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Odd and interesting news from around the West.
- Updated
CASPER, Wyo. (AP) — Mule deer in southwest Wyoming have not adapted to oil and gas wells on their winter range, according to a 17-year study that also documented a 36 percent decline in deer populations exposed to energy development.
"The study shows the trade-offs of energy development in critical wildlife habitat," said researcher Hall Sawyer, who has studied deer in southwest Wyoming since the 1990s.
The study looked at the Pinedale Anticline in Sublette County, where mule deer spend the winter and where one of the largest gas fields in the country encroaches on their winter range.
The study, published online by the journal Global Change Biology, began in 1998, two years before intensive drilling began in 2000-01.
"Twenty years ago we didn't really have a good idea of what was going to happen, if deer would avoid these areas or it would change anything or not," said Sawyer, the lead author of the article. "As development progressed, it became clear quickly that deer avoided well pads. It also became clear that mule deer numbers began to drop off."
Sawyer said the deer perceive wells and other oil and gas infrastructure as risky and try to keep their distance, and as a result their habitat is reduced, which results in fewer animals.
The paper doesn't make any recommendations but simply presents data from almost 200 mule deer that were monitored with the use of special collars placed on them, Sawyer told the Casper Star-Tribune (http://bit.ly/2s9kfC9 ).
A representative from the Petroleum Association of Wyoming didn't immediately return a message for comment Monday.
About 5,200 mule deer wintered on the Pinedale Anticline when 700 producing well pads were approved by the Bureau of Land Management in the summer of 2000. BLM approved another 4,400 wells in 2008.
The work was not conducted without concern for wildlife. Companies spent millions of dollars on horizontal wells, pipes to transfer liquids instead of trucking them, and modified fences.
The BLM also required that most wells couldn't operate during the winter in designated winter ranges.
Even with remediation efforts and a 45 percent decrease in hunting mandated by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, the deer herd dropped overall by 16 percent since 2001 and the deer wintering on the Anticline declined by 36 percent, the paper states.
Sawyer said the study showed that the mitigation efforts can reduce but not eliminate the effects of energy development.
"When we lose critical habitat and when we lose extra acres of habitat because of avoidance, we should expect fewer animals," he said.
___
Information from: Casper (Wyo.) Star-Tribune, http://www.trib.com
- Updated
BOZEMAN, Mont. (AP) — A Montana woman has suffered fatal injuries after being mauled by two dogs over the weekend.
Gallatin County Sheriff Brian Gootkin said Monday that the woman was doing yard work Saturday morning at a residence west of Bozeman when she was attacked, first by a pit bull, followed by another dog. The breed of the second dog hasn't been confirmed.
The woman, who is an organ donor, was being kept on life support at a Billings hospital pending rabies tests on the dogs, which have been euthanized. Her name and age haven't been released.
Gootkin says the case is still under investigation and no charges have been filed against the owners of the dogs.
- By ERIK LACITIS The Seattle Times
- Updated
SEATTLE (AP) — Before June 24, 1947, terms such as UFOs and flying saucers had not entered popular vocabulary. Then, on that afternoon 70 years ago, it all changed because of Kenneth Arnold:
"Supersonic Flying Saucers Sighted by Idaho Pilot."
Arnold reported seeing near Mount Rainier nine "circular-type" objects flying in formation at more than twice the speed of sound.
His was the first widely reported UFO sighting in this country, and it set off a wave of other reported sightings.
In a now-declassified document, the Air Force Materiel Command wrote it off: "The report cannot bear even superficial examination, therefore, must be disregarded."
Another Air Force document concluded, "It is the Air Force conclusion that the objects of this sighting were due to a mirage."
For Arnold, it stung.
He didn't consider himself some kind of kook. He had over 4,000 hours of mountain high-altitude pilot time; he was in the Idaho search and rescue.
"I have been subjected to ridicule, much loss of time and money, newspaper notoriety, magazine stories, reflections on my honesty, my character, my business dealings," Arnold wrote in his 1952 book, "Coming of the Saucers."
A long time ago, in 1977, I interviewed Arnold after reaching him by phone.
He died in 1984 at age 68, and in all those years, and with me, he never wavered in his descriptions.
"I made my report because I thought it was my duty. It was the only proper and American thing to do. I saw what I saw," he said.
