Medical marijuana fest denied; no hiding Nazi tattoos; security thwarts clowns
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Odd and interesting news from around the West.
- By JOCELYN GECKER Associated Press
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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Pamela Buttery noticed something peculiar six years ago while practicing golf putting in her 57th-floor apartment at the luxurious Millennium Tower. The ball kept veering to the same corner of her living room.
Those were the first signs for residents of the sleek, mirrored high-rise that something was wrong.
The 58-story building has gained notoriety in recent weeks as the "leaning tower of San Francisco." But it's not just leaning. It's sinking, too. And engineers hired to assess the problem say it shows no immediate sign of stopping.
"What concerns me most is the tilting," says Buttery, 76, a retired real estate developer. "Is it safe to stay here? For how long?"
Completed seven years ago, the tower so far has sunk 16 inches into the soft soil and landfill of San Francisco's crowded financial district. But it's not sinking evenly, which has created a 2-inch tilt at the base — and a roughly 6-inch lean at the top.
By comparison, Italy's famed Leaning Tower of Pisa is leaning more than 16 feet. But in a major earthquake fault zone, the Millennium Tower's structural problems have raised alarm and become the focus of a public scandal.
Several documents involving the downtown building were leaked in recent weeks, including exchanges between the city's Department of Building Inspection and Millennium Partners, the developer. They show both sides knew the building was sinking more than anticipated before it opened in late 2009, but neither made that information public.
In a February 2009 letter, a chief buildings inspector, Raymond Lui, wrote to the tower's engineering firm to express concerns about "larger than expected settlements." He asked what was being done to stop the sinking and if the building's structural safety could be affected.
DeSimone Consulting Engineers replied that the building had already unexpectedly settled 8.3 inches. But the engineering firm concluded, "It is our professional opinion that the structures are safe."
City Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who has convened hearings on the matter at City Hall, asked Lui why the building was then certified safe for occupancy.
"We felt they had it under control," replied Lui, now employed in San Francisco's public works department. He did not elaborate.
City officials, owners of the building's high-end apartments, its developers and politicians are arguing over who is to blame. Meanwhile, key questions remain.
"When is this building going to stop sinking?" asks Jerry Dodson, an attorney and engineer who paid $2.1 million in 2009 for his two-bedroom apartment on the 42nd floor. "That's something that no one has been able to answer."
On the sidewalks outside the Millennium Tower, engineers last month started working to figure out why the building keeps sinking and if there's a way to fix it. But the process, which involves drilling deep holes and testing soil samples, is expected to take several months.
The geotechnical engineer leading the operation, Pat Shires, said existing data indicates the tower "might" sink between 24 to 31 inches in total, but nobody knows for sure.
When the Millennium Tower opened, it became a haven for the city's well-heeled, and all 419 apartments quickly sold out. Tenants have included former San Francisco 49er Joe Montana, late venture capitalist Tom Perkins and Giants outfielder Hunter Pence.
The building has a 75-foot indoor lap-pool, a health club and spa, an in-house cinema, and a restaurant and wine bar run by celebrity chef Michael Mina. Penthouses have sold for more than $10 million.
The tower's troubles are apparent in its five-floor underground garage, where Porsches and Lamborghinis sit near walls bearing floor-to-ceiling cracks, many bracketed by stress gauges to measure growth.
Meanwhile, accusations and lawsuits are piling up.
Dodson and other residents blame developers for what they say is a flawed design. The tower's foundation, for instance, uses piles driven 60 to 90 feet into landfill, rather than the pricier option of going down at least 240 feet to bedrock.
Millennium Partners maintains its design is safe and says many San Francisco high-rises have similar foundations.
"We did this building the right way," Chris Jeffries, a founding partner at Millennium Partners, told a news conference. "The building is 100 percent safe."
Jeffries blames the building's problems on an adjacent construction site where a city rail terminal is being built. He says the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, the public agency building the $4.5 billion transit hub, dug a 60-foot hole to create a dry construction site and pumped out millions of gallons of groundwater that wound up compressing and weakening the soil under the Millennium Tower.
Transbay says the tower's "inadequate foundation is the sole cause of the excessive settlement and tilt." It released a statement saying the building had sunk 10 inches and started to lean before the agency broke ground in 2010.
It has continued to sink at a rate of about 1 inch per year.
"We are all living there and wondering about our safety," another resident, Nina Agabian, said at a recent City Hall hearing. "We've been told it's going to take years to solve this, and I don't think we have years."
- ANDREW SELSKY, Associated Press
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SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Inside the white-marble state archives building, way in the back of a cavernous room, lies Oregon's original constitution. It's in poor shape, and among its fading pages is a clause from an ugly chapter in the state's history that completely conflicts with its progressive image.
Now, the state is trying to raise funds from schoolchildren and others to restore the leather-bound document, and to buy a special case to preserve and display it, warts and all. They've raised one-tenth of the amount needed so far.
On a recent morning, State Archivist Mary Beth Herkert walked past rows of laden shelves that mechanically shift at the touch of a button. She got to a door, spun a wheel like one on a submarine hatch, and walked inside a vault. There, sitting in a box on a shelf, was Oregon's founding document. Herkert carefully opened the constitution with gloved hands. Some pages were starting to fall out. The vegetable ink on linen paper is fading after 159 years.
It could be even worse, considering how the document was kept for decades. For many of those years, there isn't even any record of where the constitution was stored, Herkert said. She could not confirm one account that the constitution was saved from a fire that destroyed the Oregon State Capitol in 1935.
"That it is not in awful condition, I think, is pretty remarkable," Herkert said. "Until 1990-1991, when we moved into this building, it never was in an environmentally controlled space."
These days, the constitution is kept with 250 million other pieces of paper, all at a chilly 65 degrees with 45 percent humidity in the archives building.
Written by white men in 1857 after a constitutional convention, it contained a clause prohibiting black people from residing in Oregon. That clause was approved in a popular vote, along with a ban on slavery. That made Oregon the only state admitted to the Union with an exclusionary clause in its constitution.
"It is a shameful part of our history, but if you take it in context of what the times were, we were right before the Civil War," Herkert said, adding that Oregon had to strike a balance to achieve statehood, with America becoming sharply divided over slavery. Two years after Oregon became a state in 1859, the Civil War broke out.
The exclusionary clause remained until it was repealed in 1927. That history reverberates even now. Oregon's population is only 2.1 percent black, compared with 13.3 percent for all of America, according to the 2015 U.S. census.
In the county that encompasses Portland, African-Americans "continue to live with the effects of racialized policies, practices and decision-making," a 2014 report said. The report by the Coalition of Communities of Color and Portland State University cited discrimination in housing, school discipline and the justice system, and racial profiling by police.
