Toxic tea; coach sex charges; clash on pot clubs
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Odd and interesting news from around the West.
- By KRISTEN WYATT Associated Press
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DENVER (AP) โ Colorado lawmakers moved closer Monday to a showdown with the governor over pot clubs.
A House committee voted 8-3 to approve a bill giving local governments a roadmap to allowing private marijuana clubs. The clubs could allow indoor smoking, if they have fewer than three employees.
"The goal here is to give folks a space where they can consume" marijuana, said Rep. Dan Pabon, a Denver Democrat and sponsor of the bill.
The bill also has Republican supporters who say clubs would keep pot smoking out of parks and other public areas. It has already passed the GOP Senate.
But Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper told reporters recently that he opposes the pot club bill if it allows indoor smoking.
He said it's a bad idea to invite attention to Colorado as a new president takes office and sends mixed messages about whether state pot experiments will be allowed to continue.
"Smoking is bad for you โ very bad for you," Hickenlooper said earlier this month.
Sponsors counter that the clubs would still be subject to the Clean Indoor Air Act, which bans indoor smoking unless the establishment has no more than three employees. The bill bars the clubs from serving food beyond pre-packages snacks or coffee; state liquor code bars any club from selling alcohol.
Pabon and other supporters repeatedly mentioned indoor smoking during testimony Monday. Colorado already has a patchwork of private pot clubs, but the law is unclear about whether pot clubs are OK and many existing clubs are word-of-mouth "smokeasies."
"We have at best a piecemeal approach to public consumption," Pabon argued.
But anti-smoking activists oppose the bill, saying it could send the signal that smoking inside is OK, even under limited circumstances.
Bob Doyle of the American Lung Association warned that Colorado is "opening a Pandora's Box" if it opens the door to statewide pot clubs.
No other marijuana state has regulated pot clubs, though underground pot-sharing clubs exist even in states where pot remains illegal. Voters in California and Maine last year approved legalization measures that allow for social consumption of pot, but regulations in those states are still being worked out.
Colorado's pot club bill awaits a vote by the full House, though sponsors hint that amendments are likely, meaning the bill would have to return to the Senate before hitting the governor's desk.
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Kristen Wyatt can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/APkristenwyatt
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LINCOLN CITY, Ore. (AP) โ A youth coach in the coastal town of Lincoln City has been charged with more than two dozen sex crimes.
KATU-TV reports (https://goo.gl/zZ4McD ) 22-year-old Tyler William Lopez was charged Monday with sex abuse crimes involving seven boys.
Lopez worked as a football coach at Taft High School in Lincoln County, and as a baseball coach at Lincoln City Youth League. Officials say he passed both background checks.
Lopez's bail was set at $1.5 million and he remains in jail.
Lincoln City Police believe there may be more victims or witnesses and are hoping they'll come forward to speak with investigators. Anyone with information is asked to call Lincoln City police at (541) 994-3636.
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Information from: KATU-TV, http://www.katu.com/
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MALIBU, Calif. (AP) โ Taking a stand in the national debate over illegal immigration, Malibu has joined the ranks of sanctuary cities.
The City Council of the celebrity enclave voted 3-2 this month to approve a resolution prohibiting use of city funds and resources to enforce federal civil immigration law.
Councilwoman Laura Rosenthal introduced the resolution after Malibu resident and actor Martin Sheen appeared before the council in December to urge a sanctuary designation.
"When I reached out to some of the people at the schools and other people in the community, they told me people are scared," Rosenthal told the Los Angeles Times (http://lat.ms/2nKIAIF). "That's people coming into Malibu who may be undocumented. I wanted to send a clear message that we are here for you."
A report by the city attorney cited the potential for some "negative fiscal impacts" due to an executive order by President Donald Trump directing the attorney general and secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to ensure that sanctuary jurisdictions do not receive federal grants.
The report said the city receives annually about $46,000 in community development block grant funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Development. Malibu also occasionally receives one-time grants from federal agencies but currently has none that are active.
Immigrants work throughout the city, according to Juan Escobar, 32, who works at the Malibu Country Mart.
"You see Spanish speakers taking care of babies in every house," he told the Times. "They help people here."
Resolution supporter Mikke Pierson, 57, said it is important to express support for people who are in the country illegally.
"Heck . we would be paralyzed and no one's houses would be cleaned," the former surf shop owner said.
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SALEM, Ore. (AP) โ Starting on April 1, Oregonians will be able to double the money they get back for recycling their old plastic water bottles, soda cans and beer bottles at redemption sites throughout the state.
A measure which requires payment of the 10-cent refund for covered beverage containers beginning the first of the month, regardless of refund value indicated on the container, was overwhelmingly approved by the Oregon Senate on Monday and heads to Gov. Kate Brown for her signature.
The Oregon Legislature set a trigger for the deposit to increase to 10 cents if the recycling rate fell below 80 percent for two consecutive years. Last year state officials said that had happened and the increased bottle rate was set in motion.
