Latest Oregonian Stories

By Anne Saker, The Oregonian, Portland, Ore. Jul. 7--Providence Health & Services has joined companies nationwide in trying to manage an internal drain that many employees see as a job perk: Hospital workers are now forbidden from downloading streaming audio or video from the Internet. Gary Walker, senior public relations coordinator for Providence, said the problem for the hospital was not so much YouTube or other video Web sites but online audio from radio stations or music-only...

By Gail Kinsey Hill, The Oregonian, Portland, Ore. Jul. 5--Columbia Basin river managers had a close call this week when they were forced to cut back on hydropower after a surge in wind energy blasted through the system. The surge forced them to spill more water over dams, risking the health of migrating fish. For the first time, it also exposed serious kinks in a plan that was supposed to deal smoothly with just such emergencies. As it turned out, the spills weren't heavy enough to...

By Erin Hoover Barnett, The Oregonian, Portland, Ore. Jul. 1--Northeast Portland's Garlington Center, a community cornerstone that serves nearly 600 people with mental illnesses, may avert closure thanks to pressure from a standing-room-only crowd Monday. The clinic at 3034 N.E. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. faces shutdown because of the financial problems of its operator, Cascadia Behavioral Healthcare. The clinic serves mostly neighborhood residents, including many African Americans...

By Ted Sickinger, The Oregonian, Portland, Ore. Jul. 1--If gas prices have you down, you'd better brace for rising utility bills the next few years. Regional utilities face rapidly escalating fuel prices and, in some cases, project wide gaps between their power supply and customer demand. As they purchase expensive wholesale electricity to meet that demand, pay inflated costs to build power plants and invest heavily to meet renewable energy and global warming mandates, consumers can...

By Michelle Roberts, The Oregonian, Portland, Ore. Jun. 29--On a recent weekday afternoon, Pil Hwang tells it like it is to an employee at Lake Oswego-based Pacific Lumber & Truss Co. At age 49, the worker has yet to save a single penny for retirement. "It's not going to be pretty," Hwang says, brow furrowed, furiously punching the sad math into his copper-colored Hewlett-Packard laptop. "If you're counting on Social Security, you're going to be in trouble, man. We really, really need...

By Jonathan Brinckman, The Oregonian, Portland, Ore. Jun. 28--The genesis of the airline revving up for its inaugural flight Monday was a 2005 conversation on the wharf in front of Centennial Mill on the Portland waterfront. With the Willamette River at their feet, John Beardsley, who owned the Northwest Portland mill, and Kent Craford, a lobbyist, bounced the idea of launching a commercial floatplane business. Such planes could make the Portland-to-Seattle trip quicker and more...

By Michael Milstein, The Oregonian, Portland, Ore. Jun. 26--Gary Soderstrom had just got off the Columbia River after a long night of fishing Wednesday morning when he heard that the Supreme Court had slashed the money coming to him. Soderstrom, who lives in Clatskanie, was among the thousands of fishermen who once were to share $5 billion in damages Exxon Mobil was told to pay for devastation caused by the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. But Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court...

By Amy Hsuan, The Oregonian, Portland, Ore. Jun. 25--Seven weeks after Oregon's oldest forest products company closed its doors, workers left unemployed by the Pope & Talbot bankruptcy will return to work at the Halsey mill starting this week. By Tuesday, more than half of the 180 workers displaced by the mill's closure last month said they intended to go back, said Leon Harlson, the mill's former union president. The rehiring of the workers could require the mill's new owners, the...

By Betsy Hammond, The Oregonian, Portland, Ore. Jun. 20--Oregon students will have to pass state reading, math and writing tests, or prove they have the equivalent skills, to get a high school diploma, beginning with this fall's freshmen. Thursday's unanimous decision by the Oregon Board of Education also requires students to give three speeches that meet state standards. The new requirements -- three years in the making -- will set off a scramble to make sure students know the rules...

By Michael Milstein, The Oregonian, Portland, Ore. Jun. 20--With millions of acres of overgrown Oregon forests at desperate risk of wildfires, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Thursday advanced an outline of legislation aimed at permanently protecting old-growth trees while also promoting sustainable logging. That combination has long been an elusive Holy Grail of public-land forestry in the Northwest. Intense old-growth logging through the 1980s led to a public and legal backlash that brought...