Book-filled van stolen; radiation on highway; college gets tax break

EASTVALE, Calif. (AP) — Authorities in Riverside County are searching for a driver who ran away after a car jumped a curb, slammed into a house and burst into flames in Eastvale.

Sheriff's officials say the fire was quickly contained and everyone inside made it out safely after the crash shortly after 2 a.m. Monday.

Investigators are trying to track down the driver of the car, which smashed through a brick wall before becoming embedded in the home.

Five people have been displaced.

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) — State regulators have fined CenturyLink $2.85 million for a statewide 911 outage in April 2014.

The Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission said Monday they approved a settlement between the company and commission staff following an investigation into the outage that disrupted emergency services for six hours.

The company must also regularly report to the commission on 911 circuit reliability and the transition to a more advanced 911 system.

CenturyLink also admitted to violations for failing to automatically re-route 911 calls and failing to maintain and manage the 911 system as required by law.

Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a statement he is disappointed in the settlement, saying it amounts to a slap on the wrist for CenturyLink.

CenturyLink is the provider of 911 services for the state's 7 million residents.

PHOENIX (AP) — The Arizona Senate has approved a bill granting a big property tax break for a growing private Christian university in west Phoenix.

Monday's 16-14 vote on Senate Bill 1402 cuts Grand Canyon University's property taxes. Republican Sen. Steve Yarbrough's legislation applies to any regionally or nationally accredited private university in Arizona but Grand Canyon benefits most.

A 2014 effort benefiting the university's west Phoenix campus failed because of concerns it benefited only one university and was unconstitutional. Expanding it to other colleges fixes that problem.

Yarbrough says it's good policy to offer the expanding university a tax break.

Democratic Sen. Robert Meza of Phoenix says neighboring property owners will pay higher tax bills if the bill passes.

The legislation now heads to the House for action.

BOISE, Idaho — Idaho Republicans are backing a measure that would exempt the acquisition of sawed off shotguns, machine guns and silencers from public records request.

The measure passed through the House State Affairs Committee Monday in a 13-4 vote along party lines.

Under the proposed legislation, registration documents filed with a local law enforcement agency for weapons identified in the National Firearms Act would be kept private.

Republican Rep. Caroline Troy says new federal regulations will require people and businesses to release more personal information.

She says House Bill 478 is necessary to protect such personal information of those acquiring weapons and would also protect such individuals and businesses from burglary.

The bill was met with opposition from House Democrats, who said it created community safety concerns.

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — A rare books dealer says his van filled with valuable titles was stolen while he was visiting the Bay Area.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports (http://sfg.ly/1Q6GPQ9) Lawrence Van De Carr says his van was taken Monday night or Tuesday morning while parked outside a friend's Oakland home. Van De Carr owns Bookleggers Used Books in Chicago and was in town to attend book fairs.

He says the van held 400 books worth more than $350,000, many by Faulkner, Hemingway and other famous authors. He reported the theft to a network of book dealers, asking them to keep an eye out for the novels.

Van De Carr says one man was arrested after trying to sell to Moe's Books in Berkeley, but his apparent accomplice ran away.

Police have not found the van.

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This story has been corrected to show that the name of Van De Carr's bookstore is Bookleggers, not Bootleggers.

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Information from: San Francisco Chronicle, http://www.sfgate.com

CLOVIS, N.M. — Authorities are investigating the deaths of a Clovis couple who died after their car was parked on railroad tracks and then struck by a train.

Curry County Sheriff's officials say 36-year-old Jason Cassady died at the scene Saturday night while his 40-year-old wife, Rosann Lopez, died after being taken to a Texas hospital.

The Clovis News Journal reports that witnesses say they saw the vehicle cross the railroad tracks, then back onto the tracks and park.

The train operators say they say a man get out of the vehicle on the passenger side and stand beside the vehicle until the collision.

Authorities say the train was traveling around 45 mph when it struck the vehicle.

Sheriff's officials say no suicide note was found at the scene.

LARAMIE, Wyo. — A judge has sentenced former Albany County prosecuting attorney Richard Bohling to two to four years in prison for misuse of county money.

The Laramie Boomerang reports that District Judge John Perry on Monday also fined Bohling $45,000 and ordered him to pay $3,000 in restitution.

Prosecutors charged Bohling with using county money to buy cameras and other items for personal use. A jury last fall convicted Bohling of four felony counts of obtaining property by false pretenses and one misdemeanor count of official misconduct.

