At 104 degrees, the forecast is death.

Byline: Michael Martinez

TUCSON, Ariz. _ A controversial new initiative by an Arizona doctor would actually predict, like a weather report, the likelihood of a death among immigrants illegally crossing the border from Mexico when the desert heat hits this spring.

The season of triple-digit heat will be arriving soon, and Dr. Samuel Keim is ready for it, planning to roll out what state officials call a first-of-its-kind prognosticating report stating which days will have "a probability of death" for immigrants crossing the arid wasteland.

"By May, we will have an extreme heat warning based upon increasing probabilities that deaths will occur among border crossers," Keim said. "From four consecutive years of data, we have found that as the temperature on a given day reaches 104, the probability of death among the border crossers in (Pima) County reaches 50 percent."

Border deaths _ and efforts to alleviate them, such as ...