Oregon was the first state to adopt a bottle refund bill back in 1971 as a way to encourage recycling. Ten other states have similar laws, but only Michigan currently offers a 10-cent refund.
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This article has been corrected to show that the measure specifies that 10-cent refund applied to containers beginning April 1, regardless of what it says on the container, and that increased rate had been decided previously.
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TRUCKEE, Calif. (AP) โ Regional planners developing a comprehensive transportation blueprint for Lake Tahoe over the next two decades say the shortage of public parking spaces is a bigger problem than they thought.
While some parts of Tahoe's southern and western shores in California average one parking space for roughly every 800 visitors, other areas have more than 6,000 visitors per parking spot, the Sierra Sun newspaper reported (http://tinyurl.com/m6fwzms ).
The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency published a draft last month of its plan for the lake through 2035. The agency's governing board intends to review the plan Wednesday before a 30-day comment period expires Friday.
Plans call for developing new bus transit systems around the lake as well as water ferry service linking the north and south shores. Officials hope to increase transit frequency from 60-minute to 30-minute intervals.
The area is home to only 55,000 full-time residents, about 10 million vehicles visited last year.
The biggest shortage of public parking identified so far is around the northwest quarter of the lake from Sugar Pine Point on California State Route 89 to the Nevada state line on State Highway 28.
The ratio there is 6,441 visitors for every parking spot, according to data used in the draft. That means about 6.7 million vehicles travel that stretch a year.
"We all know parking's an issue, but when you start comparing it to parking spaces, you realize the number of parking spaces available to us is abysmal, and they're not in the recreational areas," Tahoe Transportation District Manager Carl Hasty told the newspaper.
Another of the most traveled areas around the lake is the Nevada side โ a 28-mile stretch of Nevada State Route 28 on the north shore from the Nevada-California line at Crystal Bay south to Stateline. The area recorded an estimated 4.5 million trips with a visitor-to-parking ratio of 3,736-to-1.
Hasty said the transportation plan acknowledges the reality that because the region's main roads run along the perimeter of the lake, they cannot be expanded to meet the growing traffic demands. And transit shuttles require parking areas.
"If we're ever going to be successful in getting people to use transit and reduce vehicle trips, we need to address parking," he said.
The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency is a bistate compact that regulates the lake and use of its shores.
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Information from: Sierra Sun.
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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) โ A San Francisco woman who fell critically ill after drinking tea from a Chinatown herbalist has died.
In a statement, the San Francisco Department of Public Health says the tea leaves bought at Sun Wing Wo Trading Company contained the plant-based toxin Aconite.
The woman, in her 50s, became ill within an hour of drinking the tea in February. She grew weak, then had life-threatening abnormal heart rhythms that required resuscitation and intensive care.
She died while hospitalized on March 18.
A San Francisco man in his 30s had identical symptoms after drinking tea from the same herbalist in March. He recovered and was released from the hospital March 12.
Their names were not released.
Aconite, also known as monkshood, helmet flower and wolfsbane, is used in Asian herbal medicines. It must be processed properly to be safe.
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LOS ANGELES (AP) โ Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has declared an emergency due to predictions of overwhelming runoff from the eastern Sierra Nevada snowpack that feeds the Los Angeles Aqueduct.
The action Monday is aimed at helping the city Department of Water and Power respond to what it describes as the threat to "the health and safety of the public as well as to protect infrastructure and the environment."
The aqueduct runs hundreds of miles south down arid Owens Valley to Los Angeles.
The city is using aqueduct water to replenish local aquifers and emptying reservoirs to create more capacity but a huge amount will end up in Owens Lake, which dried up when the city channeled its water source into the aqueduct 100 years ago.
- By ANTHONY McCARTNEY AP Entertainment Writer
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LOS ANGELES (AP) โ Roman Polanski's attorney implored a judge Monday to signal how the fugitive director would be sentenced if he returned to Los Angeles to resolve his long-running underage sex abuse case.
Superior Court Judge Scott Gordon heard arguments in the four-decade-old case but gave no immediate indication of how he would rule, saying he would issue a written order.
Polanski's lawyer, Harland Braun, said he was trying to find a solution for a unique case, while a prosecutor said the Oscar winner was trying to get special treatment and dictate how the case proceeds from afar.
Deputy District Attorney Michele Hanisee said Polanski needed to appear in court to resolve the charges and urged the judge to reject what she called an attempt to give a "wealthy celebrity different treatment than any other fugitive."
The hearing was the first time in seven years that a Los Angeles judge has considered Polanski's case, which dates to 1977. He was accused of plying a 13-year-old girl with champagne and part of a sedative pill, then raping her at actor Jack Nicholson's house.
Polanski pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with a minor but fled Los Angeles on the eve of sentencing in 1989. Since then, his movements have been restricted to France, Poland and Switzerland.