You can draw a direct line between what Arnold repeatedly recounted in detail to FBI and military investigators and our collective fascination with the possibility that aliens have visited us.
That direct connection goes from Area 51 allegedly hiding an alien craft, to the Roswell UFO Incident; and from movies such as "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," to the TV series "The X-Files."
It's become so much a part of our culture that even the CIA website has a section titled "Take a Peek Into Our "X-Files" that is chock-full of declassified files.
The CIA helpfully lists "Top 5 CIA Documents Mulder Would Love To Get His Hands On," and "Top 5 CIA Documents Scully Would Love To Get Her Hands On."
Interested in a 1952 drawing of "flying saucers over Belgian Congo uranium mines?" It's in the CIA files.
Unassuming salesman
Arnold was an unlikely candidate to become embroiled in such a controversy.
He lived in Meridian, Idaho, and sold fire-extinguishing equipment. About as unusual as his life got was that he piloted a small airplane to get to his clients around the Northwest.
A month after Arnold was in the news, a now-declassified report made in July 1947 by Army Air Force Counter-Intelligence Corps Officer Frank M. Brown said, "Mr. Arnold is a man of 32 years of age, being married and the father of two children . It is the personal opinion of the interviewer that Mr. Arnold actually saw what he saw . To go further, if Mr. Arnold can write a report of the character that he did while not having seen the objects that he claimed he saw, it is the opinion of the interviewer that Mr. Arnold is in the wrong business, that he should be writing Buck Rogers fiction."
That was one of the few sympathetic portrayals in government documents of Arnold's sighting.
In another declassified intelligence report in July 1947, First Lt. Hal L. Eustace of the Army Air Corps put Arnold's report as part of "silly-season episodes."
The lieutenant wrote that Arnold "seems to be reasonably well balanced, although excitable, and has no apparent ulterior motive . other than to prove he is not 'nuts.'?"
The lieutenant wrote that Arnold revealed "an antagonistic attitude toward the Army" by stating, "Well, if the Army doesn't know what they are, it sure ought to be trying to find out!"
Bright flash lit the sky
Arnold's sighting of the craft was the 1947 version of a story going viral.
"It was a beautiful day. Just as clear as a bell," Arnold said. He was flying from Chehalis to Yakima and decided to spend an hour or so searching for a downed C-46 Marine transport that had crashed into the southwest side of Mount Rainier.
There was a $5,000 reward for finding it.
It was at 3 p.m., he remembered, "when a very bright flash lit up the plane and the sky around me."
At first, Arnold thought it was the sun reflecting off another plane.
"But the flash happened again, and that's when I saw where it was coming from. It came spasmodically from a chain of nine circular-type aircraft way up from the vicinity of Mount Rainier," said Arnold.
". I could not find any tails on these things. They didn't leave a jet trail behind them. I judged their size to be at least 100 feet in widespan. I thought it was a new type of missile."
His plane had a big sweep 24-hour clock on the instrument panel. Arnold measured that the craft covered the distance between Mount Rainier and Mount Adams in 1 minute 42 seconds.
"That figured out to something like 1,760 miles an hour, which I could hardly believe. I knew that figure couldn't be entirely accurate, but I'd say it was within a couple of hundred miles accurate," he said.
From Yakima, Arnold then flew to an air show in Pendleton, Oregon. The next day, on June 25, he stopped by the local newspaper, the East Oregonian. He wanted to know if the military had been testing secret warplanes in the area.
He ended up talking to reporter Bill Bequette, who, in subsequent years, remembered that Arnold "came off as honest, level headed and credible," said a story in the East Oregonian.
So Bequette wrote a brief story about what Arnold said he witnessed.
But the brief also went out to The Associated Press, got picked up by numerous newspapers, and the furor began. For the first time, a mass-media story and subsequent headlines used the term, "flying saucers."
There were no reported riches for Arnold because of his notoriety. Instead, he complained to Frank Brown, the Air Force investigator, "that his business had suffered greatly . at every stop in his business routes, large groups of people were waiting to question him ."
Brown concluded his report, "Mr. Arnold stated further that if he, at any time in the future, saw anything in the sky, to quote Mr. Arnold . 'If I ever saw a ten story building flying through the air I would never say a word about it,' due to the fact that he has been ridiculed by the press to such an extent that he is practically a moron in the eye of the majority of the population of the United States."
