In brief: Snowplows return to mountain passes

A snow warning for the Washington Cascades has forced some highway crews to delay mowing grass and return to the mountain passes with snowplows.

The Transportation Department sent plows and deicing equipment Monday night to Snoqualmie, Stevens, White and Chinook passes and the North Cascades Highway.

As much as 6 inches of snow was expected in the passes.

The National Weather Service issued the snow warning for the Washington Cascades and Olympics as a cold front hits Western Washington. Forecasters expect up to a foot of snow at higher elevations in the Cascades and 4 to 9 inches in the Olympics.

The cold front will bring rain showers to other parts of Western Washington through today.

Forecasters say Eastern Washington will be cloudy with a chance of showers.

YAKIMA

Chimpanzees on long trip to sanctuary

A retirement home long in the making will welcome its first residents Friday, but these aren’t your average senior citizens.

Seven chimpanzees from a medical laboratory in Pennsylvania are making a cross-country trip by truck to their new home at the nonprofit Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, an 18,000-cubic-foot facility on 26 acres near Cle Elum, about 70 miles east of Seattle.

The six females and one male – Annie, Foxy, Jamie, Jody, Missy, Negra and Burreto – range in age from 24 to 34. In captivity, chimpanzees can live into their 60s, but generally their life span is 35-50 years old.

“It actually seems kind of unreal because it’s been such a long time coming,” said Zibby Wilder, a volunteer and board member for the new facility. “We’re just so excited to get them and to be able to provide such a great level of care for them.”

Plans for the chimpanzee sanctuary were first hatched in 2003. The $150,000 sanctuary, one of nine such chimpanzee sanctuaries in the United States, is being built to give homes to chimps that have been used by the entertainment and biomedical industries.

The seven chimps are being brought to the sanctuary from Buckshire Corp., in Perkasie, Pa., a laboratory and quarantine facility that provides chimpanzees for testing. Five were believed to have been born at the laboratory. They were mostly used for hepatitis B vaccine studies and have no infectious diseases, according to the sanctuary.

Wilder said the chimps’ caretaker at Buckshire, who has been with them for 20 years, will be traveling with them to Cle Elum and will remain there for several weeks.

TACOMA

Man who hit officer with car arrested

Police have arrested the driver of a stolen car who hit an officer in Tacoma.

Officers fired at the man Monday and he was reportedly bleeding from the neck when he was taken into custody after a chase.

Capt. Mike Miller says the incident began about 11 a.m. when officers where checking the stolen car in a parking lot.

One of the officers was walking toward the vehicle when the driver accelerated, striking the officer. Miller says the officer was taken to a hospital.

Other officers fired at the fleeing car and chased it until a patrol car crashed into it.

Officers tracked the man with the help of a Pierce County sheriff’s dog. He was arrested and taken away in an ambulance.

EUGENE, Ore.

Author who denies Holocaust to speak

A British author convicted of denying the Holocaust has been invited to speak at the University of Oregon – but by the school.

David Irving served 13 months in prison in Austria for violating the country’s law against denying the Nazis exterminated 6 million Jews during World War II.

Irving was invited by the Pacifica Forum, a group that arranges talks at the Oregon campus.

University officials say the Pacifica Forum is not affiliated with the school, and Irving’s talk was scheduled under a policy that allows retired professors to book rooms on campus.

Irving has been met by protesters at other talks in the past, including Oxford University last November.

VANCOUVER, B.C.

Mounties find some art taken in heist

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said Monday they had recovered some of the Haida art treasures stolen from the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology.

Constable Annie Linteau confirmed some of the 12 stolen items were seized as search warrants were executed, but she didn’t say how many.

“I can say that we’ve recovered artwork in relation to this investigation. We have instituted search warrants within the Lower Mainland and, as a result of that, have recovered some of the pieces,” Linteau told the Canadian Press on Monday. She declined to give further details, saying the investigation was still under way.

The artwork – a gold box, broaches, bracelets and some argilite stone panels by famed Haida artist Bill Reid – was stolen from the university’s Museum of Anthropology on May 24, along with three Mexican gold necklaces.

Reid, who died in 1998, is one of Canada’s most famous sculptors. Perhaps his most well-known sculpture is the “Spirit of Haida Gwaii,” which features a group of mythological Haida figures in a canoe. The sculpture is portrayed on the Canadian $20 bill.

Compiled from wire reports