Man yells 'sexy,' is booted from plane; french fry lawsuit; agent's OD kit
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Odd and interesting news from around the West.
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EUGENE, Ore. (AP) — A Cottage Grove woman has been given a 10-day jail sentence after admitting that she had sex with her 16-year-old neighbor last summer.
The Register-Guard reports (http://bit.ly/2dK3ALX ) that 27-year-old Jessica Jane Bennett was sentenced Monday after pleading guilty to contributing to the sexual delinquency of a minor. She has the option of avoiding jail time by participating in an alternate program such as road crew or community service.
Authorities began investigating Bennett in July after the teen's father contacted the Lane County Sheriff's Office to report that the woman was naked in the boy's bed.
Bennett allegedly admitted to authorities that she and the teen had sex multiple times that day. She said she knew the teen was underage and realized she had made a bad decision.
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Information from: The Register-Guard, http://www.registerguard.com
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LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) — A Los Alamos National Laboratory team is trying to develop a project that would grab solar power from building windows.
Team leader Victor Klimov said this week researchers are developing solar concentrators that will harvest sunlight from building windows and turn it into electricity.
Klimov leads the Los Alamos Center for Advanced Solar Photophysics.
The team currently is taking quantum dot, solar-powered windows from the laboratory to test at a construction site. It is trying to prove that the technology can be scaled up from palm-sized demonstration models to windows large enough to put in and power a building.
Their study will be published this week in the journal, Nature Energy.
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SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Sacramento County has agreed to pay $200,000 to settle an excessive-force complaint that alleges a suspect was needlessly beaten by a deputy wielding a flashlight. This is the third such settlement in six years.
The Sacramento Bee reports (http://bit.ly/2d7blxC ) that the settlement stems from a lawsuit filed by John Reyes, who alleged that a deputy beat him with a flashlight, doused him in pepper spray and shot him with a stun gun during a December 2015 confrontation outside a Starbucks.
The lawsuit has been dismissed with neither party admitting wrongdoing.
Sheriff's spokesman Sgt. Tony Turnbull said he was not aware of the settlement and had no comment.
The settlement is the third in since 2010 involving the same deputy and alleged flashlight beatings.
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Information from: The Sacramento Bee, http://www.sacbee.com
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LA GRANDE, Ore. (AP) — The Oregon Department of Transportation is testing new speed signs that change the speed limit based on weather conditions on Interstate 84.
The La Grande Observer reports (https://is.gd/bXRVw6 ) that over the past few weeks ODOT crews have been installing the variable-speed signs in a 30-mile corridor from Ladd Canyon to Baker City.
The new electronic message boards indicate a safe speed limit for vehicles in adverse weather conditions. Computers collect data regarding temperature, skid resistance and average motorist speed to determine the most effective speed limit for this area before presenting the limit on the sign.
The variable signs are expected to go live on Nov. 1.
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Information from: The (La Grande) Observer, http://www.lagrandeobserver.com/
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LAS VEGAS (AP) — A California company says it intends to spend billions of dollars to build the largest solar power plant in the world on a sprawling 25-square-mile plot in the sun-baked Nevada desert about 225 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
SolarReserve chief executive Kevin Smith outlined a plan Tuesday to create a 10-tower concentrated solar array dubbed Sandstone Energy X near the Nye County city of Tonopah.
Smith, with U.S. Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., and Deputy federal Energy Secretary Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, said the goal is to produce enough electricity to power about a million homes, probably in California.
SolarReserve already operates a single-tower project on 1,600 acres of federal land outside Tonopah called the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Plant.
It can produce up to 110 megawatts of electricity by focusing a 1-mile circle of mirrors on a 640-foot central tower to heat molten salt to more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The superheated salt is used to boil water to drive power turbines.
The new project could cost $5 billion and would be larger by far than any existing solar facility in the world, Smith told the Las Vegas Review-Journal (http://bit.ly/2efsczx ). It would produce between 1,500 and 2,000 megawatts of electricity, comparable to a nuclear power plant or Hoover Dam.
It would resemble the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, a three-tower concentrated solar thermal plant that has been operating for more than two years in the Mojave Desert about 40 miles southwest of Las Vegas. That project, owned by NRG Energy, BrightSource Energy and Google, is visible to motorists on Interstate 15 just south of the Nevada-California state line.
SolarReserve officials said the Crescent Dunes and Sandstone projects differ from Ivanpah because they are designed to store heat without backup fuels or batteries to deliver electricity even in darkness, with zero emissions, little water use and no hazardous waste.
A 16,000-acre Sandstone site on federal land in Nye County could be announced next year, Smith said, with construction to begin by 2020. SolarReserve will need to build transmission lines to carry the electricity to market.
Smith told the Review-Journal the company, based in Santa Monica, California, will explore federal loan programs and private financing to pay for the new project.
Crescent Dunes cost about $1 billion, and was backed by $737 million in federal loan guarantees. Nevada's dominant utility, NV Energy, agreed to buy that plant's entire output at 13.5 cents per kilowatt hour for the next 25 years — roughly twice the cost of power from a natural gas-fueled plant.
Smith said no power purchase agreements have been struck yet for the Sandstone project.
- By VICKIE ALDOUS Mail Tribune
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ASHLAND, Ore. (AP) — Reports of sexual assaults at Southern Oregon University are skyrocketing, but to school officials and Sen. Ron Wyden, that's a good thing.
The statistics show students are more comfortable coming forward, said the Democratic senator, who was on campus this week to talk to SOU staff members and students about the university's approach to handling cases of sexual assault.
"What I've heard today from the student leaders is that the numbers have gone up to a great extent because students have felt confident that they're going to be treated fairly," said Wyden, who is promoting legislation in Congress that would improve universities' responses to sexual assault.
SOU fielded just 12 reports of sexual assault in 2011 and eight reports in 2012. Numbers shot up in subsequent years, hitting a high so far of 97 reports in 2015, according to Angela Fleischer, a confidential adviser at SOU who explains options to victims and guides them through whichever process they choose.
Victims can choose to seek only support resources, trigger a university administrative process or report a sexual assault to law enforcement, she said.