On a recent Friday, several dozen demonstrators in Portland affiliated with Black Lives Matter accused the police of racism, and complained of excessively rough treatment at a demonstration two days earlier. Demonstrator Nita Kelly described witnessing racial profiling, saying that during the earlier demonstration at City Hall, police assaulted an African-American woman waiting for a light-rail train "simply because she looked like someone who participated" in the demonstration.
In 1984, Oregon students raised over $37,000 to re-gild the golden pioneer statue on top of the State Capitol. In the current fundraising drive, $6,000 has been contributed so far, Herkert said. A total of $60,000 is needed. Officials are also asking adults to donate on behalf of schools. Schools that donate more than $250 will have their names on a plaque next to the display.
"The Constitution helps remind us of our past — both good and bad — just as it serves as the foundational document upon which Oregon's progress has been built since 1857 and continues to be built today," Secretary of State Jeanne P. Atkins said. "It should be restored, publicly displayed, and preserved for future Oregonians to learn about."
Herkert doesn't know if the racist exclusionary clause will be highlighted once the constitution goes on display, but she said it won't be hidden either.
"We have to remember it's our history, and we have to learn from our mistakes," she said.
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FLORENCE, Ariz. (AP) — County leaders have denied a permit for an overnight medical marijuana festival in Casa Grande on Halloween weekend.
The Casa Grande Dispatch reports (http://bit.ly/2ehisS8 ) that the "Errl Camp" was to be held at the Casa Grande Domes on Oct. 29 and 30 as a celebration for people who use medical marijuana. According to the permit application, medical marijuana wouldn't be sold at the event but attendees could bring and use it.
The application says the festival would include live music, campfires and dancing and would only admit people with a valid medical marijuana card.
The Board of Supervisors unanimously rejected the permit last week, citing concerns about the event's proximity to the interstate and the inability for designated drivers to attend.
Applicant Jim Morrison believes the board didn't give his event a fair chance.
This post has been corrected to show that county leaders, not city leaders, denied the festival permit.
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Information from: Casa Grande Dispatch.
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EUGENE, Ore. (AP) — A group of Eugene residents wants the city's public square formally named after Ken Kesey, the author of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and who is featured in a sculpture on the plaza.
The area officially known as Broadway Plaza will celebrate its 20th anniversary on Friday. It contains a statue of Kesey reading to his grandchildren, reported The Register-Guard (http://bit.ly/2f9nUsS ), and many Eugene residents know it by the informal name of "Kesey Square."
Jerry Diethelm, co-founder of the Friends of Kesey Square and a retired University of Oregon professor, said his group formally requested the name change by email last week. He said he had received no response from Eugene officials as of Thursday.
Any resident can request to change the name of city-owned land or a building under a policy adopted by Eugene in 2010, although the policy says the city council will only approve the change if the property "has a generic name or in recognition of and response to evolving political/social perspectives and sensitivities."
In the case of Broadway Plaza, Diethelm said the change should be an "easy sell" because its nickname is widely used.
"In this case, we're saying why doesn't the city just acknowledge what's happened and take care of it?" said Diethelm.
Kesey grew up in Springfield, graduated from UO and wrote the well-known novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," which was set in an Oregon psychiatric hospital. Diethelm said Kesey's work represents "real creativity and Northwest focus."
"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," in particular, "helps us to even consider how we're dealing with people who are challenged (with mental illness) in our public spaces, too," said Diethelm.
City Councilor George Brown, who represents an area that includes downtown Eugene, told The Register-Guard that he supports the name change.
"It makes sense, because I don't know anybody who calls it Broadway Plaza," he said.
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Information from: The Register-Guard, http://www.registerguard.com
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HELENA, Mont. (AP) — A second woman is accusing a former Helena police officer of sexually assaulting her while she worked as a confidential informant.
A new lawsuit alleges Lloyd Matthew Thompson began grooming the girl when she was still in high school and assaulted her after she became an informant for the Missouri River Drug Task Force in 2012.
The woman alleges Thompson falsely informed her she was facing at least 10 years in prison for two felony charges and that she could help herself by becoming an informant.
Another lawsuit filed in June alleges Thompson repeatedly sexually assaulted another female informant. Neither complaint has been served on the officer, the city of Helena or Lewis and Clark County.
Helena City Attorney Thomas Jodoin said Monday the alleged conduct is outside the scope of Thompson's duties as a police officer.
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MOSCOW, Idaho (AP) — The Moscow Police Department's new internet crimes officer has investigated more than a dozen cases since the post was created nine months ago, police said.
Capt. Roger Lanier said there has been a national trend of using electronics in crimes, and Latah County is no exception, The Lewiston Tribune reported (http://bit.ly/2enPZhn). He said the Moscow Police Department has seen an increase of more than 300 percent in the amount of electronics officers need to process since 2013.
Lanier said the city realized they needed an electronics forensic investigator in 2014. The Moscow City Council approved the creation of the position and Eric Kjorness was appointed to that role.
"I really am happy, and think it's great that the department created this position," Kjorness said. "It's needed, obviously. And I enjoy doing it."
Kjorness serves as Moscow's sole police officer looking into online child pornography and other electronic crimes. Since he moved to the position his investigations have secured two guilty pleas, passed five cases along to state courts and one to federal court. He is also currently working on six additional cases, and has referred three investigations to other jurisdictions.
In order to secure guilty pleas, Kjorness relies on a number of tips for where to start looking. Sometimes, criminals will share files directly with one of his accounts on file sharing networks, other times he gets referrals from the National Center for Missing or Exploited Children, which attempts to identify the victims in images and videos of child porn.
Kjorness said dealing with crimes that affect children can be hard, but he takes solace in getting the offenders into custody.
"I like to think of myself as preventing that," Kjorness said. "If we can get this person convicted, get him registered as a sex offender, get him some treatment ... I think we can prevent somebody from being a victim."
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Information from: Lewiston Tribune, http://www.lmtribune.com
- By BOB CHRISTIE Associated Press
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PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey on Monday ordered the state's employee insurance plan and its Medicaid plan to limit narcotic painkiller prescriptions in an effort to cut future drug addiction.
The order signed by the Republican governor limits the initial prescription of opioid drugs for adults to a 7-day supply. Children are not prescribed more than a 7-day supply unless they have cancer, other chronic disease or a traumatic injury.
Ducey announced the actions during a Capitol event kicking off a campaign highlighting substance abuse issues known as National Red Ribbon Week.
"This is a preventive step, and one we hope that employers and insurance companies will follow our lead to address the scourge of addiction on the front end," Ducey said.
The governor also announced that people with state-provided insurance will no longer need pre-approval to be prescribed Vivitrol, a drug that blocks receptors for opiates and alcohol that is prescribed to recovering addicts.
"It can make the road to recovery a much smoother one," Ducey said.
The governor pushed back on questions from reporters about putting government between patients and doctors.