The victim has said she forgives the "Rosemary's Baby" director and believes the case should end.
Polanski, 83, has long contended that he is the victim of judicial misconduct because a now-deceased judge who handled the case suggested in private remarks that he would renege on a plea bargain and sentencing agreement. It called for no more time behind bars for the director after he spent 42 days in a prison undergoing a diagnostic screening.
Braun says Polanski has already served his sentence, in a part due to 335 days he spent in jail and under house arrest during a failed extradition effort from Switzerland in 2010.
The defense attorney pointed to statements by the original lawyers on the case saying the deceased judge had gone back on the sentence he initially promised the director. Braun said he was trying to get an assurance that the original agreement would be honored, either from the judge or prosecutors.
Hanisee refused, and Gordon did not indicate how he would respond. The judge directed several pointed questions about the facts and evidence to Braun during the hearing, and the prosecutor said she thought Braun's calculations about how much time Polanski has served were incorrect.
Braun tried several strategies before and during the hearing but ultimately abandoned an effort to unseal 2010 testimony from the original prosecutor. He said the various approaches aimed to get enough of an assurance for Polanski to return to the United States, hopefully without the need to arrest the director.
"This is a unique case, and I'm trying to fashion a unique solution to resolve the case," Braun said.
Hanisee blamed Polanski for its strange procedural history.
"This case is 40 years old because the defendant fled," she said.
Braun has given a lengthy recitation of allegations of past judicial misconduct in his court filings but said Monday he did not want to litigate those issues.
"You've ventured very far into those things you don't want to get into," Gordon told Braun, smiling.
The judge said that if Polanski wanted to address those allegations in court, it would seem that he would need to personally appear.
Polanski won an Academy Award for best director for his 2002 film "The Pianist" and was nominated for 1974's "Chinatown" and 1979's "Tess."
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Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP .
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FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) โ Coconino National Forest officials say a drone hindered efforts to fight a Northern Arizona grass fire.
Forest spokesman Brady Smith says the drone's presence Friday near the fire about 15 miles north of Flagstaff caused a helicopter to delay its arrival to help map the spread of the fire.
Forest officials say members of the public, news media, film and video production companies and others should never fly drones over or near a wildfire.
Officials say unauthorized drone flights can cause serious injury to firefighting personnel in the air and to firefighters and others on the ground.
The 228-acre grass fire was declared 100 percent contained Saturday. Several communications towers and a retired Forest Service fire guard station were threatened but not damaged.
The fire's cause is under investigation.
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NAMPA, Idaho (AP) โ Eastern Idaho parents Nick and Chelsea Torres are home with their newborn conjoined twins after a six-day drive from Texas.
Nampa TV station KIVI (http://bit.ly/2nsEyrc ) reports the twins, Callie and Carter, are healthy so doctors aren't going to try to separate them right now. The girls have separate torsos but they share a set of legs and a bladder.
Nick and Chelsea Torres temporarily moved from Idaho Falls to Houston last year so a specialist could monitor the high-risk pregnancy.
Chelsea says they are looking forward to getting to know the girls better, but she still worries about what challenges her daughters will face as they grow.
Doctors advised her to terminate the pregnancy and warned that the girls might not make it. Now she calls them her miracle babies.
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Information from: KIVI-TV, http://www.scrippsmedia.com/kivitv
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CARLSBAD, Calif. (AP) โ A California city plans to scan the license plates of all incoming cars by placing stationary cameras at key intersections in a bid to boost public safety.
The seaside city of Carlsbad will spend $1 million to add cameras at 14 intersections following a spike in property crime, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported Sunday (http://bit.ly/2nIfzO4 ).
Statistics show that most of those crimes were committed by suspects from other cities, police Capt. Mickey Williams said.
The plan approved last week by the City Council has some residents concerned about their privacy rights, with police able to monitor where they travel throughout the city.
"We need to look at this for what it is โ mass surveillance," resident Noel Breen said.
The cameras automatically recognize license plates and check them against a law enforcement database that includes information about stolen vehicles and missing people.
Any data collected will be deleted after a year unless it's part of a criminal investigation, Williams said.
Carlsbad โ which has about 110,000 residents in San Diego County โ isn't the only Southern California city to use the license plate readers. Many use them on a more limited basis, affixing them to patrol cars.
In nearby Orange County, Laguna Beach also has placed the cameras at key entry points to the city.
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Information from: The San Diego Union-Tribune, http://www.utsandiego.com
- By MARK FREEMAN Mail Tribune
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MERLIN, Ore. (AP) โ What used to be the tallest known Ponderosa pine on the planet has died, and now its namesake campground is set to join it.
A beetle infestation has done in the 259-foot Ponderosa pine that was tallest of its ilk known for more than three decades before it was supplanted in 2011 by another tree in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest by about 9 feet.