Bohling's lawyers had argued he bought the expensive camera gear because photos taken by police often were insufficient to secure convictions.

Two to four years in prison was the sentence sought by prosecutors. Bohling's attorney and numerous supporters argued for probation instead of prison time.

SEATTLE (AP) — Red light cameras led to nearly 40,000 tickets in Seattle in 2015. Now Washington's largest city is considering adding more.

KING-TV reports (http://is.gd/597t7A ) Seattle's existing red light cameras brought in more than $5 million last year.

The Seattle Department of Transportation is looking for more intersections to install red light cameras. The program has been in Seattle since 2006.

There are 31 cameras at 23 intersections throughout Seattle.

HELENA, Mont. — A Helena man is charged with using a shotgun to kill his upstairs neighbors at an apartment building.

The Independent Record reports that Lewis and Clark County prosecutors filed deliberate homicide charges Monday against 43-year-old Tilmon R. Nungesser IV in the deaths of 40-year-old Robert Alan Mishler and 42-year-old William Andrew Mishler.

Court records say an apartment resident called 911 on Saturday to report seeing a man with a shotgun banging on an apartment door. She was talking with the dispatcher at about 9:15 p.m. when the shots were fired.

The Mishler brothers were found dead in the hallway. Officers found Nungesser in the basement with blood spatter on his face and clothes.

Officers say Nungesser confessed to shooting the brothers. The shotgun was recovered.

Authorities did not release any motive for the shooting.

JACKSON, Wyo. — Wyoming's largest elk herd is estimated to have increased in numbers slightly, according to an annual winter survey.

Wyoming Game and Fish Department wildlife biologist Aly Courtemanch, who heads up the survey, detected notably few changes in the herd, which roams the Jackson Hole area, including the National Elk Refuge. She wrapped up her surveys Feb. 10.

The raw count, 10,678, was only 35 more animals than a year ago. To account for animals missed during an aerial survey the estimated herd size was bumped up to 11,200 — just a shade above of 11,000-elk objective.

"We're right where we want to be for overall numbers," Courtemanch told the Jackson Hole News & Guide. "The persistent challenge that we're concerned about, and other agencies are, is this skewed winter distribution where we have a lot of elk on the refuge and fewer elk than we'd like in other areas."

There were 1,681 elk in the Gros Ventre River drainage, but the numbers of elk wintering elsewhere in Jackson Hole were minimal.

Gender and age ratios within the Jackson Elk Herd stayed mostly stagnant, according to the survey.

Measured against the number of cows, calf numbers dipped just slightly. This winter's ratio, 19 calves per 100 cows, is not cause to think the herd is shrinking or doomed, Courtemanch said.

"We like to look at it on the whole," she said. "If we start seeing a number of years (with calves) in the single digits or in the teens, we would start to get concerned."

The ratio of mature bulls came in at 24 per 100 cows, but Courtemanch conceded she probably missed a fair number that were obscured by trees and terrain on natural winter range. A year ago the bull ratio was at 31, but the higher number stems partly from a considerable late-season cow elk harvest.

Spike bulls, the last component of the herd, this winter numbered seven for every 100 cows, a typical ratio.

RICHLAND, Wash. (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency says the uncontrolled spread of small amounts of radioactive waste at Hanford after a Nov. 17 windstorm is alarming.

The winds pushed specks of contamination beyond Route 4, the public highway from Richland out to the Wye Barricade entrance to Hanford.

The Tri-City Herald (http://bit.ly/1PSexaJ ) reports that tests found no contamination on the public highway. And the Department of Energy concluded that workers and the public are not at risk of exposure.

But the EPA in a letter says the uncontrolled spread of contamination "is a matter that is alarming to EPA and requires further investigation and discussion."

It has given the Energy Department until the third week of April to prepare a report on its loss of control of radioactive material.

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Information from: Tri-City Herald, http://www.tri-cityherald.com

LEWISTON, Idaho — A decaying mansion in Lewiston is back in good standing with the city after being declared dangerous a year ago.

The Hurlbut Mansion is no longer dangerous to the public, according to city building official John Smith. He told The Lewiston Tribune that officials at the Lewis-Clark Early Childhood Program, which owns the building, have fixed some structural problems and rebutted others.

The main danger of the mansion was that parts of the brick veneer facade that were in danger of collapse, according to a report Smith filed early last year. Program officials put up a safety fence around the building and were able to scale it back as exterior repairs were made.