"We lost 401 Arizonans in the last year due to this issue. We know that there is a problem and we're acting on it," he said.
The state's Medicaid plan is also implementing $4 co-pays for some people who receive narcotic painkiller prescriptions under a waiver approved by the federal government last month. The co-pays are due after the prescription is filled and people can be kicked off the insurance program if they fail to pay.
Ducey also signed laws this year requiring doctors to check a database before prescribing narcotics to ensure patients are getting drugs elsewhere, and making an opioid antidote available without a prescription.
The Governor's Office of Youth, Faith, and Family coordinates the yearly Red Ribbon Week effort to educate Arizonans about substance abuse issues.
Ducey's broader message to a gathering of several hundred schoolchildren, addiction counselors, law enforcement officials and lawmakers was that the state needs to do more to address addiction, especially among young people. He pointed out that more young people die from addiction-related causes each year than from suicide, firearms, school violence and car accidents combined.
"Let's be clear, addiction is not a moral failing, it's a disease, and it must be treated as such," Ducey said. "That means prevention, early intervention, treatment and recovery, and it also means better education for our youth and parents alike."
Ducey, however, declined to commit to adding funding in next year's budget for addiction recovery efforts.
"We think recovery is important. The way to avoid some of the high costs of recovery is certainly through prevention, that's what this morning is about," he said. "We're also deep at work at the budget and depending on where we are on the numbers we're going to hopefully have more money available."
- By LINDA DEUTSCH and TAREK HAMADA Associated Press
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SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) — During more than 50 years in the public eye, Tom Hayden went from firebrand college liberal to mainstream politician to elder political statesman. Through it all he remained the person he said he always wanted to be: someone dedicated to changing the world.
Hayden, who died Sunday following a long illness, was barely out of his teens and a student at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in the early 1960s when he came to national prominence as co-founder of the Students For a Democratic Society, a group critics at the time often dismissed as a band of rag-tag malcontents threatening the American way of life with their leftist ideas.
In the years that followed, he went on to take part in Civil Rights Freedom Rides through the South and helped organize the protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago that led to his and other members of the Chicago 7 being charged with, and eventually cleared of, inciting riots.
After that, he married actress Jane Fonda and ran for political office several times, serving 10 years in the California Assembly and eight more in the state Senate. He lectured frequently on politics and wrote 20 books, leading some of his contemporaries to brand him a sell-out who joined the mainstream culture.
But even as his hair turned white, he never escaped his past — or for that matter even tried very hard to.
As he wrote proudly in his memoir of forgoing an early opportunity at a career in journalism: "I didn't want to report on the world; I wanted to change it."
Like others who felt that way, he had come of age in America's tumultuous 1960s, a decade of dissent marked by civil rights sit-ins, anti-war marches, the Chicago riots and scenes of kids being tear-gassed and clubbed on American campuses.
He spoke many times about the era that planted his name in the American consciousness as a radical firebrand, anti-Vietnam War protester and defendant in the Chicago 7 conspiracy trial.
"Rarely, if ever, in American history has a generation begun with higher ideals and experienced greater trauma than those who lived fully the short time from 1960 to 1968," he wrote in his autobiography "Reunion."
He did sometimes wish aloud that his early advocacy hadn't alienated quite as many people as it did.
"I can't get past that," he said in 2008. "... I can be like 68 years old and I'm still trouble because (people are) thinking about something in Vietnam or they're thinking about Jane Fonda."
Less remembered were the books he wrote, the countless lectures, blog posts, the 100-plus legislative bills he shepherded to approval or his advocacy for the environment.
His story began in America's heartland — Royal Oak, Michigan — where Thomas Emmet Hayden was born on Dec. 11, 1939, into a middle-class family. He attended the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, a hotbed of student politics. It was there that he cast his lot with the counterculture movement.
He took up political causes, including the civil rights movement, wrote fiery editorials for the campus newspaper and contemplated a career in journalism. But upon graduation, he turned down a newspaper job in favor of trying to change the world.
In 1960, the year that he graduated, he was involved in formation of Students for a Democratic Society, then dedicated to desegregating the South. By 1962, he became one of the key authors of its landmark Port Huron Statement, a call to students on campuses everywhere to take up political protest.
"We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably at the world we inherit," began the statement, which outlined a plan for a revolutionary campus social movement.
Hayden was fond of comparing the student movement that followed to the American Revolution and the Civil War.
He went freedom riding for civil rights in the South and was beaten and briefly jailed in Mississippi and Georgia. He married a fellow activist, Sandra "Casey" Cason, and together they witnessed the violence of the battle against segregation.
Yearning for a more influential role, Hayden returned to Ann Arbor to work on the Port Huron Statement.
"I didn't want to go from beating to beating, jail to jail," he wrote. "... There was an entire generation to arouse, primarily about civil rights but also about the larger issues."
The largest issue at the time was the Vietnam War. In 1965, Hayden made his first visit to what was then North Vietnam with an unauthorized delegation. In 1967, he returned to Hanoi with another group and was asked by North Vietnamese leaders to bring three prisoners of war back to the United States. With the prisoners suffering medical problems, the U.S. State Department thanked Hayden for his humanitarian action.
Firmly committed to the anti-war movement, Hayden participated in sit-ins at Columbia University, then began traveling the country to promote a rally in Chicago for the 1968 Democratic National Convention. It became a turning point in his life.
A single event galvanized him — the 1968 assassination of his friend, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, in Los Angeles.
"I went from Robert Kennedy's coffin into a very bleak and bitter political view," Hayden recalled in an Associated Press interview in 1988. "I think it confirmed for me that there was no future and brought out a lurking belief that this was a really violent country and that I was headed into apocalyptic times."
Police assaults on student demonstrators in Chicago seemed to confirm his belief. The violence resulted in the circus-like Chicago 7 trial.
"In 1968, I thought it was reasonable to anticipate a police state," he recalled. "But in 1972, the people who were running the Democratic Party four years before were out and the people who were in the streets were in. In the next year, the people who wanted to put me in jail began the road to jail themselves with Watergate."
"The radical pressure caused the reforms," Hayden said. "But it's fair to say the system reformed itself."
In 1971, Hayden met Jane Fonda who was a latecomer to the protest movement.
"She came from the orbits of fame, power and success. A popular actress and the daughter of Henry Fonda, she burst like a dislocated star onto the movement scene ... but came only slowly and haltingly into my life," he wrote.
After he heard her give an eloquent anti-war speech in 1972, Hayden said they connected and became a couple. He was divorced from Cason by then and Fonda was divorced from director Roger Vadim and had a daughter, Vanessa Vadim.
"I was 32, she 34, both of us were starting over," he wrote. "The passion of our common involvement no doubt caused our involvement in passion for each other."