It once was one of 61 "Living Witness Trees" tapped in 1987 as being around when the U.S. Constitution was ratified. Now its moniker is "hazard tree," one of several dead but still-standing trees whose widow-maker capabilities have closed Big Pine Campground, the 12-space area near Galice where the tree resides, according to the Forest Service.
"It's a hazard tree, so how do you reconcile that?" forest spokeswoman Chamise Kramer says. "It's incredibly difficult to cut a tree that big, and some people might be upset by that."
So the forest's Wild Rivers Ranger District now plans to rid the campground of its fire pits, picnic tables and other amenities and re-open the lands there for "dispersed" camping, just like anywhere else in the forest, Kramer says.
Forest Service requirements for addressing hazard trees don't apply in the general forest, Kramer says.
The tree and the campground are 12 miles up Forest Service Road No. 25 off the Merlin-Galice Access Road near Merlin.
The tree's death has been met with dismay by big-tree hunters like Mike Oxman, the former owner of a Grants Pass tree service who now lives in Seattle.
"I wasn't planning on this tree dying in my lifespan," says Oxman, 65.
Oxman, however, is in the midst of finding a way for the dead pine to remain alive, at least in the annals of big-tree history.
When this pine was tapped as a Living Witness Tree as part of the Constitution's bicentennial celebration, Oxman purchased a bronze plaque that has since remained a marker for the former biggest Ponderosa on the planet.
Oxman says he is arranging for the plaque to be given to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History, possibly even by U.S. Rep. Greg Walden in July during a meeting of tree-surgeon associations in Washington, D.C.
"I think it's time to continue this tree's life and extend it in a different form," Oxman says.
Kramer says Oxman is welcomed to take the plaque to the Smithsonian.
"He could go get it right now," Kramer says, "except it's snowed in."
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Information from: Mail Tribune, http://www.mailtribune.com/
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SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) โ School officials in Spokane have suspended Ferris High School football coach Jim Sharkey as they investigate claims he exposed himself to players at a leadership camp last summer.
Sharkey strongly denies the allegations. His suspension is with pay.
The Spokesman-Review says the camp was last August along the Coeur d'Alene River near Cataldo, Idaho.
A couple of weeks after the camp, a Ferris player came forward and said that the 50-year-old coach exposed himself to players while he was working the grill.
The coach got a written reprimand and was allowed to coach this past fall.
But school officials placed him on administrative leave Feb. 1 after more players claimed to have seen the incident and other students brought up separate incidents of questionable behavior by the 11-year teacher.
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Information from: The Spokesman-Review, http://www.spokesman.com
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JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) โ A Juneau man says he's optimistic that he'll open the city's second marijuana retail shop soon.
Marijuana grower Paul Disdier told The Juneau Empire (http://bit.ly/2nD0NeE ) that he has faced challenges but expects his company, Fireweed Factory LLC, to open in the near future.
Disdier earned the city's first conditional use permit in March 2016 after testimony on his behalf from marijuana cultivators James and Giono Barrett. He's currently growing pot in a small warehouse near the Juneau International Airport.
Fireweed has secured a retail space in Juneau that's ready to go, but Disdier still has a few hurdles to clear before he can start selling his products.
He said he lost dozens of marijuana plants after a light disrupted what was supposed to be a dark part of the growing cycle.
"These plants are really finicky to grow," Disdier says. "You'd think they were just a weed and you put the seeds out and they pop up and grow like crazy, but they're so hybrid now that they're tricky to grow."
Disdier has cleared the bundle of reviews, paperwork, inspections and interviews required by the state to earn approval for his business, but there are other challenges facing marijuana cultivators.
Banks are reluctant to work with someone growing a substance that, while legal under Alaska law, is considered illegal under federal law, said Loren Jones, a member of the Alaska Marijuana Control Board.
"That all relates to the fact that it's still a Schedule 1 drug with the feds," Jones said, "and they operate under federal rules, and under federal rules, you cannot, as a bank, further a criminal enterprise by allowing them to legitimately bank."
Another issue is that there is no product testing lab in Juneau, although Southeast Alaska Laboratories LLC is close to being approved locally. For now, growers in Juneau must take their product to Anchorage for approval.
Disdier remains optimistic despite facing the cost of adding more LED lights and another heat pump to his operation.
"You've just got to take one step at a time," he said. "We've been at this for a year now, with all the money going out and nothing coming in."
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Information from: Juneau (Alaska) Empire, http://www.juneauempire.com
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LOS ANGELES (AP) โ Katy Perry says she "prayed the gay away" during her "unconscious adolescence."
The 32-year-old singer opened up about her sexuality and praised the gay community while receiving an award from the Human Rights Campaign on Saturday in Los Angeles.
Perry was born into a fundamentalist Christian family, but says she was curious about sexuality and knew it wasn't a black-and-white issue. She referenced one of her biggest hits in telling the group "I kissed a girl and I liked it." She added that she also "did more than that." She says she "prayed the gay away" at Christian camps, but later met people outside of her "bubble."