If a victim chooses the administrative process, information is gathered and a person found to be a perpetrator could face sanctions ranging from education about the problem to suspension or expulsion, Fleischer said.
Wyden said SOU is leading the way in its response to sexual assault and serves as a model to other colleges and universities in the nation.
The university's Campus Choice program addresses domestic violence, dating violence and stalking, in addition to sexual assault.
Campus Choice has some similarities to the Ashland Police Department's You Have Options Program for sexual assault reporting, which also gives victims more control in how their cases move forward. APD's program, too, has garnered national attention.
Fleischer said victims are often reluctant to come forward if they believe a criminal investigation will automatically be triggered.
"They say, 'I don't want to ruin the person's whole life.' But they also say, 'I don't want this to happen to someone else,'" she said.
People who commit sexual assault often engage in serial predatory behavior and have multiple victims, according to Ashland police Detective Carrie Hull, founder of You Have Options.
Hull said while many victims have negative experiences after reporting sexual assault, many also have positive experiences. She said law enforcement agencies and universities can learn from those positive experiences and use them to craft their responses.
Hull said giving victims more control allows organizations to get a better, more realistic view of the prevalence of sexual assault.
"Institutions want to be in control. If we give that up, we get so much more intelligence on what is happening," she said.
In addition to explaining options to victims, SOU staff members and students are working to reduce sexual assaults by educating everyone on campus.
First-year students especially are targeted with information on consent, healthy relationships, bystander intervention and similar topics, said SOU Women's Resource Center Coordinator Riah Safady Gooding.
"We are trying to change belief systems and culture," she said.
Turning to events on the national stage, Wyden said he is disturbed by a recently released recording of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump bragging about being able to kiss women and grab their genitals without their consent because he is a wealthy, successful celebrity.
Wyden said Trump's attitude reflects an outdated, twisted sense of entitlement that men in power can abuse women.
"This set of events in the last few days once again reaffirms in my mind that real men don't engage in this kind of abuse," Wyden said.
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Information from: Mail Tribune, http://www.mailtribune.com/
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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A former Brigham Young University-Hawaii student has filed a lawsuit alleging the school's honor code prevented her from seeking help after she was sexually assaulted by her campus job supervisor.
The Salt Lake Tribune reports (http://bit.ly/2d7xls4) that the lawsuit, filed Sept. 30 in Honolulu, claims the Mormon-owned school's rules banning unmarried students from sexual activity made the victim feel like she could not report her assault. According to the lawsuit, the victim had previously been suspended over an alleged violation of the school's Honor Code.
A BYU-Hawaii spokesman declined to comment on the lawsuit but said the university has a zero-tolerance policy for sexual misconduct.
The woman's complaint comes as BYU-Provo faces a federal investigation into its compliance with Title IX, which requires universities to follow certain procedures when dealing with sexual assault on campus.
According to the lawsuit, the woman was working for the university's student government in October 2014 when her direct supervisor drove her to a beach and sexually assaulted her on the way back.
"Through the remainder of (the woman's) employment, (the defendant) used his position as ... supervisor and superior to direct and/or lure her to the offices of the BYU-H Student Association and other locations where he could isolate and repeatedly assault her," the complaint said.
The newspaper reports that the woman sought the appointed position of student association vice president in April 2015.
"Immediately before the interview for this position, over which (the defendant) had influence, he called plaintiff to solicit sex as a quid pro quo for his support of her candidacy," the lawsuit said.
The woman quit her position a week later and was psychologically unable to take final exams. She needed special arrangements to take the exams off-campus, according to the lawsuit, which also alleges that the university's staff director over student activities suspected the man was abusing his power but didn't intervene.
The woman's lawyer, Mark Gallagher, said she has since transferred to a school in Vancouver. The Salt Lake Tribune was unable to reach the defendant for comment.
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Information from: The Salt Lake Tribune, http://www.sltrib.com
- By The Associated Press
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Alaska Airlines removed a man from a plane after he heckled a female flight attendant, calling out "sexy!" as she demonstrated how to use a life vest.
The incident occurred Sunday before a flight from Seattle to Burbank, California, Alaska spokeswoman Ann Zaninovich said Wednesday.
Zaninovich provided few details other than to say that the airline stood behind the decision of the crew to remove the man from the flight. She also said an account of the incident posted on Facebook was accurate.
In that post, Amber D. Nelson of suburban Los Angeles said a man in the row behind her began calling out to the flight attendant demonstrating the life vest. After the attendant asked the man to be respectful, he answered "C'mon, I'm just playing with you!" Nelson wrote.
As the man was escorted off the plane, he objected that he hadn't done anything wrong, according to Nelson, who did not immediately respond to an attempt to contact her.
Nelson praised Alaska for supporting the crew "and those of us on board who were demeaned by another passenger's juvenile and exceedingly disrespectful behavior."
Airline employees have broad latitude to remove passengers, who are often allowed to board a later flight. Alaska did not identify the passenger or say whether he took a later flight.
People who commented on Nelson's post took both sides, with some applauding the airline and others saying the crew overreacted.
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COOS BAY, Ore. (AP) — A hospital in Coos Bay has lifted a quarantine of its emergency room after a 78-year-old patient, her caregiver, two sheriff's deputies and a hospital employee all developed hallucinations.
The Coos Bay World reported Wednesday (http://bit.ly/2e8ATGO) that authorities have not yet pinpointed what caused the episodes but they believe it was something spread by direct contact. The sheriff's department says one possibility is a medicated patch.
The bizarre incident began around 3 a.m. when the elderly woman's caregiver called authorities to say people were vandalizing her car.
A responding deputy found nothing. The caregiver called back at 5:30 a.m. and was taken to the hospital after deputies decided she needed medical help.
Later, the two deputies who helped the caregiver, the caregiver's patient and a hospital staffer all developed symptoms.
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OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — A man who threw acid on a Thurston County judge at his home was sentenced Wednesday to more than 14 years in prison.