He acknowledged ruefully that their marriage in 1973 may have appeared to some as "a remake of 'Beauty and the Beast.' "
He was a rumpled longhaired activist who still cast himself as an outsider. She was a glamorous, world-famous movie star and heiress to a Hollywood dynasty. They were married for 17 years and had a son, Troy.
Both Hayden and Fonda were demonized by the political right after she visited North Vietnam in 1972 and was photographed posed on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun. It took many decades to minimize her "Hanoi Jane" moniker.
Hayden once expressed regret about his past. In a 1986 piece he wrote for the Los Angeles Times, he said: "I regret most of all that I compounded the pain of many Americans who lost sons and loved ones in Vietnam. ... I will always believe the Vietnam War was wrong. I will never again believe that I was always right."
In the late 1970s, Hayden plunged into mainstream politics, winning election to the California Assembly. He also served in the state Senate before stepping down in 2000. He ran unsuccessfully for Los Angeles mayor and California governor.
In later years, he focused on writing, teaching and lecturing. Hayden married actress Barbara Williams, and they had a son, Liam.
He acknowledged contentment with his later life but confided that nothing would ever match the excitement of his early years.
"Whatever the future holds and as satisfying as my life is today," he wrote, "I miss the '60s and I always will."
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Deutsch is a retired AP special correspondent who contributed to this report. Hamada contributed from Phoenix.
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LAS VEGAS (AP) — A Las Vegas man who was allowed to use makeup to cover his neo-Nazi tattoos during his trial and conviction in a robbery case in August may not get to hide them during an upcoming death penalty trial.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports (http://bit.ly/2eqk2lq ) that Clark County District Court Judge Michelle Leavitt said during a hearing last week that she believes a fair and impartial jury can be found.
Bayzle Dylan Morgan's trial on murder and other charges in the May 2013 slaying of 75-year-old Jean Main has been postponed until at least next month.
The 25-year-old Morgan has a swastika within a clover permanently etched under his left eye; the words "Most Wanted" on his forehead; "Baby Nazi" on his neck; and white supremacist tattoos instead of eyebrows.
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Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal, http://www.lvrj.com
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SURPRISE, Ariz. (AP) — Surprise police say a 3-year-old girl has died from injuries suffered when a dresser fell on her.
Police say the girl was found trapped and unconscious under the dresser Sunday morning when it tipped over as she climbed on it.
Sgt. Tim Klarkowski says police have investigated the incident and have determined that no criminal charges are warranted.
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MESA, Ariz. (AP) — Authorities say at least one of the wild horses living along the Salt River on the eastern outskirts of the Phoenix area has been shot and killed.
The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office says deputies found a dead foal with gunshot wounds during a search Saturday after witnesses reported seeing a person shooting at three horses Friday.
Citing the witnesses' accounts, the Sheriff's Office says it believes two other horses may be injured or dead.
According to the Sheriff's Office, the person shooting at the horses with either a rifle or shotgun was wearing black shorts and a dark green shirt.
The Sheriff's Office says two other people reportedly were accompanying the shooting when the incident occurred on the Tonto National Forest at a location called Pirates Island.
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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Authorities say three men with clown masks and a gun ran from a downtown San Francisco shopping center after they were discovered by security guards on Sunday.
San Francisco Police Department spokesman Officer Carlos Manfredi says the guards were doing their rounds in the emergency stairwells in the mall when they came across the three men. Manfredi says one brandished a gun.
No one was injured.
The men remain at large.
The report joins a growing number of incidents involving clowns in the San Francisco Bay Area and nationwide.
Most of the threats have been hoaxes.
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Information from: The San Francisco Examiner, http://www.sfexaminer.com
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MADERA, Calif. (AP) — A woman on a ride-along with a California police officer in his police cruiser can be heard on audio from dash camera video crying and pleading for the officer not to continue a pursuit after a gunman fired a dozen rounds at the patrol car.
The Fresno Bee reports (http://bit.ly/2eKKuF6 ) that the incident happened early Sunday morning when the officer tried to stop a white Mazda sports utility vehicle and pursued it after the vehicle took off.
The officer had planned to stop the Mazda because its driver did not yield and went through a stop sign without stopping, the Madera police department said in a statement on its Facebook page.
Just before shots rang out, the woman can be heard on the audio saying: "He has a gun, oh no!"
The officer and the woman were not hit by bullets, but the woman suffered cuts from shattered glass after the patrol car's windshield was shot out.
Two bullets hit the windshield, narrowly missing the officer and the woman in the front passenger seat. The bullets disabled the patrol car and the officer had to give up the chase.
Police found the SUV few blocks from where the officer last saw it. Police say they also located an AR15-style pistol and other unspecified evidence.
No arrests have been made.
The department says the officer had just finished training and was on his second week working alone. Civilians are allowed to ride-alongs with police if the department gives approval.
The officer and the woman were not identified.
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Information from: The Fresno Bee, http://www.fresnobee.com
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HALF MOON BAY, Calif. (AP) — For a first time, the Titans of Mavericks big wave surf contest will have a women's heat.
The East Bay Times reports (http://bit.ly/2egDzo0 ) Monday that a California Coastal Commission report released Friday says its staff recommendation would have been to deny contest organizer Cartel Management its permit if it did not include a women's heat in the 2016-17 contest.
The heat will be a one-hour, six-woman contest with a $30,000 prize purse within the main event this season. The contest window runs from Nov. 1 through March 31.
Cartel Management acquired the contest, which is held in 25-foot-plus waves at the Maverick's break near Pillar Point in Half Moon Bay, last year.
The coastal commission will vote on the permit during its Nov. 2 meeting.
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Information from: Contra Costa Times, http://www.contracostatimes.com
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GRASS RANGE, Mont. (AP) — A sport utility vehicle struck a dead deer in the road, causing a rollover crash that killed a 64-year-old Grass Range woman and critically injured a 61-year-old man.
The Montana Highway Patrol says the crash happened at about 10:20 a.m. Sunday on U.S. Highway 87.
The patrol says the SUV hit the deer and the driver lost control of the vehicle, which went off the right side of the road. The SUV rolled 2 ½ times and both people were thrown from the vehicle. Trooper Pat Crisswell tells The Billings Gazette (http://bit.ly/2exyZ6c ) it's not clear who was driving.
The woman died at the scene. The man was airlifted to a Billings hospital.
The victim's name has not been released.
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Information from: The Billings Gazette, http://www.billingsgazette.com
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FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — The Forest Service is starting a months-long reconstruction of a decades-old forest fire lookout tower that overlooks Flagstaff.
Coconino National Forest officials say the work on the Mount Elden tower began Monday and should be completed by April 30.
Forest officials say the tower's cab was built in 1977 and that its interior needs to be upgraded after decades of use by lookouts and visitors.
The cab's exterior also needs work because of weathering by high winds, strong rain and snow storms.