She says without people in her life from the LGBTQ community she'd be "half of the person I am today."
- By KRISTEN WYATT Associated Press
DENVER (AP) โ Colorado lawmakers moved closer Monday to a showdown with the governor over pot clubs.
A House committee voted 8-3 to approve a bill giving local governments a roadmap to allowing private marijuana clubs. The clubs could allow indoor smoking, if they have fewer than three employees.
"The goal here is to give folks a space where they can consume" marijuana, said Rep. Dan Pabon, a Denver Democrat and sponsor of the bill.
The bill also has Republican supporters who say clubs would keep pot smoking out of parks and other public areas. It has already passed the GOP Senate.
But Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper told reporters recently that he opposes the pot club bill if it allows indoor smoking.
He said it's a bad idea to invite attention to Colorado as a new president takes office and sends mixed messages about whether state pot experiments will be allowed to continue.
"Smoking is bad for you โ very bad for you," Hickenlooper said earlier this month.
Sponsors counter that the clubs would still be subject to the Clean Indoor Air Act, which bans indoor smoking unless the establishment has no more than three employees. The bill bars the clubs from serving food beyond pre-packages snacks or coffee; state liquor code bars any club from selling alcohol.
Pabon and other supporters repeatedly mentioned indoor smoking during testimony Monday. Colorado already has a patchwork of private pot clubs, but the law is unclear about whether pot clubs are OK and many existing clubs are word-of-mouth "smokeasies."
"We have at best a piecemeal approach to public consumption," Pabon argued.
But anti-smoking activists oppose the bill, saying it could send the signal that smoking inside is OK, even under limited circumstances.
Bob Doyle of the American Lung Association warned that Colorado is "opening a Pandora's Box" if it opens the door to statewide pot clubs.
No other marijuana state has regulated pot clubs, though underground pot-sharing clubs exist even in states where pot remains illegal. Voters in California and Maine last year approved legalization measures that allow for social consumption of pot, but regulations in those states are still being worked out.
Colorado's pot club bill awaits a vote by the full House, though sponsors hint that amendments are likely, meaning the bill would have to return to the Senate before hitting the governor's desk.
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Kristen Wyatt can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/APkristenwyatt
LINCOLN CITY, Ore. (AP) โ A youth coach in the coastal town of Lincoln City has been charged with more than two dozen sex crimes.
KATU-TV reports (https://goo.gl/zZ4McD ) 22-year-old Tyler William Lopez was charged Monday with sex abuse crimes involving seven boys.
Lopez worked as a football coach at Taft High School in Lincoln County, and as a baseball coach at Lincoln City Youth League. Officials say he passed both background checks.
Lopez's bail was set at $1.5 million and he remains in jail.
Lincoln City Police believe there may be more victims or witnesses and are hoping they'll come forward to speak with investigators. Anyone with information is asked to call Lincoln City police at (541) 994-3636.
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Information from: KATU-TV, http://www.katu.com/
MALIBU, Calif. (AP) โ Taking a stand in the national debate over illegal immigration, Malibu has joined the ranks of sanctuary cities.
The City Council of the celebrity enclave voted 3-2 this month to approve a resolution prohibiting use of city funds and resources to enforce federal civil immigration law.
Councilwoman Laura Rosenthal introduced the resolution after Malibu resident and actor Martin Sheen appeared before the council in December to urge a sanctuary designation.
"When I reached out to some of the people at the schools and other people in the community, they told me people are scared," Rosenthal told the Los Angeles Times (http://lat.ms/2nKIAIF). "That's people coming into Malibu who may be undocumented. I wanted to send a clear message that we are here for you."
A report by the city attorney cited the potential for some "negative fiscal impacts" due to an executive order by President Donald Trump directing the attorney general and secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to ensure that sanctuary jurisdictions do not receive federal grants.
The report said the city receives annually about $46,000 in community development block grant funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Development. Malibu also occasionally receives one-time grants from federal agencies but currently has none that are active.
Immigrants work throughout the city, according to Juan Escobar, 32, who works at the Malibu Country Mart.
"You see Spanish speakers taking care of babies in every house," he told the Times. "They help people here."
Resolution supporter Mikke Pierson, 57, said it is important to express support for people who are in the country illegally.
"Heck . we would be paralyzed and no one's houses would be cleaned," the former surf shop owner said.
SALEM, Ore. (AP) โ Starting on April 1, Oregonians will be able to double the money they get back for recycling their old plastic water bottles, soda cans and beer bottles at redemption sites throughout the state.
A measure which requires payment of the 10-cent refund for covered beverage containers beginning the first of the month, regardless of refund value indicated on the container, was overwhelmingly approved by the Oregon Senate on Monday and heads to Gov. Kate Brown for her signature.
The Oregon Legislature set a trigger for the deposit to increase to 10 cents if the recycling rate fell below 80 percent for two consecutive years. Last year state officials said that had happened and the increased bottle rate was set in motion.
Oregon was the first state to adopt a bottle refund bill back in 1971 as a way to encourage recycling. Ten other states have similar laws, but only Michigan currently offers a 10-cent refund.
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This article has been corrected to show that the measure specifies that 10-cent refund applied to containers beginning April 1, regardless of what it says on the container, and that increased rate had been decided previously.
TRUCKEE, Calif. (AP) โ Regional planners developing a comprehensive transportation blueprint for Lake Tahoe over the next two decades say the shortage of public parking spaces is a bigger problem than they thought.
While some parts of Tahoe's southern and western shores in California average one parking space for roughly every 800 visitors, other areas have more than 6,000 visitors per parking spot, the Sierra Sun newspaper reported (http://tinyurl.com/m6fwzms ).
The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency published a draft last month of its plan for the lake through 2035. The agency's governing board intends to review the plan Wednesday before a 30-day comment period expires Friday.
Plans call for developing new bus transit systems around the lake as well as water ferry service linking the north and south shores. Officials hope to increase transit frequency from 60-minute to 30-minute intervals.
The area is home to only 55,000 full-time residents, about 10 million vehicles visited last year.
The biggest shortage of public parking identified so far is around the northwest quarter of the lake from Sugar Pine Point on California State Route 89 to the Nevada state line on State Highway 28.
The ratio there is 6,441 visitors for every parking spot, according to data used in the draft. That means about 6.7 million vehicles travel that stretch a year.
"We all know parking's an issue, but when you start comparing it to parking spaces, you realize the number of parking spaces available to us is abysmal, and they're not in the recreational areas," Tahoe Transportation District Manager Carl Hasty told the newspaper.
Another of the most traveled areas around the lake is the Nevada side โ a 28-mile stretch of Nevada State Route 28 on the north shore from the Nevada-California line at Crystal Bay south to Stateline. The area recorded an estimated 4.5 million trips with a visitor-to-parking ratio of 3,736-to-1.
Hasty said the transportation plan acknowledges the reality that because the region's main roads run along the perimeter of the lake, they cannot be expanded to meet the growing traffic demands. And transit shuttles require parking areas.
"If we're ever going to be successful in getting people to use transit and reduce vehicle trips, we need to address parking," he said.
The Tahoe Regional Planning Agency is a bistate compact that regulates the lake and use of its shores.
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Information from: Sierra Sun.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) โ A San Francisco woman who fell critically ill after drinking tea from a Chinatown herbalist has died.
In a statement, the San Francisco Department of Public Health says the tea leaves bought at Sun Wing Wo Trading Company contained the plant-based toxin Aconite.
The woman, in her 50s, became ill within an hour of drinking the tea in February. She grew weak, then had life-threatening abnormal heart rhythms that required resuscitation and intensive care.
She died while hospitalized on March 18.
A San Francisco man in his 30s had identical symptoms after drinking tea from the same herbalist in March. He recovered and was released from the hospital March 12.
Their names were not released.
Aconite, also known as monkshood, helmet flower and wolfsbane, is used in Asian herbal medicines. It must be processed properly to be safe.
LOS ANGELES (AP) โ Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has declared an emergency due to predictions of overwhelming runoff from the eastern Sierra Nevada snowpack that feeds the Los Angeles Aqueduct.
The action Monday is aimed at helping the city Department of Water and Power respond to what it describes as the threat to "the health and safety of the public as well as to protect infrastructure and the environment."
The aqueduct runs hundreds of miles south down arid Owens Valley to Los Angeles.
The city is using aqueduct water to replenish local aquifers and emptying reservoirs to create more capacity but a huge amount will end up in Owens Lake, which dried up when the city channeled its water source into the aqueduct 100 years ago.
- By ANTHONY McCARTNEY AP Entertainment Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) โ Roman Polanski's attorney implored a judge Monday to signal how the fugitive director would be sentenced if he returned to Los Angeles to resolve his long-running underage sex abuse case.
Superior Court Judge Scott Gordon heard arguments in the four-decade-old case but gave no immediate indication of how he would rule, saying he would issue a written order.
Polanski's lawyer, Harland Braun, said he was trying to find a solution for a unique case, while a prosecutor said the Oscar winner was trying to get special treatment and dictate how the case proceeds from afar.
Deputy District Attorney Michele Hanisee said Polanski needed to appear in court to resolve the charges and urged the judge to reject what she called an attempt to give a "wealthy celebrity different treatment than any other fugitive."
The hearing was the first time in seven years that a Los Angeles judge has considered Polanski's case, which dates to 1977. He was accused of plying a 13-year-old girl with champagne and part of a sedative pill, then raping her at actor Jack Nicholson's house.
Polanski pleaded guilty to unlawful sex with a minor but fled Los Angeles on the eve of sentencing in 1989. Since then, his movements have been restricted to France, Poland and Switzerland.
The victim has said she forgives the "Rosemary's Baby" director and believes the case should end.
Polanski, 83, has long contended that he is the victim of judicial misconduct because a now-deceased judge who handled the case suggested in private remarks that he would renege on a plea bargain and sentencing agreement. It called for no more time behind bars for the director after he spent 42 days in a prison undergoing a diagnostic screening.
Braun says Polanski has already served his sentence, in a part due to 335 days he spent in jail and under house arrest during a failed extradition effort from Switzerland in 2010.
The defense attorney pointed to statements by the original lawyers on the case saying the deceased judge had gone back on the sentence he initially promised the director. Braun said he was trying to get an assurance that the original agreement would be honored, either from the judge or prosecutors.
Hanisee refused, and Gordon did not indicate how he would respond. The judge directed several pointed questions about the facts and evidence to Braun during the hearing, and the prosecutor said she thought Braun's calculations about how much time Polanski has served were incorrect.
Braun tried several strategies before and during the hearing but ultimately abandoned an effort to unseal 2010 testimony from the original prosecutor. He said the various approaches aimed to get enough of an assurance for Polanski to return to the United States, hopefully without the need to arrest the director.
"This is a unique case, and I'm trying to fashion a unique solution to resolve the case," Braun said.
Hanisee blamed Polanski for its strange procedural history.
"This case is 40 years old because the defendant fled," she said.
Braun has given a lengthy recitation of allegations of past judicial misconduct in his court filings but said Monday he did not want to litigate those issues.
"You've ventured very far into those things you don't want to get into," Gordon told Braun, smiling.
The judge said that if Polanski wanted to address those allegations in court, it would seem that he would need to personally appear.
Polanski won an Academy Award for best director for his 2002 film "The Pianist" and was nominated for 1974's "Chinatown" and 1979's "Tess."
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Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP .
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) โ Coconino National Forest officials say a drone hindered efforts to fight a Northern Arizona grass fire.
Forest spokesman Brady Smith says the drone's presence Friday near the fire about 15 miles north of Flagstaff caused a helicopter to delay its arrival to help map the spread of the fire.
Forest officials say members of the public, news media, film and video production companies and others should never fly drones over or near a wildfire.
Officials say unauthorized drone flights can cause serious injury to firefighting personnel in the air and to firefighters and others on the ground.
The 228-acre grass fire was declared 100 percent contained Saturday. Several communications towers and a retired Forest Service fire guard station were threatened but not damaged.
The fire's cause is under investigation.
NAMPA, Idaho (AP) โ Eastern Idaho parents Nick and Chelsea Torres are home with their newborn conjoined twins after a six-day drive from Texas.
Nampa TV station KIVI (http://bit.ly/2nsEyrc ) reports the twins, Callie and Carter, are healthy so doctors aren't going to try to separate them right now. The girls have separate torsos but they share a set of legs and a bladder.
Nick and Chelsea Torres temporarily moved from Idaho Falls to Houston last year so a specialist could monitor the high-risk pregnancy.
Chelsea says they are looking forward to getting to know the girls better, but she still worries about what challenges her daughters will face as they grow.
Doctors advised her to terminate the pregnancy and warned that the girls might not make it. Now she calls them her miracle babies.
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Information from: KIVI-TV, http://www.scrippsmedia.com/kivitv
CARLSBAD, Calif. (AP) โ A California city plans to scan the license plates of all incoming cars by placing stationary cameras at key intersections in a bid to boost public safety.
The seaside city of Carlsbad will spend $1 million to add cameras at 14 intersections following a spike in property crime, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported Sunday (http://bit.ly/2nIfzO4 ).
Statistics show that most of those crimes were committed by suspects from other cities, police Capt. Mickey Williams said.
The plan approved last week by the City Council has some residents concerned about their privacy rights, with police able to monitor where they travel throughout the city.
"We need to look at this for what it is โ mass surveillance," resident Noel Breen said.
The cameras automatically recognize license plates and check them against a law enforcement database that includes information about stolen vehicles and missing people.
Any data collected will be deleted after a year unless it's part of a criminal investigation, Williams said.
Carlsbad โ which has about 110,000 residents in San Diego County โ isn't the only Southern California city to use the license plate readers. Many use them on a more limited basis, affixing them to patrol cars.
In nearby Orange County, Laguna Beach also has placed the cameras at key entry points to the city.
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Information from: The San Diego Union-Tribune, http://www.utsandiego.com
- By MARK FREEMAN Mail Tribune
MERLIN, Ore. (AP) โ What used to be the tallest known Ponderosa pine on the planet has died, and now its namesake campground is set to join it.
A beetle infestation has done in the 259-foot Ponderosa pine that was tallest of its ilk known for more than three decades before it was supplanted in 2011 by another tree in the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest by about 9 feet.
It once was one of 61 "Living Witness Trees" tapped in 1987 as being around when the U.S. Constitution was ratified. Now its moniker is "hazard tree," one of several dead but still-standing trees whose widow-maker capabilities have closed Big Pine Campground, the 12-space area near Galice where the tree resides, according to the Forest Service.