Michael E. Martin, 36, had pleaded guilty last month to charges of first-degree assault, second-degree assault and malicious mischief for the attack on District Judge Brett Buckley when he answered the door at his home on Sept. 10, 2012, the Olympian reported (http://bit.ly/2e8pE1c).
Buckley was present in the courtroom Wednesday and spoke of the toll the attack had taken on his family. He and his two dogs sustained chemical burns, and the sulfuric acid caused about $30,000 in damage to the family's home. He and his wife ultimately sold their home of 27 years.
Buckley had previously granted a domestic violence protection order against Martin that was sought from an ex-girlfriend. Police, who learned that the FBI was investigating Martin for threatening to kill an Army lawyer, found "to do" lists on Martin's phone related to getting battery acid and finding out the name of his judge.
Martin also pleaded guilty to those charges in 2013 and was dishonorably from the Army, according to court documents. After serving his sentence in the federal case, he was booked into the Thurston County jail, where he awaited resolution of the Thurston County case.
"Judges should not have to live in fear that a decision they make would lead to an attack on them and their families," Buckley said. "We, the citizens of this country, do not want judges having to consider the calculus of personal safety when determining how to resolve a case."
At Wednesday' hearing, Martin said that he had no intention of killing Buckley or even hurting him, but wanted to scare him. He argued that Buckley's no-contact order led to unfair treatment by his superiors in the Army, an eventual court martial and his dishonorable discharge.
"You are not the victim, you are the perpetrator," Judge Pro Tempore Toni Sheldon reminded him.
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Information from: The Olympian, http://www.theolympian.com
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RED RIVER, N.M. (AP) — A New Mexico bank employee and her cousin have been arrested along with another man after authorities concluded that a robbery was an inside job, according to court documents released Wednesday.
Investigators made the allegations after viewing surveillance video they say shows suspect Jennifer Marissa Miera didn't bother to read a holdup note given to her by a man later identified as her cousin Troy Montoya.
People's Bank in Red River was robbed of $12,229 on Oct. 6, an FBI agent said in an affidavit.
After viewing the video, investigators said, they re-interviewed Miera and were told her involvement came under duress because two unidentified men had threatened her if she didn't cooperate.
A search of Miera's home then unearthed incriminating items such as torn pieces of paper that "appeared to be the bottom half of the demand note," the affidavit said.
Montoya confessed to participating in the robbery, the affidavit said.
The investigation also resulted in the arrest of Shawn Michael Goodrum Jr.
Authorities said he knew about the robbery but concealed it so he could blackmail Miera to get some of the money.
The affidavit says Miera initially asked Goodrum to help rob the bank but turned to Montoya when Goodrum didn't respond immediately.
Goodrum, the affidavit said, initially told Miera he wanted only $1,000, "but that Miera told him he could take half of the money in the bag."
The affidavit said investigators recovered more than $6,000 from Goodrum, his truck and home.
All three defendants appeared Wednesday in federal court in Albuquerque, where a magistrate ordered them detained pending another hearing.
An attorney for Montoya declined comment on the accusations. An attorney for Miera did not immediate respond to a request for comment. It could not be immediately determined whether Goodrum has an attorney.
- By MICHELLE L. PRICE Associated Press
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SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A prosecutor said Wednesday that he intends to file misdemeanor drug charges against the wife of the Democratic candidate for governor after federal investigators found about 2 pounds of marijuana at the couple's Utah home.
The investigation began after U.S. Postal Service inspectors intercepted a package containing a small amount of pot that Donna Weinholtz tried to mail earlier this year to another home she and husband Mike Weinholtz own in California, Tooele County Chief Deputy Attorney Gary Searle said.
Federal investigators went to the couple's Salt Lake City home and found the larger stash of marijuana, which Donna Weinholtz told them that she uses to treat chronic pain, authorities said.
The U.S. attorney's office didn't believe federal charges were warranted and forwarded the case to Salt Lake County prosecutors several weeks ago, spokeswoman Melodie Rydalch said.
The case was then sent to Tooele County because Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill is a political ally of Mike Weinholtz and wanted to avoid a conflict of interest, officials said.
Searle said it appears Donna Weinholtz had the drug for her personal use and there's no evidence her husband was aware she had it. Searle said he plans to file misdemeanor drug possession charges against her soon, meaning she could face up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine if convicted.
Mike Weinholtz said in a statement released by his campaign that his wife uses marijuana to relieve pain caused by arthritis and degenerative spinal conditions.
"She refuses to use addictive opiates and used cannabis after suffering when other medicinal options were either invasive, ineffective or addictive," he said. "We have complied at every step of the judicial process and now that we know where the case is landing, we look forward to having the issue resolved and moving on."
The wealthy businessman announced soon after winning his party's nomination in April that he would advocate for legalizing medical marijuana in Utah because his wife was under investigation for pot possession.
The U.S. attorney's office confirmed in July it was investigating Donna Weinholtz but offered little information. Rydalch declined to comment further Wednesday or explain why federal prosecutors decided not to file charges.
Searle said he plans to treat Weinholtz like everyone else but that he has "no intent to turn this into some political sideshow." He did not know whether she had a medical marijuana card in California. Even if she did, possession of the drug is illegal in Utah.
The conservative state has passed a very limited medical marijuana law allowing those with severe epilepsy to use cannabis extract oil that doesn't contain psychoactive properties.
The marijuana investigation is not Donna Weinholtz's first brush with authorities. She was one of 13 people arrested in 2014 as part of a protest over the GOP-dominated Legislature's refusal to hold a hearing on an anti-discrimination law that includes sexual and gender orientation protections. It passed the following year.
Weinholtz pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of disrupting a meeting after she and other protesters blocked the doors to a committee meeting room. She was sentenced to probation, and the charge was dismissed after she completed the probation and paid a $100 fine.
Mike Weinholtz is facing an uphill battle this year to try to unseat Republican Gov. Gary Herbert in an overwhelmingly GOP state.
Herbert campaign manager Marty Carpenter had no comment on the investigation.
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LAS VEGAS (AP) — Researchers say they detonated an underground explosion comparable to nearly 2.5 tons of TNT in a vast former nuclear testing range in the Nevada desert north of Las Vegas.