Forest officials say visitors won't be allowed on the tower during construction.
- By JOCELYN GECKER Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Pamela Buttery noticed something peculiar six years ago while practicing golf putting in her 57th-floor apartment at the luxurious Millennium Tower. The ball kept veering to the same corner of her living room.
Those were the first signs for residents of the sleek, mirrored high-rise that something was wrong.
The 58-story building has gained notoriety in recent weeks as the "leaning tower of San Francisco." But it's not just leaning. It's sinking, too. And engineers hired to assess the problem say it shows no immediate sign of stopping.
"What concerns me most is the tilting," says Buttery, 76, a retired real estate developer. "Is it safe to stay here? For how long?"
Completed seven years ago, the tower so far has sunk 16 inches into the soft soil and landfill of San Francisco's crowded financial district. But it's not sinking evenly, which has created a 2-inch tilt at the base — and a roughly 6-inch lean at the top.
By comparison, Italy's famed Leaning Tower of Pisa is leaning more than 16 feet. But in a major earthquake fault zone, the Millennium Tower's structural problems have raised alarm and become the focus of a public scandal.
Several documents involving the downtown building were leaked in recent weeks, including exchanges between the city's Department of Building Inspection and Millennium Partners, the developer. They show both sides knew the building was sinking more than anticipated before it opened in late 2009, but neither made that information public.
In a February 2009 letter, a chief buildings inspector, Raymond Lui, wrote to the tower's engineering firm to express concerns about "larger than expected settlements." He asked what was being done to stop the sinking and if the building's structural safety could be affected.
DeSimone Consulting Engineers replied that the building had already unexpectedly settled 8.3 inches. But the engineering firm concluded, "It is our professional opinion that the structures are safe."
City Supervisor Aaron Peskin, who has convened hearings on the matter at City Hall, asked Lui why the building was then certified safe for occupancy.
"We felt they had it under control," replied Lui, now employed in San Francisco's public works department. He did not elaborate.
City officials, owners of the building's high-end apartments, its developers and politicians are arguing over who is to blame. Meanwhile, key questions remain.
"When is this building going to stop sinking?" asks Jerry Dodson, an attorney and engineer who paid $2.1 million in 2009 for his two-bedroom apartment on the 42nd floor. "That's something that no one has been able to answer."
On the sidewalks outside the Millennium Tower, engineers last month started working to figure out why the building keeps sinking and if there's a way to fix it. But the process, which involves drilling deep holes and testing soil samples, is expected to take several months.
The geotechnical engineer leading the operation, Pat Shires, said existing data indicates the tower "might" sink between 24 to 31 inches in total, but nobody knows for sure.
When the Millennium Tower opened, it became a haven for the city's well-heeled, and all 419 apartments quickly sold out. Tenants have included former San Francisco 49er Joe Montana, late venture capitalist Tom Perkins and Giants outfielder Hunter Pence.
The building has a 75-foot indoor lap-pool, a health club and spa, an in-house cinema, and a restaurant and wine bar run by celebrity chef Michael Mina. Penthouses have sold for more than $10 million.
The tower's troubles are apparent in its five-floor underground garage, where Porsches and Lamborghinis sit near walls bearing floor-to-ceiling cracks, many bracketed by stress gauges to measure growth.
Meanwhile, accusations and lawsuits are piling up.
Dodson and other residents blame developers for what they say is a flawed design. The tower's foundation, for instance, uses piles driven 60 to 90 feet into landfill, rather than the pricier option of going down at least 240 feet to bedrock.
Millennium Partners maintains its design is safe and says many San Francisco high-rises have similar foundations.
"We did this building the right way," Chris Jeffries, a founding partner at Millennium Partners, told a news conference. "The building is 100 percent safe."
Jeffries blames the building's problems on an adjacent construction site where a city rail terminal is being built. He says the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, the public agency building the $4.5 billion transit hub, dug a 60-foot hole to create a dry construction site and pumped out millions of gallons of groundwater that wound up compressing and weakening the soil under the Millennium Tower.
Transbay says the tower's "inadequate foundation is the sole cause of the excessive settlement and tilt." It released a statement saying the building had sunk 10 inches and started to lean before the agency broke ground in 2010.
It has continued to sink at a rate of about 1 inch per year.
"We are all living there and wondering about our safety," another resident, Nina Agabian, said at a recent City Hall hearing. "We've been told it's going to take years to solve this, and I don't think we have years."
- ANDREW SELSKY, Associated Press
SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Inside the white-marble state archives building, way in the back of a cavernous room, lies Oregon's original constitution. It's in poor shape, and among its fading pages is a clause from an ugly chapter in the state's history that completely conflicts with its progressive image.
Now, the state is trying to raise funds from schoolchildren and others to restore the leather-bound document, and to buy a special case to preserve and display it, warts and all. They've raised one-tenth of the amount needed so far.
On a recent morning, State Archivist Mary Beth Herkert walked past rows of laden shelves that mechanically shift at the touch of a button. She got to a door, spun a wheel like one on a submarine hatch, and walked inside a vault. There, sitting in a box on a shelf, was Oregon's founding document. Herkert carefully opened the constitution with gloved hands. Some pages were starting to fall out. The vegetable ink on linen paper is fading after 159 years.
It could be even worse, considering how the document was kept for decades. For many of those years, there isn't even any record of where the constitution was stored, Herkert said. She could not confirm one account that the constitution was saved from a fire that destroyed the Oregon State Capitol in 1935.
"That it is not in awful condition, I think, is pretty remarkable," Herkert said. "Until 1990-1991, when we moved into this building, it never was in an environmentally controlled space."
These days, the constitution is kept with 250 million other pieces of paper, all at a chilly 65 degrees with 45 percent humidity in the archives building.
Written by white men in 1857 after a constitutional convention, it contained a clause prohibiting black people from residing in Oregon. That clause was approved in a popular vote, along with a ban on slavery. That made Oregon the only state admitted to the Union with an exclusionary clause in its constitution.
"It is a shameful part of our history, but if you take it in context of what the times were, we were right before the Civil War," Herkert said, adding that Oregon had to strike a balance to achieve statehood, with America becoming sharply divided over slavery. Two years after Oregon became a state in 1859, the Civil War broke out.
The exclusionary clause remained until it was repealed in 1927. That history reverberates even now. Oregon's population is only 2.1 percent black, compared with 13.3 percent for all of America, according to the 2015 U.S. census.
In the county that encompasses Portland, African-Americans "continue to live with the effects of racialized policies, practices and decision-making," a 2014 report said. The report by the Coalition of Communities of Color and Portland State University cited discrimination in housing, school discipline and the justice system, and racial profiling by police.