A mystery to this day
Despite that statement to Brown, in the coming years Arnold was driven to prove he was right.
There were "many long hours of fruitless flying with a camera, trying and failing to find anything like his saucers again," says Martin Shough, a well-regarded researcher of the UFO phenomena who has written a detailed analysis of Arnold's account.
In an email, Shough, who lives in the Highlands of Scotland, says, "I am resigned to never knowing what Arnold saw."
He concludes, "Seventy years on, when so much of the flying saucer mythology that Kenneth Arnold triggered has been explained away, it is somewhat embarrassing that Arnold's own sighting remains obstinately resistant.
"But there it is."
- Updated
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A Portland woman says she used a car jack to break a window after spotting a dog stuck inside of a Mercedes in 89 degree- (32 degrees Celsius-) weather with little air.
The Oregonian/OregonLive reports (http://bit.ly/2sU4lch ) Shawna Harch published her account on an online blogging platform on Saturday where she explained that she called authorities and attempted to activate the car's alarm before she smashed the window.
She says she became concerned after she found a parking receipt on the car that was good for two hours. The encounter happened days after the passage a new Oregon law that protects people who enter cars to rescue children or domestic animals from criminal or civil charges.
Harch says the owner of the vehicle arrived afterward and thanked her.
___
Information from: The Oregonian/OregonLive, http://www.oregonlive.com
- Updated
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — An embattled California tax-collecting agency is spending $1.7 million on furniture and equipment for a new Los Angeles County office.
The Sacramento Bee reported Monday (http://bit.ly/2sepps0 ) the Board of Equalization will spend eight times what it originally planned to pay for furniture in a 2014 proposal for the move.
The board is moving 160 employees from an office in Norwalk to a new location in Cerritos. It plans to spend more than $160,000 for office chairs and more than $5,000 for trash cans and clocks, among other expenses for the new office, according to documents obtained by the Bee.
The Board of Equalization collects about a third of California's revenue from 30 tax and fee programs. It also equalizes property taxes between counties and decides tax disputes.
The agency is losing of most of its power and 4,300 employees after a March audit found it misallocated money and misused employees' time. A bill Gov. Jerry Brown plans to sign will transfer most of the board's functions, including its ability to resolve tax disputes, to new state agencies. The Department of Tax and Fee Administration will oversee the new Cerritos office, which is scheduled to open in September.
Board of Equalization member Fiona Ma told the Bee she was alarmed by a June 1 memo that detailed the unexpectedly high furniture costs.
The board declined to say whether moving costs have changed since then and refused to answer questions about the move, according to the Bee.
___
Information from: The Sacramento Bee, http://www.sacbee.com
- Updated
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Police are investigating the death of a 2-year-old who apparently fell asleep in a hot car in southern Utah.
The Washington County Sheriff's Office said Monday it happened at a house where several out-of-state families were staying during a family reunion near St. George, where temperatures have been topping 100 degrees.
Investigators say the child likely fell asleep during a ride in a van with several other children on Saturday, and wasn't immediately missed when the group got out of the van.
Police say the child's father discovered the unresponsive toddler after several adults returned from a religious meeting.
The Washington County Sheriff's Lt. David Crouse says the death appears to be an accident.
- Updated
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Alaska Airlines is offering a charter flight over the Pacific Ocean this Aug. 21 that will allow select passengers to view the astronomical event from the sky.
The company said Monday that the flight will take off at 7:30 a.m. Pacific from Portland, Oregon and is by invitation-only for astronomers and serious eclipse chasers.
The total solar eclipse is the first coast-to-coast total solar eclipse to hit the continental U.S. in 99 years.
A total eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the sun and the Earth.
The path of totality -- the area of complete darkness where the moon's shadow completely obscures the sun -- begins in the U.S. on the Oregon coast before traveling east.
Alaska is also holding a contest to give away tickets to one person and a guest.
- Updated
MEDFORD, Ore. (AP) — An Oregon man who stole a TV and PlayStation from a friend who was receiving treatment for a gunshot wound has been sentenced to two years in prison.
The Mail Tribune reports (https://is.gd/erzjSp ) 31-year-old Joshua Lines pleaded guilty to robbery and burglary in Jackson County Circuit Court. In addition to stealing from his friend, he admitted punching a Macy's employee after he was caught shoplifting sunglasses in February.
