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Serving Central Oregon since 1903 www.bendbulletin.com The Bulletin
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Sunday Reader: For Joanna Newman, the diagnosis came in 2008: a tumor on the spine. Surgery comes next, if insurance will cover it, or she can afford it.
Airfares soar after a long recession’s bargains
Governor’s crisis cabinet details blueprint for state’s colleges — with COCC-OSU model in mind By Sheila G. Miller The Bulletin
It’s no secret that as the recession has taken hold of Oregon, more people have returned to schools searching for higher education that will help them find jobs and a more secure future. It’s especially true in Central Oregon, where the community college has seen an 85 percent enrollment jump over the past three years, and Oregon State University-Cascades Campus is entering its sixth consecutive term with enrollment increases. More students may be crowding the state’s campuses, but repeated state budget shortfalls mean there’s not much additional state funding to help those campuses deal with the enrollment increases. Now, Gov. Ted Kulongoski’s “reset cabinet” has a few ideas to help higher education become more efficient and successful. Kulongoski assembled a nine-person cabinet to determine how best to deal with the current economic crisis facing Oregon. In June, the group released a report that details ways it believes Oregon could save money, trim government and cut spending. The report features sections on each of the main government functions, from labor costs and public safety to human services and education.
By Jad Mouawad New York Times News Service
Airfares have marched steadily upward in recent months and are now close to pre-recession levels — and that’s not even counting all the fees that airlines have introduced lately. The increase in fares is the result of a remarkable discipline shown by the airlines, which have generally not added more flights this year — even as the economy has improved and demand has picked up. For the airlines, flying fewer and fuller planes has paid off. And passengers are paying the price. For leisure travelers, domestic fares have increased more than 20 percent in the second quarter compared with a year earlier, according to data compiled by the travel website Orbitz. On international routes, the climb has been even steeper, with fares 30 percent higher than last year. For business travelers, ticket prices increased by 12 percent in the first half of the year. Even as the summer ends, experts said they did not expect bargain fares to return anytime soon. See Airfare / A7
Within military families, strong criticism rises with casualties By David Zucchino Los Angeles Times
QUEENSBURY, N.Y. — Bill and Beverly Osborn still can’t bring themselves to erase the phone message from their son Ben. He had called from Afghanistan in June to assure them that he was safe. Four days later, he was killed in a Taliban ambush. The Osborns long ago accepted the risks faced by their son, an Army specialist. But what they can’t accept now are the military rules of engagement, which they contend made it possible for the Taliban to kill him. “We let the enemy fire first, and they took my son from us,” Beverly Osborn said of the rules. As American combat deaths have reached record levels this summer, public support is eroding for the 9-year-old conflict. And criticism is mounting among military families, too. See Casualties / A10
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Flexible, but less, funding in reset plan for higher ed
Funding linked to success? When it comes to higher education, the report pushes the state to redefine its relationship with the university system and to restructure funding to give more money to the schools that provide the best educational outcomes, like graduation rates and other measures of success. The reset cabinet did not attempt to quantify how much money might be saved by working toward the higher education efficiencies; however, it did recommend funding the Oregon University System at 15 percent below the current service level for the coming budget year. See Higher ed / A6
REPLACING FOSSIL FUELS
Scientific method as a corporate strategy By Andrew Pollack New York Times News Service Rob Kerr / The Bulletin
Joanna Newman, 21, visits with Cutter, a horse at 4 Start Stables, where the Redmond High School graduate used to ride horses. Newman, though, has been unable to ride for about two years, since she began suffering severe back pain caused by a noncancerous tumor growing along her spine.
Waiting, in pain By Patrick Cliff The Bulletin
B
y the time Joanna Newman, a Redmond High School valedictorian in 2007, learned what was causing the intense pain in her back, she was more relieved than upset. An intradural lipoma — a noncancerous fatty tumor along her spinal column — was compressing her spine and growing larger. Her situation, doctors have said, is rare and threatens to paralyze Newman from the chest down. Newman now needs surgery and
is waiting for her insurance provider to decide whether it will cover it. At the same time, she is trying to raise money to pay for the surgery at a California hospital. The surgery, Newman hopes, will bring to a close a long struggle to feel better. That struggle began in late 2007, when Newman began suffering back pains that made the most basic movements difficult. In January 2008, Newman began visiting doctor’s offices and clinics, searching for an answer. Over the next four months, Newman saw emergency room doctors, a nurse practitioner
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and an osteopath. In April 2008, when Newman could barely walk because of the pain, her mother-in-law took her to the ER at St. Charles Bend. Amber Newman, her mother-in-law, persuaded doctors to conduct a CT scan of Joanna’s back. An MRI followed, and with it the news of the tumor. Hearing the grim diagnosis was difficult, but it gave Newman — now 21 and a student at Oregon State University in Corvallis — a name for the pain that haunted much of her life. See Newman / A8
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J. Craig Venter — a real-life Dr. Frankenstein? — wants to create creatures (think bacteria, algae or even plants) to carry out industrial tasks and displace fossil fuels. It will be, he says, “the basis of a new industrial revolution.”
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SAN DIEGO — The scientific rebel J. Craig Venter created headlines — and drew comparisons to Dr. Frankenstein — when he announced in May that his team had created what, with a bit of stretching, could be called the first synthetic living creature. Two months later, only a smattering of reporters and local dignitaries bothered to show up at a news conference to hear Venter talk about a new greenhouse that his company, Synthetic Genomics, had built outside its headquarters here to conduct research. The contrast in the fanfare reflects the enormous gap between Venter’s stunning scientific achievements and his business aspirations. Venter, 63, made his name as a gene hunter. He was co-founder of a company, Celera Genomics, that nearly left the federally funded Human Genome Project in the dust in the race to determine the complete sequence of DNA in human chromosomes. See Venter / A5
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AFGHANISTAN: U.S. bank bailout in works, Page A2 CRAIGSLIST: No more exotic services, Page A2