Workers repaired some loose masonry and secured the building against vandals and birds, according to Clarkston architect Jerry Brotnov. The 110-year-old building is no longer at risk of collapsing, according to an assessment by Brotnov and an engineering firm hired to assess the home.

Lewiston banker Wendell Hurlbut had the 8,286-square-foot colonial revival home built in 1905 for $26,000. It was designed by Spokane architect Kirtland Cutler.

The Children's Home Finding and Aid Society bought the mansion from foreclosure in 1912, and it served as an orphanage for 56 years. Then someone else bought the building and leased it to the Idaho Head Start Association, which later became the Early Childhood Program.

The building fell into disrepair and was scheduled to be demolished in 2001, but a group of community members rallied to save it.

The Early Childhood Program bought the property in 2001. Total renovation cost is estimated to be $2.4 million.

BILLINGS, Mont. — The founder of a Montana resort for the ultra-rich will stay in jail for failing to account for the "vanished" money from a Mexico property sale made in defiance of a court order, a federal judge said.

Tim c, founder of the Yellowstone Club that filed for bankruptcy in 2008, has been behind bars since last April, when he was found in contempt of court. He sold the luxury Tamarindo property, located in the Mexican state of Jalisco, for $13.8 million in 2011, violating a bankruptcy judge's order.

U.S. District Judge Sam Haddon said Blixseth's incarceration is meant to coerce him into revealing what happened to the money.

"Literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in disbursements made to various Blixseth family members or to entities he owned or controlled have simply vanished without adequate or even plausible explanation," Haddon wrote in a Friday order.

Creditors from the Yellowstone Club's bankruptcy are seeking more than $250 million from Blixseth. They have argued for him to remain incarcerated.

Blixseth has submitted more than 22,000 pages of documents in his numerous attempts to satisfy Haddon and get out of jail. Attorneys for the real estate developer have said repeatedly that he's done all he can to account for the Tamarindo proceeds.

"There is nothing more to produce, no further documents and Tim has no control over former employees who kept any records," Blixseth attorney Phil Stillman said Monday.

But more than $2.6 million remains unaccounted for, the judge said. That includes $1.2 million transferred to Blixseth and his wife and $1.1 million designated as loans to a timber company that disappeared without explanation, Haddon said.

The judge added that Blixseth's claims that he's done all he can to say what happened to the money "rings hollow."

Stillman said he would again take the case to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which turned down several prior petitions from Blixseth to be released. The attorney said Haddon has changed the terms of what Blixseth must do to get out of jail each time his client has tried to comply.

The Yellowstone Club near Big Sky went bankrupt after Blixseth, a resident of Washington state, pocketed much of a $375 million Credit Suisse loan to the resort and later gave up control of the enterprise to his ex-wife during their 2008 divorce.

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — Wildlife officials are working to identify new locations to release Mexican gray wolf packs that have been raised in captivity.

Federal forest and wildlife officials are looking at nine locations across the Sitgreaves and Tonto national forests as potential sites for wolf releases, The Arizona Daily Sun reported (http://bit.ly/1Q5V2Jx ).

At a meeting earlier this month between wildlife officials and ranchers who have grazing leases on the land, some ranchers said they understand the need to protect the wolves, but new release areas bring them closer to cattle, roads and communities.

"Many of these folks have not had to deal with the (Mexican wolf recovery) program, so we're starting from square one," said Patrick Bray, executive vice president of the Arizona Cattle Growers' Association.

Officials with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service say the expanded release area is necessary because the original release area has no more space for wolves to establish territory.

"If you release wolves and they establish there, you can't continually put wolves on top of wolves," said Sherry Barrett, the Mexican wolf recovery coordinator at the Fish and Wildlife Service. "It was really constricting us on where we could put new wolves so we could get the genetics of the wild population more diverse."

An annual survey released last week by the Fish and Wildlife Service shows at least 97 wolves are spread among forested lands in southwestern New Mexico and southeast Arizona.

The population had been on the upswing since 2010, with 2014 marking a banner year when the predators topped 110 after seeing an increase of nearly a third in their numbers.

The Mexican wolf was added to the federal endangered species list in 1976. Wildlife officials are working to expand the wolf release zone as part of changes made last year to the regulations on how Mexican wolves are managed.

With the rule change, wildlife officials said they expect to release 28 to 40 packs, each with an adult pair and several pups, into the wild over the next 20 years.

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Information from: Arizona Daily Sun, http://www.azdailysun.com/