On a recent Friday, several dozen demonstrators in Portland affiliated with Black Lives Matter accused the police of racism, and complained of excessively rough treatment at a demonstration two days earlier. Demonstrator Nita Kelly described witnessing racial profiling, saying that during the earlier demonstration at City Hall, police assaulted an African-American woman waiting for a light-rail train "simply because she looked like someone who participated" in the demonstration.
In 1984, Oregon students raised over $37,000 to re-gild the golden pioneer statue on top of the State Capitol. In the current fundraising drive, $6,000 has been contributed so far, Herkert said. A total of $60,000 is needed. Officials are also asking adults to donate on behalf of schools. Schools that donate more than $250 will have their names on a plaque next to the display.
"The Constitution helps remind us of our past — both good and bad — just as it serves as the foundational document upon which Oregon's progress has been built since 1857 and continues to be built today," Secretary of State Jeanne P. Atkins said. "It should be restored, publicly displayed, and preserved for future Oregonians to learn about."
Herkert doesn't know if the racist exclusionary clause will be highlighted once the constitution goes on display, but she said it won't be hidden either.
"We have to remember it's our history, and we have to learn from our mistakes," she said.
FLORENCE, Ariz. (AP) — County leaders have denied a permit for an overnight medical marijuana festival in Casa Grande on Halloween weekend.
The Casa Grande Dispatch reports (http://bit.ly/2ehisS8 ) that the "Errl Camp" was to be held at the Casa Grande Domes on Oct. 29 and 30 as a celebration for people who use medical marijuana. According to the permit application, medical marijuana wouldn't be sold at the event but attendees could bring and use it.
The application says the festival would include live music, campfires and dancing and would only admit people with a valid medical marijuana card.
The Board of Supervisors unanimously rejected the permit last week, citing concerns about the event's proximity to the interstate and the inability for designated drivers to attend.
Applicant Jim Morrison believes the board didn't give his event a fair chance.
This post has been corrected to show that county leaders, not city leaders, denied the festival permit.
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Information from: Casa Grande Dispatch.
EUGENE, Ore. (AP) — A group of Eugene residents wants the city's public square formally named after Ken Kesey, the author of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and who is featured in a sculpture on the plaza.
The area officially known as Broadway Plaza will celebrate its 20th anniversary on Friday. It contains a statue of Kesey reading to his grandchildren, reported The Register-Guard (http://bit.ly/2f9nUsS ), and many Eugene residents know it by the informal name of "Kesey Square."
Jerry Diethelm, co-founder of the Friends of Kesey Square and a retired University of Oregon professor, said his group formally requested the name change by email last week. He said he had received no response from Eugene officials as of Thursday.
Any resident can request to change the name of city-owned land or a building under a policy adopted by Eugene in 2010, although the policy says the city council will only approve the change if the property "has a generic name or in recognition of and response to evolving political/social perspectives and sensitivities."
In the case of Broadway Plaza, Diethelm said the change should be an "easy sell" because its nickname is widely used.
"In this case, we're saying why doesn't the city just acknowledge what's happened and take care of it?" said Diethelm.
Kesey grew up in Springfield, graduated from UO and wrote the well-known novel "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," which was set in an Oregon psychiatric hospital. Diethelm said Kesey's work represents "real creativity and Northwest focus."
"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," in particular, "helps us to even consider how we're dealing with people who are challenged (with mental illness) in our public spaces, too," said Diethelm.
City Councilor George Brown, who represents an area that includes downtown Eugene, told The Register-Guard that he supports the name change.
"It makes sense, because I don't know anybody who calls it Broadway Plaza," he said.
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Information from: The Register-Guard, http://www.registerguard.com
HELENA, Mont. (AP) — A second woman is accusing a former Helena police officer of sexually assaulting her while she worked as a confidential informant.
A new lawsuit alleges Lloyd Matthew Thompson began grooming the girl when she was still in high school and assaulted her after she became an informant for the Missouri River Drug Task Force in 2012.
The woman alleges Thompson falsely informed her she was facing at least 10 years in prison for two felony charges and that she could help herself by becoming an informant.
Another lawsuit filed in June alleges Thompson repeatedly sexually assaulted another female informant. Neither complaint has been served on the officer, the city of Helena or Lewis and Clark County.
Helena City Attorney Thomas Jodoin said Monday the alleged conduct is outside the scope of Thompson's duties as a police officer.
MOSCOW, Idaho (AP) — The Moscow Police Department's new internet crimes officer has investigated more than a dozen cases since the post was created nine months ago, police said.
Capt. Roger Lanier said there has been a national trend of using electronics in crimes, and Latah County is no exception, The Lewiston Tribune reported (http://bit.ly/2enPZhn). He said the Moscow Police Department has seen an increase of more than 300 percent in the amount of electronics officers need to process since 2013.
Lanier said the city realized they needed an electronics forensic investigator in 2014. The Moscow City Council approved the creation of the position and Eric Kjorness was appointed to that role.
"I really am happy, and think it's great that the department created this position," Kjorness said. "It's needed, obviously. And I enjoy doing it."
Kjorness serves as Moscow's sole police officer looking into online child pornography and other electronic crimes. Since he moved to the position his investigations have secured two guilty pleas, passed five cases along to state courts and one to federal court. He is also currently working on six additional cases, and has referred three investigations to other jurisdictions.
In order to secure guilty pleas, Kjorness relies on a number of tips for where to start looking. Sometimes, criminals will share files directly with one of his accounts on file sharing networks, other times he gets referrals from the National Center for Missing or Exploited Children, which attempts to identify the victims in images and videos of child porn.
Kjorness said dealing with crimes that affect children can be hard, but he takes solace in getting the offenders into custody.
"I like to think of myself as preventing that," Kjorness said. "If we can get this person convicted, get him registered as a sex offender, get him some treatment ... I think we can prevent somebody from being a victim."
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Information from: Lewiston Tribune, http://www.lmtribune.com
- By BOB CHRISTIE Associated Press
PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey on Monday ordered the state's employee insurance plan and its Medicaid plan to limit narcotic painkiller prescriptions in an effort to cut future drug addiction.
The order signed by the Republican governor limits the initial prescription of opioid drugs for adults to a 7-day supply. Children are not prescribed more than a 7-day supply unless they have cancer, other chronic disease or a traumatic injury.
Ducey announced the actions during a Capitol event kicking off a campaign highlighting substance abuse issues known as National Red Ribbon Week.
"This is a preventive step, and one we hope that employers and insurance companies will follow our lead to address the scourge of addiction on the front end," Ducey said.
The governor also announced that people with state-provided insurance will no longer need pre-approval to be prescribed Vivitrol, a drug that blocks receptors for opiates and alcohol that is prescribed to recovering addicts.
"It can make the road to recovery a much smoother one," Ducey said.
The governor pushed back on questions from reporters about putting government between patients and doctors.
"We lost 401 Arizonans in the last year due to this issue. We know that there is a problem and we're acting on it," he said.