"It's a hazard tree, so how do you reconcile that?" forest spokeswoman Chamise Kramer says. "It's incredibly difficult to cut a tree that big, and some people might be upset by that."
So the forest's Wild Rivers Ranger District now plans to rid the campground of its fire pits, picnic tables and other amenities and re-open the lands there for "dispersed" camping, just like anywhere else in the forest, Kramer says.
Forest Service requirements for addressing hazard trees don't apply in the general forest, Kramer says.
The tree and the campground are 12 miles up Forest Service Road No. 25 off the Merlin-Galice Access Road near Merlin.
The tree's death has been met with dismay by big-tree hunters like Mike Oxman, the former owner of a Grants Pass tree service who now lives in Seattle.
"I wasn't planning on this tree dying in my lifespan," says Oxman, 65.
Oxman, however, is in the midst of finding a way for the dead pine to remain alive, at least in the annals of big-tree history.
When this pine was tapped as a Living Witness Tree as part of the Constitution's bicentennial celebration, Oxman purchased a bronze plaque that has since remained a marker for the former biggest Ponderosa on the planet.
Oxman says he is arranging for the plaque to be given to the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History, possibly even by U.S. Rep. Greg Walden in July during a meeting of tree-surgeon associations in Washington, D.C.
"I think it's time to continue this tree's life and extend it in a different form," Oxman says.
Kramer says Oxman is welcomed to take the plaque to the Smithsonian.
"He could go get it right now," Kramer says, "except it's snowed in."
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Information from: Mail Tribune, http://www.mailtribune.com/
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) โ School officials in Spokane have suspended Ferris High School football coach Jim Sharkey as they investigate claims he exposed himself to players at a leadership camp last summer.
Sharkey strongly denies the allegations. His suspension is with pay.
The Spokesman-Review says the camp was last August along the Coeur d'Alene River near Cataldo, Idaho.
A couple of weeks after the camp, a Ferris player came forward and said that the 50-year-old coach exposed himself to players while he was working the grill.
The coach got a written reprimand and was allowed to coach this past fall.
But school officials placed him on administrative leave Feb. 1 after more players claimed to have seen the incident and other students brought up separate incidents of questionable behavior by the 11-year teacher.
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Information from: The Spokesman-Review, http://www.spokesman.com
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) โ A Juneau man says he's optimistic that he'll open the city's second marijuana retail shop soon.
Marijuana grower Paul Disdier told The Juneau Empire (http://bit.ly/2nD0NeE ) that he has faced challenges but expects his company, Fireweed Factory LLC, to open in the near future.
Disdier earned the city's first conditional use permit in March 2016 after testimony on his behalf from marijuana cultivators James and Giono Barrett. He's currently growing pot in a small warehouse near the Juneau International Airport.
Fireweed has secured a retail space in Juneau that's ready to go, but Disdier still has a few hurdles to clear before he can start selling his products.
He said he lost dozens of marijuana plants after a light disrupted what was supposed to be a dark part of the growing cycle.
"These plants are really finicky to grow," Disdier says. "You'd think they were just a weed and you put the seeds out and they pop up and grow like crazy, but they're so hybrid now that they're tricky to grow."
Disdier has cleared the bundle of reviews, paperwork, inspections and interviews required by the state to earn approval for his business, but there are other challenges facing marijuana cultivators.
Banks are reluctant to work with someone growing a substance that, while legal under Alaska law, is considered illegal under federal law, said Loren Jones, a member of the Alaska Marijuana Control Board.
"That all relates to the fact that it's still a Schedule 1 drug with the feds," Jones said, "and they operate under federal rules, and under federal rules, you cannot, as a bank, further a criminal enterprise by allowing them to legitimately bank."
Another issue is that there is no product testing lab in Juneau, although Southeast Alaska Laboratories LLC is close to being approved locally. For now, growers in Juneau must take their product to Anchorage for approval.
Disdier remains optimistic despite facing the cost of adding more LED lights and another heat pump to his operation.
"You've just got to take one step at a time," he said. "We've been at this for a year now, with all the money going out and nothing coming in."
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Information from: Juneau (Alaska) Empire, http://www.juneauempire.com
LOS ANGELES (AP) โ Katy Perry says she "prayed the gay away" during her "unconscious adolescence."
The 32-year-old singer opened up about her sexuality and praised the gay community while receiving an award from the Human Rights Campaign on Saturday in Los Angeles.
Perry was born into a fundamentalist Christian family, but says she was curious about sexuality and knew it wasn't a black-and-white issue. She referenced one of her biggest hits in telling the group "I kissed a girl and I liked it." She added that she also "did more than that." She says she "prayed the gay away" at Christian camps, but later met people outside of her "bubble."
She says without people in her life from the LGBTQ community she'd be "half of the person I am today."
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