A statement from the U.S. Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration said the Wednesday explosion was the sixth in a series of experiments designed to test methods for detecting underground nuclear explosions.
Agency spokesman Dante Pistone says no unexpected damage and no injuries resulted.
The statement says chemical explosives equivalent to 4,850 pounds (2,200 kilograms) of TNT were detonated 101 feet (31 meters) underground to allow monitors to collect seismic, optical, acoustic and magnetic data.
Results were to be shared with researchers worldwide on an Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology website, in a comparison of conventional and nuclear explosions.
- By ANDREW SELSKY Associated Press
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PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The DEA's top agent in Oregon is worried about the opioid epidemic hitting the state, so just about every time he steps out into the street, he carries something to combat it.
Cam B. Strahm, assistant special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said the use of both heroin and prescription pills is spiking, and that Fentanyl, which is many times stronger than heroin, presents an even greater threat.
When he goes out, Strahm packs a black zippered bag, looking like a travel toiletry kit, which contains Narcan. When administered through the nose, it can save a life by reviving a person who has overdosed.
"If I see a kid collapse in front of me, I want to be able to give him a second chance," Strahm said in an interview with The Associated Press on Oct. 5.
Overdoses from prescription opioid pain relievers and heroin killed more than 28,000 people in the United States in 2014, a record number, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Since 1999, the number of opioid overdose deaths has nearly quadrupled.
In Oregon, opioid overdose deaths reached 6.826 per 100,000 population in 2014, the Oregon Health Authority said, a more than threefold increase from 2000.
The flood of opioid pills comes from unscrupulous pain-management clinics and doctors who overprescribe for profits, Strahm said.
Concurrent with the increase in overdoses is a sharp rise in Mexico of poppy cultivation. Acting DEA Deputy Administrator Jack Riley told a U.S. Senate subcommittee on May 26 that cultivation increased 160 percent between 2013 and 2015, with growing of the heroin-producing crop centered primarily in the state of Guerrero and the "Golden Triangle," which includes the states of Chihuahua, Sinaloa and Durango.
Most of the heroin in Oregon — black tar and brown powdered — comes from Mexico via California, Strahm said. Much of it is distributed in Oregon by residents with family ties to villages in Mexico, often the same villages, said Strahm, who was raised near Portland and who previously served in the DEA's offices in Houston and Jacksonville.
In the interview, Strahm declined to comment on whether a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border could cause a drop in heroin smuggling. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has vowed to build a wall along the border if he wins the election.
"I am apolitical, and I don't comment on politics," Strahm said. "We have to attack this epidemic before we lose more people than we're currently losing to overdoses."
Strahm has agents trying to curtail drug availability, bring traffickers to justice, and destroy drug trafficking organizations.
And with his small black bag, he is ready to personally intervene to save a user. "It certainly goes with me most places," he said.
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Follow Andrew Selsky on Twitter at https://twitter.com/andrewselsky
- DAN JOLING, Associated Press
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ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A remote village on Alaska's northwest coast has begun a reverse tourism campaign. Residents want visitors to stay away.
Pacific walrus by the thousands in recent years have come ashore in early fall near the Inupiat village of Point Lay, including about 6,000 last week, and people have dropped in, hoping to see a marine mammal phenomenon brought on by climate change and disappearing summer sea ice in the Chukchi Sea.
However, Point Lay, population 270, has no hotel or restaurants. And walrus to residents are a major food source, not a curiosity. Disturbances by boats or airplanes can spook walrus into stampedes that crush the smallest animals.
So Point Lay is working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on an information campaign: Thanks for the interest, but please don't stop by.
"They've had people come and had no place to accommodate them and they ended up having to tell the person to get back on the plane and head out," said Andrea Medeiros, spokeswoman for the agency in Anchorage. "I would imagine it's a very awkward situation for them."
The walrus can't even be seen from the village.
"You have to travel across a cove to get to where the animals are," Medeiros said. Visitors would need a ride from a resident and the trip can be hazardous.
"They're actually on a barrier island," she said.
Walrus started coming ashore on the northwest Alaska coast in 2007. In September last year, 35,000 packed a rocky beach near Point Lay. The carcasses of more than 130 mostly young walruses were counted after a stampede in September 2009 at Icy Cape.
Walrus prefer spreading out on sea ice, where they can monitor the approach of predators such as polar bears.
Many adult male walrus stay south of the Bering Strait year-round. However, females with calves stay on the edge of pack ice, where the young can rest as mothers dive for clams.
As the sea ice melts, the edge moves north, providing a moving platform over the shallow Bering and Chukchi seas.
In recent years, as Arctic temperatures have warmed, the edge of the sea ice has receded far to the north over water too deep for walrus to dive and reach the ocean bottom. Walrus have the choice of resting on ice over deep water or moving to shore, joined by thousands of other animals.
Remnant ice floating in the Chukchi gave walrus a safe platform this year until Friday, when about 6,000 of them came ashore near Point Lay. They appear to have since moved on, likely to Russia, Joel Garlich-Miller, a walrus biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said in a Tuesday statement.
Leo Ferreira, Point Lay Tribal Council president, in an interview with Sitka radio station KCAW last year urged the media to keep its distance and reacted angrily when a photographer flew near the walrus. He issued a statement Friday reiterating a "no media" policy while walrus are on shore.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service works with the Federal Aviation Administration to discourage airplanes from flying near walrus.
The agency also has received a two-year, $140,000 grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to help Point Lay.
The grant will pay to train Point Lay young people in photography, videography and film production that could be used on a website about walrus coming ashore. The goal is to keep people informed while warning them of the hazards and discouraging them from visiting.
The grant also will pay for villagers to monitor walrus coming ashore over about 50 miles of ocean beach, and to collect data including the age, sex and cause of any walrus deaths.
Walrus herds are just one change brought to Point Lay by climate change. The frozen ground on which the village is built is melting. Over the summer, soil weakened ground between a river and the lake where Point Lay drew water. A canal developed and drained the lake. The community has water in storage tanks that should last about a year, giving residents time to find a new water source.
