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TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2013
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Wayside vandalized FBI gets involved in latest case where two flags were stolen ■
BY THOMAS MORIARTY The World
By Alysha Beck, The World
An Oregon State Police officer and FBI agent examine the flagpoles at North Bend’s David DeWitt Memorial Wayside off U.S. Highway 101 where an American and POW-MIA flag were apparently taken over the weekend.
New plan to make dams safe for salmon
NORTH BEND — A wayside north of the McCullough Bridge has apparently become the second veterans memorial to fall prey to vandals in the past month. The David Dewitt Memorial Way-
side is also the second once-possible relocation site for the contested Mingus Park Vietnam War Memorial cross that has been targeted. Mark Winders of Pointman Ministries, a faith-based veterans support group, said an American flag and a POW-MIA flag were apparently stolen from the wayside over the weekend. The panel that covers the internal hoist mechanism had been pried open on each of the flagpoles. Two FBI agents accompanied a trooper from Oregon State Police to
the site shortly before 6 p.m. to collect evidence. Winders said a member driving by Saturday night had seen both flags flying, but the group noticed they were missing Sunday morning. An Oregon state flag on a third flagpole was left untouched. He said the memorial has never had trouble with vandals in the past. “We’ve really been blessed,” Winders said. “I’m thankful that’s all they did. We’ve got hundreds of SEE VANDALISM | A8
The new school ‘necessity’
BY JEFF BARNARD The Associated Press
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Coquille begins pre-kindergarten program BY CHELSEA DAVIS The World
COQUILLE — Pre-kindergarten is the first step toward retaining students and ensuring a successful academic career, school officials say. This fall, the Coquille School District became the second district in the state to implement a pre-kindergarten program at a public elementary school (David Douglas School District in Portland was the first). Sept. 3 marked the first day of the program, with 23 youngsters getting a jump start on their education at Lincoln Elementary. Sharon Nelson retired from her position as Coquille High School principal this summer
and became the half-time principal at Lincoln. “It was something that is a necessity and the sooner we can get our kids into a prekindergarten mindset, the school routines and pre-everything, we’re looking at making greater advances in student achievement once they reach kindergarten, especially to tie in with the new kindergarten readiness assessment now required by all schools in the state,” Nelson said. The 4-year-olds are going to pre-kindergarten half-days, Monday through Thursday. Coquille kids can attend the program for free, while out-of-town families must pay a $60 monthly fee. “It is as I had anticipated: a much-needed
and wanted program,” she said. Superintendent Tim Sweeney said the discussion of launching a pre-kindergarten program began in March. He turned to Rudy Crew, former Oregon chief education officer, to see if there was any state funding available for a pilot pre-kindergarten program. “He loved the idea,” Sweeney said. The state didn’t end up funding the program, though. Instead, the district received a Title VI Innovate Programs grant from the U.S. Department of Education, as well as grants from Coquille’s First Community Credit Union and Coquille Valley Hospital. All in all, the district received approximately SEE COQUILLE | A8
Syria accepts Russian weapons proposal BY LORI HINNANT The Associated Press PARIS — Syria has accepted a proposal to place its chemical weapons under international control for dismantling, the Syrian foreign minister said Tuesday, as France proposed a U.N. resolution that would enforce the plan militarily if the government failed
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to follow through. The moves are part of flurry of diplomatic activity aimed at averting Western military action. Speaking in Moscow, Walid alMoallem said his government quickly agreed to the plan to “thwart U.S. aggression” — an allusion to possible U.S.-led strikes in retaliation for a deadly Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack
Miriam Heath, Coquille Robert Heath, Coquille Richard Ball, North Bend Myrton Campbell, Coos Bay
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near Damascus that Western powers blame on the Syrian regime. Syrian President Bashar Assad has denied the claim. Russia, Syria’s most powerful ally, is now working with Damascus to prepare a detailed plan of action that will be presented soon, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said. Russia will then be ready to finalize the plan with
Cheryle Airth, Coos Bay Darrell Adkins, Coos Bay
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By Alysha Beck, The World
Brody Jones, 4, plays with a train set in Elissa Coonce’s pre-kindergarten class at Lincoln Elementary in Coquille on Monday. The Coquille School District is the second in Oregon to start a pre-kindergarten program in a public school.
DEATHS
The Obama administration’s latest plan for making 14 hydroelectric dams in the Northwest safe for salmon offers no major changes in strategy and continues to rely on habitat improvements to overcome the numbers of fish killed by the dams. The 751-page draft of the courtordered plan known as a biological opinion was released Monday by NOAA Fisheries Service. The last plan was struck down in 2011 for depending too much on habitat improvements that weren’t specific. That plan also failed to consider the possibility of breaching the four dams on the Snake River in eastern Washington — a move that would return the river to more natural conditions. The new plan also doesn’t consider breaching the four dams. It said current dam operations are working fine, survival of juvenile salmon migrating to the ocean has improved and habitat improvements are on track to be implemented by 2018, when the biological opinion runs out. The latest plan also noted that scientists can’t explain a downturn in the past four years in the numbers of adult fish surviving the reach between Bonneville Dam on the Columbia and Ice Harbor Dam on the Snake in eastern Washington. The survival outlook for many threatened and endangered salmon runs remains risky. Landscape-scale habitat improvements are being ramped up on the Columbia Estuary, where spending is increasing from $4 million to $13 million. “Our finding was that our original analysis was correct, so then it was not necessary to look at additional actions, including additional spill or dam breaching,” Bruce Suzumoto, chief of hydropower operations for NOAA Fisheries, said in a teleconference. Court ordered spilling of water over the dams, rather than running it through turbines, has increased the survival of young fish migrating downstream, but at the expense of power production. Breaching the four Snake River dams would eliminate reservoirs
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Kimoon and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. Al-Moallem’s brief statement sounded more definitive than his remarks a day earlier, when he said Damascus welcomed Russia’s initiative. He did not provide any SEE SYRIA | A8
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