Police say Lines was with Matthew Atkinson in March when another man shot Atkinson. Lines rode with Atkinson and Atkinson's mother to a Medford hospital, where Atkinson was admitted to the emergency room.
Police say Lines took Atkinson's keys while the man was in surgery and used them to enter his home to take the TV and video game console.
Lines said little at Friday's sentencing. He was ordered to pay more than $1,000 in restitution.
___
Information from: Mail Tribune, http://www.mailtribune.com/
- Updated
CODY, Wyo. (AP) — A 19-year-old Montana man has died after falling 2,000 feet while backcountry skiing with his sister in the Beartooth Mountains in northern Wyoming.
The Park County Sheriff's Department says Benjamin Fern Tesseneer of Bozeman died in the accident Saturday.
Authorities say Tesseneer and his sister were climbing a steep, rocky chute near Glacier Lake just south of the Wyoming-Montana border when Tesseneer fell. His sister had stopped about 1,000 feet up the chute while Tesseneer continued to climb another 1,000 feet before he fell.
Tesseneer died from apparent head and chest trauma. He was not wearing a helmet.
Backcountry skiing is common in the Beartooth Mountains, where snow still remains high up on the mountains.
- Updated
SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — A friendly game in California between former players of two professional Mexican soccer clubs turned violent when dozens of fans rushed the field and began fighting.
The Orange County Register reports (http://bit.ly/2rTmsxn ) the "game of legends" between former Club America and Pumas players Sunday was intended to benefit Santa Ana-based United Soccer Talents Foundation, which supports soccer players.
Santa Ana police Cmdr. Jeffrey Smith says about 50 fans made their way onto the field at halftime and began fighting. Officers working the event shut down the game and cleared the field and stands.
Smith says five suspects were detained.
Some of the better known players included former Mexican national team members Luis Roberto Alves "Zague" and Alberto Garcia Aspe, Paraguay's Salvador Cabañas, Chile's Fabian Estay and Colombia's Andres Chitiva.
CASPER, Wyo. (AP) — Mule deer in southwest Wyoming have not adapted to oil and gas wells on their winter range, according to a 17-year study that also documented a 36 percent decline in deer populations exposed to energy development.
"The study shows the trade-offs of energy development in critical wildlife habitat," said researcher Hall Sawyer, who has studied deer in southwest Wyoming since the 1990s.
The study looked at the Pinedale Anticline in Sublette County, where mule deer spend the winter and where one of the largest gas fields in the country encroaches on their winter range.
The study, published online by the journal Global Change Biology, began in 1998, two years before intensive drilling began in 2000-01.
"Twenty years ago we didn't really have a good idea of what was going to happen, if deer would avoid these areas or it would change anything or not," said Sawyer, the lead author of the article. "As development progressed, it became clear quickly that deer avoided well pads. It also became clear that mule deer numbers began to drop off."
Sawyer said the deer perceive wells and other oil and gas infrastructure as risky and try to keep their distance, and as a result their habitat is reduced, which results in fewer animals.
The paper doesn't make any recommendations but simply presents data from almost 200 mule deer that were monitored with the use of special collars placed on them, Sawyer told the Casper Star-Tribune (http://bit.ly/2s9kfC9 ).
A representative from the Petroleum Association of Wyoming didn't immediately return a message for comment Monday.
About 5,200 mule deer wintered on the Pinedale Anticline when 700 producing well pads were approved by the Bureau of Land Management in the summer of 2000. BLM approved another 4,400 wells in 2008.
The work was not conducted without concern for wildlife. Companies spent millions of dollars on horizontal wells, pipes to transfer liquids instead of trucking them, and modified fences.
The BLM also required that most wells couldn't operate during the winter in designated winter ranges.
Even with remediation efforts and a 45 percent decrease in hunting mandated by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, the deer herd dropped overall by 16 percent since 2001 and the deer wintering on the Anticline declined by 36 percent, the paper states.
Sawyer said the study showed that the mitigation efforts can reduce but not eliminate the effects of energy development.
"When we lose critical habitat and when we lose extra acres of habitat because of avoidance, we should expect fewer animals," he said.
___
Information from: Casper (Wyo.) Star-Tribune, http://www.trib.com
BOZEMAN, Mont. (AP) — A Montana woman has suffered fatal injuries after being mauled by two dogs over the weekend.
Gallatin County Sheriff Brian Gootkin said Monday that the woman was doing yard work Saturday morning at a residence west of Bozeman when she was attacked, first by a pit bull, followed by another dog. The breed of the second dog hasn't been confirmed.
The woman, who is an organ donor, was being kept on life support at a Billings hospital pending rabies tests on the dogs, which have been euthanized. Her name and age haven't been released.
Gootkin says the case is still under investigation and no charges have been filed against the owners of the dogs.
- By ERIK LACITIS The Seattle Times
SEATTLE (AP) — Before June 24, 1947, terms such as UFOs and flying saucers had not entered popular vocabulary. Then, on that afternoon 70 years ago, it all changed because of Kenneth Arnold:
"Supersonic Flying Saucers Sighted by Idaho Pilot."
Arnold reported seeing near Mount Rainier nine "circular-type" objects flying in formation at more than twice the speed of sound.
His was the first widely reported UFO sighting in this country, and it set off a wave of other reported sightings.
In a now-declassified document, the Air Force Materiel Command wrote it off: "The report cannot bear even superficial examination, therefore, must be disregarded."
Another Air Force document concluded, "It is the Air Force conclusion that the objects of this sighting were due to a mirage."
For Arnold, it stung.
He didn't consider himself some kind of kook. He had over 4,000 hours of mountain high-altitude pilot time; he was in the Idaho search and rescue.
"I have been subjected to ridicule, much loss of time and money, newspaper notoriety, magazine stories, reflections on my honesty, my character, my business dealings," Arnold wrote in his 1952 book, "Coming of the Saucers."
A long time ago, in 1977, I interviewed Arnold after reaching him by phone.
He died in 1984 at age 68, and in all those years, and with me, he never wavered in his descriptions.
"I made my report because I thought it was my duty. It was the only proper and American thing to do. I saw what I saw," he said.
You can draw a direct line between what Arnold repeatedly recounted in detail to FBI and military investigators and our collective fascination with the possibility that aliens have visited us.
That direct connection goes from Area 51 allegedly hiding an alien craft, to the Roswell UFO Incident; and from movies such as "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," to the TV series "The X-Files."
It's become so much a part of our culture that even the CIA website has a section titled "Take a Peek Into Our "X-Files" that is chock-full of declassified files.
The CIA helpfully lists "Top 5 CIA Documents Mulder Would Love To Get His Hands On," and "Top 5 CIA Documents Scully Would Love To Get Her Hands On."
Interested in a 1952 drawing of "flying saucers over Belgian Congo uranium mines?" It's in the CIA files.
Unassuming salesman
Arnold was an unlikely candidate to become embroiled in such a controversy.
He lived in Meridian, Idaho, and sold fire-extinguishing equipment. About as unusual as his life got was that he piloted a small airplane to get to his clients around the Northwest.
A month after Arnold was in the news, a now-declassified report made in July 1947 by Army Air Force Counter-Intelligence Corps Officer Frank M. Brown said, "Mr. Arnold is a man of 32 years of age, being married and the father of two children . It is the personal opinion of the interviewer that Mr. Arnold actually saw what he saw . To go further, if Mr. Arnold can write a report of the character that he did while not having seen the objects that he claimed he saw, it is the opinion of the interviewer that Mr. Arnold is in the wrong business, that he should be writing Buck Rogers fiction."
That was one of the few sympathetic portrayals in government documents of Arnold's sighting.
In another declassified intelligence report in July 1947, First Lt. Hal L. Eustace of the Army Air Corps put Arnold's report as part of "silly-season episodes."
The lieutenant wrote that Arnold "seems to be reasonably well balanced, although excitable, and has no apparent ulterior motive . other than to prove he is not 'nuts.'?"
The lieutenant wrote that Arnold revealed "an antagonistic attitude toward the Army" by stating, "Well, if the Army doesn't know what they are, it sure ought to be trying to find out!"
Bright flash lit the sky
Arnold's sighting of the craft was the 1947 version of a story going viral.
"It was a beautiful day. Just as clear as a bell," Arnold said. He was flying from Chehalis to Yakima and decided to spend an hour or so searching for a downed C-46 Marine transport that had crashed into the southwest side of Mount Rainier.
There was a $5,000 reward for finding it.
It was at 3 p.m., he remembered, "when a very bright flash lit up the plane and the sky around me."
At first, Arnold thought it was the sun reflecting off another plane.
"But the flash happened again, and that's when I saw where it was coming from. It came spasmodically from a chain of nine circular-type aircraft way up from the vicinity of Mount Rainier," said Arnold.
". I could not find any tails on these things. They didn't leave a jet trail behind them. I judged their size to be at least 100 feet in widespan. I thought it was a new type of missile."
His plane had a big sweep 24-hour clock on the instrument panel. Arnold measured that the craft covered the distance between Mount Rainier and Mount Adams in 1 minute 42 seconds.
"That figured out to something like 1,760 miles an hour, which I could hardly believe. I knew that figure couldn't be entirely accurate, but I'd say it was within a couple of hundred miles accurate," he said.
From Yakima, Arnold then flew to an air show in Pendleton, Oregon. The next day, on June 25, he stopped by the local newspaper, the East Oregonian. He wanted to know if the military had been testing secret warplanes in the area.
He ended up talking to reporter Bill Bequette, who, in subsequent years, remembered that Arnold "came off as honest, level headed and credible," said a story in the East Oregonian.
So Bequette wrote a brief story about what Arnold said he witnessed.
But the brief also went out to The Associated Press, got picked up by numerous newspapers, and the furor began. For the first time, a mass-media story and subsequent headlines used the term, "flying saucers."
There were no reported riches for Arnold because of his notoriety. Instead, he complained to Frank Brown, the Air Force investigator, "that his business had suffered greatly . at every stop in his business routes, large groups of people were waiting to question him ."
Brown concluded his report, "Mr. Arnold stated further that if he, at any time in the future, saw anything in the sky, to quote Mr. Arnold . 'If I ever saw a ten story building flying through the air I would never say a word about it,' due to the fact that he has been ridiculed by the press to such an extent that he is practically a moron in the eye of the majority of the population of the United States."
A mystery to this day
Despite that statement to Brown, in the coming years Arnold was driven to prove he was right.
There were "many long hours of fruitless flying with a camera, trying and failing to find anything like his saucers again," says Martin Shough, a well-regarded researcher of the UFO phenomena who has written a detailed analysis of Arnold's account.
In an email, Shough, who lives in the Highlands of Scotland, says, "I am resigned to never knowing what Arnold saw."
He concludes, "Seventy years on, when so much of the flying saucer mythology that Kenneth Arnold triggered has been explained away, it is somewhat embarrassing that Arnold's own sighting remains obstinately resistant.
"But there it is."
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A Portland woman says she used a car jack to break a window after spotting a dog stuck inside of a Mercedes in 89 degree- (32 degrees Celsius-) weather with little air.
The Oregonian/OregonLive reports (http://bit.ly/2sU4lch ) Shawna Harch published her account on an online blogging platform on Saturday where she explained that she called authorities and attempted to activate the car's alarm before she smashed the window.
She says she became concerned after she found a parking receipt on the car that was good for two hours. The encounter happened days after the passage a new Oregon law that protects people who enter cars to rescue children or domestic animals from criminal or civil charges.
Harch says the owner of the vehicle arrived afterward and thanked her.
___
Information from: The Oregonian/OregonLive, http://www.oregonlive.com
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — An embattled California tax-collecting agency is spending $1.7 million on furniture and equipment for a new Los Angeles County office.
The Sacramento Bee reported Monday (http://bit.ly/2sepps0 ) the Board of Equalization will spend eight times what it originally planned to pay for furniture in a 2014 proposal for the move.
The board is moving 160 employees from an office in Norwalk to a new location in Cerritos. It plans to spend more than $160,000 for office chairs and more than $5,000 for trash cans and clocks, among other expenses for the new office, according to documents obtained by the Bee.
The Board of Equalization collects about a third of California's revenue from 30 tax and fee programs. It also equalizes property taxes between counties and decides tax disputes.
The agency is losing of most of its power and 4,300 employees after a March audit found it misallocated money and misused employees' time. A bill Gov. Jerry Brown plans to sign will transfer most of the board's functions, including its ability to resolve tax disputes, to new state agencies. The Department of Tax and Fee Administration will oversee the new Cerritos office, which is scheduled to open in September.
Board of Equalization member Fiona Ma told the Bee she was alarmed by a June 1 memo that detailed the unexpectedly high furniture costs.
The board declined to say whether moving costs have changed since then and refused to answer questions about the move, according to the Bee.