Point Lay residents are trying to adapt.
"It's challenging," Medeiros said.
EUGENE, Ore. (AP) — A Cottage Grove woman has been given a 10-day jail sentence after admitting that she had sex with her 16-year-old neighbor last summer.
The Register-Guard reports (http://bit.ly/2dK3ALX ) that 27-year-old Jessica Jane Bennett was sentenced Monday after pleading guilty to contributing to the sexual delinquency of a minor. She has the option of avoiding jail time by participating in an alternate program such as road crew or community service.
Authorities began investigating Bennett in July after the teen's father contacted the Lane County Sheriff's Office to report that the woman was naked in the boy's bed.
Bennett allegedly admitted to authorities that she and the teen had sex multiple times that day. She said she knew the teen was underage and realized she had made a bad decision.
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Information from: The Register-Guard, http://www.registerguard.com
LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (AP) — A Los Alamos National Laboratory team is trying to develop a project that would grab solar power from building windows.
Team leader Victor Klimov said this week researchers are developing solar concentrators that will harvest sunlight from building windows and turn it into electricity.
Klimov leads the Los Alamos Center for Advanced Solar Photophysics.
The team currently is taking quantum dot, solar-powered windows from the laboratory to test at a construction site. It is trying to prove that the technology can be scaled up from palm-sized demonstration models to windows large enough to put in and power a building.
Their study will be published this week in the journal, Nature Energy.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Sacramento County has agreed to pay $200,000 to settle an excessive-force complaint that alleges a suspect was needlessly beaten by a deputy wielding a flashlight. This is the third such settlement in six years.
The Sacramento Bee reports (http://bit.ly/2d7blxC ) that the settlement stems from a lawsuit filed by John Reyes, who alleged that a deputy beat him with a flashlight, doused him in pepper spray and shot him with a stun gun during a December 2015 confrontation outside a Starbucks.
The lawsuit has been dismissed with neither party admitting wrongdoing.
Sheriff's spokesman Sgt. Tony Turnbull said he was not aware of the settlement and had no comment.
The settlement is the third in since 2010 involving the same deputy and alleged flashlight beatings.
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Information from: The Sacramento Bee, http://www.sacbee.com
LA GRANDE, Ore. (AP) — The Oregon Department of Transportation is testing new speed signs that change the speed limit based on weather conditions on Interstate 84.
The La Grande Observer reports (https://is.gd/bXRVw6 ) that over the past few weeks ODOT crews have been installing the variable-speed signs in a 30-mile corridor from Ladd Canyon to Baker City.
The new electronic message boards indicate a safe speed limit for vehicles in adverse weather conditions. Computers collect data regarding temperature, skid resistance and average motorist speed to determine the most effective speed limit for this area before presenting the limit on the sign.
The variable signs are expected to go live on Nov. 1.
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Information from: The (La Grande) Observer, http://www.lagrandeobserver.com/
LAS VEGAS (AP) — A California company says it intends to spend billions of dollars to build the largest solar power plant in the world on a sprawling 25-square-mile plot in the sun-baked Nevada desert about 225 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
SolarReserve chief executive Kevin Smith outlined a plan Tuesday to create a 10-tower concentrated solar array dubbed Sandstone Energy X near the Nye County city of Tonopah.
Smith, with U.S. Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., and Deputy federal Energy Secretary Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, said the goal is to produce enough electricity to power about a million homes, probably in California.
SolarReserve already operates a single-tower project on 1,600 acres of federal land outside Tonopah called the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Plant.
It can produce up to 110 megawatts of electricity by focusing a 1-mile circle of mirrors on a 640-foot central tower to heat molten salt to more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The superheated salt is used to boil water to drive power turbines.
The new project could cost $5 billion and would be larger by far than any existing solar facility in the world, Smith told the Las Vegas Review-Journal (http://bit.ly/2efsczx ). It would produce between 1,500 and 2,000 megawatts of electricity, comparable to a nuclear power plant or Hoover Dam.
It would resemble the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, a three-tower concentrated solar thermal plant that has been operating for more than two years in the Mojave Desert about 40 miles southwest of Las Vegas. That project, owned by NRG Energy, BrightSource Energy and Google, is visible to motorists on Interstate 15 just south of the Nevada-California state line.
SolarReserve officials said the Crescent Dunes and Sandstone projects differ from Ivanpah because they are designed to store heat without backup fuels or batteries to deliver electricity even in darkness, with zero emissions, little water use and no hazardous waste.
A 16,000-acre Sandstone site on federal land in Nye County could be announced next year, Smith said, with construction to begin by 2020. SolarReserve will need to build transmission lines to carry the electricity to market.
Smith told the Review-Journal the company, based in Santa Monica, California, will explore federal loan programs and private financing to pay for the new project.
Crescent Dunes cost about $1 billion, and was backed by $737 million in federal loan guarantees. Nevada's dominant utility, NV Energy, agreed to buy that plant's entire output at 13.5 cents per kilowatt hour for the next 25 years — roughly twice the cost of power from a natural gas-fueled plant.
Smith said no power purchase agreements have been struck yet for the Sandstone project.
- By VICKIE ALDOUS Mail Tribune
ASHLAND, Ore. (AP) — Reports of sexual assaults at Southern Oregon University are skyrocketing, but to school officials and Sen. Ron Wyden, that's a good thing.
The statistics show students are more comfortable coming forward, said the Democratic senator, who was on campus this week to talk to SOU staff members and students about the university's approach to handling cases of sexual assault.
"What I've heard today from the student leaders is that the numbers have gone up to a great extent because students have felt confident that they're going to be treated fairly," said Wyden, who is promoting legislation in Congress that would improve universities' responses to sexual assault.
SOU fielded just 12 reports of sexual assault in 2011 and eight reports in 2012. Numbers shot up in subsequent years, hitting a high so far of 97 reports in 2015, according to Angela Fleischer, a confidential adviser at SOU who explains options to victims and guides them through whichever process they choose.
Victims can choose to seek only support resources, trigger a university administrative process or report a sexual assault to law enforcement, she said.
If a victim chooses the administrative process, information is gathered and a person found to be a perpetrator could face sanctions ranging from education about the problem to suspension or expulsion, Fleischer said.
Wyden said SOU is leading the way in its response to sexual assault and serves as a model to other colleges and universities in the nation.
The university's Campus Choice program addresses domestic violence, dating violence and stalking, in addition to sexual assault.
Campus Choice has some similarities to the Ashland Police Department's You Have Options Program for sexual assault reporting, which also gives victims more control in how their cases move forward. APD's program, too, has garnered national attention.
Fleischer said victims are often reluctant to come forward if they believe a criminal investigation will automatically be triggered.
"They say, 'I don't want to ruin the person's whole life.' But they also say, 'I don't want this to happen to someone else,'" she said.
People who commit sexual assault often engage in serial predatory behavior and have multiple victims, according to Ashland police Detective Carrie Hull, founder of You Have Options.
Hull said while many victims have negative experiences after reporting sexual assault, many also have positive experiences. She said law enforcement agencies and universities can learn from those positive experiences and use them to craft their responses.
Hull said giving victims more control allows organizations to get a better, more realistic view of the prevalence of sexual assault.
"Institutions want to be in control. If we give that up, we get so much more intelligence on what is happening," she said.
In addition to explaining options to victims, SOU staff members and students are working to reduce sexual assaults by educating everyone on campus.
First-year students especially are targeted with information on consent, healthy relationships, bystander intervention and similar topics, said SOU Women's Resource Center Coordinator Riah Safady Gooding.
"We are trying to change belief systems and culture," she said.
Turning to events on the national stage, Wyden said he is disturbed by a recently released recording of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump bragging about being able to kiss women and grab their genitals without their consent because he is a wealthy, successful celebrity.
Wyden said Trump's attitude reflects an outdated, twisted sense of entitlement that men in power can abuse women.
"This set of events in the last few days once again reaffirms in my mind that real men don't engage in this kind of abuse," Wyden said.
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Information from: Mail Tribune, http://www.mailtribune.com/
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A former Brigham Young University-Hawaii student has filed a lawsuit alleging the school's honor code prevented her from seeking help after she was sexually assaulted by her campus job supervisor.
The Salt Lake Tribune reports (http://bit.ly/2d7xls4) that the lawsuit, filed Sept. 30 in Honolulu, claims the Mormon-owned school's rules banning unmarried students from sexual activity made the victim feel like she could not report her assault. According to the lawsuit, the victim had previously been suspended over an alleged violation of the school's Honor Code.
A BYU-Hawaii spokesman declined to comment on the lawsuit but said the university has a zero-tolerance policy for sexual misconduct.
The woman's complaint comes as BYU-Provo faces a federal investigation into its compliance with Title IX, which requires universities to follow certain procedures when dealing with sexual assault on campus.
According to the lawsuit, the woman was working for the university's student government in October 2014 when her direct supervisor drove her to a beach and sexually assaulted her on the way back.
"Through the remainder of (the woman's) employment, (the defendant) used his position as ... supervisor and superior to direct and/or lure her to the offices of the BYU-H Student Association and other locations where he could isolate and repeatedly assault her," the complaint said.
The newspaper reports that the woman sought the appointed position of student association vice president in April 2015.
"Immediately before the interview for this position, over which (the defendant) had influence, he called plaintiff to solicit sex as a quid pro quo for his support of her candidacy," the lawsuit said.
The woman quit her position a week later and was psychologically unable to take final exams. She needed special arrangements to take the exams off-campus, according to the lawsuit, which also alleges that the university's staff director over student activities suspected the man was abusing his power but didn't intervene.
The woman's lawyer, Mark Gallagher, said she has since transferred to a school in Vancouver. The Salt Lake Tribune was unable to reach the defendant for comment.
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Information from: The Salt Lake Tribune, http://www.sltrib.com
- By The Associated Press
Alaska Airlines removed a man from a plane after he heckled a female flight attendant, calling out "sexy!" as she demonstrated how to use a life vest.
The incident occurred Sunday before a flight from Seattle to Burbank, California, Alaska spokeswoman Ann Zaninovich said Wednesday.
Zaninovich provided few details other than to say that the airline stood behind the decision of the crew to remove the man from the flight. She also said an account of the incident posted on Facebook was accurate.
In that post, Amber D. Nelson of suburban Los Angeles said a man in the row behind her began calling out to the flight attendant demonstrating the life vest. After the attendant asked the man to be respectful, he answered "C'mon, I'm just playing with you!" Nelson wrote.
As the man was escorted off the plane, he objected that he hadn't done anything wrong, according to Nelson, who did not immediately respond to an attempt to contact her.
Nelson praised Alaska for supporting the crew "and those of us on board who were demeaned by another passenger's juvenile and exceedingly disrespectful behavior."
Airline employees have broad latitude to remove passengers, who are often allowed to board a later flight. Alaska did not identify the passenger or say whether he took a later flight.
People who commented on Nelson's post took both sides, with some applauding the airline and others saying the crew overreacted.
COOS BAY, Ore. (AP) — A hospital in Coos Bay has lifted a quarantine of its emergency room after a 78-year-old patient, her caregiver, two sheriff's deputies and a hospital employee all developed hallucinations.
The Coos Bay World reported Wednesday (http://bit.ly/2e8ATGO) that authorities have not yet pinpointed what caused the episodes but they believe it was something spread by direct contact. The sheriff's department says one possibility is a medicated patch.
The bizarre incident began around 3 a.m. when the elderly woman's caregiver called authorities to say people were vandalizing her car.
A responding deputy found nothing. The caregiver called back at 5:30 a.m. and was taken to the hospital after deputies decided she needed medical help.
Later, the two deputies who helped the caregiver, the caregiver's patient and a hospital staffer all developed symptoms.
OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — A man who threw acid on a Thurston County judge at his home was sentenced Wednesday to more than 14 years in prison.
Michael E. Martin, 36, had pleaded guilty last month to charges of first-degree assault, second-degree assault and malicious mischief for the attack on District Judge Brett Buckley when he answered the door at his home on Sept. 10, 2012, the Olympian reported (http://bit.ly/2e8pE1c).
Buckley was present in the courtroom Wednesday and spoke of the toll the attack had taken on his family. He and his two dogs sustained chemical burns, and the sulfuric acid caused about $30,000 in damage to the family's home. He and his wife ultimately sold their home of 27 years.
Buckley had previously granted a domestic violence protection order against Martin that was sought from an ex-girlfriend. Police, who learned that the FBI was investigating Martin for threatening to kill an Army lawyer, found "to do" lists on Martin's phone related to getting battery acid and finding out the name of his judge.
Martin also pleaded guilty to those charges in 2013 and was dishonorably from the Army, according to court documents. After serving his sentence in the federal case, he was booked into the Thurston County jail, where he awaited resolution of the Thurston County case.
"Judges should not have to live in fear that a decision they make would lead to an attack on them and their families," Buckley said. "We, the citizens of this country, do not want judges having to consider the calculus of personal safety when determining how to resolve a case."
At Wednesday' hearing, Martin said that he had no intention of killing Buckley or even hurting him, but wanted to scare him. He argued that Buckley's no-contact order led to unfair treatment by his superiors in the Army, an eventual court martial and his dishonorable discharge.
"You are not the victim, you are the perpetrator," Judge Pro Tempore Toni Sheldon reminded him.
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Information from: The Olympian, http://www.theolympian.com
RED RIVER, N.M. (AP) — A New Mexico bank employee and her cousin have been arrested along with another man after authorities concluded that a robbery was an inside job, according to court documents released Wednesday.
Investigators made the allegations after viewing surveillance video they say shows suspect Jennifer Marissa Miera didn't bother to read a holdup note given to her by a man later identified as her cousin Troy Montoya.
People's Bank in Red River was robbed of $12,229 on Oct. 6, an FBI agent said in an affidavit.
After viewing the video, investigators said, they re-interviewed Miera and were told her involvement came under duress because two unidentified men had threatened her if she didn't cooperate.
A search of Miera's home then unearthed incriminating items such as torn pieces of paper that "appeared to be the bottom half of the demand note," the affidavit said.
Montoya confessed to participating in the robbery, the affidavit said.
The investigation also resulted in the arrest of Shawn Michael Goodrum Jr.
Authorities said he knew about the robbery but concealed it so he could blackmail Miera to get some of the money.
The affidavit says Miera initially asked Goodrum to help rob the bank but turned to Montoya when Goodrum didn't respond immediately.
Goodrum, the affidavit said, initially told Miera he wanted only $1,000, "but that Miera told him he could take half of the money in the bag."
The affidavit said investigators recovered more than $6,000 from Goodrum, his truck and home.
All three defendants appeared Wednesday in federal court in Albuquerque, where a magistrate ordered them detained pending another hearing.
An attorney for Montoya declined comment on the accusations. An attorney for Miera did not immediate respond to a request for comment. It could not be immediately determined whether Goodrum has an attorney.
- By MICHELLE L. PRICE Associated Press
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A prosecutor said Wednesday that he intends to file misdemeanor drug charges against the wife of the Democratic candidate for governor after federal investigators found about 2 pounds of marijuana at the couple's Utah home.
The investigation began after U.S. Postal Service inspectors intercepted a package containing a small amount of pot that Donna Weinholtz tried to mail earlier this year to another home she and husband Mike Weinholtz own in California, Tooele County Chief Deputy Attorney Gary Searle said.
Federal investigators went to the couple's Salt Lake City home and found the larger stash of marijuana, which Donna Weinholtz told them that she uses to treat chronic pain, authorities said.
The U.S. attorney's office didn't believe federal charges were warranted and forwarded the case to Salt Lake County prosecutors several weeks ago, spokeswoman Melodie Rydalch said.
The case was then sent to Tooele County because Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill is a political ally of Mike Weinholtz and wanted to avoid a conflict of interest, officials said.
Searle said it appears Donna Weinholtz had the drug for her personal use and there's no evidence her husband was aware she had it. Searle said he plans to file misdemeanor drug possession charges against her soon, meaning she could face up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine if convicted.
Mike Weinholtz said in a statement released by his campaign that his wife uses marijuana to relieve pain caused by arthritis and degenerative spinal conditions.
"She refuses to use addictive opiates and used cannabis after suffering when other medicinal options were either invasive, ineffective or addictive," he said. "We have complied at every step of the judicial process and now that we know where the case is landing, we look forward to having the issue resolved and moving on."
The wealthy businessman announced soon after winning his party's nomination in April that he would advocate for legalizing medical marijuana in Utah because his wife was under investigation for pot possession.
The U.S. attorney's office confirmed in July it was investigating Donna Weinholtz but offered little information. Rydalch declined to comment further Wednesday or explain why federal prosecutors decided not to file charges.
Searle said he plans to treat Weinholtz like everyone else but that he has "no intent to turn this into some political sideshow." He did not know whether she had a medical marijuana card in California. Even if she did, possession of the drug is illegal in Utah.
The conservative state has passed a very limited medical marijuana law allowing those with severe epilepsy to use cannabis extract oil that doesn't contain psychoactive properties.
The marijuana investigation is not Donna Weinholtz's first brush with authorities. She was one of 13 people arrested in 2014 as part of a protest over the GOP-dominated Legislature's refusal to hold a hearing on an anti-discrimination law that includes sexual and gender orientation protections. It passed the following year.
Weinholtz pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of disrupting a meeting after she and other protesters blocked the doors to a committee meeting room. She was sentenced to probation, and the charge was dismissed after she completed the probation and paid a $100 fine.
Mike Weinholtz is facing an uphill battle this year to try to unseat Republican Gov. Gary Herbert in an overwhelmingly GOP state.
Herbert campaign manager Marty Carpenter had no comment on the investigation.
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Researchers say they detonated an underground explosion comparable to nearly 2.5 tons of TNT in a vast former nuclear testing range in the Nevada desert north of Las Vegas.
A statement from the U.S. Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration said the Wednesday explosion was the sixth in a series of experiments designed to test methods for detecting underground nuclear explosions.
Agency spokesman Dante Pistone says no unexpected damage and no injuries resulted.
The statement says chemical explosives equivalent to 4,850 pounds (2,200 kilograms) of TNT were detonated 101 feet (31 meters) underground to allow monitors to collect seismic, optical, acoustic and magnetic data.
Results were to be shared with researchers worldwide on an Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology website, in a comparison of conventional and nuclear explosions.
- By ANDREW SELSKY Associated Press
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The DEA's top agent in Oregon is worried about the opioid epidemic hitting the state, so just about every time he steps out into the street, he carries something to combat it.
Cam B. Strahm, assistant special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said the use of both heroin and prescription pills is spiking, and that Fentanyl, which is many times stronger than heroin, presents an even greater threat.
When he goes out, Strahm packs a black zippered bag, looking like a travel toiletry kit, which contains Narcan. When administered through the nose, it can save a life by reviving a person who has overdosed.
"If I see a kid collapse in front of me, I want to be able to give him a second chance," Strahm said in an interview with The Associated Press on Oct. 5.
Overdoses from prescription opioid pain relievers and heroin killed more than 28,000 people in the United States in 2014, a record number, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Since 1999, the number of opioid overdose deaths has nearly quadrupled.
In Oregon, opioid overdose deaths reached 6.826 per 100,000 population in 2014, the Oregon Health Authority said, a more than threefold increase from 2000.
The flood of opioid pills comes from unscrupulous pain-management clinics and doctors who overprescribe for profits, Strahm said.
Concurrent with the increase in overdoses is a sharp rise in Mexico of poppy cultivation. Acting DEA Deputy Administrator Jack Riley told a U.S. Senate subcommittee on May 26 that cultivation increased 160 percent between 2013 and 2015, with growing of the heroin-producing crop centered primarily in the state of Guerrero and the "Golden Triangle," which includes the states of Chihuahua, Sinaloa and Durango.
Most of the heroin in Oregon — black tar and brown powdered — comes from Mexico via California, Strahm said. Much of it is distributed in Oregon by residents with family ties to villages in Mexico, often the same villages, said Strahm, who was raised near Portland and who previously served in the DEA's offices in Houston and Jacksonville.
In the interview, Strahm declined to comment on whether a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border could cause a drop in heroin smuggling. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has vowed to build a wall along the border if he wins the election.
"I am apolitical, and I don't comment on politics," Strahm said. "We have to attack this epidemic before we lose more people than we're currently losing to overdoses."
Strahm has agents trying to curtail drug availability, bring traffickers to justice, and destroy drug trafficking organizations.
And with his small black bag, he is ready to personally intervene to save a user. "It certainly goes with me most places," he said.
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Follow Andrew Selsky on Twitter at https://twitter.com/andrewselsky
- DAN JOLING, Associated Press
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A remote village on Alaska's northwest coast has begun a reverse tourism campaign. Residents want visitors to stay away.
Pacific walrus by the thousands in recent years have come ashore in early fall near the Inupiat village of Point Lay, including about 6,000 last week, and people have dropped in, hoping to see a marine mammal phenomenon brought on by climate change and disappearing summer sea ice in the Chukchi Sea.
However, Point Lay, population 270, has no hotel or restaurants. And walrus to residents are a major food source, not a curiosity. Disturbances by boats or airplanes can spook walrus into stampedes that crush the smallest animals.
So Point Lay is working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on an information campaign: Thanks for the interest, but please don't stop by.
"They've had people come and had no place to accommodate them and they ended up having to tell the person to get back on the plane and head out," said Andrea Medeiros, spokeswoman for the agency in Anchorage. "I would imagine it's a very awkward situation for them."
The walrus can't even be seen from the village.
"You have to travel across a cove to get to where the animals are," Medeiros said. Visitors would need a ride from a resident and the trip can be hazardous.
"They're actually on a barrier island," she said.
Walrus started coming ashore on the northwest Alaska coast in 2007. In September last year, 35,000 packed a rocky beach near Point Lay. The carcasses of more than 130 mostly young walruses were counted after a stampede in September 2009 at Icy Cape.
Walrus prefer spreading out on sea ice, where they can monitor the approach of predators such as polar bears.
Many adult male walrus stay south of the Bering Strait year-round. However, females with calves stay on the edge of pack ice, where the young can rest as mothers dive for clams.
As the sea ice melts, the edge moves north, providing a moving platform over the shallow Bering and Chukchi seas.
In recent years, as Arctic temperatures have warmed, the edge of the sea ice has receded far to the north over water too deep for walrus to dive and reach the ocean bottom. Walrus have the choice of resting on ice over deep water or moving to shore, joined by thousands of other animals.
Remnant ice floating in the Chukchi gave walrus a safe platform this year until Friday, when about 6,000 of them came ashore near Point Lay. They appear to have since moved on, likely to Russia, Joel Garlich-Miller, a walrus biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said in a Tuesday statement.
Leo Ferreira, Point Lay Tribal Council president, in an interview with Sitka radio station KCAW last year urged the media to keep its distance and reacted angrily when a photographer flew near the walrus. He issued a statement Friday reiterating a "no media" policy while walrus are on shore.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service works with the Federal Aviation Administration to discourage airplanes from flying near walrus.
The agency also has received a two-year, $140,000 grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to help Point Lay.
The grant will pay to train Point Lay young people in photography, videography and film production that could be used on a website about walrus coming ashore. The goal is to keep people informed while warning them of the hazards and discouraging them from visiting.
The grant also will pay for villagers to monitor walrus coming ashore over about 50 miles of ocean beach, and to collect data including the age, sex and cause of any walrus deaths.
Walrus herds are just one change brought to Point Lay by climate change. The frozen ground on which the village is built is melting. Over the summer, soil weakened ground between a river and the lake where Point Lay drew water. A canal developed and drained the lake. The community has water in storage tanks that should last about a year, giving residents time to find a new water source.
Point Lay residents are trying to adapt.
"It's challenging," Medeiros said.
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