florence, some 60 miles southeast of Phoenix.

Lopez would be the fourth Arizona inmate to be executed this year in Arizona, and the 32nd since the state reinstated the death penalty in 1992.

PHOENIX (Reuters) – Tucson police on Monday released recordings of 911 calls reporting the disappearance of Arizona 6-year-old Isabel Celis, who authorities said may have been snatched from her bed last month.

The high-profile search for hazel-eyed Isabel, who was reported missing on April 21 from the home she shared with her older brothers and both parents, drew national media attention as volunteers and police combed streets and washes in her middle class Tucson neighborhood looking for her.

In the audio recording, Isabel’s father, Sergio Celis, calmly tells the operator he wants to “to report a missing person. My little girl who’s 6-years-old. I believe she was abducted from our house.”

The operator asks Celis why he thinks she was abducted, to which he replies: “I have no idea. We woke up this morning and went to go get her up for her baseball game, and she’s gone,” he said, in the recordings posted on the ABC news website.

“I woke up my sons … we looked everywhere in the house, and my oldest son noticed that her window was wide open and the screen was laying in the backyard. We’ve looked all around the house,” he adds.

The operator asks him if the girl’s mother is with him. He replies, “I just called her and told her to get her ass back here,” and then breaks off into chuckle.

A subsequent call was placed by Isabel’s 14 year-old brother, Sergio, who then gives the telephone to his mother Rebecca, who is agitated and becomes barely coherent.

PHOENIX (Reuters) – Arizona Governor Jan Brewer on Monday vetoed a bill demanding the U.S. government turn over millions of acres of its property to the state, dealing a surprise blow to the “sagebrush revolt” against federal control over vast tracts of land in the West.

The much-publicized measure, which cleared the Republican-dominated Arizona legislature last month, called for federal agencies to relinquish title to roughly 48,000 square miles (124,000 square km) of land they hold in the Grand Canyon state by 2015.

Brewer, a Republican and staunch conservative who had been widely expected to support the measure, said in a statement that the legislation failed to “identify an enforceable cause of action to force federal lands to be transferred to the state.”

“I am also concerned about the lack of certainty this legislation could create for individuals holding existing leases on federal lands. Given the difficult economic times, I do not believe this is the time to add to that uncertainty,” she said.

The bill, SB 1332, was similar to legislation signed into law by Governor Gary Herbert in the neighboring state of Utah in March in a revival of a Republican drive to diminish federal land ownership in the West.

Utah’s law seeks to claim some 47,000 square miles (124,300 square km) of federal property and was enacted despite warnings from state attorneys that it was likely unconstitutional and would trigger a costly and ultimately futile legal battle.

The moves in Utah and Arizona cap years of rising indignation among political conservatives in several big Western states over the fact that major portions of their territory are owned by various federal agencies, much of it by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM).