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STATE TESTING
Explosion guts building
Writing results skewed?
Chances of staying in country were hurt by his false claims of U.S. citizenship
By Sheila G. Miller The Bulletin
Pilot Butte Principal Stephanie Bennett started the school year with a goal to improve her students’ state writing test scores. Students worked on the subject throughout the year, but when she received preliminary data on her seventh-graders’ writing assessments, she was shocked to see that the percent of students who met or exceeded state benchmarks had actually decreased. “We were bummed,” she said. Then she got to work with Assistant Principal Teri Friesen, breaking down the tests to figure out why the numbers had changed. The test scores showed a discrepancy; the students who had taken the test with paper and pencil had fared much better on the assessment than those who had taken the test on a computer.
By Cindy Powers The Bulletin
Other schools see dip
TOP NEWS INSIDE BRITAIN: Gunman’s rampage leaves 12 dead, 25 injured, Page A3
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We use recycled newsprint The Bulletin An Independent Newspaper
MON-SAT
Vol. 107, No. 154, 42 pages, 7 sections
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Pete Erickson / The Bulletin
Bend firefighters move a hose in front of the Nosler Inc. ammunition manufacturing building in southwest Bend following a fire and explosion in the facility on Wednesday afternoon. About 100 people inside the building were able to get outside before the blast.
No one injured in Nosler bullet factory fire Inside
Galveston Ave.
Nosler Inc.
BEND
Mt.
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d ora Col
Columb ia
Reed Market Rd.
Was hi
Whether he’s convicted of the criminal charges against him or not, Doitchin Krasev’s chances of staying in the United States appear to be negligible. Federa l agents outed the former Oregon Liquor Control Commission agent — who went by the name “Jason Evers” for 14 years Doitchin — as a Bulgar- Krasev ian national last week. He has apparently been in the U.S. illegally since 1994, when he stopped attending college in North Carolina, a move which rendered his student visa invalid. Now he faces one federal count of falsifying a passport application in 2002 and an Ohio charge of stealing the identity of a child named Jason Evers who was murdered there 28 years ago. And regardless of the outcome of those proceedings, he’ll ultimately have to answer to U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, which appears to have a solid case for deporting him and barring his return to the states for at least a decade.
‘A trip in his future’ St.
t.
Simpson Ave.
dS
Bend bullet manufacturer’s underground ballistics testing tunnel. It blew a massive hole in the side of the building, rattled homes and offices several blocks away and drew dozens of police officers and firefighters, who blocked off a large area around the site. But because employees had been able to escape the building after the fire alarm sounded, no one was injured. Police and fire officials remained on scene late Wednesday afternoon, keeping onlookers away from the building. See Explosion / A4
Colorado Ave.
Bon
• Nosler Inc. has been a Bend company since moving here in 1958, Page A4
Wall St.
Seth Reed had just clocked out after his shift at Nosler Inc. and ducked into the restroom when he heard the fire alarm go off and saw a cloud of smoke pouring under the door. “I opened the door and flames shot into the bathroom,” he said. “I thought I should stay in there because I didn’t think I’d be able to make it out.” But he decided to make a run for it and sprinted through the building and out the front door to Southwest Columbia Street. As the company’s employees gathered outside in a designated fire evacuation meeting spot, an explosion rocked the building and debris rained down on the crowd. The blast, which occurred around 2:15 p.m. Wednesday, was believed to have been sparked by a fire in the
Columbia St.
The Bulletin
14th St.
By Erin Golden
Century Dr.
As it turns out, it wasn’t just Pilot Butte Middle School that discovered that theme. Schools around the district and state have reported similar differences between the online and the paper-based test, and now the Oregon Department of Education is planning to analyze the data to figure out what, if anything, has gone wrong. Crystal Greene, a program analyst for the assessment team at the Oregon Department of Education, said the state hasn’t collected all of the scores, so an analysis has not yet been completed. “We do have some districts who have reported lower scores,” she said. “With a new system, it’s not unusual for there to be some score fluctuation.” The tests used the same prompts and were identical. And according to Greene, the writing scorers are trained to read both handwritten and typed essays. Currently, the state doesn’t mandate the online format. Greene said it’s unclear whether the online version will become the only accepted test. See Writing / A4
U.S. likely to deport ‘Evers’
ngto
n Dr . Greg Cross / The Bulletin
“If what I have read in your newspaper is true, I see a trip in his future,” said Portland immigration lawyer Tilman Hasche. That is because, federal investigators say, Krasev has falsely claimed U.S. citizenship in the past — a move that makes him ineligible to stay in the U.S. for almost any reason. See ‘Evers’ / A5
U.N. critical of U.S. drone attacks Nuclear option By Charlie Savage
on the oil spill?
New York Times News Service
WASHINGTON — A senior U.N. official said Wednesday that the growing use of armed drones by the United States to kill terrorism suspects was undermining global constraints on the use of military force. He warned that the American example would lead to a chaotic world as the new weapons technology inevitably spread. In a 29-page report to the U.N. Human Rights Council, the official, Philip Alston, the U.N. special representative on extrajudicial executions, called on the United States to exercise greater restraint in its use of drones in places like Pakistan and Yemen, outside the war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq. The report — the most extensive effort by the United Nations to grapple with the legal implications of armed drones — also proposed a summit meeting of “key military powers” to clarify legal limits on such killings. In an interview, Alston said the United States appeared to think that it was “facing a unique threat from transnational terrorist networks” that justified its effort to put forward
By William J. Broad New York Times News Service
The chatter began weeks ago as armchair engineers brainstormed for ways to stop the torrent of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico: What about nuking the well? Decades ago, the Soviet Union reportedly used nuclear blasts to seal off runaway gas wells, inserting a bomb deep underground and letting its fiery heat melt the surrounding rock to shut off the flow. Why not try it here?
Obama not considering the idea Ann Johansson / The New York Times
From left, Capt. Steve Truhlar, Lt. Thomas Shuler and Adm. Jody Beckenridge talk next to a Predator B aircraft in Palmdale, Calif. legal assertions to make the rules “as flexible as possible.” But that example, he said, could quickly lead to a situation in which dozens of countries carry out “competing drone attacks” outside their borders against people “labeled as terrorists by one group or another.”
“I’m particularly concerned that the United States seems oblivious to this fact when it asserts an everexpanding entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe,” Alston said in an accompanying statement. See Drones / A4
The idea has gained fans with each failed attempt to stem the leak and each new setback — on Wednesday, the latest rescue effort stalled when a wire saw being used to slice through the riser pipe got stuck. “Probably the only thing we can do is create a weapon system and send it down 18,000 feet and detonate it, hopefully encasing the oil,” Matt Simmons, a Houston energy expert and investment banker, told Bloomberg News on Friday. Or as CNN reporter John Roberts suggested last week, “Drill a hole, drop a nuke in and seal up the well.” See Nuclear / A5