The state's Medicaid plan is also implementing $4 co-pays for some people who receive narcotic painkiller prescriptions under a waiver approved by the federal government last month. The co-pays are due after the prescription is filled and people can be kicked off the insurance program if they fail to pay.
Ducey also signed laws this year requiring doctors to check a database before prescribing narcotics to ensure patients are getting drugs elsewhere, and making an opioid antidote available without a prescription.
The Governor's Office of Youth, Faith, and Family coordinates the yearly Red Ribbon Week effort to educate Arizonans about substance abuse issues.
Ducey's broader message to a gathering of several hundred schoolchildren, addiction counselors, law enforcement officials and lawmakers was that the state needs to do more to address addiction, especially among young people. He pointed out that more young people die from addiction-related causes each year than from suicide, firearms, school violence and car accidents combined.
"Let's be clear, addiction is not a moral failing, it's a disease, and it must be treated as such," Ducey said. "That means prevention, early intervention, treatment and recovery, and it also means better education for our youth and parents alike."
Ducey, however, declined to commit to adding funding in next year's budget for addiction recovery efforts.
"We think recovery is important. The way to avoid some of the high costs of recovery is certainly through prevention, that's what this morning is about," he said. "We're also deep at work at the budget and depending on where we are on the numbers we're going to hopefully have more money available."
- By LINDA DEUTSCH and TAREK HAMADA Associated Press
SANTA MONICA, Calif. (AP) — During more than 50 years in the public eye, Tom Hayden went from firebrand college liberal to mainstream politician to elder political statesman. Through it all he remained the person he said he always wanted to be: someone dedicated to changing the world.
Hayden, who died Sunday following a long illness, was barely out of his teens and a student at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in the early 1960s when he came to national prominence as co-founder of the Students For a Democratic Society, a group critics at the time often dismissed as a band of rag-tag malcontents threatening the American way of life with their leftist ideas.
In the years that followed, he went on to take part in Civil Rights Freedom Rides through the South and helped organize the protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago that led to his and other members of the Chicago 7 being charged with, and eventually cleared of, inciting riots.
After that, he married actress Jane Fonda and ran for political office several times, serving 10 years in the California Assembly and eight more in the state Senate. He lectured frequently on politics and wrote 20 books, leading some of his contemporaries to brand him a sell-out who joined the mainstream culture.
But even as his hair turned white, he never escaped his past — or for that matter even tried very hard to.
As he wrote proudly in his memoir of forgoing an early opportunity at a career in journalism: "I didn't want to report on the world; I wanted to change it."
Like others who felt that way, he had come of age in America's tumultuous 1960s, a decade of dissent marked by civil rights sit-ins, anti-war marches, the Chicago riots and scenes of kids being tear-gassed and clubbed on American campuses.
He spoke many times about the era that planted his name in the American consciousness as a radical firebrand, anti-Vietnam War protester and defendant in the Chicago 7 conspiracy trial.
"Rarely, if ever, in American history has a generation begun with higher ideals and experienced greater trauma than those who lived fully the short time from 1960 to 1968," he wrote in his autobiography "Reunion."
He did sometimes wish aloud that his early advocacy hadn't alienated quite as many people as it did.
"I can't get past that," he said in 2008. "... I can be like 68 years old and I'm still trouble because (people are) thinking about something in Vietnam or they're thinking about Jane Fonda."
Less remembered were the books he wrote, the countless lectures, blog posts, the 100-plus legislative bills he shepherded to approval or his advocacy for the environment.
His story began in America's heartland — Royal Oak, Michigan — where Thomas Emmet Hayden was born on Dec. 11, 1939, into a middle-class family. He attended the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, a hotbed of student politics. It was there that he cast his lot with the counterculture movement.
He took up political causes, including the civil rights movement, wrote fiery editorials for the campus newspaper and contemplated a career in journalism. But upon graduation, he turned down a newspaper job in favor of trying to change the world.
In 1960, the year that he graduated, he was involved in formation of Students for a Democratic Society, then dedicated to desegregating the South. By 1962, he became one of the key authors of its landmark Port Huron Statement, a call to students on campuses everywhere to take up political protest.
"We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably at the world we inherit," began the statement, which outlined a plan for a revolutionary campus social movement.
Hayden was fond of comparing the student movement that followed to the American Revolution and the Civil War.
He went freedom riding for civil rights in the South and was beaten and briefly jailed in Mississippi and Georgia. He married a fellow activist, Sandra "Casey" Cason, and together they witnessed the violence of the battle against segregation.
Yearning for a more influential role, Hayden returned to Ann Arbor to work on the Port Huron Statement.
"I didn't want to go from beating to beating, jail to jail," he wrote. "... There was an entire generation to arouse, primarily about civil rights but also about the larger issues."
The largest issue at the time was the Vietnam War. In 1965, Hayden made his first visit to what was then North Vietnam with an unauthorized delegation. In 1967, he returned to Hanoi with another group and was asked by North Vietnamese leaders to bring three prisoners of war back to the United States. With the prisoners suffering medical problems, the U.S. State Department thanked Hayden for his humanitarian action.
Firmly committed to the anti-war movement, Hayden participated in sit-ins at Columbia University, then began traveling the country to promote a rally in Chicago for the 1968 Democratic National Convention. It became a turning point in his life.
A single event galvanized him — the 1968 assassination of his friend, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, in Los Angeles.
"I went from Robert Kennedy's coffin into a very bleak and bitter political view," Hayden recalled in an Associated Press interview in 1988. "I think it confirmed for me that there was no future and brought out a lurking belief that this was a really violent country and that I was headed into apocalyptic times."
Police assaults on student demonstrators in Chicago seemed to confirm his belief. The violence resulted in the circus-like Chicago 7 trial.
"In 1968, I thought it was reasonable to anticipate a police state," he recalled. "But in 1972, the people who were running the Democratic Party four years before were out and the people who were in the streets were in. In the next year, the people who wanted to put me in jail began the road to jail themselves with Watergate."
"The radical pressure caused the reforms," Hayden said. "But it's fair to say the system reformed itself."
In 1971, Hayden met Jane Fonda who was a latecomer to the protest movement.
"She came from the orbits of fame, power and success. A popular actress and the daughter of Henry Fonda, she burst like a dislocated star onto the movement scene ... but came only slowly and haltingly into my life," he wrote.
After he heard her give an eloquent anti-war speech in 1972, Hayden said they connected and became a couple. He was divorced from Cason by then and Fonda was divorced from director Roger Vadim and had a daughter, Vanessa Vadim.
"I was 32, she 34, both of us were starting over," he wrote. "The passion of our common involvement no doubt caused our involvement in passion for each other."