___
Information from: The Sacramento Bee, http://www.sacbee.com
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Police are investigating the death of a 2-year-old who apparently fell asleep in a hot car in southern Utah.
The Washington County Sheriff's Office said Monday it happened at a house where several out-of-state families were staying during a family reunion near St. George, where temperatures have been topping 100 degrees.
Investigators say the child likely fell asleep during a ride in a van with several other children on Saturday, and wasn't immediately missed when the group got out of the van.
Police say the child's father discovered the unresponsive toddler after several adults returned from a religious meeting.
The Washington County Sheriff's Lt. David Crouse says the death appears to be an accident.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Alaska Airlines is offering a charter flight over the Pacific Ocean this Aug. 21 that will allow select passengers to view the astronomical event from the sky.
The company said Monday that the flight will take off at 7:30 a.m. Pacific from Portland, Oregon and is by invitation-only for astronomers and serious eclipse chasers.
The total solar eclipse is the first coast-to-coast total solar eclipse to hit the continental U.S. in 99 years.
A total eclipse occurs when the moon passes between the sun and the Earth.
The path of totality -- the area of complete darkness where the moon's shadow completely obscures the sun -- begins in the U.S. on the Oregon coast before traveling east.
Alaska is also holding a contest to give away tickets to one person and a guest.
MEDFORD, Ore. (AP) — An Oregon man who stole a TV and PlayStation from a friend who was receiving treatment for a gunshot wound has been sentenced to two years in prison.
The Mail Tribune reports (https://is.gd/erzjSp ) 31-year-old Joshua Lines pleaded guilty to robbery and burglary in Jackson County Circuit Court. In addition to stealing from his friend, he admitted punching a Macy's employee after he was caught shoplifting sunglasses in February.
Police say Lines was with Matthew Atkinson in March when another man shot Atkinson. Lines rode with Atkinson and Atkinson's mother to a Medford hospital, where Atkinson was admitted to the emergency room.
Police say Lines took Atkinson's keys while the man was in surgery and used them to enter his home to take the TV and video game console.
Lines said little at Friday's sentencing. He was ordered to pay more than $1,000 in restitution.
___
Information from: Mail Tribune, http://www.mailtribune.com/
CODY, Wyo. (AP) — A 19-year-old Montana man has died after falling 2,000 feet while backcountry skiing with his sister in the Beartooth Mountains in northern Wyoming.
The Park County Sheriff's Department says Benjamin Fern Tesseneer of Bozeman died in the accident Saturday.
Authorities say Tesseneer and his sister were climbing a steep, rocky chute near Glacier Lake just south of the Wyoming-Montana border when Tesseneer fell. His sister had stopped about 1,000 feet up the chute while Tesseneer continued to climb another 1,000 feet before he fell.
Tesseneer died from apparent head and chest trauma. He was not wearing a helmet.
Backcountry skiing is common in the Beartooth Mountains, where snow still remains high up on the mountains.
SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — A friendly game in California between former players of two professional Mexican soccer clubs turned violent when dozens of fans rushed the field and began fighting.
The Orange County Register reports (http://bit.ly/2rTmsxn ) the "game of legends" between former Club America and Pumas players Sunday was intended to benefit Santa Ana-based United Soccer Talents Foundation, which supports soccer players.
Santa Ana police Cmdr. Jeffrey Smith says about 50 fans made their way onto the field at halftime and began fighting. Officers working the event shut down the game and cleared the field and stands.
Smith says five suspects were detained.
Some of the better known players included former Mexican national team members Luis Roberto Alves "Zague" and Alberto Garcia Aspe, Paraguay's Salvador Cabañas, Chile's Fabian Estay and Colombia's Andres Chitiva.
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Over 60 fun events happening in Tucson in February 💖🐎
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A new chapter: Crossroads Restaurant is back open after fire
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A saber tooth tiger fossil, gemstone paintings, and more: Here's the low-down on 4 Tucson gem shows! 💎
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Tucson Valentine's: Vegas-style weddings, tattoo parlor nuptials
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Our huge guide to date ideas in Tucson, from romantic to casual
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This Tucson chef has been named a semifinalist for prestigious James Beard Award 🎉
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Step back into the 14th century at Arizona Renaissance Fair 🫅
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Transplant Pizza, Mosaic Brewing and Marana Serial Grillers close their doors