He acknowledged ruefully that their marriage in 1973 may have appeared to some as "a remake of 'Beauty and the Beast.' "
He was a rumpled longhaired activist who still cast himself as an outsider. She was a glamorous, world-famous movie star and heiress to a Hollywood dynasty. They were married for 17 years and had a son, Troy.
Both Hayden and Fonda were demonized by the political right after she visited North Vietnam in 1972 and was photographed posed on a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun. It took many decades to minimize her "Hanoi Jane" moniker.
Hayden once expressed regret about his past. In a 1986 piece he wrote for the Los Angeles Times, he said: "I regret most of all that I compounded the pain of many Americans who lost sons and loved ones in Vietnam. ... I will always believe the Vietnam War was wrong. I will never again believe that I was always right."
In the late 1970s, Hayden plunged into mainstream politics, winning election to the California Assembly. He also served in the state Senate before stepping down in 2000. He ran unsuccessfully for Los Angeles mayor and California governor.
In later years, he focused on writing, teaching and lecturing. Hayden married actress Barbara Williams, and they had a son, Liam.
He acknowledged contentment with his later life but confided that nothing would ever match the excitement of his early years.
"Whatever the future holds and as satisfying as my life is today," he wrote, "I miss the '60s and I always will."
___
Deutsch is a retired AP special correspondent who contributed to this report. Hamada contributed from Phoenix.
LAS VEGAS (AP) — A Las Vegas man who was allowed to use makeup to cover his neo-Nazi tattoos during his trial and conviction in a robbery case in August may not get to hide them during an upcoming death penalty trial.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports (http://bit.ly/2eqk2lq ) that Clark County District Court Judge Michelle Leavitt said during a hearing last week that she believes a fair and impartial jury can be found.
Bayzle Dylan Morgan's trial on murder and other charges in the May 2013 slaying of 75-year-old Jean Main has been postponed until at least next month.
The 25-year-old Morgan has a swastika within a clover permanently etched under his left eye; the words "Most Wanted" on his forehead; "Baby Nazi" on his neck; and white supremacist tattoos instead of eyebrows.
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Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal, http://www.lvrj.com
SURPRISE, Ariz. (AP) — Surprise police say a 3-year-old girl has died from injuries suffered when a dresser fell on her.
Police say the girl was found trapped and unconscious under the dresser Sunday morning when it tipped over as she climbed on it.
Sgt. Tim Klarkowski says police have investigated the incident and have determined that no criminal charges are warranted.
MESA, Ariz. (AP) — Authorities say at least one of the wild horses living along the Salt River on the eastern outskirts of the Phoenix area has been shot and killed.
The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office says deputies found a dead foal with gunshot wounds during a search Saturday after witnesses reported seeing a person shooting at three horses Friday.
Citing the witnesses' accounts, the Sheriff's Office says it believes two other horses may be injured or dead.
According to the Sheriff's Office, the person shooting at the horses with either a rifle or shotgun was wearing black shorts and a dark green shirt.
The Sheriff's Office says two other people reportedly were accompanying the shooting when the incident occurred on the Tonto National Forest at a location called Pirates Island.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Authorities say three men with clown masks and a gun ran from a downtown San Francisco shopping center after they were discovered by security guards on Sunday.
San Francisco Police Department spokesman Officer Carlos Manfredi says the guards were doing their rounds in the emergency stairwells in the mall when they came across the three men. Manfredi says one brandished a gun.
No one was injured.
The men remain at large.
The report joins a growing number of incidents involving clowns in the San Francisco Bay Area and nationwide.
Most of the threats have been hoaxes.
___
Information from: The San Francisco Examiner, http://www.sfexaminer.com
MADERA, Calif. (AP) — A woman on a ride-along with a California police officer in his police cruiser can be heard on audio from dash camera video crying and pleading for the officer not to continue a pursuit after a gunman fired a dozen rounds at the patrol car.
The Fresno Bee reports (http://bit.ly/2eKKuF6 ) that the incident happened early Sunday morning when the officer tried to stop a white Mazda sports utility vehicle and pursued it after the vehicle took off.
The officer had planned to stop the Mazda because its driver did not yield and went through a stop sign without stopping, the Madera police department said in a statement on its Facebook page.
Just before shots rang out, the woman can be heard on the audio saying: "He has a gun, oh no!"
The officer and the woman were not hit by bullets, but the woman suffered cuts from shattered glass after the patrol car's windshield was shot out.
Two bullets hit the windshield, narrowly missing the officer and the woman in the front passenger seat. The bullets disabled the patrol car and the officer had to give up the chase.
Police found the SUV few blocks from where the officer last saw it. Police say they also located an AR15-style pistol and other unspecified evidence.
No arrests have been made.
The department says the officer had just finished training and was on his second week working alone. Civilians are allowed to ride-alongs with police if the department gives approval.
The officer and the woman were not identified.
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Information from: The Fresno Bee, http://www.fresnobee.com
HALF MOON BAY, Calif. (AP) — For a first time, the Titans of Mavericks big wave surf contest will have a women's heat.
The East Bay Times reports (http://bit.ly/2egDzo0 ) Monday that a California Coastal Commission report released Friday says its staff recommendation would have been to deny contest organizer Cartel Management its permit if it did not include a women's heat in the 2016-17 contest.
The heat will be a one-hour, six-woman contest with a $30,000 prize purse within the main event this season. The contest window runs from Nov. 1 through March 31.
Cartel Management acquired the contest, which is held in 25-foot-plus waves at the Maverick's break near Pillar Point in Half Moon Bay, last year.
The coastal commission will vote on the permit during its Nov. 2 meeting.
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Information from: Contra Costa Times, http://www.contracostatimes.com
GRASS RANGE, Mont. (AP) — A sport utility vehicle struck a dead deer in the road, causing a rollover crash that killed a 64-year-old Grass Range woman and critically injured a 61-year-old man.
The Montana Highway Patrol says the crash happened at about 10:20 a.m. Sunday on U.S. Highway 87.
The patrol says the SUV hit the deer and the driver lost control of the vehicle, which went off the right side of the road. The SUV rolled 2 ½ times and both people were thrown from the vehicle. Trooper Pat Crisswell tells The Billings Gazette (http://bit.ly/2exyZ6c ) it's not clear who was driving.
The woman died at the scene. The man was airlifted to a Billings hospital.
The victim's name has not been released.
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Information from: The Billings Gazette, http://www.billingsgazette.com
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — The Forest Service is starting a months-long reconstruction of a decades-old forest fire lookout tower that overlooks Flagstaff.
Coconino National Forest officials say the work on the Mount Elden tower began Monday and should be completed by April 30.
Forest officials say the tower's cab was built in 1977 and that its interior needs to be upgraded after decades of use by lookouts and visitors.
The cab's exterior also needs work because of weathering by high winds, strong rain and snow storms.
Forest officials say visitors won't be allowed on the tower during construction.
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